The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 8

Thursday, 25th July 2002

In Consuelo Jiménez's office they sorted through her husband's old photos, finding ones that included Pablo Ortega and/or Rafael Vega. They headed out of the old city to Dr Rodríguez's surgery, which was in a barrio next to Nervión. On the way the Médico Forense called Falcón to say that the autopsies were complete and both bodies ready for identification. Ferrera called Carmen Ortiz and told her to prepare herself to go down to the Institute Anatómico Forense.

Dr Rodríguez was running late and Falcón sat down with El Pais. He skimmed past a photo of six drowned Moroccans on the beach at Tarifa, victims of another failed attempt to get into Europe. His eye settled on an article about the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, or rather a sidebar which was giving an update on a strange continuing phenomenon. Since the beginning of July, when the Rome Statute of the permanent International Criminal Court had entered into force, the Americans, for reasons that were not clear, had been persuading governments who had signed the treaty to declare that they would not press or put up for trial any US citizen for prosecution by the ICC. They gave a list of the countries wavering under American pressure but no more information. The nurse called him in to Dr Rodríguez's consulting room.

The doctor was in his late thirties. He dried his hands on paper towels while inspecting Falcón's credentials. They sat. Falcón told him of Sr Vega's death. The doctor pulled up Vega's file on the computer.

'On 5th July this year you had an appointment with Sr Vega,' said Falcón. 'As far as I can tell, that was the only time you saw him this year.'

'It was the only time ever. He was a new patient. His records came to me from Dr Alvarez.'

'His diary showed that he had an appointment with a Dr Diego before he came to you.'

'The notes came from Dr Alvarez. Maybe he saw a Dr Diego and decided that he wasn't right for him.'

'Was there any indication from the consultation or the notes sent to you by Dr Alvarez that Sr Vega was suicidal?'

'He had some hypertension, but nothing catastrophic. He was suffering from anxiety and he described a number of incidents which sounded like classic panic attacks. He assumed the cause was from pressure of work. According to Dr Alvarez's notes he'd been suffering mild anxiety since the beginning of the year, but it wasn't sufficiently serious to prescribe anything.'

'Did Dr Alvarez mention that Sr Vega's wife had an advanced mental illness? She was taking lithium.'

'He didn't, which I presume means he didn't know about it,' said Rodríguez. 'That would certainly have contributed to Sr Vega's stress.'

'Do you know why Sr Vega stopped seeing Dr Alvarez?'

'There's nothing specific in the notes, but I noticed that Dr Alvarez had been recommending some psychological therapy. When I put this to him myself he was very resistant to the idea, so it's possible they had a disagreement about that.'

'So the mild anxiety was probably developing into something more serious and he was hoping for a different approach from you?'

'My approach was to reduce his anxiety with a mild drug and then, when he was feeling more in control, persuade him into some form of therapy.'

'Did he talk about any sleep problems?'

'He mentioned a sleepwalking incident. His wife had woken up at three in the morning to see him leaving the bedroom. When she questioned him about it the next day he had no recollection of it.'

'So he did talk about his wife?'

'When describing that incident, yes, but he also said his wife could not be relied upon because she took sleeping pills. There was something else that had happened, which had convinced him that the sleepwalking had occurred, but he wouldn't be drawn on it,' said Rodríguez. 'It was the first consultation, remember. I thought there would be time to coax things out of him later.'

'Did you think he was a danger to himself?'

'Obviously I didn't. Mental disturbances of the sort he was suffering are not uncommon. I have to make decisions on the basis of a snapshot of a man's life. He was not extremely agitated, nor was he preternaturally calm – those two extremes being indicators of danger.

There was no history of depression. He had come to me from someone else. He seemed to be trying to tackle his problem. He wanted something to reduce his level of anxiety and he didn't want another panic attack. These are all positive signs.'

'It sounds as if he wanted a quick fix. No therapy.'

'Men are more resistant to the idea of discussing their private thoughts or shameful deeds with someone else,' said Rodríguez. 'If their problems can be solved with a pill, so much the better. There are plenty of doctors who believe we are bundles of chemicals and that psychopharmacology is the answer.'

'So, in your opinion, Sr Vega was troubled but not suicidal?'

