Corruption's Price: A Spanish Deceit (20 page)

"I've no idea. The one thing he won't mind me saying is that you may have managed to upend the biggest can of Iberian worms for a generation."

"That's serious. Oh well. We'll have to wait and see. A drink?"

"To be honest I could do with one."

They headed to the kitchen wondering how long it would be before Pedro appeared.

It was many minutes before he returned with the others. Davide offered everyone else a glass of wine. Pedro declined.

"Thank you all for introducing me to this. What only Ana knows is my new posting within the
Cuerpo Nacional de Policía
. Probably you will find it easier to call it the CNP, Emilia, rather than the
Policía Nacional
. My job is now to head a unit supporting the
Audiencia Nacional
focused on corruption, money laundering and the like. So this may be highly relevant, if we can substantiate your initial conclusions.

"I'd like to stay longer but can't tonight. Tomorrow I'd like to bring in some colleagues before we decide how to handle everything. That said, I think there's already sufficient for me to approach a
Juez de Instrucción,
or investigating judge, at the
Audiencia Nacional de lo Penal
, probably to meet with on Wednesday or Thursday. After that it'll be the
Juez
who'll direct how to proceed.

"As you seem to have everything organised here, may my officers work here tomorrow? It should only be for tomorrow. After that we'll move to either ORS under CNP direction or to a more formal CNP location. For the moment, meaning until I say otherwise, please say nothing to anybody outside this group and remain here. We don't want the evidence having the opportunity to go walking."

With more of a grimace than a smile he departed.

CHAPTER NINE

Pressures Rise

Wednesday: Alcobendas

Ana arrived early at ORS, finding Davide, Caterina and Emilia waiting outside the offices, unable to enter because none of them had keys. She let them in and phoned for some coffee. The office coffee that Felipe chose to drink offended her as the worst sort of American instant – watery and disgusting. From her experience on Tuesday, with the breakfast that Davide insisted they must have round the corner in Malasaña, she had learnt that all three, like her, appreciated the real stuff though they had argued whether Italian or Spanish was superior.

The next to arrive were two CNP policemen, Carlos and Lucas. More coffees were summoned as all gathered in the meeting room where only last Friday Señora Márquez had met with Felipe.

At nine on the dot Felipe appeared. He had been warned about the CNP the previous day but he was still not quite prepared to find policemen in his offices, albeit in plain clothes rather than uniform. To create some space for himself, he fled to the kitchen in order to prepare what he knew everybody else considered revolting.

As he returned with his usual monster American mug, Pedro arrived. Now they had a quorum.

Pedro opened proceedings, starting by re-explaining his position and responsibilities supporting the
Fiscalía Anticorrupción
. He continued with a summary of what first Emilia and Caterina had found, followed by all that Carlos and Lucas had confirmed the previous day. There followed a description of what he proposed to do next, if this was acceptable to ORS.

What he did not say was that, even if it was not acceptable to ORS, this would be too bad. He would just step in and overrule ORS.

Essentially he was telling Felipe and ORS that the
Fiscalia Anticorrupción
would like to 'borrow' its facilities and analytical capabilities to dig deeper into the information that Marta Márquez's smartphone contained and to correlate in detail, if at all possible, the transactions and payments that ORS' three clients possessed. He would subsequently like ORS to approach each client's management and discreetly introduce the police interest.

Of particular importance, he explained, was discretion. One reason for working from the ORS offices was that these were well away from any larger formal facility where the presence of more people meant that it was likely that someone would say something they shouldn't. A second reason was the data had been obtained on ORS premises; he did not elaborate further. A third reason was he wanted somewhere neutral until receiving formal guidance from a
Juez de Instrucción
about how to proceed.

Regarding the
Juez de Instrucción
he informed them he had already obtained an appointment with
Juez
Rafael Garibey de Williams for late that afternoon. This would initially be informal but he would like Caterina and Emilia to be present with Davide.

Glancing at Felipe and Ana, Pedro was uncertain whether or not to involve them. On balance he thought he should, if only to impress on them how significant this 'find' might be. He said as much.

Moving on, he started discussing security. From after the session with the
Juez
, assuming he received the expected go-ahead, the ORS offices would receive the presence of a twenty-four-hour CNP guard to ensure no external access. This also meant that Carlos would need a list of ORS employees and the times they worked. He re-emphasised that nobody in ORS, beyond the people in this room, should know anything about what Emilia and Caterina had uncovered except that it might involve something possibly illegal at one of ORS' clients, which was why the CNP officers were present.

At this Emilia coloured, though no one noticed. At the weekend, and before Ana recognised any importance, she had mentioned Caterina's copying of the smartphone to Alberto when she had needed to put off their date. She had not said that much, Emilia thought, but she did remember lightly joking about the phone and how it contained some interesting data and pictures.

She wondered whether to mention her indiscretion in the meeting. No, there couldn't be any harm done. She would have a quiet word later with Alberto, when re-arranging their date, to make sure he said nothing to anybody. Indeed, this would be her first task after this session with Pedro finished, not least because she really did want to see Alberto.

Monday night with Ana in bed beside her had been agony. The temptation to kiss Ana to see what might happen had been immense. She thought Ana would reciprocate if she, Emilia, acted first. But she had managed to refrain, just. Professionally that was probably for the good. But, in order to excise the beguiling images of a semi-naked Ana coming to bed and the possibilities foregone, she needed Alberto even more badly than before.

