The Hidden Assassins

The door swung open, the feet came back into the room. His presence made her shrink. He took fresh socks and pants from the drawer and put them on. He stepped into a pair of trousers and took a crisp, white shirt, ironed by the laundry where he still sent his clothes. He shook it out and drove his arms into the sleeves, shot the cuffs. He whipped a crimson tie into a perfect knot. He was efficient, vigorous and precise. He rammed those brutal feet into a pair of shoes, threw on a jacket-his savagery now perfectly disguised.

'I'm working late tonight,' he said, his tone back to normal.

The apartment door clicked shut. Ines crawled out from under the bed and flopped against the wall. She sat with her legs splayed out, her hands helpless by her sides. The first sob jolted her away from the wall.

5

Seville-Tuesday, 6th June 2006, 06.30 hrs

Falcon came to in the profound darkness of his shuttered bedroom. He lay there in his private universe, contemplating last night's events. After the disappointment at Consuelo's restaurant the drink with Laura had gone better than expected. They'd agreed to see each other as friends. She was only a little offended that he was ending their affair with, as he'd told her, no other prospect in sight.

He showered and put on a dark suit and white shirt and folded a tie into his pocket. He had meetings planned all morning after he'd been to see the Medico Forense. It was a morning of shimmering brilliance, with not a cloud in the sky. The rain had cleansed the atmosphere of all that puzzling electricity.

A temperature gauge outside in the street told him it was 16°C while the radio warned that a great heat was about to descend on Seville and by evening they should expect temperatures in excess of 36°C.

The Forensic Institute was next to the Hospital de la Macarena behind the Andalucian Parliament, which itself looked across the road to the Basilica de la Macarena, just inside the old city walls. At 8.15 a.m. Falcon was early, but the Medico Forense had already arrived.

Dr Pintado had the file open on his desk and was reminding himself of the detail of the autopsy. They shook hands, sat down and he resumed his reading.

'What I concentrated on in this case,' he said, still scanning the pages, 'apart from the cause of death, which was straightforward-he was poisoned with potassium cyanide-was giving you as much help as possible on the identification of the body.'

'Potassium cyanide?' said Falcon. 'That's not exactly in keeping with the ruthlessness of the post-mortem operations. Was it injected?'

'No, ingested,' said Pintado, other things on his mind. 'The face…I might be able to help you with that, or rather I have a friend who is interested in helping. You remember I was telling you about a case I handled in Bilbao, where they made a facial model from a skull found in a shallow grave?'

'It cost a fortune.'

'That's right, and you don't get resources like that for any old murder.'

'So how much does your friend cost?'

'He's free.'

'And who is he?'

'He's a sort of sculptor, but he's not that interested in the body, just faces.'

'Would I have heard of him?'

'No. He's strictly amateur. His name is Miguel Covo. He's seventy-four years old and retired,' said Pintado. 'But he's been working with faces for nearly sixty years. He builds them out of clay, makes moulds for wax, and carves them out of stone, although that's quite a recent development.'

'What's he proposing and why is it free?'

'Well, he's never done this kind of thing before, but he wants to try,' said Pintado. 'I let him take a plaster cast of the head last night.'

'OK, so there's no decision,' said Falcon.

'He'll make up a half-dozen models, do some sketches and then start working up the face. He'll paint it, too, and give it hair-real hair. His studio can give you the creeps, especially if he likes you and introduces you to his mother.'

'I've always got on well with mothers.'

'He keeps her in a cupboard,' said Dr Pintado. 'Just a model of her, I mean.'

'It would be cruel to keep a woman in her nineties in a cupboard.'

'She died when he was small, which was when his fascination with faces started. He wanted the photographs of her to be more real. So he recreated her. It was the only time he fashioned a body. She's in that cupboard with real hair, make-up, her own clothes and shoes.'

'So, he's weird, too?'

'Of course he is,' said Pintado, 'but likeably weird. You might not want to invite him to dinner with the Comisario and his wife, though.'

'Why not?' said Falcon. 'It would make a change from the opera.'

'Anyway, he'll call you when he has something, but…not tomorrow.'

'What else have you got?'

'It's all helpful, but not as helpful as a physical image,' said Pintado. 'I worked with a guy who did forensics on mass graves in Bosnia and I learnt a bit from him. The first thing is dental. I've made a full set of digital X-rays and notes about each tooth. He's had extensive orthodontic work done to get the teeth all straight and looking perfect.'

'How old is this guy?'

'Mid forties.'

'And normally you'd have that sort of work done in your early teens.'

'Exactly.'

'And there wasn't a lot of orthodontic work being done in Spain in the mid seventies.'

'Most likely it was done in America,' said Pintado. 'Apart from that, there's nothing much else to go on, dentally. He's had no major work done, and only a molar missing on the lower right side.'

'Have you found any distinguishing marks on the outside of the body-moles, birthmarks?'

'No, but I did come across something interesting on his hands.'

'Forgive me, Doctor, but…'

'I know. They were severed. But I checked the lymph nodes to see what was deposited there,' said Pintado. 'I'm sure our friend had a small tattoo on each hand.'

'I don't suppose there's a snapshot of it in the lymph node?' asked Falcon.

'Lymph nodes are quite clever about killing bacteria and neutralizing toxins, but their talent for recreating images from tattoo ink, introduced into the bloodstream via the hand, is extremely limited. There was a trace of ink and that was all.'

'What about surgery?'

'There's good news and bad there,' said Pintado. 'He's had surgery, but it was a hernia operation, which is just about the world's most common procedure. His was also the most common type of inguinal hernia, so he has a scar on the right side of his pubis. I'd guess it was about three years old, but I'll get one of the vascular surgeons to come over and confirm that for me. Then we'll take a look at the mesh they used to patch the hernia and hopefully he'll be able to tell me who supplied it, then you can find the hospitals they supply…and, I know, it's going to take a lot of work and time.'

'Maybe he had that done in America as well,' said Falcon.

'Like I said: good news and bad.'

'What about his hair?' asked Falcon. 'They scalped him.'

'He had hair that was at least long enough to cover his collar.'

'How do you get that?'

'He's been on the beach this year,' said Pintado, turning some photographs around for Falcon to look at. 'You can see the tan lines on his arms and legs, but if you turn him over you don't see any tan line at the back of his neck. In fact, if you look, it's quite white compared to the rest of his back, which to me means that it rarely sees the sun.'

'Would you describe him as "white"?' asked Falcon. 'His skin colour didn't look Northern European to me.'