| |
It was almost twelve noon, now. Carlos got up out of his seat, picked up the jacket that he had left carefully hung behind the door, and left in the direction of the bathroom. He needed to check that his hair was still in place, and to find the microscopic point of balance that would allow him to appear both elegant and yet still be able to breathe at the same time with that blasted tie.
Once he had deemed his appearance to be more or less acceptable, he made his way to Aguirre’s office. The latter seemed to detect his presence, because he opened the door just before Carlos could knock on it.
‘Carlos, you’re here. I’m pleased at not having to go and fetch you.’
‘With all due respect, Aguirre... Is it really necessary for me to be present? I hate these damn press conferences.’
‘I hate them too, and you already know what they say: a problem shared is a problem halved.’ Aguirre gave him a slap of encouragement on the back. ‘Besides, it was your idea to summon the media to give them the photo of this Azkar guy.’
‘I’d love to not have to do it, but we don’t have that guy on our files. We need public cooperation.’
‘Well then, you’ll have to come with me,’ said Aguirre with a half smile.
‘But if you’re the only one who’s going to be talking... I don’t know where I fit in there, dressed like a right sight and stiff as a board.’
‘I want you there for in case I have to ask you something about the investigation. And don’t worry; you don’t look like a right sight. In fact, you’re so elegant that, when I saw you, I almost didn’t recognise you.’
‘Natalia said the same thing, but this crappy suit pinches, and the tie’s suffocating me,’ replied Carlos, trying to loosen the knot a little more.
‘Come on, it’ll be over soon. Let’s get a move on. It’s not good keeping our guests waiting.’
*****
Gus tossed another peanut in the air, and missed once again. It was impossible for a person to catch one in their mouth. He had made more than fifty attempts, and had not managed to get a single one. The only thing he had been successful in doing was messing up the whole floor. He would have to tidy up a bit before Natalia got back.
He took his feet off the table and sat up straight in the chair. After knocking back a swig from his umpteenth can of Coca-Cola that morning, he took a look at the two laptops he had open in front of him. He didn’t know what else to do by this point. He had checked Andrea’s computer from top to bottom several times, and there was nothing more to search now. In the case of Carmen’s, the program he had installed in order to be able to find her password was still working, without success.
He stood up and strolled around the room. He was more bored than a monkey in a cage, but, as they were paying him, he would have to carry on there until Carlos and Natalia found some line of investigation in which he could be useful to them. He hoped they would not take long. He was almost beginning to miss Charon’s chat threads. At least in that case, he had always had something to do.
Suddenly, as if heaven had responded to his prayers, he heard a beep coming from Carmen’s computer. He quickly walked over to it and sat down, as an enormous smile illuminated his face. There it was: the darn password at last. C3a1R18m13E5n14. He looked at it for a few minutes, trying to analyse it. It was a simple combination of the letters of the woman’s name, alternating capitals and lower case, along with the number of the position they took in the alphabet. Complex enough for it not to be guessed, and simple enough to go back and work out if you forgot it.
He typed the password into the computer and opened the browser. There it was: Quicklove, the same site that Andrea had used. He opened the site and put in the password to gain access, praying that Carmen had not chosen a different one. Luckily, the page opened and showed him the list of contacts. There was Azkar, just as he had hoped.
He clicked on his name to see his profile information, and felt his blood run cold. She had been involved with him. He grabbed his mobile and, at full speed, dialled Carlos’s number.
*****
The first few notes of Hoochie Coochie Man interrupted the press conference. Aguirre paused in his speech and turned towards Carlos, to give him a lethal stare. The latter smiled by way of apology and took the phone out of his jacket pocket. It was Gus. What would that pain in the neck want now? Surely calling him because he had nothing to do and was bored. He rejected the call and turned off the mobile. Aguirre stopped looking at him as if taken by the urge to kill him, turned back towards the journalists, and continued speaking.
A few minutes later, when the journalists realised that, no matter how many questions they asked, they were only going to receive answers in the style of “That forms part of the investigation and we cannot tell you anything for the time being. We will inform you as soon as possible,” the pressroom was left empty. Aguirre turned back to face Carlos:
‘Has no one ever told you that you have to turn off your phone when you’re in an important meeting?’
‘I’m sorry. I forgot,’ Carlos smiled apologetically. ‘Anyway, it didn’t go so badly, did it? Now we just have to wait for someone to recognise that man and let us know.’
‘Yes. If everything goes well, perhaps we could catch him in a matter of hours.’
Aguirre gave him a couple of pats on the back by way of goodbye and went away to his office. Carlos decided to go for a coffee at the machine. Along the way, he took off the jacket and tie and untucked the shirt from his trousers, not caring if the shirt tails were wrinkled. Then he undid the first button on his shirt and managed to breath normally. He could not help a smile of satisfaction. Now he was a little more himself, even though he was dying to get home and swap those formal trousers for his everyday jeans.
Whilst he was waiting for the machine to prepare his coffee, he took out his mobile and turned it back on again. As soon as it was ready, it received a new call from Gus.
