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Authors: Robert Wilson
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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 deMedicina 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,’ she said, warning him, in case he tried anything too salacious in front of the children.
‘I was thinking,’ he whispered in her ear, his lips tickling her lobe.
‘It’s always dangerous when you start doing that,’ she said, smiling at the children, who were now interested.
, ‘I was thinking there should be more of us,’ he whispered. ‘Gloria, Fernando, Lourdes, Pedro and…’
‘You’re crazy,’ she said, loving those lips on her ear, saying these things.
‘We always talked about having four, didn’t we?’
‘But that was before we knew how much two cost,’ she said. ‘Now we work all day and still don’t have enough money to get out of this apartment or take a holiday.’
‘I have a secret,’ he said.
She knew he didn’t.
‘If it’s a lottery ticket, I don’t want to see it.’
‘It’s not a lottery ticket.’
She knew what it was: wild hope.
‘My God,’ he said, suddenly looking at his watch. ‘Hey, Pedro,
‘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 deMedicina 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,’ she said, warning him, in case he tried anything too salacious in front of the children.
‘I was thinking,’ he whispered in her ear, his lips tickling her lobe.
‘It’s always dangerous when you start doing that,’ she said, smiling at the children, who were now interested.
, ‘I was thinking there should be more of us,’ he whispered. ‘Gloria, Fernando, Lourdes, Pedro and…’
‘You’re crazy,’ she said, loving those lips on her ear, saying these things.
‘We always talked about having four, didn’t we?’
‘But that was before we knew how much two cost,’ she said. ‘Now we work all day and still don’t have enough money to get out of this apartment or take a holiday.’
‘I have a secret,’ he said.
She knew he didn’t.
‘If it’s a lottery ticket, I don’t want to see it.’
‘It’s not a lottery ticket.’
She knew what it was: wild hope.
‘My God,’ he said, suddenly looking at his watch. ‘Hey, Pedro,
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