The two detectives caught the internal flight to Buenos Aires and took a taxi from the airport back to Vargas’s apartment. Throughout the journey, they began to formulate a plan of action and agreed that, inevitably, they would have to face up to Franklin and confront him with their findings. Both of them had doubts about taking the case to their respective police chiefs as they still had no concrete evidence to prove Franklin was behind the murders in Buenos Aires and they wondered if anyone would accept the evidence in Box 1321 as proof of a giant conspiracy.

Vargas had just ordered a takeaway when a call came in from Torres that sounded like it might be a game changer. He brought Hembury up to date before leaving for the station.

“Troy, my assistant has just arrested a woman named Olivia Bianchi, who is the deputy head of HR for the force. He says he has conclusive proof she started the fire in the station. It sounds like she may well have been the informant who’s been feeding intel to Franklin’s people over the last few weeks. If we can get her to talk, we might finally have a direct line of sight to that son of a bitch Franklin.”

“Okay, Nic. Understood. I’m going to keep researching online and see what more I can find out about his early years in Argentina. From what I can tell already, his Uncle Ronald, alias Bormann, forms the Franklin Corporation in 1946 and, within five years, it establishes itself as the leading pharmaceutical company in South America. Richard joins the board when he’s just twenty-five and leads the charge to expand in the States. There are dozens of articles on the internet that reference Nazi gold being shipped over to South America, so clearly Bormann had unlimited funds to build the company into a giant corporation.”

“Makes total sense. Let’s hope Bianchi gives him up as her employer. That’ll be one huge nail in his coffin.”

Just as Vargas made for the front door, the entry buzzer sounded. “That’ll be our Chinese. Keep mine warm. I’ll be back later.”

Because of the fire, Torres and the detective team had migrated to a smaller office in a nearby station. Olivia Bianchi sat alone in the basement interview room, working out her tactics. She had no idea what evidence the police might have against her but she had every intention of proclaiming her innocence. Her extreme fear of Núñez and his fellow thugs meant she had no plans to betray them.

Directly above her, Vargas was being briefed by Torres, who had lined up some viewing footage on his laptop.

“Chief, many of the hard drives recording the internal cameras in the station were written off in the area by the fire but the one monitoring the main hallway was undamaged. Take a look at this.”