The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 10

Thursday, 25th July 2002

On the way back downstairs he stopped off and picked up Sebastián Ortega's file to take back home with him. In the office Ramírez was still hammering out his report with his big intrusive forefingers. Cristina Ferrera had spoken to the phone company and found that the last call received at the Vegas' house had been from Consuelo Jiménez at around 11 p.m. She'd typed up her report and left. Falcón sat opposite Ramírez, who glared at the screen like a critic inserting exquisitely savage remarks into a review.

'Anything I should know about Rafael Vega's business?'

'He employed Russian and Ukrainian labour,' said Ramírez. 'Some legal like Sergei, some not.'

'How did you find out about the non-legal labour?'

'They didn't turn up for work today – or rather they were told to go away when they did, and that left two projects with skeleton crews.'

'What about the offices?'

'Vázquez wouldn't let us search without a warrant, but he was quite accommodating about Sergei.'

'Did he have anything to say about the labour force?'

'Not his concern. He wasn't running Vega Construcciones day to day. He was just the lawyer… with a non executive role on the board, which, since Vega's death, has become executive.'

'Did you see the accountant – Sr Dourado?'

'The Golden Boy. Yes, we saw him. He explained the business to us and showed us the accounts.'

'Did he explain how the illegal labour force was being dealt with in the numbers?'

'We're not at the specifics stage of the investigation. We were talking in more general terms about structure, finding out if the company was solvent, if there were any financial time bombs, or if there was some nasty penalty clause from a project which was eating into profits.'

'Talk me through the structure of the company.'

'Vega Construcciones is the holding company for a collection of separate projects. Each project is a company with its own board, comprising a representative from Vega Construcciones, someone from the investors/venture capitalists, and someone from the financial institution providing the backing. I suppose it's to stop a fuck-up in one project bringing down the whole company,' said Ramírez. 'Anyway, the holding company has shown a decent profit for the last three years and there didn't seem to be anything going badly wrong with any of the current projects. There was no catastrophe pending. If it was a business problem that resulted in his death, it's more likely to have been something to do with the partners in the projects.'

'Did you see any names?'

'Not yet,' said Ramírez. 'How did it go at the Instituto?'

'Take a look when you're finished. There's nothing really meaty in there that would persuade a judge that it was definitely a murder. We're going to have to work hard to find a motive from Vega's three closest neighbours, who all seemed to be benefiting from their relationship with him and who were all at home last night asleep, as you'd expect. That's why we have to find Sergei. He was closest to the crime scene. If anybody saw anything, he did.'

'I haven't had a good look at that passport yet, but someone who's totally innocent doesn't keep a false document in their freezer,' said Ramírez. 'You've already had people drifting past your front door with stolen plates, and the smell of Russians is very strong down at Vega Construcciones. So we know there's something in this case that's not right. We're finding things out every day. Eventually one of those things will be a motive.'

'I've got to go,' said Falcón, looking at his watch.

'Oh, yes, shrink night tonight. Maybe I'll have to start seeing her,' said Ramírez, grinning, tapping his temple. 'She can help me straighten out my noodles.'

'Still no news on your daughter?'

'Not until they're completely finished.'

Falcón drove home. He needed another shower and time to relax before he saw Alicia Aguado. As he came into the house he had the same sense of unease he'd had the night before. He found himself listening again.

He dumped the Ortega file in his study and went upstairs, showered and changed into jeans and a black T-shirt. He came back down to the kitchen and drank water. He went to his study and lay down on the chaise longue. He did some breathing exercises and was beginning to feel quite calm when he was transfixed by something alien on the pinboard above his desk which he hadn't seen earlier. He got up slowly, as if stealth was important. He walked in a crouch to his desk and leaned against it. On the board was a photograph of Inés. It had been stuck there by a pin with a red plastic head which pierced her throat.

By 9.30 p.m. he was sitting in the S-shaped chair in Alicia Aguado's consulting room. She put her fingers to his wrist. She needed this technique even more now that she'd lost the last vestiges of her sight to retinitis pigmentosa.

