The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 7

Thursday, 25th July 2002

The heat did not back off during the night. By the time Falcón arrived at the Jefatura at 7.30 a.m. the street temperature was 36°C and the atmosphere as oppressive as an old regime. The short walk from his car to the office with a hangover like a hatchet buried in his head left him gasping, with odd flashes of light going off behind his eyes.

At one of the desks in the outer office he was surprised to find Inspector Ramírez already at work, two thick fingers poised over the computer keyboard. Falcón had always doubted that he and Ramírez would ever be friends since he'd taken the job that Ramírez had thought should have been his. But he'd been getting on better with his number two in the last four months since he'd started full-time work again. While Falcón had been suspended from duty due to depressive illness, Ramírez had seized the opportunity for command with both hands, only to find that he didn't like it. Its pressures did not suit his personality. Not only did he lack the necessary creative streak to launch a new investigation, but he could be explosive and divisive. In January Falcón had returned to part-time work. By March he had been reinstated as Inspector Jefe full time and Ramírez had been grateful. These developments had reduced the tension within the squad. They now rarely used each other's ranks in addressing each other in private.

'My God,' said Ramírez, 'what happened to you?'

'Buenos dias, José Luis. It was a bad day for children, yesterday,' said Falcón. 'I got friendly with the whisky again. How did it go at the hospital?'

Ramírez stared up from the desk and Javier had the vertiginous experience of teetering over two dark, empty lift shafts which led directly to this man's pain and intolerable uncertainty.

'I haven't slept,' said Ramírez. 'I've been to early- morning Mass for the first time in thirty years and I've confessed my sins. I've prayed harder than I've ever done in my life – but it doesn't work like that, does it? This is my penance. I must watch the sufferings of the innocent.'

He breathed in and covered his cheeks with his hands.

'They're keeping her in for four days to conduct a series of tests,' he said. 'Some of these tests are for very serious conditions like lymphatic cancer and leukaemia. They have no idea what the problem is. She's thirteen years old, Javier, thirteen.'

Ramírez lit a cigarette and smoked with one arm across his chest as if he was holding himself together. He talked about the tests as if he'd already confirmed to himself that she had something serious and the terrible words of future treatment were creeping into his vocabulary – chemotherapy, nausea, hair loss, crashing immune system, risk of infection. Footage came to Falcón's lurid mind of huge-eyed children beneath the perfect domes of their fragile craniums.

His cigarette suddenly tasted foul to Ramírez, who crushed it out and spat the smoke into his lap as if it was responsible for his child's health. Falcón talked him down, reminded him that these were just tests, to stay calm and positive and that he could take any time off that he needed. Ramírez asked to be put to work to stop his endlessly revolving thoughts. Falcón brought him into his office, took another two aspirin and briefed him on the Vega deaths.

Perez and Ferrera turned up just after 8 a.m. The other two squad members, Baena and Serrano, were out doing a door-to-door. Falcón decided to move on two fronts. He would conduct a house search at the Vega property while Ramírez made a start on Rafael Vega's place of business, interviewing the project managers, the accountant and visiting all the construction sites. They would also have to work on finding the missing gardener, Sergei, and getting more information on the Russians seen by Pablo Ortega on La Noche de Reyes visiting the Vegas' house.

'Where do we look for Sergei?' asked Perez.

'Well, you can find out if there are any Russians or Ukrainians working on Vega's building sites and ask them, for a start. I doubt he's unique.'

'If we want to search Vega's office, from what you've said about Vázquez, we're going to need a warrant.'

'And we won't get one from a judge unless we can prove suspicious circumstances, for which we'll have to wait until we get the autopsies,' said Falcón. 'I'm going to have to take someone from Lucia's family down to the Instituto to identify the bodies. I'll pick them up probably around midday and see if that scrap of photograph we found in the barbecue means anything to any of them.'

'So until then we rely on the kindness of Sr Vázquez?' said Ramirez.

'He's already told me to talk to the accountant and given me his details,' said Falcón, who turned to Ferrera. 'Did you get anything more on those number plates?'

'What plates?' asked Ramirez.

'Somebody followed me home last night in a blue Seat Cordoba.'

'Any ideas?' asked Ramirez, while Ferrera called the traffic police.