‘What do you want, you tiresome person?’
‘What the hell do you think I want? To talk to you, damn it. I don’t understand why every time I call you I have to insist so many times. If I’m calling you, it’ll be because it’s something important, won’t it? Bloody hell, you both go and hire me to work for you, and then, whenever I have something to tell you, there’s no way for me to contact you. Why did you hire me if you don’t want to listen to me?’
‘Come on, stop, stop, you’re already going off on one. And besides, the one who hired you was Natalia. Speaking for myself, I’d never have come up with anything like it in my life.’
‘That’s why Natalia’s the intelligent one of the group... Anyway, listen to me, because I haven’t called you just to argue with you. I’ve managed to get into Carmen’s computer.’
‘It’s about time. It’s taken you ages.’
‘How easy it is speaking from ignorance! You’d never have been able to get into it in a thousand years, not even if your life depended on it. It makes no difference. I called you because I’ve found something important.’
‘What? Have you been able to verify that she was also speaking with Azkar?’
‘Yes..., but not exactly with the “same” Azkar that was speaking with Andrea.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That the profile photo is different. It belongs to another guy who doesn’t look one iota like the first.’
‘So?’
‘Well, I suspect that both photos are false. I imagine that he’ll have nicked them from random Facebook profiles. That’s why I was calling you, because you’d told me that this morning you were going to be carrying out a press conference in order to issue the suspect’s photo. I think it’ll be better if you cancel it.’
‘Too late. The press conference has already finished.’ Carlos puffed out, feeling furious. ‘Shit, God damn it... You couldn’t have called me five minutes earlier?’
‘I did call you five minutes earlier, and you hung up on me.’
‘Okay, leave it. I’ll be waiting for you at the door to Aguirre’s office.’
‘I have no intention of going.’
‘Yes, you’re going to come. He’s going to give us the telling off of the century, and I have no intention of taking it all on my own.’
*****
‘I can’t believe you could be such bunglers,’ shouted Aguirre, whilst he paced across his office in large strides. ‘Did it not occur to either of you for a second that the photo could be false?’
‘Well, you also thought it was a good idea to put it out there,’ Carlos tried to excuse himself.
‘It seemed like a good idea to me because you both said that it was a good idea. How did it not occur to us, even if only for a second, that it’s not exactly normal for murderers to share their real photos?’
‘He didn’t know that we were going to find that photo,’ said Gus, in a faint voice. ‘There are murderers who’ve been caught because of similar stupid things.’
‘Well, then this one is cleverer than you were expecting.’ Aguirre returned to his side of the desk, rested both hands on the surface of it, and leaned towards them threateningly. ‘Bear it in mind from now on.’
‘We will,’ replied Carlos, avoiding his gaze.
‘Now we’re going to have to call all of the media so they don’t release the photo, even though many of them will have done so already.’ The redness in Aguirre’s face began increasing in intensity once more. ‘Do you know how the force is going to end up coming out of this? We’re going to look like herd of bloody morons!’
‘It’s not that bad. Everyone gets it wrong sometimes.’ Carlos tried to reassure him.
‘Not that bad? We’ve just asked them to publish, across all national media outlets, the photograph of a poor innocent man saying that he’s a dangerous killer. We’ve just screwed up a guy’s life and, if he has a good lawyer, he’s going to see to screwing up ours.’
‘Maybe we’ll be in luck and he never sees it,’ suggested Gus.
‘How’s he not going to see it if it’s going to come out on the TV, in all the papers, on the Internet...?’
‘Perhaps that photo is of someone from another country. We don’t know where the killer took it from.’
‘Neither of you know that, and neither of you know anything. Just that nonsense about how he could be epileptic, which has only served the purpose of having me spend days fighting with the Health Service for them to send me a list of patient data that is completely confidential.’
‘Well, we might know something else...’ Gus cut in.
‘What might we know?’
‘Now that we’re certain that Azkar is the user that contacted both victims via that dating site, we could ask for a warrant for getting his IP,’ explained Gus. ‘With that piece of information, we would be able to find out his phone number and find him.’
‘Yes, that’s a great idea,’ intervened Carlos. ‘As soon as we know that, we’ll be able to arrest him.’
‘It’s not going to be that easy,’ said Gus, causing the smile to disappear from Carlos’s face. ‘The strong point about those types of sites is discretion. I don’t think they’re going to pass on that bit of information to us so happily.’
‘A warrant will help them to show more predisposition,’ said Aguirre, picking up the phone.
‘We’re going to have trouble even with the warrant. That page is from the States. I don’t know to what extent they’ll be frightened by the warrant of a Spanish judge.’ Gus shrugged his shoulders. ‘And I’m certain that their lawyers will try to avoid us getting that information by all means possible.’
‘Well if it’s going to take a while, the best thing will be for us to get started on it as soon as possible,’ Aguirre cut him off, whilst starting to dial a number on the telephone. ‘I’m going to call the judge right now. Get out of my office and try to stay out of my sight for the next couple of days, and we’ll see if you’re in luck and my fury subsides.’