'It would have been good to have known about his wife,' said Rodríguez. 'If you have pressure at work and no respite at home and possibly no love… that is a situation that can tip a troubled mind into despair.'

Falcón sat wedged into the corner of the car, Ferrera driving. He was already questioning his instincts on day two of the investigation. So far there was no conclusive evidence to support a murder inquiry. The suicide option was looking stronger with every interview. Even if there were no matching fibres from the pillow found under Sr Vega's fingernails that was still only an indicator that somebody else might have been there. It wasn't positive proof.

Ramírez called from the offices of Vega Construcciones to say that Sergei was a legal immigrant and Serrano and Baena now had a photograph and were circulating with it around Santa Clara and the Poligono San Pablo.

The Cabellos lived in the penthouse of a block built in the seventies in the upmarket barrio of El Porvenir, opposite the bingo hall on Calle de Felipe II.

'You're never too rich to play bingo,' said Falcón, as they went up to the apartment where Carmen Ortiz was having a hysterical attack. She was in the bedroom with her husband, who had arrived from Barcelona that morning. The Ortiz children, with Mario between them, were sitting on the sofa, subdued. It was the old man, Sr Cabello, who'd answered the door. He led them into the sitting room. Ferrera knelt down with the children and had them playing and giggling in a matter of moments. Sr Cabello went to find his daughter but returned with his son-in-law. They went into the kitchen.

'She doesn't want to see the bodies,' said the son- in-law.

'They'll be behind a glass panel,' said Falcón. 'They'll look as if they're asleep.'

'I'll go,' said Sr Cabello, composed and determined.

'How is your wife?' asked Falcón.

'Stable, but still in intensive care, unconscious. I'd appreciate it if you could take me to the hospital afterwards.'

Falcón sat in the back of the car with Sr Cabello while Ferrera took on the pre-lunch traffic. The old man rested his worker's hands in his lap and stared straight into the intricacies of Ferrera's pinned-up plait.

'When was the last time you saw Lucia?' asked Falcón.

'We were there for Sunday lunch.'

'With Sr Vega?'

'He came for lunch. He'd been out driving his new car.'

'How was your daughter?'

'I think you already know by now that she was not well. She has not been well since Mario was born,' he said. 'It was never easy to see her in that state, but there was nothing extraordinary about that particular lunch. It was the same as always.'

'I am going to have to ask you some questions which might be painful,' said Falcón. 'You are the closest family and it is only through you that we can begin to understand the domestic situation between your daughter and Sr Vega.'

'Did he kill her?' asked Sr Cabello, turning his wounded eyes on Falcón for the first time.

'We don't know. We're hoping for clarification from the autopsy. Do you think he could have killed her?'

'That man was capable of anything,' said Sr Cabello, with no drama, mere fact.

Falcón waited in silence.

'He was a cold man,' said Sr Cabello, 'a ruthless man, a man that never allowed anyone too close. He never talked about his dead parents, or any member of his family. He did not love my daughter, even before her problems when she was a beautiful young woman… when… when she…'

Sr Cabello closed his eyes to memories, his jaw muscles worked over his grief.

'Were you aware of any difference in your son-in- law's behaviour since the beginning of this year?'

'Only that he was even more withdrawn than usual,' said Sr Cabello. 'Whole meals would pass in silence.'

'Did you remark on it?'

'He said it was work, that he was managing too many projects at once. We didn't believe him. My wife was sure he had a woman somewhere and it had all gone wrong.'

'Why did she think that?'

'No reason. She's a woman. She sees things I don't see. She sensed that the trouble was in the heart and not the head.'

'Was there anything specific that led you to believe that he had a mistress?'

'He was not often at home with Lucia. She would go to bed before he arrived back from whatever he was doing and sometimes he would be gone by the time she woke up,' said Sr Cabello. 'So there was that, and the way he had always been with our daughter.'

'His neighbours said that Mario appeared to be very ' important to him.'

'That is true. He was very fond of the boy… and Lucia found it difficult to cope with his energy as that puta of a disease took hold of her mind,' said Cabello. 'No, I don't say that he was all bad, and certainly he would not have appeared bad to an outsider. He understood the necessity for charm. It was only by living close to him that you saw his true nature.'