'Too early to say, but they didn't seem too bothered by me or that I saw their plates.'

'They were reported stolen off a VW Golf in Marbella,' said Ferrera. 'Nothing more.'

Falcón and Ferrera picked up the crime scene photographs from Felipe and Jorge and went down to the car. Cristina Ferrera always dressed as if she was about to disappear without trace. She never used make-up and had one piece of jewellery: a crucifix on a chain. Her face was wide and flat with a nose that calmed the traffic of freckles across it. She had watchful brown eyes that moved slowly in her head. She made no physical impact and yet she had a strong presence which had impressed Falcón in her interview. Ramirez had passed over her photograph on the grounds of looks alone, but Falcón's curiosity was piqued. Why should an ex-nun want to become a member of a murder squad? Her prepared answer was that she wanted to be part of a group that was engaged on the side of Good against Evil. Ramirez had warned her that there was nothing theological about murder work, that in fact it was illogical – the result of breakdowns and short circuits in society – and nothing to do with chariot battles in heaven.

'The Inspector Jefe was asking for my reasons as someone who'd been thinking of becoming a nun,' she'd said, coolly. 'It was my naive belief then that the next best institution after the Church where I could do some good was the police force. My ten years on the streets of Cadiz have taught me that that is possible only on rare occasions.'

Falcón had wanted to give her the job there and then, but Ramirez wasn't finished.

'So why did you leave your vocation?'

'I met a man, Inspector. I fell pregnant, we got married and had two children.'

'In that order?' asked Ramirez, and Ferrera had nodded without taking her brown eyes off him.

So, a fallen angel, too. A Bride of Christ who'd found herself more mortal boots. Falcón had made his decision. The transfer from Cadiz had been slow but the few days she'd been with his squad had convinced him that he'd made the right choice. Even Ramirez had taken her out for a coffee, but that was how things changed. Ramirez, with his daughter's mystery illness, had found himself searching for spiritual sustenance rather than the corporeal version he usually hunted for amongst the courts' secretaries, the bar flirts, shopgirls and even, so Falcón suspected, some of the hookers that crossed his path.

Ferrera drove. Falcón preferred to lose himself in vague thoughts that might lead to better ideas. They drove to Santa Clara in silence. Falcón liked her for that resistance to the Andaluz gene for talking nonstop. His thoughts moved in a slow sickly loop. How men were changed by crisis. Ramírez had gone to church. Falcón had never been attracted to it. It made him feel fraudulent. He, like Sr Vega, had gone to the river, whose draw, he had to admit, was not always positive. There had been times when it offered him an alternative solution and he'd had to pull back and rush home to the comfort of whisky.

They pulled up outside the Vegas' house. Falcón used the remote to open the gates to the driveway. The air conditioning was still on in the house. He gave Ferrera a guided tour of the two crime scenes, the rest of the house and the garden with Sergei's accommodation. He profiled the two victims as they progressed. They returned to the crime scenes and went through the police photographs. Falcón filled in what he knew about the lead up to the crisis, but did not particularly emphasize murder or suicide. He wanted Ferrera to look at the crime scenes from the point of view of a woman, to think herself into Luda Vega's mind by going through her effects and then relive her actions.

He went into Vega's study and sat at the desk below the bullfight poster. The laptop had been removed and was in the lab. There was only the phone and the tape outline of the position of the laptop on the desk. He looked down the list of pre-programmed numbers on the phone. There were office numbers and Vázquez's direct line as well as the Krugmans' and Consuelo's. The last number was void. He picked up the phone and pressed it.

'Da… zdrastvutye, Vasili,' said a voice, clearly expecting someone else on the line.

'Your telephone number has been selected in our grand draw,' said Falcón. 'I'm happy to inform you that you and your wife have won a prize. All you have to do is give me your name and address and I will tell you where to go to pick up your wonderful prize.'

'Who are you?' asked the voice in heavily accented Spanish.

'Name and address first, please.'

A hand went over the receiver. Muffled voices came down the line.

'What's the prize?'

'Name and -'

'Tell me the prize,' he said brutally.

'It's a watch for you and your -'

'I've got a watch,' he said, and slammed down the phone.

