The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 9

Thursday, 25th July 2002

On the way back to the Jefatura Falcón drove while Ferrera read the autopsy reports. It was lunch time, the temperature had now reached 45°C. There was no one on the streets. Cars bulldozed the heat down the shimmering tarmac. When they arrived at the Jefatura he told Ferrera to leave the reports on Ramírez's desk and they would reconvene at 6 p.m.

The heat had broken Falcón's appetite. At home he managed a bowl of gazpacho, of which Encarnación made a daily supply. He could not find the energy, with the heat crammed into every corner of the house, to look through the Jiménez photographs he'd brought in from the car. He went upstairs, stripped and showered and collapsed into the air-conditioned cool of his bedroom. His brain wavered and released images of the day. He lurched into sleep and a recurring dream where he entered a public toilet which was pristine until he flushed it, whereupon it started filling up with sickening quantities of shit until it overflowed. He found himself trapped and had to climb the walls of the cubicle, only to find all the other toilets were doing the same thing so that he felt a rush of nausea followed by a deep animal panic. He woke up, his hair full of sweat and his mind inexplicably latched on to Pablo Ortega until he remembered the actor's cesspit problem.

It was 5.30 p.m. The shower drilled the muck out of his hair and head. His mind tripped forwards and backwards under the pummelling water. He knew why he had dreamt the dream – another investigation, his own past and the past of others all rucked up by the tragedy. What he was unprepared for was his mind's next leap, which told him that he should go and visit Pablo Ortega's son, Sebastián, in prison. This would be nothing to do with his investigation, just a separate mission. The idea made him feel good. Something creaked open in his chest. He felt more able to breathe.

He took the Jiménez photographs into the study and pulled out the shots of Pablo Ortega. There was one of Pablo smiling and talking to two men. One of these men was obscured by people in the foreground and the other man he did not know. He took the photo with him, put it on the passenger seat.

Ramírez was typing up his report on his interviews in Vega's offices and the latest on the search for Sergei. Falcón told him about the passport in the name of Emilio Cruz and the key. Ramírez took down the details.

'I'll e-mail this to the Argentinean Embassy in Madrid, see what they make of it,' said Ramírez. 'And I'll put a trace right back to the original issuing office on Rafael Vega's ID.'

'Can we get something on that before the weekend?'

'Not in July, but we can try.'

'Any news on Sergei?'

'He was seen some time in the last couple of weeks in a bar on Calle Alvar Nunez Caleza de Vaca with a woman who was not Spanish and talked the same language as him. The woman had been seen there before and the barman thought she came from the Poligono San Pablo. He also thought she was a hooker. We've got a full description and Serrano and Baena are working with it now.'

Falcón listened to his messages, staring at the photograph he'd brought up from the car. Calderón had postponed their meeting until the following morning. He put a call through to Inspector Jefe Alberto Montes from GRUME (Grupo de Menores), who was responsible for crimes against children, and asked if he could pass by for an informal chat. Ferrera arrived as he was leaving and he told her to work on the phone numbers listed beside calls in and out of the Vegas' house and Rafael Vega's mobile, and then join Serrano and Baena looking for the woman seen with Sergei.

'What about the key we found with the passport in Vega's house?'

'Sergei is more important at this stage. We need a witness,' said Falcón. 'Work on the key if you have time. Start with the banks.'

On the way up to Montes's office he dropped in on Felipe and Jorge in the lab. He talked them through the autopsies. They looked dismal. They had nothing to offer from the crime scene. The pillow had been clean of any sweat or saliva. The only curious thing they'd come across was to do with the note in Vega's hand.

'As his lawyer said, it's clearly his own handwriting, but we thought it interesting that he should describe it as "careful" so I looked at it under the microscope,' said Felipe. 'It's traced over.'

'What do you mean?'

'He'd written it before, which left an indent on the page beneath, then he'd gone back to the pad and traced over the indent… as if he wanted to see what had been written.'

'But he'd written it in the first place?' said Falcón.

'I can only tell you the facts,' said Felipe.

Alberto Montes was in his early fifties, overweight, with bags under his eyes and a nose that had exploded from excessive drinking. He'd undergone a psychological assessment at the end of last year because of the drinking problem and had somehow got through it. He was looking at early retirement now and seemed anxious to get there. He had been with the Grupo de Libertad Sexual, which investigated adult sex crimes, and GRUME for over fifteen years and held an encyclopaedic knowledge of names and the horrors attached to them. He sat turned away from his desk, looking out of his second-floor window, smoking and presumably thinking of future freedom. He strained water from a plastic cup through his thick moustache as if he was wishing it was whisky. As Falcón reached his desk he swivelled in his chair and refilled the plastic cup.

