The Hidden Assassins (31 page)

‘After that, our information gets a little sparse. We’ve a record of him taking a trip to Morocco for three weeks at the end of April. He took the ferry from Algeciras to Tangier on 24th April and he came back on 12th May. That’s it.’

‘Does he have a name?’

‘His real name is Tateb Hassani,’ said Pablo. ‘When he became an American citizen in 1984—which was also the year both his parents died, one in a car crash and the other of cancer—he changed his name to Jack Hansen. It’s not so unusual for immigrants to anglicize their names. He was born in Fès in 1961 and his parents left Morocco in 1972. His father was a businessman who went back and forth frequently. Tateb only went back to Morocco twice in thirty years. He didn’t like it. His parents forced him to maintain an Arabic education and his mother spoke to him only in French. He
wrote and spoke Arabic fluently. He graduated in mathematics, but couldn’t get a place as a post-graduate, so he switched to Arabic Studies and wrote a thesis on Arab mathematicians. He came out of Princeton with a doctorate in 1986. He spent time in the universities of Madison, Minnesota and San Francisco before ending up in New York. He had a good life: a university salary, with the rent from his parents’ apartment coming in. Then, when he landed the professorship at Columbia, he took over the apartment and had the perfect existence, until he started sleeping with his students.’

‘What about his religion?’

‘He’s down as a Muslim, but, as you might have gathered from his history, he’d let that lapse.’

‘Was he known for any opinions about radical Islam?’

‘You can read the file sent over by the CIA,’ said Pablo, taking it out of his briefcase, laying it on the table. It looked to be about ten pages long.

‘Are there any samples of his handwriting in here?’ asked Falcón.

‘Not that I’ve seen.’

‘Can the CIA send some across to us?’ asked Falcón, flicking through the pages. ‘In both Arabic script and English.’

‘I’ll get them on to it.’

‘Any other languages, apart from French, English and Arabic?’

‘He spoke and wrote Spanish, too,’ said Pablo. ‘He used to give a maths course every summer over here at Granada University.’

‘Comisario Elvira told me that you’re not much interested in our investigation any more and that Juan has gone back to Madrid,’ said Falcón. ‘Does that mean
you’ve cracked the code in the annotated versions of the Koran?’

‘Juan’s been called back to Madrid because there have been reports of other cells, not connected with Hammad and Saoudi, which are now on the move,’ said Pablo. ‘We’re still interested in your investigation, but not in the way you are. And, no, we haven’t cracked the code.’

‘How’s the diversion theory going?’

‘Madrid have hit dead ends with the Hammad and Saoudi connections,’ said Pablo. ‘Arrests have been made, but it’s the usual thing. They only knew what
they
were doing. They received encrypted emails and did what they were told to do. So far we’ve only picked up a few “associates” of Hammad and Saoudi, which hardly constitutes unravelling the whole network—if there was one to unravel. We’re hoping Yacoub can help us there.’

‘What about the MILA?’

‘A story invented by the media based on some truth—that this group does, in fact, exist—but they weren’t involved in any way,’ said Pablo. ‘It was a neat follow-on from the Abdullah Azzam text sent to the
ABC
. Something to capture the public’s imagination, but, in the end, bogus. If you ask me, it’s irresponsible journalism.’

‘And VOMIT?’ asked Falcón. ‘Did you break them down, too?’

‘That’s not a priority for us,’ said Pablo, riding over Falcón’s irony. ‘We’re more concerned about future attacks on European countries which emanate from Spain rather than an enumeration of the past.’

‘So nothing has changed?’ said Falcón. ‘You still
believe that Miguel Botín was a double, and he was instructed to give the electrician’s card to the Imam by someone in his radical Islamic network?’

‘I know you don’t have any faith in it,’ said Pablo, ‘but we have more information than you do.’

‘And you’re not going to give it to me?’

