Robert Wilson - The Hidden Assassins

'I don't expect you to reply immediately. I know you will have to talk to your people first. I need your answer as soon as possible. If I can give them this information I believe it will increase my standing with the council immeasurably.'

'That last bit I don't even have to think about,' said Falcon. 'I can't do it.'

'Just wait, Javier,' said Gregorio, but Falcon was already typing out his reply:

'Yacoub, it's completely impossible for me to give you that information. We have our suspicions, but absolutely no proof. I assume the leaders of this council are looking for revenge for the bombing of the mosque and that is not something I am prepared to have on my conscience.'

Falcon had to hold Gregorio back as he hit the send button. After about fifteen seconds the screen wavered and the CNI secure website disappeared to be replaced by the msn home page. Gregorio played about on the keyboard and tried to get back into the website, but there was no access. He made a call standing at the window.

'We've lost the connection,' he said.

After several minutes of listening and nodding he closed down the mobile.

'Trouble with the encryption software. They had to terminate the transmission as a precaution.'

'Did my last paragraph go through?'

'They said it did.'

'All the way through to Yacoub?'

'That I don't know yet,' said Gregorio. 'We'll reconvene at your house at 11 p.m. I'll have had a chance to discuss the meat of what Yacoub was saying and its implications with Juan and Pablo by then.'

Seville-Friday, 9th June 2006, 17.45 hrs

On the way back down to the interview rooms Falcon ran into Elvira and del Rey in the corridor. They'd been looking for him. The forensics computer specialists had hacked into the Fuerza Andalucia hard disks. From the articles and photographs found on one of the computers they could tell that the user was compiling the raw material to be transformed into the web pages that would appear on the VOMIT website. From other material on the same hard disk, the user was evidently Angel Zarrias. Elvira seemed annoyed that this news didn't impress Falcon, whose mind was still reeling from the exchange with Yacoub.

'It's more leverage,' said Elvira. 'It places Zarrias and Fuerza Andalucia closer to the heart of the conspiracy.'

Falcon had no ready opinion about that.

'I'm not sure that it does,' said del Rey. 'It could be construed as a separate entity. Zarrias can defend it as a personal campaign. All he's done is use a Fuerza Andalucia computer to draft the articles, which he's downloaded on to a CD and given to some geek, to anonymously slap them up on the VOMIT website. I can't see the leverage we can extract from that.'

Falcon looked from one man to the other, still with no comment. Elvira took a call on his mobile. Falcon started to move away.

'That was Comisario Lobo,' said Elvira. 'The media pressure is at breaking point.'

'What has the media been told so far about these men being held?' asked Falcon, coming back down the corridor to Elvira.

'Suspicion of murder and conspiring to murder,' said Elvira.

'Has Tateb Hassani been named?'

'Not yet. Naming him would involve revealing too much about the nature of our enquiry at the moment,' said Elvira. 'We're still sensitive to the expectations of the people.'

'I'd better get back to work. I'm due to start on Eduardo Rivero in a few minutes,' said Falcon, looking at his watch. 'Tell me, have the forensics found any blood traces in the Fuerza Andalucia offices, yet? Especially in the bathroom?'

'I haven't heard anything on that,' said Elvira, moving off with del Rey. All the interrogators were in the corridor outside the interview rooms. A paramedic in fluorescent green was talking to Ramirez, who caught sight of Falcon over his shoulder.

'Rivero's collapsed,' he said. 'He started gasping for air, getting disorientated, and then fell off his chair.'

Rivero was lying on the floor between two paramedics who were giving him oxygen.

'What's the problem?' asked Falcon.

'Heart arrhythmia and high blood pressure,' said the paramedic. 'We're going to take him to hospital, keep him under observation. His heart rate is up around 160 and completely irregular. If we don't bring it down there's a danger that the blood will pool and clot in the heart, and if a clot gets loose he might have a stroke.'

'Shit,' said Ramirez from the corridor. 'God knows how this is going to play out in the media. They'll tell the world we're running Abu Ghraib down here.'

All the interrogators thought that Rivero, of all the suspects, had been the least attached to the central conspiracy. He had only been important as the leader of the party and, given that the intention was to wrest that from him in order to install Jesus Alarcon, it would stand to reason that he would be kept the least informed. His collapse had occurred under persistent questioning from Inspector Jefe Ramon Barros about the real reason for his relinquishing of the leadership. The pressure of sticking to his story about old age, while the truth worked away at the flaws in his mind, had proved too much.

Just after 7 p.m. Marco Barreda, the Informaticalidad sales manager, was brought in. He'd been met at the airport having flown in from Barcelona. His mobile phone records were accessed but none of the numbers called corresponded to any of those owned by Angel Zarrias. Falcon made sure that Zarrias knew about Barreda's appearance in the Jefatura. Zarrias was unperturbed. Barreda was questioned for an hour and a half about his relationship with Ricardo Gamero. He didn't deviate from his original story. They released him at 8.30 p.m. and went back to Zarrias and lied to him about Barreda, saying he'd admitted that Gamero had said nothing about being in love with him and wasn't even a homosexual. Zarrias didn't buy any of it.

By 9 p.m. Falcon couldn't take any more. He went outside to breathe some fresh air, but found it hot and suffocating after the chill of the Jefatura. He drank a coffee in the cafe across the street. His mind was confused with too much going on between Yacoub and the interrogation of the three suspects. He drank some water to wash out the bitterness of the coffee, and Zorrita's words from last night came back to him.

In the Jefatura he went down to the cells where he asked the officer on duty if he could speak to Esteban Calderon, who was in the last cell, lying on his back, staring at the back of his hands held above him. The guard locked Falcon in. He took a stool and leaned back against the wall. Calderon sat up on his bunk.

'I didn't think you were going to come,' he said.

'I didn't think there was much point in coming,' said Falcon. 'I can't help you or discuss your case with you. I'm here out of curiosity only.'

'I've been thinking about denial,' said Calderon.

Falcon nodded.

'I know you've come across a lot of it in your work.'

'There's no greater guilt than that of a murderer,' said Falcon, 'and denial is the human mind's greatest defence.'

'Talk me through the process?' said Calderon. 'The theory's always different to the reality.'

'Only in the aftermath of a serious crime, such as murder, does the motive for taking such disastrous measures suddenly seem ridiculously disproportionate,' said Falcon. 'So, to kill someone for, say, the paltry reason of jealousy seems like madness, an affront to the intellect. The easiest and quickest way to deal with the aberration is to deny it ever happened. Once that denial is in place, it doesn't take long for the mind to create its own version of events which the brain comes to believe with absolute certainty.'

'I'm trying to be as careful as I can,' said Calderon.

'Sometimes care is not enough to defeat a deepseated desire,' said Falcon.