At the same moment the two officers entered Ramos’s flat, Paz and his men were clambering into the back of a blacked-out van. Héctor Santos was the senior of the two patrol cops and had worked the same beat for nearly twenty years, but he’d never seen a sight like this before. The entire floor of the apartment had been savagely ripped apart and was covered with what he figured must be millions of dollars’ worth of items. In the corner of the room lay the prone body of Sebastian Ramos. His green eyes were wide open and appeared to be staring directly back at him. The blood surrounding the bullet wound in his forehead had started to congeal into a grotesque crust.

The rookie cop turned to his superior. “Héctor, what the fuck has gone on here?”

Santos flicked down the switch on his chest-mounted radio. “This is Officer Santos. We are in apartment 1B at the main housing estate on Avenida da Lacarra. We have a murder scene and we urgently need senior backup.”

There was little traffic on the road and the black transit made its way swiftly back towards the offices of Theodor Consultants. No one had spoken since the sudden retreat from Ramos’s apartment and the men on board knew better than to attempt to break the awkward silence as their boss was evidently seething with anger.

Paz decided to call Luciano to bring him up to speed and reached inside his jacket pocket for his mobile. In an instant he remembered he had left the broken phone behind in the flat on the dining table. At that moment, he let out a terrifying cry which sounded more like a howl than a scream.

* * *

Vargas and Torres stood over the slain body of Sebastian Ramos. He had patently suffered at the hands of the same torturer as his friend, Ricardo Gonzales, and now two of the three bank robbers were dead.

Torres looked away from the corpse and turned to his boss. “Identical M.O. as before. Interrogation and then a single gunshot to the head. I’m betting ballistics will confirm that Ramos was shot with the same gun that killed both members of the Gonzales family. Ramos obviously hid his share under the floor while Gonzales used his father’s shed but, otherwise, the story is the same.”

Vargas nodded in agreement as he stared grimly at the outlandish crime scene. “Once again, the haul is left behind, but what we don’t know is whether they found what they were looking for this time. Yet again, these bastards have a head start on us. Get the team to check out the immediate families and close friends of both our victims and see if anyone jumps out as a possible suspect. It’s vital we locate his whereabouts before they do.”