'When did you spend time with him?'

'On holidays down at the coast. He was supposed to be relaxed then, but in many ways he was worse. Constant company made him uneasy. I think the idea of family made him sick.'

'Do you know what happened to his parents?'

'He said they were killed in a car accident when he was nineteen years old.'

'You know more than his lawyer.'

'He wouldn't tell Carlos Vázquez that sort of thing.'

'He told him that his father had been a butcher,' said Falcón. 'And how he used to punish him.'

'You've seen the room he has in his house,' said Cabello. 'He gave Carlos Vázquez an explanation. He never told me what his father had done to him. You see, he is not a normal man. He is at heart a suspicious man, because he believes that people are like he is himself.'

'Lucia didn't like the butchery?'

'That only started after Mario was born. Before then she didn't mind.'

'Were you surprised that she wanted to marry him?'

'It was a difficult time.'

They were stopped at a traffic light. An African boy walked between the cars, hatless in the full sun, selling newspapers. Sr Cabello seemed to need movement to get himself talking. The lights changed.

'As I told you, Lucia was a beautiful woman,' said Cabello, embarking on a story that he'd built inside himself over years. 'There was no shortage of men who wanted to marry her… and she married a man whose father had a large farm outside Cordoba. They went to live in a house on the farm and they were very happy, until Lucia did not conceive. She went for tests. They told her that there was nothing wrong with her and that perhaps they should consider IVF. The husband refused. Lucia always thought that he was afraid to find that he had a problem. Things were said in the heat of the moment that could not be undone and the marriage was dissolved. Lucia came back to live with us. She was twenty-eight years old by now and had missed out on the best of her generation.

'I still owned these pieces of agricultural land in and around Seville. They weren't big pieces of land, but some of them were strategic – without them an area could not be successfully developed. A lot of developers knocked on my door and one of the most persistent was a nameless person represented by Carlos Vázquez.

'Lucia had been working for the Banco de Bilbao. They had a caseta at the Feria de Abril every year. Lucia was a beautiful dancer. She lived for the Feria de Abril and went every night, all night. She looked forward to that time of year. It was a week in which she could forget about all her problems and be herself. That's where she met him. He was an important client at the bank.'

'He was twenty years older than her,' said Falcón.

'She'd missed out on her own generation. All the eligible men were taken. She had no interest in what was left. Then an important man took an interest in her. Her superiors at the bank were happy about it. They started to take notice of her. She was promoted. He was already wealthy. He had found his place in the world. There was certainty with him. All these things were very seductive to someone who thought they'd been left on the shelf.'

'What did you think?'

'We told her to make sure that a man of that age still wanted to have a family.'

'Were you surprised that he hadn't been married before?'

'But he had been married before, Inspector Jefe.'

'Yes, I forgot, Sr Vázquez mentioned a death certificate that had to be supplied.'

'We know only that she came from Mexico City. She might have been Mexican, but we're not sure. As always with Rafael, we were told the minimum that was relevant to us.'

'Were you concerned that his reticence was because of a criminal past?'

'Well now, Inspector Jefe, you have uncovered my shame. I was prepared to overlook his reticence. My financial circumstances then were not like they are now. I had land, but no job. Capital, but no income. Rafael Vega solved those difficulties for me. He made me a partner in a business that paid a large sum of money for several plots of my land. We built apartments financed by the Banco de Bilbao and rented them out. He made me wealthy and gave me an income. That's how an old farmer like me lives in a penthouse in El Porvenir.'

'What did Sr Vega get out of it, apart from your daughter's hand in marriage?'

'One of the other plots I sold to him separately was the key that unlocked a very large development for him in Triana. And there was a second plot, which one of his competitors wanted very badly. When that plot came into Rafael's hands they had to sell out to him. It meant that he could be more generous to me than any other developer.'

'So, he didn't have to marry your daughter?' said Falcón. 'He was offering you a very sweet deal anyway.'

'I have the mentality of a farmer. That land was only going to go to someone who would marry my eldest daughter. I am old-fashioned and Rafael is a traditionalist. He knew the key to unlock the problem. His meeting of Lucia was no accident. It is my shame that

I allowed the business to cloud my judgement of the man. I had no idea how cold a brute he would be to her.'