Falcón made a note to ask Vázquez about these Russians. The desk drawers revealed nothing unusual. The Heckler & Koch had been removed for tests. He opened up the filing cabinets with the keys he'd found the day before. He flicked through the files for telephone, bank, insurance. They were catching on something underneath – a leather-bound loose-leaf diary and address book.

The diary was private. The entries were minimal. Most of the time there was just an 'X' marked next to the hour and they were mostly night-time meetings. Falcón went back to Noche de Reyes and found that there was an 'X' marked there, too. The first daytime meeting was in March with 'Dr A'. In June there were meetings with Dr A and another with Dr D. In the address section he found a list of doctors – Medicos Alvarez, Diego and Rodríguez. He flicked through the diary and found that Dr R was the last doctor to see Vega. He called and arranged to talk to him around midday.

He went through the address section of the book, which contained only names and telephone numbers. Raúl Jiménez's name was there but had been crossed out. As he turned the pages, names he knew leapt out at him. A lot of them he vaguely recalled from the Raúl Jiménez murder investigation – people from the town hall and public works. There was one name though that really took him back to that turbulent time – Eduardo Carvajal. Again it had been crossed out. Like Raúl Jiménez, he was dead. Falcón had never found what linked the two men. All he'd discovered was that Jiménez had rewarded Carvajal via a fake consultancy company during Expo '92 and, at the time of his death in a car crash in 1998 on the Costa del Sol, Carvajal was about to face trial on charges relating to a paedophile ring.

Ortega's name was also in the book and the last name to stand out was one that had him pacing around the house, reminding himself that there was no art on the walls of any significance. Ramon Salgado, who had been one of Seville's best-known art dealers, was also in the book, crossed out. Maybe Vega Construcciones had invested in art or bought a piece for their headquarters, but there was also that disturbing memory of the child pornography they'd discovered on Salgado's hard disk after his brutal murder. In these circles everybody knew each other, links in a golden chain of wealth and influence. Another question for Vázquez.

There were no Russian names in the book. He put it back in the filing cabinet. He moved on to another cabinet which contained box files full of blueprints and photographs of buildings. In the bottom drawer of the third cabinet there was a box file with no reference number. It said simply Justicia. In the file there were pages, mostly in English and mostly from this year, which had been extracted from the internet on a range of subjects but primarily concerned with an international system of justice. There were also newspaper articles on the International Criminal Court, the Tribunal that it was designed to replace, the crusading Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón and also the intricacies and possibilities within the Belgian legal system for bringing international war criminals to justice.

The doorbell sounded in the hall. He locked up the cabinet and went to answer it. Sra Krugman was wearing a black linen top and a skirt, bias-cut, with a scarlet silk sash hanging down the side. On the end of her long white arm was a plastic thermos jug.

'I thought you might like some coffee, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'Spanish strength. None of your American sock water here.'

'I thought there'd been a coffee revolution in America,' he said, thinking other things.

'The levels of penetration have been uneven,' she said. 'It cannot be guaranteed.'

He let her pass, closed the door to the grotesque heat. He didn't want this intrusion. Maddy fetched cups and saucers. He shouted upstairs to Ferrera but she didn't want any coffee. They went into Vega's office and sat at the desk. Maddy smoked and flicked ash into her saucer. She made no attempt at conversation.

Her physical, or rather, sexual presence filled the room. Falcón still felt nauseous and he had nothing to say to her. His mind raced as he drank the coffee.

'Do you like bullfights?' she asked, looking above his head just as the silence had reached screaming point.

'I used to go a lot,' he said, 'but I haven't been since… for well over a year now.'

'Marty wouldn't take me,' she said, 'so I asked Rafael. We went on several occasions. I didn't understand it, but I liked it.'

'A lot of foreigners don't,' said Falcón.

'I was surprised,' she said, 'at how quickly the violence became tolerable. When I saw the first picador's lance go in I didn't think I'd be able to take it. But, you know, it sharpens your sight. You don't realize how soft focus everyday life is until you've been to a bullfight. Everything stands out. Everything is defined. It's as if the sight of blood and the prospect of death wakes up in us something atavistic. I found myself tuning into a different level of awareness, or rather an old one, that the boredom in our lives has gradually smothered. By the third bull I was quite used to it, the brilliance of the blood welling up from a particularly deep lance wound and cascading down the bull's foreleg wasn't just bearable but electrifying. We must be hard-wired for violence and death, don't you think, Inspector Jefe?'