Having completed all he had to say, Pedro addressed Felipe: "Do you agree? By the way, there'll almost certainly be some compensation payable to ORS for the inconvenience caused, though how much I can't say."

Felipe, overwhelmed by officialdom and having discreetly looked up Pedro's rank in the CNP, meekly agreed, saying, "That's fine. I guess you'll want this room for working. Should Ana arrange for the systems that Caterina and Emilia have been using to be brought in here?"

"Yes, please. That makes sense about your systems though we'll also be bringing in our own tomorrow, now that you've agreed. We will, however, want to keep yours and ours physically and electrically separate to avoid any danger of cross contamination, however inadvertent. It would also help if we could have the keys to this room as well as to access the offices."

Turning to Caterina, Pedro asked, "Have you brought your laptop with the simulation of the smartphone running? Good. A task for Lucas is to acquire some identical smartphones so that we can replicate everything that Márquez was able to do, though we'd better not start on this until we have met with
Juez
Garibey de Williams."

After the meeting broke up, Emilia went to find Alberto, who was delighted to see her. After exchanging exasperatingly (to Emilia) chaste kisses they arranged to meet when they could.

Wednesday: Alfredo

Alfredo was displeased. The more he tried to find reasons for encouraging ORS to leave Spain, the more frustrated he became. Monday and Tuesday had produced nothing sufficiently tangible to be worth going out on a limb.

Yet, by chance, he had learned his godson, Alberto, was employed at ORS. Alfredo's first reaction had been incredulity. Had he stumbled on a new avenue forwards, one close to home? Maybe Alberto would be the goldmine needed to provide the reason to encourage ORS to leave Spain.

To find out more he had suggested dinner to Alberto. This had occurred the previous evening. It had been pleasant though frustrating because what he had heard gave rise to concern for his godson. Failing to stay in contact with Alberto should teach him not to let family connections slide, even if his justification to himself was the pleasure of being with Puri.

Throughout dinner Alfredo had done his utmost to persuade Alberto to share any malpractices or errors that ORS had made or was making. He had obtained no joy. Instead, Alberto had spent the time talking about how good ORS was to him and how much he appreciated the CEO, Felipe Garcia-Martín.

What struck Alfredo was that this positive appreciation of ORS was a direct consequence of how Alberto had been treated by a succession of Spanish financial services companies. The worst instance was one that handled some form of credit scoring, which according to Alberto, along with ten others, had hired them for a year. They knew that the job was not likely to last more than that year because Spanish law changed an employee's status on the 366th day of employment: you automatically obtained long-term permanent employment status on that day with hugely different privileges and protections.

Nevertheless, according to Alberto, the eleven hoped they would be different and find they would be kept on past the end of their twelve months. What they had not expected was an SMS on their 364th day, falling between Christmas and New Year, instructing them not to return to work and terminating their employment. Even by Spanish labour standards, Alfredo had been appalled by such cynical treatment coming from an apparently reputable firm.

On hearing this miserable tale he'd asked why Alberto had not come to him for advice, not that he was convinced he could have done anything substantial. Alberto's answer was that they knew the same had happened to their predecessors, and probably would to their successors. That was just the way it was.

Alfredo reflected on this. He could see Alberto's fatalism was all too well founded.

Just as Alfredo was thinking that this dinner was going to end up fruitless, at least as far as obtaining any dirt on ORS was concerned, Alberto had dropped his bombshell. He had been enthusing about some Australian lady whom he had met there and liked a lot, sufficiently it would seem as not to have tried to jump into bed with her, which struck Alfredo as odd for a young man. Maybe this Emilia was serious. In describing her and that they both shared a love of accounting, in her case forensic accounting, Alberto had recalled a most amusing incident that had occurred the previous Friday.

Alfredo's lawyer antennae sprang to attention. Friday was the day that Marta had visited ORS. Was there a connection?

His antennae proved accurate when Alfredo continued by describing how some woman visiting ORS had asked to charge her phone. Apparently, the only suitable cable was connected to a laptop. But the entertaining part, according to Alberto, was that connecting the two resulted in an inadvertent backup copy being taken of the phone by ORS.

Alberto had laughed at this casual error. Alfredo had needed to force himself to pretend to share Alberto's amusement. Inside, he was not at all entertained. Rather, he was afraid. If this unnamed woman was Marta, had she kept anything incriminating on her phone?

He had tried, with the greatest care, to gather more details from Alberto. But Alberto didn't seem to know any more, only what this Emilia had told him when she was postponing their date. He could not even tell at what time this nameless woman had arrived, so there was no way to obtain indirect confirmation whether or not it was Marta who was involved.

The dinner had finished shortly afterwards. Alberto had gone home to his parents. Alfredo sympathised with him for that. It would have driven him crazy to have to live with his own parents in his thirties. Looking back he was grateful that he had insisted, much against his own mother's wishes, on renting an apartment with friends. The costs at the time had nearly killed his bank account, at least until he started his meteoric, in his own mind, rise within his father's sleepy law firm.

The question was what to do with the information Alberto had unwittingly provided. Should he call Marta and ask whether she kept anything on her phone? Maybe it was a dumb phone that could only make calls. Thinking about it, he remembered – assuming it was the same phone – it had a large screen and that Marta had looked up something on the Internet.

It wasn't an iPhone, of this he was sure. He would have recognised it for he owned one himself. But it was almost certainly something that could store a lot of information. Pray to God that Marta was too technology illiterate to make use of its capabilities other than to surf the Internet, make calls or send messages.