The Ignorance of Blood Read Free

traffic. The driver of the truck cleared the central reservation and the fast lane and came to rest by the crash barrier on the hard shoulder. The Range Rover was hit by two steel rods thirty metres beyond where the truck had hit the barriers. The first went through the windscreen, speared the driver through the chest and continued through the front seat, the rear seat and the floor of the vehicle, missing the fuel tank by millimetres. The second rod went through the rear window and into the boot. This rod seems to have ripped open the suitcase, exposing the money. The driver of the Range Rover died on impact, lost control of the vehicle, which must have hit some of the truck's shed load, giving the car sufficient lift so that it cleared the crash barriers, smashed through the pine trees and disappeared down the bank, into the fields.
‘If that steel rod hit him with a combined velocity of 250 kilometres per hour,’ said the médico forense, ‘I'd be surprised if there was anything left of him.’
‘What is left is not a pretty sight,’ said the Guardia Civil.
‘I'll take a look,’ said the médico forense, ‘then you can start cutting him out of there.’
Felipe and Jorge completed their initial inspection of thescene and took their photographs. They joined Falcón while the médico forense finished his work.
‘What the fuck are we doing here?’ asked Felipe, yawning wider than a dog. ‘It's not murder.’
‘He's Russian mafia and there's a lot of money here,’ said Falcón. ‘Any evidence we gather might be usable in a future conviction. Fingerprints on the money and suitcase, mobile phone, address book; there might be a laptop in there…’
‘There's a briefcase on the back seat, which wasn't touched by the steel rods,’ said the Guardia Civil. ‘And there's a cool box in the boot. We haven't opened either of them.’
‘This is why we need an Organized Crime Response Squad in Seville,’ said Jorge.
‘We're running this for the moment. They're sending someone up from the Costa del Sol GRECO and an intelligence guy from CICO,’ said Falcón. ‘Let's take a look at this money. Elvira called me on the way to say he's got Prosegur to send a van out.’
The Guardia Civil opened the boot. There was suddenly a crowd.
‘Joder ,’ said one of the motorbike cops.
The visible money was in used notes and bound in packs of €100- and €50-denomination notes. Some of the packs had burst open on impact from the steel rod, but there was no loose money outside the vehicle.
‘Let's have some room around here,’ said Falcón. ‘Glove up. Only the forensics and I will touch this money. Jorge, bring a couple of bin liners over, one for each denomination.’
They counted out the packs of money, avid eyes looking on. At the bottom of the suitcase were several layers of €200-denomination notes and below them two layers of €500 notes. Jorge went to get two more bin liners. Falcón made his calculations.
‘Not counting this loose money, we're looking at seven million, six hundred and fifty thousand euros.’
‘That's got to be drug money,’ said the Guardia Civil.
‘More likely people-trafficking and prostitution,’ said Falcón, who was calling Comisario Elvira.
As he gave his report the Prosegur van pulled up in front of the last Nissan 4×4. Two helmeted guys lifted a metal trunk out of the back. Falcón hung up. Felipe had taped up the packs of money into tight black blocks and was marking up the bin liners with white stick-on labels. They put the four blocks into the trunk, which was locked with two keys, one given to Falcón, who signed for it.
The money moved off. The scene relaxed.
Falcón lifted out the cool box, opened it. Krug champagne and melting blocks of ice around bottles of Stolichnaya.
‘I suppose eight million euros would merit a bit of a celebration,’ said the Guardia Civil. ‘We could have all retired on that lot.’
While one of the fire brigade teams winched the steel rods out of the