‘Ask your old friend, Mark Flowers,’ said Pablo. ‘I’ve got to go now.’

‘You know, it was a set of keys from the Imam’s kitchen drawer that opened the fireproof box recovered from the storeroom of the mosque,’ said Falcón. ‘Gregorio was with me when they opened it and he was very interested by that, although, as usual, he didn’t say why the CNI was so fascinated.’

‘This is just the way we have to be, Javier,’ said Pablo. ‘It’s nothing personal, it’s just the nature of our work and the work of others in our business.’

‘Make sure you call me when the handwriting comes through from the CIA,’ said Falcón.

‘What do you want us to do with it?’

‘You’ve got a handwriting expert back in Madrid, haven’t you?’

‘Sure.’

Falcón bowed his head and started flicking through Tateb Hassani’s file. He knew it was childish, but he wanted to show that two could play at the withholding information game.

‘Gregorio and I will come by your house tonight.’

He nodded, waited for Pablo to leave. He closed the file, sat back and let his mind wander. The television was on and the four o’clock news showed the evacuations of the schools and the biology faculty while the bomb squad went in with their dogs. Gradually, a
palimpsest of the Arabic script found with the architect’s drawings appeared over the action images with a voice-over of their translations. Cut to a journalist outside the school, trying to make something out of the fact that nothing, as yet, had been found on the premises.

The chair recently vacated by Pablo slid into Falcón’s vision. He went back to the photographs of Horizonte’s fortieth anniversary and the shot of Banco Omni’s table. That’s what he’d noticed: an empty chair next to Jesús Alarcón’s wife, Mónica. A closer look showed that the chair had just been vacated by a man in a dark suit who was walking away. Against the dark background, only a cuff of shirt, a hand and his collar with some grey hair above it was visible.

The pre-school was empty, apart from a policewoman at the door and another on the computer in one of the classrooms. The stink from the bombsite did not make it a popular location to hang out. Falcón logged on to the internet and entered:
Horizonte: fortieth anniversary
. He clicked on the first article, which was from the business pages of the
ABC
. The byline jumped out at him because it was A. Zarrías. He read through the article just looking for a mention of Banco Omni. It was there, but no names. The photograph was of the Horizonte board at the dinner. He went for another article, which had been published in a business magazine. Again the byline was for A. Zarrías. Falcón clicked on five other articles, of which three had been placed by Angel. He must have been doing the PR for Horizonte’s fortieth anniversary. Interesting. He entered Banco Omni and Horizonte into the search engine.

There were thousands of hits. He scrolled down
through the pages of hits until he got to articles written in 2001. He clicked on the articles, not reading them but checking who placed them. Angel Zarrías had written 80 per cent of them. So, when Angel had quit politics he’d gone into journalism, but he’d also picked up a lucrative sideline in PR with Banco Omni, who presumably put him in touch with Horizonte. He entered ‘Banco Omni board of directors’ into the search engine. He went back through the years, pulling up articles on to the screen. There were names, but never any photographs. In fact, the only photograph he could find of any employees of Banco Omni was from the table shot taken at Horizonte’s fortieth anniversary banquet.

Seville—Thursday, 8th June 2006, 17.30 hrs

‘It’s taken me hours to get to speak to this person,’ said Ferrera, ‘but I think it’s been worth it. I’ve got a…reliable witness to the dumping of the body which was later found on the rubbish dump outside Seville.’

‘We now have a name for that body. He’s called Tateb Hassani,’ said Falcón. ‘You didn’t sound very sure of that word “reliable”.’

‘He drinks, which is never a good thing for a court to hear, and I’m not sure we could ever get him to court anyway.’

‘Tell me what the guy saw and we’ll worry about his credentials if it gets us anywhere.’

‘He lives in an apartment at the end of a cul-de-sac just off Calle Boteros. His daughter owns the third and fourth floors of this building. She lives on the third and her father lives above. Both apartments have the perfect view of those bins on the corner of Calle Boteros.’