'Was he violent?'

'Never. If he had beaten her, that would have been the end of it,' said Cabello. 'He reduced her. I mean he… this is difficult… he was reluctant to perform his marital duties. He implied it was her fault, that she was not making herself attractive to him.'

'One thing… did the death certificate of his previous wife give a cause of death?'

'Accidental. He told us she drowned in a swimming pool.'

'Did he have any children from this previous marriage?'

'He said not. He said he wanted children… so it was strange that he didn't want to do what was necessary to make them happen.'

'Did you know of any previous relationships here, before he met Lucia?'

'No. Lucia hadn't heard of any either.'

Falcón took out the plastic sachet containing the partial photograph of the girl that Vega had burnt at the bottom of the garden.

'Do you recognize this person?'

Cabello put on glasses, shook his head.

'She looks foreign to me,' he said.

They arrived at the Instituto on Avenida Sánchez Pizjuan and parked in the hospital grounds. Falcón found the Médico Forense, who showed them into the room for the body identification and left them there for a few minutes. Sr Cabello started to pace the room, nervous at what he'd let himself in for – his daughter dead on the slab. The Médico Forense returned and opened the curtains. Sr Cabello stumbled forwards and had to put a hand up on the glass to steady himself. With the fingers of his other hand he dug into his skull through his thinning hair as if he was trying to tear this unnatural image from his brain. He nodded and coughed against the violence of the emotion. Falcón drew him away from the glass. The Médico Forense supplied the paperwork and Sr Cabello put his signature to his daughter's death.

They went outside into the fierce heat and light whose savagery had sucked all colour from everything so that the trees seemed vague, buildings merged with the white sky and only dust looked as if it belonged in this place. Sr Cabello had shrunk in his suit; his thin neck, loose in its collar, jumped and gasped as he tried to swallow what he'd just seen. Falcón shook his hand and eased him into the car. Cristina Ferrera took the old man round to the hospital entrance. Falcón called Calderón and arranged a meeting for seven o'clock to discuss the autopsies.

He went back into the chill of the morgue. He sat with the Médico Forense in his office, the two autopsy reports open on the desk. The doctor puffed on a Ducados whose smoke was sucked up into the air conditioning unit and spat out into the crushing heat.

'Let's start with the easy one,' said the doctor. 'Sra Vega was suffocated to death by the application of a pillow over her face. She was probably unconscious while this was happening, due to a severe slap across the face which dislocated her jaw. It's probable that the heel of the hand made contact with her chin.'

The Médico Forense gave an unintentionally comical slow-motion replay of the blow, his cheek, jowl and lips shunting to one side into a slobbery air kiss.

. 'Very graphic, Doctor,' said Falcón, smiling.

'Sorry, Inspector Jefe,' he said, more self-conscious now. 'You know how it is. Long days in the company of dead people. The heat. The holidays nearly, nearly there. The family already at the coast. I forget who I'm with sometimes.'

'It's all right, carry on, Doctor. You're helping me,' said Falcón. 'What about time of death? It's important for us to know if she died before or after Sr Vega.'

'I'm not going to be much help to you on that. Their deaths occurred within the same hour. Their body temperatures were nearly the same. Sra Vega was only slightly warmer. The ambient temperatures were the same in the kitchen and the bedroom, but Sr Vega was lying bare chested on a tiled floor while his wife was in bed with her face under a pillow. I wouldn't be able to stand up in court and say with any conviction that she'd died after her husband.'

'All right, what about Sr Vega?'

'He died directly as a result of the ingestion of a corrosive liquid. Cause of death was a combination of effects on his vital organs. He'd suffered renal failure, liyer and lung damage… It was a real mess in there. The composition of what he ingested is interesting. I seem to remember it was a regular brand of drain cleaner…'

'That's right: Harpic.'

'Well, normally those gels are a mixture of caustic soda and disinfectant. The caustic element would be about a third of the contents. Of course, that would do your system no good at all, but it would take time

for it to kill a grown man in good health. This product killed him in less than quarter of an hour because it had been powerfully boosted with hydrochloric acid.'

'How easy is that to get hold of?'