'Kidney stones, Inspector Jefe,' he said. 'They get me every summer. I've been told to drink six litres of water a day. What can I do for you?'

'Eduardo Carvajal,' said Falcón. 'Remember him?'

'He's burnt on my heart, that guy. He was going to make me famous,' said Montes. 'Why has his name suddenly reappeared?'

'I'm investigating the deaths of Rafael and Lucia Vega.'

'Rafael Vega… the constructor?' said Montes.

'Do you know him?'

'I don't get invited to his caseta in the Feria, but I know who he is,' said Montes. 'Did somebody kill him?'

'That's what we're trying to find out. While I was going through his address book I came across Carvajal and it was a name that rang bells from that case I investigated last year – he was known to, and a friend of, Raúl Jiménez. I didn't have time to dig him up then so I thought I'd try now,' said Falcón. 'How was he going to make you famous?'

'He said he was going to give me all the names of everybody who'd been a part of his paedophile ring… ever. He promised me the biggest coup of my career. Politicians, actors, lawyers, councillors, businessmen. He said he would bring me the golden key which would open up high society and reveal it for the rotten, stinking egg it really was. And I believed him. I genuinely thought he was going to come through with the information.'

'But he died in a car crash before he could deliver.'

'Well, he came off the road,' said Montes. 'It was late at night, there was alcohol in his system and it was a very tricky series of bends from Ronda to San Pedro de Alcántara… but we'll never know.'

'What does that mean?'

'All this is pretty well known, Inspector Jefe. By the time I'd been notified, he'd been buried and the car was a block in a breaker's yard about that big -' said Montes, holding his hands fifty centimetres apart.

'But some people were convicted, weren't they?'

Montes held up four fat fingers with a cigarette burning amongst them.

'And they couldn't help you in the same way that Carvajal could?'

'They only knew each other. They were one cell in the ring,' said Montes. 'They're careful, these people. It's no different to a terrorist outfit or a resistance movement.'

'How did you get to them in the first place?'

'I'm ashamed to have to tell you it was through the FBI,' said Montes. 'We can't even crack our own paedophile rings.'

'So it was international?'

'That's the internet for you,' said Montes. 'The FBI were running a sting operation. They found a couple in Idaho who were managing a child porn site and they took it over. They picked up addresses from all over the world and informed the local authorities in each country. It's good to know that there are a lot of scared paedophiles out there, but I don't think we'll pull in any of the people that Carvajal knew. I'm sure that's all finished.'

'Why?'

'Carvajal was the key man. He was procuring. They knew him. He knew them. But they didn't know each other. There's nothing to hold it together.'

'But what was Carvajal doing out of custody on his own?'

'That was part of the deal negotiated with his lawyer. He was going to pull all the different cells together and we were going to scoop the lot in a series of raids.'

'Did you find out how he was procuring?'

'Not that it did us much good,' said Montes, nodding.

'It was something that was just starting then. The Russian mafia involvement in people trafficking. Prostitution became a big thing for them because they could control the supply. To control the drugs trade they had to fight for territory because they didn't have home-grown heroin or cocaine, but with prostitution they had the goods from the word go. And what's more they found that it was less dangerous and just as lucrative. There was a Romanian girl in here last week who'd been bought and sold seven times. Believe me, Inspector Jefe, we've come full circle and we're back in the slave-trade era.'

'Do you mind just giving me a little resume about that?'

'The ex-Soviet states are full of people. A lot of them are able and intelligent – university lecturers, technical college instructors, builders, public servants – but hardly any of them can make a living in the post Soviet era. They're trying to live off fifteen to twenty euros a month. We in Europe, and especially in countries like Italy and Spain, don't have enough people. I've read reports saying that Spain needs an extra quarter of a million people a year just to keep the country functioning and pay taxes so that the state has money to give me a pension. Supply-and-demand economies are the easiest to understand and are immediately exploited.

'You need a visa to get into Europe. I've heard a lot of Ukrainians cross the border into Poland and get their visas from the embassies in Warsaw. Portugal offers visas quite easily. Spain, because of our Moroccan problem, is more difficult, but it's easy enough to enrol in a language school or something like that. Of course, you need help to do this. This is where the mafia steps in. They will facilitate your journey. They will get you a visa. They will arrange transport. They will charge you a minimum of a thousand dollars per head… I can see you're thinking, Inspector Jefe.'

