Far from the Heart

Lorenzo Silva takes us to one of the hottest settings in contemporary Europe, the Strait of Gibraltar, to unravel a complicated cybercrime, against the backdrop of the underworld of drug trafficking and dark money

In the hot zone of the Strait, where the difference in wealth between the north and the south is most remarkable, and where three different countries and jurisdictions are concentrated within a few kilometres, “tons of dark money” are generated that need to be laundered. That’s where the washing machine in virtual currency (bitcoins) comes into play of the brilliant computer scientist whose kidnapping sets in motion the new delivery of the (now) lieutenant Vila and Sergeant Chamorro, whose relationship, marked by the inexorable passage of time, experiences here a disturbing point of inflection.

A twenty-five-year-old with a record for cybercrime disappears around Campo de Gibraltar. Witnesses say they saw a group of men attack him in the street and force him into a car. Not long after his disappearance, a ransom is issued, and his family pays it without complaint. Afterwards, no one hears about him again.

Three days after his disappearance, Lieutenant Bevilacqua and Sergeant Chamorro are ordered to find out what’s happened. They travel to the Strait, finding a hidden world where the law is relative, dirty money flows like a river and there’s always a need for someone to wash it. A place far from the heart of everything, where nothing belongs to anyone, and everything can be taken; where no one looks, and no one sees, and everything is possible.