'I remember a sort of ritualistic thrill on the faces of the Moroccans in Tangier when they killed a sheep for the festival of Aid el Kebir,' said Falcón.

'Bullfighting must be an extension of that,' she said. 'There's ritual, theatre, thrills… but there's something else, too. Passion, for instance and, of course… sex.'

'Sex?' he said, the whisky lurching in his stomach.

'Those beautiful guys in their tight costumes performing so gracefully with every muscle in their bodies, in the face of terrible danger… possible death. That is the ultimate in sexiness, don't you think?'

'That's not the way I see it.'

'How do you see it?'

'I go to see the bulls,' said Falcón. 'The bull is always the central figure. It's his tragedy and the greater his nobility the finer his tragedy will be. The torero is there to shape the performance, to bring out the bull's noble qualities and in the end to dispatch him and give us, the audience, our catharsis.'

'You can tell I'm an American,' she said.

'That's not how everybody sees it,' said Falcón. 'Some toreros believe that they are there to dominate the bull, even to humiliate it and showcase their masculine prowess in the process.'

'I've seen that,' she said, 'when they thrust their genitals at the bull.'

'Ye-e-s,' said Falcón nervously. 'Quite often the spectacle is a travesty, even in the best arenas. There have been Ladies Only nights and other…'

'Decadence?' said Maddy, filling in.

'Greek tragedy is quite rare these days,' said Falcón, 'whereas soap opera isn't.'

'So how are we supposed to keep ourselves noble in such a world?'

'You have to concentrate on the big things,' said Falcón. 'Like Love. Compassion. Honour… that sort of stuff.'

'It sounds almost medieval now,' she said.

Silence. He heard Ferrera leave the house. She walked in front of the study window.

'You said something to me yesterday in English?' he said, wanting to get rid of her now.

'I don't remember,' she said. 'Did it make you angry?'

'Lighten up. You told me to lighten up.'

'Yes, well, today's a different day,' she said. 'I read your story on the internet last night.'

'Is that why you've come over this morning?'

'I'm not here to scavenge – whatever you might think of my photographs.'

'I thought the stories of your subjects, the causes of their internal struggle, were not your concern.'

'This isn't about my work.'

'Unfortunately this is about mine. I have to get on, Sra Krugman. So, if you'll excuse me…' he said.

The front doorbell rang. He went to open it.

'I locked myself out. Inspector Jefe,' said Ferrera.

Maddy Krugman sauntered out between them. Ferrera followed Falcón to the study where he sat back in the chair.

'Tell me,' he said, staring out of the window, wondering what Maddy Krugman was after.

'Sra Vega was a manic depressive,' said Ferrera.

'We know she had trouble sleeping.'

'There's quite a range of drugs in his bedside table.'

'That was locked, as I remember, and the keys are here.'

'Lithium, for instance,' said Ferrera. 'He was probably handing the drugs out to her… or so he thought. I found a duplicate key in her wardrobe, along with a secret stash of eighteen sleeping pills. There's plenty of evidence of obsessive-compulsive behaviour in there, too. I also found a lot of chocolate in the fridge and more ice cream in the freezer than a small child could possibly eat.'

'What about her relationship with her husband?'

'I doubt they were having sex, given her condition and the fact that he was handing out the drugs to her,' said Ferrera. 'He was probably getting his sex from elsewhere… but that didn't stop her buying an extensive range of sexy underwear.'

'What about the child?'

'She had a picture of her and the child just after the birth on her bedside table. She looks fantastic – radiant, beautiful and proud. I think it's a photograph she looked at a lot. It reminded her of the woman she used to be.'

'Postnatal depression?'

'Could be,' said Ferrera. 'She didn't go out much. There's stacks of mail-order catalogues under the bed.'

'She let the child sleep over at a neighbour's house quite often.'

'Difficult to cope when your life runs away from you like that,' said Ferrera, her eyes dropping to the lipstick-smeared coffee cup. 'Was she that neighbour?'

'No, another one,' said Falcón, shaking his head.

'She didn't look the mothering type.'

'So what do you think happened here?' asked Falcón.