'Fifty people on a bus, less a few thousand in expenses,' said Falcón. 'It's not difficult to see how well that works.'

'They're taking at least forty-five thousand dollars a busload,' said Montes. 'But it doesn't stop there because with a bit of intimidation these are people who can also be put to work for you when they reach their destination. The mafia gangs pick them off. The women and children go into prostitution and the men go into forced labour. It's happening everywhere – London, Paris, Berlin, Prague. A friend of mine was on holiday outside Barcelona last month and on the road going into Roses there was a line of beautiful girls waving him down… and they weren't hitchhikers.'

'What sort of work do the men get put into?'

'Factory work, sweatshops, building sites, warehouses, driving jobs – anything menial. They're even in the greenhouses in the flatlands out towards Huelva. There are girls out there, too.

'Four or five years ago prostitution was something you came across only if you wanted to, or if you took a wrong turn in the city. The red-light districts were confined. Now you can go to a garage in the middle of nowhere and find a girl "working".'

Montes lit another cigarette while crushing out the one he'd been smoking.

'Now I know that I'm too old for this work. It's not a challenge any more. It's something that's become overwhelming, something that's got the better of me,' said Montes. 'You said you had another question, Inspector Jefe. Hurry up before I lose myself in despair and throw myself into the car park.'

Falcón faltered over that because he could see the man's weariness, feel his ingrained fatigue and colossal disappointment.

'Just kidding, Inspector Jefe,' said Montes. 'I'm too close to the end. I feel sorry for the mid-career guys. They've got a long haul.'

'I was going to ask you about Sebastián Ortega, but it can wait for another time.'

'No, no… it's no problem, really, Inspector Jefe. I just need my annual holiday,' said Montes. 'Sebastián Ortega – what about him?'

'Pablo Ortega is Rafael Vega's next-door neighbour. The Juez de Instrucción on the case is Esteban Calderón.'

'Aha, yes, well, I shouldn't bring those two together in the same room.'

'What happened? It sounds like a strange case.'

'Which version did you hear?'

'I see… it's that complicated,' said Falcón. 'I heard that he kidnapped the boy, sexually abused him over a number of days and released him. He then waited for the police to come and arrest him.'

'That's what they pinned on him in court – abduction and sexual assault, which was why Juez Calderón and the fiscal managed to get him put away for twelve years,' said Montes. 'I didn't work the case, so this is only what I heard, but I know it's true. Having said that, the only video statement you'll see in the file is the official one used in court,' said Montes. 'First of all, Sebastián Ortega did not make life easy for himself. He said nothing about what he'd done. He never put his own version of events out there. So, when there's nothing to contradict, people feel they have an imaginative licence.

'Question number one: why did he abduct the boy? Question number two: why did he have a specially prepared room in which to keep his prisoner? Question number three: why did he tie the boy up? And the answer to all those questions, in the minds of the investigators and prosecutors, was that Sebastián Ortega planned and carried out his action in order to give himself the opportunity to sexually abuse this boy at will. Except… he didn't.'

'He didn't what?'

'He didn't sexually abuse him… or rather there was no evidence of it, and the boy also said that Sebastián Ortega didn't touch him in that way,' said Montes. 'Then, I think, the judge had a word with the investigators, who spoke to the boy's parents. And in the subsequent video the victim's statement became more persuasive or imaginative, whichever you prefer.'

'So what was the purpose of the abduction?'

'They knew each other. They were from the same barrio. I hesitate to call them friends because of the age difference, but that is more or less what they were. So Sebastián Ortega didn't exactly have to abduct him. He invited him to his flat. Then things got a bit strange, as far as I can make out. He kept him in this closed- off room he had already built and tied him up. But in the initial interview the boy said that, although he was frightened by Ortega's strangeness, he was not hurt or touched in a sexual manner.'

'I don't get it,' said Falcón. 'So what did Sebastián do?'

'He read children's stories to him. He sang songs… he wasn't a bad guitarist, apparently. He made him meals, let him drink as much Coca Cola as he wanted.'

'Why did he tie him up?'

'Because the boy said he had to go home or his father would be angry.'

'And this went on for some days?'

'Everybody outside was going crazy looking for the boy. The parents even called Sebastián, who said he was sorry but he hadn't seen the boy… Manolo was his name, I think. Then one day he just gave up… He let the boy go, sat on the bed and waited for retribution.'