'You're tired,' she said.

'I'm at the end of the second day of a new investigation,' he said. 'A double death and lots of emotional upheaval.'

'You're anxious again.'

'I had another "shit" dream during my siesta,' said Falcón. 'They always come in the afternoons.'

'We've talked about them before,' she said. 'So what are you anxious about?'

'The shit dream was different this time. I woke up with a clear idea in my head and a sense of purpose.'

He told her about the Sebastián Ortega case, what he knew about it at the time of the dream (including the state of Pablo Ortega's house), and what he discovered subsequently from Montes.

'Is that a common occurrence?'

'Quite often evidence that's not admissible in court shows unquestionable proof of a defendant's guilt,' said

Falcón defensively. 'Police and prosecutors will then use nuance and emphasis to secure the "right" conviction.'

'But that's not the case here, is it?' said Aguado. 'A victim has been manipulated to give an exaggerated account of what happened to him. Who was the judge on the case?'

'The conviction was never in doubt. What they wanted to secure was the maximum sentence, but… I don't want to get into specifics and personalities,' said Falcón. 'The point was that I didn't know about that before the dream and yet I woke up with a strong sense of wanting to help this young man, who is not connected to me in any way.'

'That's good,' said Aguado.

'I think so, too. It's the most boring thing about depression – the time you have to spend with yourself,' said Falcón. 'I'm glad to be breaking out of my self-absorption.'

'What drew you to Sebastián Ortega's predicament?'

'There are some interesting connections there. Pablo Ortega knew Francisco Falcón. He was a friend of his. He had even met me before, when I was eighteen, but I didn't remember him. Like Francisco, he's charismatic and someone who can summon up tremendous fury. He also said things which I subsequently found out were not true. It was quite difficult to disentangle the truth from performance. It's possible that he is hiding things from himself. In a later interview someone said that they'd always assumed that he was either homosexual or asexual.'

'My God… we are talking about Pablo Ortega the actor, aren't we?'

'Yes, but don't go ringing the Diario de Sevilla,' said Falcón. 'He'd kill himself if that broke.'

'I can see the comparisons with your own situation,' she said.

'I think I've subconsciously identified with Sebastián, which is why I want to help him.'

'Because?'

'Because I want to help myself.'

'This is good, Javier,' said Aguado. 'I just want to go back to Pablo Ortega…'

'That stuff about him being homosexual – there's no proof. It was just something that this particular interviewee had always assumed to be the case.'

'That's not what concerns me,' she said. 'Why was Pablo Ortega so angry?'

'He was furious at Juez Calderón…'

'So he was the judge on Sebastián Ortega's case as well?'

'You found me out.'

'I thought there was something more complicated at work there.'

'If there is, I don't know what it is.'

'I remember you saying while you were investigating the Jiménez murder that you liked Juez Calderón. You told me that he was one of the first people you'd considered a possible friend since your training in Barcelona.'

'That was before I knew he was seeing Inés.'

Her fingers jumped off his pulse as he said her name.

'Has something happened with Inés?'

'Yesterday he told me they were getting married,' said Falcón. 'I nearly called you.'

'We've dealt with Inés.'

'I thought we had.' 'You were expecting them to get married, ' said Alicia Aguado. 'And you told me that you'd accepted it.'

'The concept, yes.'

'And the reality was different?'

'I was surprised at how bitterly disappointed I was by the news.'

'You'll get over it.'

'That's why I didn't call you,' said Falcón. 'But just before I came out to see you this evening I found a photograph of her stuck up on the noticeboard above my desk with a red pin through her throat.'

Silence. Falcón thought he felt Alicia shiver.

'Did you stick it up there?' she asked.

'That's what concerns me,' said Falcón. 'I don't know.'

'Do you think you might have done it subconsciously?' asked Aguado.

'I don't even recognize the photograph.'

