The Hidden Assassins. Robert Thomas Wilson

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 Falcón.

      ‘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 Falcón. ‘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 Falcón.

      ‘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 Falcón.

      ‘Like I said: good news and bad.’

      ‘What about his hair?’ asked Falcón. ‘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 Falcón 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 Falcón. ‘His skin colour didn’t look Northern European to me.’

      ‘No. He’s olive-skinned.’

      ‘Do you think he was Spanish?’

      ‘Without doing any genetic testing, I would say that he was Mediterranean.’

      ‘Any scars?’

      ‘Nothing significant,’ said Pintado. ‘He’d sustained a fracture to his skull, but it’s years old.’

      ‘Anything interesting about the structure of his body that would give us an idea of what he did?’

      ‘Well, he wasn’t a bodybuilder,’ said Pintado. ‘Spine, shoulder and elbows indicate a deskbound, sedentary life. I’d say that his feet didn’t spend much time in shoes. The heels are more splayed than usual, with a lot of hardened skin.’

      ‘As you said, he liked the sun,’ said Falcón.

      ‘He also smoked cannabis and I would say he was a regular user, which could be thought of as unusual in someone in his mid forties,’ said Pintado. ‘Kids smoke dope, but if you’re still doing it in your forties it’s because it’s your milieu…you’re an artist, or a musician, or hanging out with that sort of crowd.’

      ‘So he’s a desk worker with long hair, who spent time in the sun, not wearing shoes, and smoking dope.’

      ‘A hard-working hippy.’

      ‘They might have been like that in the seventies, but it’s not the profile of a modern-day drug smuggler,’ said Falcón. ‘And potassium cyanide would be an unusual method of execution for people with 9mm handguns in their waistbands.’

      The two men sat back from the desk. Falcón flicked through the photographs from the file hoping that something else might jump out at him. He was already thinking about the university and the Bellas Artes, but he didn’t want to confine himself at this early stage.

      In this momentary silence the two men looked up at each other, as if they were on the brink of the same idea. From beyond the grey walls of the Facultad de Medicina came the unmistakable boom of a significant explosion, not far away.

      Gloria Alanis was ready for work. By this time she would normally be on her way to her first client meeting, thinking how much, as it receded in the rearview mirror, she hated the drab seventies apartment block where she lived in the barrio of El Cerezo. She was a sales rep for a stationery company but her area of operation was Huelva. On the first Tuesday of every month there was a meeting of the sales team at the head office in Seville, followed by a team-building exercise, a lunch and then a mini-conference to show and discuss new products and promotions.

      It meant that for one day during the month, she could put breakfast on the table for her husband and two children. She could also take her eight-year-old daughter, Lourdes, to school, while her husband delivered their three-year-old son, Pedro, to the pre-school which was visible from the back window of their fifth-floor apartment.

      On this morning, instead of hating her apartment, she was looking down on the heads of her children and husband and feeling an unusual sensation of warmth and affection early in the week. Her husband sensed this, grabbed her and pulled her on to his lap.

      ‘Fernando,’