‘I’m sure that’s why the daughter bought them,’ said Falcón. ‘And what’s this guy doing awake at three in the morning, looking out of his window?’

‘He’s an insomniac, or rather he can’t sleep at night, only during the day,’ she said. ‘He sleeps from eight until four. The daughter wouldn’t let me disturb him until she’d given him lunch. She knows that if she breaks his routine it’ll be hell for her for a week.’

‘He goes straight into lunch?’ said Falcón. ‘She doesn’t give him breakfast?’

‘He likes to drink wine, so she gives him something substantial to eat with it.’

‘So, what’s his problem exactly?’

‘Quite unusual for a Sevillano: he’s agoraphobic. He can’t go outside and he can’t bear more than two people in a room.’

‘I see the problem with the court appearance now,’ said Falcón. ‘Anyway, he was awake at three in the morning, but not so drunk that he couldn’t see what was going on by the bins.’

‘He was drunk, but he says it doesn’t affect his vision,’ said Ferrera. ‘Just after three o’clock on Sunday morning, he saw a large, dark estate car pull into the cul-de-sac and reverse back towards the bins. The driver and passenger got out of the front, both male, and a third man got out of the back. The driver stood in the middle of Calle Boteros, and looked up and down. The other men opened the boot. They checked the bins, which were empty at that time of night, tipped one of them on its side and leaned it against the rear of the car. They reached into the back and dragged something into the bin. They manoeuvred the bin, which now appeared heavy, back up to the pavement and returned to the rear of the car. They removed two black bin liners, which the witness described as bulky but light, and swung them into the bin on top of whatever they’d
just put in there. They closed the bin. The driver slammed the boot shut. They got back into the car, reversed into Calle Boteros and headed off in the direction of the Alfalfa.’

‘Could he give you anything on the three men?’

‘He thought, from the way they moved, that the two guys who did the work were young—by that he meant around thirty. The driver was older, thicker around the waist. They were all dressed in dark clothes, but seemed to be wearing what looked like white gloves. I assume he means latex gloves. The driver and one of the younger men had dark hair and the third was either bald or had had his head shaved.’

‘Not bad for an old drunk in an attic,’ said Falcón.

‘There’s some street lighting on that corner,’ said Ferrera. ‘But, still…not bad for someone who his daughter says will drink until he falls over.’

‘Just don’t include that in his witness statement,’ said Falcón. ‘What about these two “bulky but light” bin liners they threw on top of the body?’

‘He thought they probably contained something like gardening detritus—hedge clippings, that sort of thing.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s seen that sort of stuff thrown in there before, but at the end of the afternoon, not at three in the morning.’

‘Have you found any large houses in that area which might have that quantity of gardening detritus?’ asked Falcón. ‘It’s mostly apartments around the Alfalfa.’

‘They could have picked up a couple of bin liners of stuff from anywhere,’ said Ferrera.

‘If they’d done that, those bin liners would have
come out first, whereas, according to your friend, they dealt with “something heavy” first.’

‘I’ll see what I can find.’

‘Come to think of it, Felipe and Jorge said they had a bin liner of clippings that they’d picked up near the body on the rubbish dump,’ said Falcón. ‘I’ll see if they’ve had time to have a look at it, yet.’

Ramírez called as Falcón was on his way out to the forensics’ tent.

‘The Imam’s mobile phone records,’ said Ramírez. ‘The CNI have got them and they won’t release them to me. Or rather, Pablo said he would look into it, but now he doesn’t take or return my calls.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Falcón.

The forensic tent was filled with more than twenty masked and boiler-suited individuals who were impossible to differentiate. Falcón called Felipe and told him to come outside. Felipe remembered the gardening detritus, which he’d also had a chance to look at.

‘It was all from the same type of hedge,’ he said. ‘The kind they use in ornamental gardens. Box hedge. Small, shiny, dark green leaves.’