'What about the other prints?'

'I bought a digital camera last week. Work has been slack until yesterday and I've been out on the streets taking snaps, getting used to the technology and then downloading stuff on to the computer, erasing shots, printing out others, throwing some stuff away. You know, playing around with it. So… I… I just can't be certain. Maybe I did snap her without realizing it. We don't live that far from each other. I see her occasionally in the street, as you do in Seville.'

'How else could it have got on to your noticeboard?'

'I don't know. I did get very drunk last night and passed out…'

'You shouldn't let this worry you,' said Aguado.

'But what do you think it means?' said Falcón. 'I don't like the idea that my mind is operating independently of me. This was what was happening to one of the victims in my investigation.'

Falcón explained Vega's bizarre note, how he'd traced over it.

'The positive side of this incident is that it seems to indicate that by pinning Inés by her throat to your board you're releasing yourself from this hold you believe she has over you.'

'Well, that's one interpretation,' said Falcón. 'There could be some darker ones.'

'Don't dwell on it. You're on the move. Keep up the momentum.'

'All right, let's talk about something else – Sebastián Ortega. What do you think about his behaviour, psychologically? Why did he do what he did?'

'I'd need to know a lot more about him and the case before I ventured an opinion on that.'

'My theory is that he was reliving an ideal,' said Falcón. 'He was being to the boy what he'd wanted his father to be to him.'

'I can't comment.'

'I'm not asking you for a serious professional opinion.'

'And I don't give amateur ones.'

'OK, so what shall we talk about that's not Inés?'

'Talk to me some more about Juez Calderón.'

'I don't know what I think about him any more,' he said. 'I'm confused. Initially I was attracted by his intelligence and sensitivity. Then I found out that he had a relationship with Inés, which I couldn't and can't talk about with him. Now they're getting married. I've watched his star consistently rising, but then I hear from others that it's vanity propelling this trajectory…'

'I think you missed something out.'

'I don't think so.'

'Has Juez Calderón done something to you?'

'Not to me,' said Falcón. 'I can't talk about it yet.'

'Not even to your clinical psychologist, who you've been seeing for over a year?'

'No… not yet. I can't be certain about it,' said Falcón. 'It could have just been a moment's madness, now forgotten, or there could be clearer intent.'

'To do someone wrong?'

'Not wrong exactly… although it would be wrong,' said Falcón. 'All I can promise you is that it has nothing to do with me.'

The appointment finished soon after. Before walking Javier to the door she deviated to a cabinet, fumbled around and took out a dictaphone.

'I don't mind thinking about Sebastián Ortega for you,' she said. 'My summer is quiet. Since my blindness has become complete I've been getting agoraphobic. The idea of hundreds of people on the beach, and me amongst them, makes me feel nervous. I'm staying in town, despite the heat. Put everything you know down on tape and I'll listen to it.'

She gave him the dictaphone and some tapes. Javier shook her cool white hand, their professional relationship never having got beyond this formality, apart from some madness on his part in the early stages of treatment. But this time she pulled him to her and kissed him on both cheeks.

'Good night, Javier,' she said, as he walked down the stairs. 'And remember: the important thing is that you're a good man.'

Falcón left the coolness of her consulting room and stepped into the thick heat in the street. He walked and did what Alicia had told him not to do. He dwelt on that photograph of Inés pinned to his board. Without thinking, he crossed a road and found himself in front of the Old Tobacco Factory, which had now been incorporated into the university. He'd overshot the Edificio de los Juzgados where he'd parked the car. He crossed Avenida del Cid and backtracked through the walkways of the Palacio de Justicia. Someone called his name. The sound of the voice was like a woman's hands coming up his chest from behind. The skipping heels on the pavement told him before he'd turned that he was going to see Inés.

'Congratulations,' he said, his lips fluffing the word.

She looked blank as they kissed hello.

'Esteban told me yesterday,' said Falcón.

