The Hidden Assassins

11

Seville-Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 14.15 hrs

A group of workmen had formed around the section of the building where Fernando had pinpointed his wife's position from the sound of her mobile phone. Fernando was on his haunches, with his hands clasped over the top of his head, trying to exert additional gravitational force, as if there was the possibility that more tragedy might carry him away like a child's lost helium-filled balloon.

The crane loomed over the scene with its wrist-thick steel cable, taut and creaking. There were workmen on ladders using motorized hand-held saws, capable of ripping through concrete and steel with a noise that went through Falcon taking shreds with it. They had inserted hydraulic props and thick scaffolding planks to keep the collapsed floors apart as they carved out a tunnel. Chunks of concrete were coughed from the hole within clouds of dust, and showers of sparks spewed out as the saws' teeth bit into steel. The goggled workmen, grey as ghosts, plunged further in until the unbearable sound stopped and there was a call for more props and planks. The sun beat down. The sweat tracked dark rivulets through the grey dust on the workmen's faces. Once the props and planks were inserted the saws started up again, making all humans aware of the savagery of their metal teeth. The workmen were off the ladders now, kneeling on pads strapped to their knees, staring into the tangled skeleton of the building, embraced by claws of steel rods jutting from the shattered concrete.

He knew he should move away, that the sight of the confused guts of the building was not good preparation for the task at hand, but Falcon was caught up in the drama and was feeding a profound sense of anger at the tragedy. Only Ramirez calling wrenched him out of his distraction.

'We're getting reports of a blue transit van that was parked outside the front of the building yesterday morning,' said Ramirez. 'There seems to be confusion about the numbers of people in it. Some say two, others three and still others, four. They brought in tool boxes, a plastic box of some sort of electrical supplies and insulation tubing, carried in rolls over their shoulders. Nobody remembers any company name on the side of the van.'

'And it all went into the mosque?'

'There's confusion there, too,' said Ramirez. 'Most of the people we're talking to don't live in the building, they were just passers-by. Some didn't know there was a mosque in the basement. We're getting snapshots of what happened. I've got Perez working on the residents list. He's down at the hospital. Serrano and Baena are working the surrounding blocks and people in the street. Where's Cristina?'

'She should still be working those blocks on Calle Los Romeros,' said Falcon. 'What we need to find is someone who was inside the mosque in the last forty-eight hours to corroborate what we're hearing about on the outside. What about that woman, Esperanza, who gave Comisario Elvira the list-didn't she leave a number? Call her and get some names and addresses. Those women must know.'

'Hasn't anybody from the Moroccan community approached the Comisario yet?'

'Somebody turned up with the Mayor,' said Falcon. 'You know what it's like. They've got to contain the media before they can give us any practical help.'

'You remember that mosque they wanted to build over in Los Bermejales?' said Ramirez. 'A huge place, big enough for seven hundred worshippers. There was a protest group organized by the locals called Los Vecinos de Los Bermejales.'

'That's right, they had a website, too, called www.mezquitanogracias.com. There were a lot of accusations about xenophobia, racism and anti-Muslim activity, especially after March 11th.'

'Maybe we should look up some of the personalities from that dispute,' said Ramirez. 'Or is that too obvious?'

'Keep working on what happened inside and outside the building in the last forty-eight hours,' said Falcon. 'In the end there are two possibilities: explosives were brought here by terrorists and accidentally exploded, or an anti-Muslim group has planted a bomb and set it off. There are a lot of complications within those scenarios, but those are the two basic concepts. Let's work with the information we find, rather than getting distracted by the possibilities.'

Falcon hung up. The saws had stopped. The workmen were shovelling out rubble by hand. Two more props, planks and lights were called for. Men ran up the ladders with the equipment. Props were passed in. Torches were trained into the hole. A single saw ripped into some steel and stopped. A length of metal rod was flung out followed by more rubble. Four paramedics leaned against their ambulance, waiting for their turn in the drama. Two cradle stretchers with straps were brought to the foot of the ladders by the rescue teams. Fernando was concentrating on his breathing, under orders from his trauma counsellor. There was a shout for a doctor. A Medico Forense stepped up the ladder with his bag and crawled down the tunnel. There was silence, apart from the rumble of the insulated diesel generators. The diggers had stopped work. The drivers were out of their cabs watching. There was a collective need to wring some hope out of this calamitous day.

Another shout, this time for a stretcher. The doctor backed out on all fours and came down the ladder, while two men from the rescue services dragged the stretcher up the other ladder. Fernando came off his haunches and in seconds was on the doctor, holding him by the sleeves of his shirt. The doctor grasped Fernando by the shoulders and spoke directly into his eyes. The tension in their strange embrace made them look like judoists, struggling for the upper hand. Fernando's hands fell to his sides. The doctor put his arm around him and beckoned the counsellor. Fernando leaned into him like a lost child. The doctor spoke to the trauma counsellor over Fernando's shoulder.