‘How fresh was it?’

‘It had been cut that weekend. Friday afternoon or Saturday.’

‘Any idea how much hedge we’d be looking at?’

‘Remember, that might have been just part of the clippings,’ said Felipe. ‘And I live in an apartment. Hedges are not my speciality.’

Calderón was lying on the fold-down bed in his police cell. His head was resting on his hands, while his eyes stared at four squares of white sunlight high on the
wall above the door. When he closed his eyes the four squares burned red on the inside of his eyelids. If he looked into the darkness of the cell they smouldered greenly. He was calm enough for this. He had been calm since the moment he’d been caught trying to get rid of Inés. Get rid of Inés? How had that phrase broken its way into his lexicon?

They’d brought him down to the Jefatura in the early-morning summer light. He was shirtless because the forensics had bagged that horrifically blood-stained garment. The cops had the air conditioning on even at that hour and his nipples were hard and he was shivering. As they crossed the river, two rowing eights, out for early training, slipped under the bridge and he had the sensation of an enormous weight coming off his shoulders. The relaxing of the muscles in his neck and between his scapulae was almost erotic. It was a powerful post-fear drug that his body chemistry had concocted, and it had the awkward result of arousing him.

He had gone through the process of incarceration dumbly, like an animal for slaughter, moving from transport, to pen, to holding cell with no idea of the implications. A DNA swab had been taken from the inside of his cheek, he’d been photographed and given an orange short-sleeve shirt. The relief of finally being left alone, with no possessions, his belt removed, and just a pack of cigarettes, was immense. His tiredness drew him to the bed. He kicked off his loafers and sank back on the hard bunk and fell into a dreamless sleep, until he was woken at three in the afternoon for lunch. He’d eaten and applied his ferocious intellect to what he was going to say in his interview with the detective before falling
into this dazed state of looking at the squares of light on the wall. It was unexpectedly pleasant to be released from the oppression of time. At five o’clock the guard came to tell him that Inspector Jefe Luis Zorrita was ready to interview him.

‘You are, of course, allowed to have your lawyer present,’ said Zorrita, coming into the interview room.

‘I
am
a lawyer,’ said Calderón, still with all his precrime arrogance. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Zorrita made the introductions to the tape and asked Calderón to confirm that he’d been given the opportunity to have a lawyer present, and had declined.

‘I didn’t want to talk to you until I’d had the full autopsy report from the Médico Forense,’ said Zorrita. ‘Now I’ve got that and had the opportunity to conduct my preliminary enquiries…’

‘What sort of preliminary enquiries?’ asked Calderón, just to show that he wasn’t going to be passive.

‘I’ve more or less established what you and your wife had been doing over the last twenty-four hours before her murder.’

‘More or less?’

‘There are still some details to fill in on what your wife was doing yesterday afternoon. That’s all,’ said Zorrita. ‘So what I’d like you to do, Sr Calderón, is to tell me, in your own words, what happened last night.’

‘From what time?’

‘Well, let’s start from the moment you left the Canal Sur studios and arrived at your lover’s apartment,’ said Zorrita. ‘The time before that is well accounted for.’

‘My lover?’

‘That was the word Marisa Moreno used to describe your relationship,’ said Zorrita, looking through his
notes. ‘She was firm about not wanting to be called your mistress.’

That admission from Marisa made him feel quite sentimental. How ridiculous it was that a police enquiry had drawn that from her. Having not thought about her very much since being arrested, he suddenly missed her.

‘Is that a fair description?’ asked Zorrita. ‘From your point of view?’

‘Yes, I would say that we were lovers. We’d known each other for nine months or so.’

‘It would explain why she was doing her best to protect you.’

‘Protect me?’

‘She was trying to make out that you’d left her apartment later than you had, which would have made it more difficult for you to have murdered your wife…’

‘I did
not
kill my wife,’ said Calderón, summoning the full severity of his professional voice.