She put her hand to her mouth as if that would obscure her memory struggle and then rolled her eyes.

'I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking,' she said. 'Thank you, Javier.'

'I'm very happy for you,' he said. 'Isn't it a bit late for you to be working?'

'Esteban told me to meet him here at 9.30. Have you seen him today?' she asked.

'He postponed our meeting until tomorrow.'

'He's always here at this time of night. I don't know what could…'

'What did the security guard say?'

'That he left at six and hasn't been back.'

'You've tried his mobile?'

'It's switched off. He switches it off all the time now. Too many people want to talk to him,' she said.

'Well… can I give you a lift somewhere?'

Inés left a message with the security guard and they got into Falcón's car. They drove down Cristobal Colón and agreed to have a tapa in El Cairo on Reyes Catolicos.

They sat at the bar and ordered beers and a tapa of piquillo peppers stuffed with hake. He asked her about the wedding. She spoke with her mind only half on the job, looking at every face that walked by the window. Falcón sipped his beer and murmured encouragement until she turned on him and gripped his knee with her long white manicured nails.

'Has he been all right?' she asked. 'You know… in his work.'

'I don't know. I've been working this case with him out in Santa Clara, but only since yesterday.'

'Santa Clara?'

'At the end of Avenida de Kansas City.'

'I know where Santa Clara is,' she said, annoyed, but her irritation instantly broke and she was staring at him with her big brown eyes in the way that she did when she wanted something. 'He said… he said…'

'What, Inés?'

'Nothing,' she said, and released his knee. 'He seems a little anxious recently.'

'Only because he's made it official now: the announcement.'

'What difference does that make?' she said, hanging on Falcón's every syllable, desperate for insight into the male psyche.

'You know… total commitment… no going back.'

'He was committed before.'

'It's official… confirmed to the world. It can make a man nervous, that sort of thing. You know, The End of Youth. No more playing around. Family. Adult responsibilities – all that stuff.'

'I see,' she said, not seeing it at all. 'You mean there's doubt?'

'No, no, no que no,' said Falcón. 'There's no doubt, just a nervousness at the prospect of change. He's thirty-seven, never been married before. It's just a reaction to the future physical and emotional upheaval.'

'Physical?' she said, sitting on the edge of her seat.

'You're not going to stay in his apartment, are you?' said Falcón. 'You'll get a house… start a family.'

'Did Esteban talk to you about this?' she said, searching his face for the least sign of a tic.

'I'm the last person…'

'We'd always said that we'd buy a place in the centre of town,' she said. 'We wanted to be in the old city in a big house like yours… maybe not so mad and enormous, but in that classic style. I've been looking for months… mostly at old properties that need work, and guess what Esteban said last night?'

'That he's found somewhere?' said Falcón, unable to stop the thought flashing through his mind that Inés had only married him for his house.

'That he wants to live in Santa Clara.'

Falcón stared into those big frightened eyes and felt something like slow-motion wreckage forming in his mind. Consonants caught in his throat like fish bones.

'Exactly,' she said, leaning back, almost in triumph, 'it's the antithesis of what we'd always talked about.'

Falcón drained his beer, ordered more, stuffed the pepper into his mouth messily.

'What does it mean, Javier?'

'It means,' he said, hurtling towards tragic revelations and veering off at the last moment, 'it means that it's part of the emotional upheaval. When everything in your life changes at once… you change with it… but more slowly. I know. I've become an expert in these matters of change.'

She nodded, gulping the words down into her chest where she could treasure them until her eyes flickered and she shot off the bar stool and leapt at the door.

'Esteban!' she roared down the street, better than any fishwife.

Calderón stopped as if he'd been knifed in the chest. He turned and Falcón expected to see the hilt jutting out of his ribs, but instead he saw – in the moments before Calderón could compose his face – fear, loss, contempt and a strange wildness, as if the man had been lost for days in the mountains. Then the judge smiled and the radiance shone out of him. She went to him. He went to her. They kissed madly in the street. An old couple sitting in the window nodded their approval. Falcón blinked at the fraudulence on display.