The doctor trotted over to the paramedics, who radioed through to the hospital. He talked directly with the emergency room. The paramedics reversed the ambulance up to the ladders, opened the double doors, prepared the trolley with a head, neck and spine immobilizer, turned on the oxygen, charged the defibrillator.

The workmen, who'd plunged into the hole after the doctor had backed out, now called the rescue workers in with the stretcher. The Medico Forense joined Falcon, just as Calderon came round from the front of the building.

'Have we got a survivor in there?' asked Calderon.

'The woman is dead,' said the doctor, 'but her child is hanging on. She's breathing and there's a thready pulse. The mother seems to have fallen with her body protecting the child, as much as possible, from the debris falling on top of them. The problem is to get the girl out. The mother's back is facing the rescue workers, so they've got to lift the child up and over her body and there's no room in there. If the child has a spinal injury, just the movement could cause permanent paralysis, but if she stays there much longer she'll die.'

The workmen roared from the mouth of the hole and held their thumbs up. The rescue workers slid the steel cradle stretcher out, mounted it on the ladder's sliders and lowered it to the paramedics, who lifted the girl out, on the count, and fitted her into the immobilizer. Two television crews came running, pursued by local police. The Medico Forense made a full report to Calderon. The pneumatic drills, saws and diggers started up again as if galvanized by this thin slice of hope. Falcon got into the ambulance cab. The trolley was lifted into the back, followed by Fernando. A cameraman was pushed back roughly by one of the workmen. The door closed on a woman's microphone. The driver leapt into his seat and set the siren off. He drove slowly over the rough ground until he got back on to the tarmac. Photojournalists stormed the side and back of the ambulance, holding cameras up to the windows and flashing away. The lurid lights, hysterical siren and the sprinting journalists left pedestrians gaping and slack-faced.

The news of a survivor travelled faster than the ambulance and there was a media scrum, battling it out with a dozen local policemen and hospital orderlies, at the entrance to the hospital. The ambulance ramp was clear and they got the girl out and through the swing doors before the newsmen could get near her. Fernando was sucked in after her. The media rounded on Falcon, who they'd seen in the ambulance cab, and he steadied their hysteria by informing them that the girl had been removed from the destroyed building showing signs of life. A doctor would make a full statement once he'd completed his examination. Falcon held up his hand and pushed back the barrage of questions that followed.

Ten minutes later he'd picked up his car from the Forensic Institute and was easing his way out through a gaggle of journalists still desperate for his final words. He crossed the river and went into the old Expo ground. He found Informaticalidad in an office that fronted a large warehouse on Calle Albert Einstein. He showed his police ID to the woman in reception and told her he wanted an immediate interview with Pedro Plata in connection with a murder investigation. He gave her his stoniest policeman's stare and she phoned through. Sr Plata was in a board meeting but would make himself available in a few minutes. She took him through security to an office with glass walls on all sides. The receptionist was still the only visible person. There was a lack of movement in the building, as if business was slow, even dead.

Pedro Plata arrived with the receptionist, who set down two coffees and left. He had only been responsible for buying the property so could offer no help in explaining how it had been used.

'Any reason why you bought it rather than rented it?'

'Only if you assure me this is not going to get back to the tax authorities, or be used against this company in any way.'

'My job is finding murderers.'

'We had some black money to get rid of.'

'And its use wasn't discussed at a board meeting?'

'Not one I attended,' said Plata. 'It was Diego Torres's idea, he's the Human Resources Director, you'd best talk to him.'

More time leaked past. The chill of the air conditioning and his exposure in the glass office made him feel like an Arctic zoo animal. Diego Torres arrived and before he'd even sat down Falcon asked him how they'd used the apartment.

'We try to encourage our employees to think creatively, not just about our business but business in general,' said Torres. 'Where will the next opportunities come from? Is there another strand that we can attach to our core business? Is there another business out there that could improve our own, or help it to grow? Is there a totally different project that could be worth investing in? These sorts of things.'

'And you think you can achieve that by investing in a small apartment, in an anonymous block, in a poor neighbourhood of Seville?'

'That was a conscious decision,' said Torres. 'Our employees complained that they never had time to think creatively, they were always too busy with the work at hand. They came to us demanding "brainstorming time". A lot of companies offer this and it normally consists of sending employees away to an expensive country club, where they attend meetings and seminars, listen to gurus spouting common sense and charging a fortune, interspersed with tennis, swimming and staying up until five in the morning partying.'