'Any hardware store would sell it to you under the name of muriatic acid. It's used for cleaning cement off paving stones, for instance.'

'We'll check his garage,' said Falcón, making a note. 'There's no going back once you've ingested something that strong?'

'Irreparable damage would be done to the throat, digestive tract and, in this case, the lungs as well.'

'How did it get into the lungs?'

'It's very difficult to tell what damage was caused by force or violence and what was caused by the corrosiveness of the liquid. I would say that he, or someone else, had rammed the bottle down his throat. Under those circumstances some of the liquid would inevitably find its way into the lungs. There's evidence of corrosive action in the nasal passages, so product was being coughed up. With the mouth occupied by the bottle the only way out was via the nose.'

'You seem to think he could have accomplished this on his own.'

'I have to say that's doubtful.'

'But not impossible?'

'If you were going to kill yourself in this horrible way I imagine that you would try and put yourself beyond rescue by making sure you ingested as much of the product as possible in the first moments. I think there would be a certain amount of nervousness involved, too… and that would cause you to ram the neck of the bottle down your throat. That of course would also set off the gagging mechanism. I think it would be a messy business, unless there was someone holding the bottle in place and holding the victim steady as well.'

'The floor was clean apart from some droplets close to the neck of the bottle.'

'There was spotting on his chest and clothes, but nothing like the quantities you'd expect if he gagged and spurted it out all over.'

'Any evidence of holding – marks on arms, wrist, neck, head?'

'Nothing on the wrists. There are burn marks on the arms in the crooks of his elbows, but the dressing gown had slipped down and it's possible that happened as he writhed in agony on the floor. There are marks on the head and neck, and claw marks on the throat. I would say they are self-inflicted. He had product on his hands. But the marks could just as easily have been made by someone holding him in a kind of neck lock.'

'You know what I'm trying to do here, Doctor,' said Falcón. 'I've got to go back to Juez Calderón and show him conclusive proof that someone else was in the room with Sr Vega, who was responsible for his death. If I can't do that there may well be no murder inquiry. Now, if I'm not mistaken, you think, like me and the forensics, that it was probably murder.'

'But conclusive proof of another party's presence is more difficult,' said the Médico Forense.

'Is there anything that would link Sr Vega to the death of his wife?'

'I didn't find anything. Sr Vega had only his own tissue under his fingernails from clawing at his throat.'

'Anything else?'

'What's the psychological profile of the victims?'

'She was suffering from mental illness,' said Falcón. 'He doesn't seem to have been suicidal, but there are questionable aspects to his mental state.'

Falcón gave a brief resume of what he'd been told by Dr Rodríguez and how disturbed Vega had been since the beginning of the year.

'I see what you mean,' said the Médico Forense. 'This could go either way.'

'To balance that, the victim had a 9mm handgun, a surveillance system he didn't use and bulletproof windows.'

'Expecting trouble.'

'Or just a nervous, wealthy person close to the Poligono San Pablo.'

'And the unused surveillance system?'

'Nerves again,' said Falcón. 'Maybe his mentally ill wife was paranoid. She showed off to her neighbours about the windows. Or possibly Vega himself wanted to discourage outsiders but not leave a record of people who came to the house.'

'Because he's involved in something criminal?'

'A neighbour saw some Russian visitors who didn't look like they'd come from the Bolshoi.'

'There's plenty of talk about the Russian mafia these days, especially down on the Costa del Sol, but I didn't know they'd reached Seville,' said the Médico Forense.

'This is a nasty way to die, isn't it, Doctor?'

'Revenge or punishment, maybe an example to others. What about his sex life?'

'His father-in-law says he was reluctant to perform his marital duties… ever, even before his wife got depressed. The mother-in-law reckoned he was having an affair which went wrong, which was why he'd been so withdrawn since the beginning of the year,' said Falcón. 'Is there anything else I should know?'

'Just one curious thing. He's had some cosmetic surgery done to his eyes and neck. Nothing extraordinary, just bags removed from under the eyes, and skin removed from the neck to tighten up and reveal the jawline.'

'Everybody's having cosmetic surgery these days.'

'That's true, and this is the curious thing. The work is pretty old. Difficult to say exactly how old, but more than ten years.'