'There's enough despair in this house to lead you to believe that having decided to kill himself he would have had to kill her to put her out of her misery.'

'Why did he dislocate her jaw?'

'To knock her out?'

'Doesn't that seem too violent? She was probably groggy with sleep anyway.'

'Perhaps he did it as a way of finding the violence in himself,' said Ferrera.

'Or perhaps she heard the death agonies of her husband and surprised the murderer, who then had to deal with her,' said Falcón.

'Where's the pad Sr Vega wrote his note on?'

'Good question. It hasn't been found. But it's possible that it was an old piece of paper he had in his dressing- gown pocket.'

'Who bought the drain cleaner?'

'Not the maid,' said Falcón.

'Do we know when it was bought?'

'Not yet, but if it was from a supermarket it won't be much help.'

'It looks as if Sra Vega was on her own that night, indulging herself as usual,' said Ferrera. 'She spends a lot of time on her own and she's well prepared for it.'

'You're always on your own with mental illness,' said Falcón.

'She has a box of her favourite videos and DVDs. All romantic stuff. There's a DVD still in the machine. She gets the call from her neighbour so the child is taken care of. She has no responsibilities. When did her husband get home?'

'I'm told it was normally quite late… around midnight.'

'That would fit: put off coming home to the despair for as long as possible,' said Ferrera. 'Sra Vega probably didn't like seeing him anyway. She heard the car… or maybe not through these windows. So she more likely heard him come into the house from the garage. She turned off the DVD and ran upstairs leaving her slippers. He eventually joined her in bed, or at least…'

'How do you know he joined her? His pillow was undented in the crime scene shots.'

'But the sheets and covers were pulled out… so he might have been about to join her…'

'And then been distracted by something else.'

'Do we know from the phone company if there were any more calls after the neighbour rang about the child?'

'Not yet. You can work on that when we get back.'

'The only other oddity I've come across is that in the crime scene photographs he's got his watch on with the face on the outside of his wrist, but in the photos I've seen elsewhere in the house he always wore it with the face on the underside of his wrist.'

'What do you conclude from that?'

'It either worked its way round in his struggle with himself or an assailant,' said Ferrera, 'or the watch has come off and been put back on his wrist by somebody who doesn't know how he wears it.'

'Why would someone want to do that?'

'Well… if it came off as a result of a struggle with an assailant whose ultimate aim was to make this look like a suicide it would be less indicative of another person's presence if the watch was on his wrist rather than on the floor.'

'What sort of a strap did his watch have?'

'It seems to be a metal bracelet type, which can come off easily in a struggle or just as easily work its way round a wrist, so

'Whatever… that was a good piece of observation,' said Falcón. 'It might not help us form a case for murder, but it is indicative of the strange circumstances of the crime scene. Now all we've got to do is find the incontrovertible proof that will convince Juez Calderón that we have a case. We know Sr Vega was burning things at the bottom of the garden. What does that imply to you?'

'He was getting rid of things in preparation for something.'

'They were personal things, letters and photographs, and they caused him great distress.'

'So he didn't want them discovered. He was hiding them and now…'

'If you were Sr Vega and you wanted to hide something, where would you put it?'

'In my territory – either here in my study or in the butcher's room.'

'I've searched the study,' said Falcón.

They went into the butcher's room. Ferrera turned on the harsh neon lights and Falcón walked around the wooden chopping block putting on latex gloves. They opened up the first freezer cabinet and he started taking out the blocks of meat. When all the meat was out of the cabinets Ferrera crawled into the dark frozen holes with a pen torch in her mouth and a knife to scrape away at the frost on the sides of the freezers. At the back in a corner of the second freezer she found what they were looking for. A plastic package encrusted in ice. She passed it out. They returned the meat to the cabinets.

The package was a small freezer bag with a wire twist at its neck. Inside was an Argentinian passport issued in Buenos Aires in May 2000 in the name of

Emilio Cruz. The photo was of Rafael Vega in a pair of old-fashioned heavy-framed glasses. There was also a single key with no label.

This was an escape route,' said Falcón. 'What are the implications of that?'

'Well, if he had an escape route into the life of Emilio Cruz,' said Ferrera, 'then he'd probably already escaped into the life of Rafael Vega.'

'So we now check Vega's ID card right back to its original issuing office,' said Falcón.