'And none of this came out in court?'

'Some of it did, but obviously the prosecution's emphasis was not the same as mine. They made Sebastián out to be more aggressive and predatory.'

'What do you make of it?'

'I think Sebastián Ortega is a disturbed young man who should probably not be in prison. He did something wrong, but not twelve years' worth of wrong.'

'And your investigators?'

'The real story was too strange. If you were experienced you could possibly handle it in such a way as to bring the truth to light, but it was summer, the two investigators were young and they were uncertain and that made them malleable. The media interest in the case because of Pablo Ortega introduced some pressure. They didn't want to appear stupid and, like Juez Calderón, they were excited by a high-profile conviction.'

'What do you think of the Juez's role in this case?'

'None of my business… officially,' said Montes. 'But personally I think his vanity got the better of him. He was riding high after your case. The media coverage of that was incredible. He's young, good-looking, good family with all the right connections and… Yes, well, that's it.'

'What were you going to say?'

'I only just remembered in time about his new wife… I'm sorry.'

'So that's got out already, has it?'

'We knew it before he did.'

'Do you think Juez Calderón knew the reality of the case?'

'I don't know what went through his mind. There were lots of unofficial discussions about it between him and my men. He said that he thought the whole thing was a ludicrous fantasy planted in the boy's head by a manipulative brute. The court would not believe a word of it. He said it would be better for the boy to give a clearer and less ambiguous account of what had happened to him. The investigators talked to the parents and the boy did what he was told.'

'Where were you in all this?'

'Off sick. Hernia operation.'

'It doesn't sound as if justice was done.'

'To be fair, as I told you earlier, Sebastián Ortega did not contest any of the facts that came out in the boy's video interview shown in court. He did not defend himself at all. There should be the possibility of an appeal, but as far as I know Sebastián Ortega does not want that. I get the impression that for some reason Sebastián is where he wants to be.'

'Do you think he should get some psychological help?'

'Yes, but he won't. I'm told he doesn't speak any more. He's gone into solitary confinement and communicates the absolute minimum.'

Falcón stood up to leave.

'Tell me, do you recognize any of the men in this photograph?' he said, and laid down the Ortega shot on Montes's desk.

'My God, there he is, the hijo de puta. That's Eduardo Carvajal. And if I'm not mistaken he's talking to Pablo Ortega and somebody I can't see,' said Montes. 'I should get him out of my sight unless you want to see a grown man cry, Inspector Jefe.'

'Thanks for that,' said Falcón, picking up the photograph.

They shook hands and he headed for the door.

'What work did Eduardo Carvajal do, by the way?' he said, reaching for the door handle.

'He was a property consultant,' said Montes, whose face had turned haggard again after its relative calm during the Ortega discussion. 'He used to work for Raúl Jiménez, here in Seville in the construction business, until the late seventies, early eighties. He was from a wealthy family who had a lot of property in the Marbella area. When he left Raúl Jiménez he developed that land and sold it off. He made contacts. He knew all the right people. He started finding holiday companies plots of land to build hotels. He had the town halls eating out of his hand, so all the building permissions and the licences went through and he had the connections for the finance. He made a fortune.'

'So his big promise to you was entirely believable?'

'Completely.'

Falcón nodded, opened the door.

'On the Ortega case,' said Montes. 'I don't attach any blame to my men – which doesn't mean I haven't spoken to them about how to handle it next time, but you need to be strong to stand up to the sort of gilded personality that is Juez Calderón.'

'And it's his job to put together a case that will give the fiscales the best chance of success in court,' said Falcón. 'That's where very tricky moral decisions have to be made and Juez Calderón is a very able man.'

'You like him, Inspector Jefe,' said Montes. 'I'd never have thought it.'

'I've only worked with him once… on the Raúl Jiménez case. He handled it very well. He handled me very well when I was not in a fit state to be running an investigation.'

'Success changes a man,' said Montes. 'Some people are destined for a very high form of it. Others, like me, have reached their level and have to be content with it or go mad. Juez Calderón isn't even forty years old and yet he's achieved things that some judges never do in an entire career. It's a hard act to maintain… to reach even greater heights. Sometimes things have to be forced a little so that the star's distinctive glow retains its brightness. Judgement is affected by ambition and mistakes get made. People like that fall very hard and fast. Do you know why, Inspector Jefe?'

'Because people like to see them broken,' said Falcón.

'I think there are plenty of people out there waiting,' said Montes.