Inés hauled him into the bar. Calderón's step faltered as he saw Falcón perched on his bar stool. The three of them explained everything to each other twice without listening to a word. Beers shot down throats. Topics came and went. Inés and Calderón left after minutes. Falcón studied the sinew standing out of Inés's forearm as she gripped her fiancé’s shirt. It was desperate. She was never letting go of this one.

The bill came. He paid it and drove home. Every light turned to red. The cobbles jolted his insides. Despite his tiredness he had no patience for bed. He went to his study and booted up the computer. He went through all the shots he'd taken since the weekend. He kept looking at the snap of Inés, seeing if it fitted with any of the others, seeing if he could remember it. It didn't help. He found the whisky, poured himself a single glass and left the bottle in the kitchen.

He was about to shut the computer down when he remembered Maddy Krugman telling him that she'd read his story on the internet. He logged on and entered her name into a search engine. There were several thousand hits, mostly for a political commentator called John Krugman and a journalist for the New York Times called Paul Krugman. Falcón entered Madeleine Coren into the search engine. There were only three hundred hits and he quite quickly started to find references to her photographic work. They were mainly old articles and a few reviews of her exhibitions, but they always featured a shot of the stunningly beautiful young Madeleine Coren, who looked cool, unapproachable and dressed exclusively in black. He was butting up against his boredom when a small piece from the St Louis Times caught his eye. FBI murder inquiry: Madeleine Coren, photographer, has been helping the FBI with their inquiries into the murder of Iranian-born carpet dealer Reza Sangari. The article appeared under the local news section and was dated 15th October 2000.

Madeleine Coren in FBI Murder Inquiry

The New York photographer Maddy Coren has been helping the FBI with their murder inquiry following the discovery of Reza Sangari's bludgeoned body in his Lower East Side apartment.

The FBI could not reveal why they were talking to Ms Coren in connection with the Iranian carpet dealer's murder. They have only stated that no charges have been brought against the thirty-six-year-old photographer whose latest show 'Minute Lives' has just moved from the St Louis Art Museum. John and Martha Coren, who still live in Belleville, St Clair would make no comment on their daughter's FBI interview. Maddy Coren currently lives in Connecticut with her husband, the architect Martin Krugman.

The journalist's name was Dan Fineman and after reading it through a few times Falcón began to pick up the slightly mischievous tone of the piece. Its news- worthiness was hardly worth the column inches. He entered 'Minute Lives' into the search engine and a review came up with the headline 'Short on content. Small in stature.' The by-line was the same Dan Fineman. A man with a grudge.

Falcón typed Reza Sangari into the search engine. His murder had been well covered at a local and national level, and from these articles he was able to piece together the full story.

Reza Sangari was just thirty years old. He was born in Tehran. His mother was from a banking family and his father originally ran his own carpet factory until they left prior to the Iranian revolution in 1979. Reza was brought up in Switzerland but went to the USA to study Art History at Columbia University. After graduation he bought a warehouse on the Lower East Side from which he developed his carpet import and sales business. He converted the second floor into an apartment, which was where his dead body was found on 13th October 2000. He had been murdered three days earlier; he had taken two blows to the head with a blunt instrument, which had not killed him, but he had fallen sideways on to a brass bedstead which had. The weapon that caused the first wounds was never found. Because of the wide-ranging nature of the investigation and Sangari's international client list the FBI took over from the New York homicide cops and contacted all his clients and social acquaintances. They found he was seeing a number of women but not one in particular. There was no evidence of a break-in and nothing obvious had been stolen. There was nothing missing from the inventory. The FBI had been unable to develop any suspects in the case despite extensive interviews with the women he was seeing at the time of his death. Some of the names of these women had crept into the media because they were famous. They were: Helena Valankova (dress designer), Françoise Lascombs (model) and Madeleine Krugman. The last two were married women.