'They must have been very disappointed by your solution,' said Falcon. 'How many employees did you lose?'

'None from that project, but there's always a certain amount of churn in the sales teams. It's hard work with demanding targets. We pay well, but we expect results. A lot of young guys think they can handle the pressure, but they burn out, or lose their drive. It's a young person's business. There are no sales reps over thirty.'

'You're telling me you didn't lose anybody when you showed them that apartment in El Cerezo?'

'We're not stupid, Inspector Jefe,' said Torres. 'We gave them a sweetener. The idea was that they should take the brainstorming seriously. We put them in a place outside their normal environment, with no distractions, not even a decent cafe to go to, so that they would concentrate on the task. They went in pairs and we swapped the people around. They were told it was a finite project, three months maximum, and they wouldn't have to spend more than four hours at a time in the apartment. They were also told that they would be a part of any of their projects which received board approval.'

'Was that the sweetener?'

'We're not that tough on them,' said Torres. 'The sweetener was a fully paid break in a beach hotel, with golf and tennis, during the Feria-and they wouldn't have to do any work. We let them bring their girlfriends, too.'

'And boyfriends?'

Torres blinked, as if that little comment had short-circuited something in his brain. Falcon thought Torres might be inferring something 'inappropriate' from his remark until he remembered that only men had been seen going into the apartment.

'You do employ women, don't you, Sr Torres?'

'The receptionist who showed you in here is…'

'How do you recruit, Sr Torres?'

'We advertise at business schools and through recruitment agencies.'

'Give me some names and telephone numbers,' said Falcon, handing him his notebook. 'How many people have you fired in the last year?'

'None.'

'Two years?'

'None. We don't fire people. They leave.'

'It's cheaper that way,' said Falcon. 'I'd like a list of all the people who have left your employ in the last year, and I'd also like the names and addresses of all the men who frequented that apartment in Calle Los Romeros.'

'Why?'

'We have to know whether they saw anything while they were there, especially in the last week.'

'It might not be so easy for you to interview my sales reps.'

'You'll have to make it easy. We're looking for people who are responsible for the deaths of four children and five adults…so far. And the first forty-eight hours of an investigation are critical.'

'When would you like to start?'

'Two members of my squad will begin contacting your sales reps as soon as you've given me their names and phone numbers,' said Falcon. 'And why, by the way, did you insist on your employees being there in the hours of daylight?'

'Those are the hours they work anyway. They sell from nine in the morning until eight at night while businesses are open. Then there's the paperwork, team meetings, course studies, product information classes. Twelve-hour days are the short ones.'

'Let me have a list with addresses and phone numbers of all the board members, too.'

'Now?'

'Along with those other lists I asked for,' said Falcon. 'I am busy, too, Sr Torres. So if you could bring them to me in the next ten minutes it would be appreciated.'

Torres stood and went to shake Falcon's hand.

'I'd like you to bring me the lists, Sr Torres'' said Falcon. 'I'll have more questions by then.'

Torres left. Falcon went to the toilet; there was an electronic plaque above each urinal, which streamed quotes from the Bible and inspirational business maxims. Informaticalidad extracted the best out of its employees by embracing them in a culture not unlike a religious sect.

The receptionist was waiting for him outside the toilets. It looked as if she'd been sent to make sure he didn't roam too freely around the corridors, despite all the offices being controlled by security key pads. She took him back to Torres, who was waiting with the lists.

'Is Informaticalidad part of a holding company?' asked Falcon.

'We're in the high-technology division of a Spanish company based in Madrid called Horizonte. They are owned by a US investment company called I4IT.'

'Who are they?'

'Who knows?' said Torres. 'The I4 bit is Indianapolis Investment Interests Incorporated and IT is Information Technology. I think they started out investing only in Hi-Tech, but they're broader based than that now.'

Torres walked him back to reception.

'How many ideas and projects did your reps come up with while they were in Calle Los Romeros?'

'Fifteen ideas, which have already been incorporated into our working practices, and four projects which are still in the planning stage.'

'Have you ever heard of a website called www.vomit.org?'

'Never,' said Torres, and let the door slowly close.

Back in his car Falcon checked his mobiles for calls. Informaticalidad's building, a steel cage covered in tinted glass, reflected its surroundings. On top of the building were four banners with company logos: Informaticalidad, Quirurgicalidad, Ecograficalidad and finally a slightly larger placard featuring a huge pair of spectacles with a horizon running through them and above, the word Optivision. High technology, robotic surgical instruments, ultrasound machines and laser equipment for correcting visual defects. This company had access to the internal workings of the body. They could see inside you, remove and implant things and make sure you saw the world the way they saw it. It disturbed Falcon.