‘…but she “forgot” that she’d called a taxi for you and that we can access all the phone records, as well as the cab company logs, and talk to the driver himself, of course. So her attempts to help you were, I’m afraid, quite futile.’

The interview was not following the pattern that Calderón had outlined to himself in his lawyer’s mind while lying on his bunk. He’d witnessed only a few police interrogations in his time as a judge and so had little idea of the way in which they moved. It was for this reason that, barely a minute into his interview with Zorrita, he was in a quandary. Warmed by the thought that Marisa had called him her lover, but chilled by the idea that she believed he needed her help, which
had ugly implications. The effect of these two extremes of temperature alive in his body was to undermine his equilibrium. His thoughts would not line up in their usual orderly fashion, but seemed to mill around, like shoals of children careering around the school playground.

‘So, Sr Calderón, please tell me when you arrived at your lover’s apartment.’

‘It must have been about 12.45.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘We went out on to the balcony and made love.’

‘Made love?’ said Zorrita, deadpan. ‘You didn’t indulge in anal sex, by any chance?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘You seem very firm about that,’ said Zorrita. ‘And I only ask you such a personal question because the autopsy revealed that your wife seemed to be accustomed to being penetrated in this fashion.’

Panic rose in Calderón’s chest. He had lost control of the interview in a matter of a few exchanges. His arrogance had cost him dear. His assumption that he could trounce Zorrita in any mind or word game had proved to be wide of the mark. This was a man who was used to the wiliness of criminals, and had come to the interview with a clear strategy, which made Calderón’s analytical brain seem worthless.

‘We made love,’ said Calderón, unable to add anything more without making it sound like some biological transaction.

‘Would you say that these two relationships generally worked in this fashion?’ asked Zorrita. ‘You treated your lover with respect and admiration, while abusing your wife as if she was some cheap whore.’

Outrage was the first emotion that leapt into Calderón’s throat, but he was learning. He saw Zorrita’s two interrogating weapons: emotional stabs, followed by logical bludgeon.

‘I did not treat my wife like a cheap whore.’

‘You’re right, of course, because not even a cheap whore allows herself to be beaten up
and
sodomized for no money at all.’

Silence. Calderón gripped the edge of the table so hard his nails whitened with the pressure. Zorrita was unconcerned.

‘At least you don’t have the temerity to deny that you treated your wife in such shameful fashion,’ said Zorrita. ‘I presume your lover didn’t know these two sides to your personality?’

‘Who the fuck do you think you are, to presume to know anything about my relationship with my wife, or my lover?’ said Calderón through lips gone bloodless with rage. ‘Some fucking Inspector Jefe, come down from Madrid…’

‘Now I can see why your wife would be terrified of you, Sr Calderón,’ said Zorrita. ‘Underneath that brilliant legal mind, you’re a very angry man.’

‘I am not fucking angry,’ said Calderón, pounding the table hard enough to jog a hank of his hair loose. ‘
You
are
goading
me, Inspector Jefe.’

‘If I’m goading you, I’m not doing it by shouting at you or insulting you. I’m only doing it by asking you questions based on proven fact. The autopsy has revealed that you sodomized your wife and that you beat her up so badly that some of her vital organs were damaged. There’s also a history of humiliation, which even extended to pursuing an affair with another
woman on the same day that you announced your engagement to your wife.’

‘Who’ve you been talking to?’ asked Calderón, still unable to control his fury.

‘As you know, I’ve only had today to work on this case, but I’ve managed to talk to your lover, which was a very interesting conversation, and a number of your colleagues and your wife’s colleagues. I’ve also spoken to some of the secretaries in the Edificio de los Juzgados and the Palacio de Justicia, and the security guards, of course, who see everything. Of the twenty-odd interviews I’ve conducted so far, not one person has been prepared to defend your behaviour. The least emotional description of your activities was “an incorrigible womanizer”.’