The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 12

Friday, 26th July 2002

On the way to Ortega's house he took a call from Jorge, who told him that the paper used for the Inés print was of a different make and quality to the blank stock he'd given him. The news momentarily elated him until he realized that this proof of his sanity must also mean that someone had got into his home and planted the photo. Not only that, they also knew about him and his particular vulnerability. His blood felt sharp in his veins but he calmed his paranoia with the thought that everybody knew about him. Since the Francisco Falcón scandal his story was public property.

Pablo Ortega was coming back from walking his dogs. Falcón buzzed down his window as he drew alongside and asked if he could spare a few minutes. Ortega nodded grimly. Falcón pulled the photograph out of his briefcase. Ortega held the gate open for him. The stink from the cesspit was as thick as a mud wall. They went around the house and into the kitchen. The dogs drank noisily.

'I've had some good news about the cesspit,' said Ortega, unable to sound delighted by it. 'One of my brother's contractors thinks he can rebuild without having to knock down all the rooms and he could do it for five million.'

'That's good,' said Falcón. 'I'm glad it's going to work out for you.'

They went into the living room and sat down.

'I might have some more good news for you,' said Falcón, wanting to keep things positive. 'I'd like to help with Sebastián's case.'

'It's no use you helping from the outside if Sebastián doesn't want to be helped from the inside.'

'I think I can help there, too,' said Falcón, taking the risk that Aguado would agree. 'I have a clinical psychologist who's looking at his case and might be prepared to talk to him.'

'A clinical psychologist,' said Ortega, slowly. 'And what would he talk to Sebastián about?'

'She would try to find out why Sebastián felt the need to incarcerate himself.'

'He didn't incarcerate himself,' said Ortega, leaping to his feet, throwing out a big dramatic hand. 'The state incarcerated him with the help of that cabron Juez Calderón.'

'But Sebastián didn't defend himself. He seems to have welcomed his punishment and failed to offer anything that might have reduced his sentence. Why?'

Ortega dug his fists into his expansive waist and drew in a massive breath as if he was about to blow the house down.

'Because,' he said, very quietly, 'he was guilty… It was just his mental state at the time that was in question. The court decided he was sane. I dispute that.'

'She will find that out from him,' said Falcón.

'What will she talk to him about?' said Ortega. 'The boy has a fragile mind as it is. I don't want her stirring up more trouble. He's already in solitary confinement. I don't want him feeling suicidal.'

'Have there been any reports from the prison that he might be?'

'Not yet.'

'She's very good at her work, Pablo. I don't think this will do him any harm,' said Falcón. 'And while she helps him clarify things, I'll look at various elements of the case

'Like what?'

'The boy he kidnapped – Manolo. I should talk to his parents.'

'You won't get anywhere there. The Ortega name cannot be spoken in that house. The father has suffered some sort of collapse. He can't work any more. They spread malicious gossip so that the whole barrio has turned against me. I mean, that is why I am here, Javier… and not there.'

'I have to talk to them,' said Falcón. 'It was the seriousness of Manolo's testimony that resulted in such a heavy prison sentence for Sebastián.'

'Why should he change it?' said Ortega. 'It's his testimony.'

'That's what I have to find out: whether it was his testimony or something that he was encouraged to say by others.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'He's a very young boy. At that age you do what you're told.'

'You know something, Javier, don't you?' said Ortega. 'What do you know?'

'I know that I want to help.'

'Well, I don't like it,' said Ortega. 'And I don't want it to rebound on Sebastián.'

'It can't get any worse for him, Pablo.'

'It'll stir things up…' said Ortega, repeating his fear. He started out angry but then softened. 'Can you just let me think about it for a bit, Javier? I don't want to rush into these things. It's delicate. The media has only just fallen silent. I don't want them on my back again. Is that all right?'

'Don't worry, Pablo. Take your time.'

Ortega blinked at the photograph whose corner Javier was flicking.

'Anything else?' he asked.

'I was confused,' said Falcón, throwing back the pages of his notebook, 'as to your relationship with Rafael Vega. You said: "I knew him. He introduced himself about a week after I moved in here." Does that mean you did know him before you moved here, or that you've only known him since you've lived in Santa Clara?'

Ortega was staring at the photograph face down on the table in front of Falcón as if he was a poker player and it was a draw card whose suit and number he wouldn't mind knowing.

'I did know him before,' he said. 'I suppose I should have said he reintroduced himself. I met him at some party or other. I can't remember whose…'

'Once, twice, three times?'

'It's not so easy for me to remember. I meet so many…'

'You knew Consuelo Jiménez's late husband,' said Falcón.

'Yes, yes, Raúl. That would have been it. They were in the same business. I used to go to the restaurant in El Porvenir. That's what it was.'

'I thought the connection was your brother and his air-conditioning systems?'

'Yes, yes, yes, now I've got it. Of course.'

Falcón gave him the photograph, watching his face as he did so.

'Who are you talking to in that photograph?' asked Falcón.

'God knows,' said Ortega. 'The one you can't see is my brother. I know that from his bald head. This guy… I don't know.'

'It was taken at one of Raúl Jiménez's parties.'

'That doesn't help. I went to dozens of functions. I met hundreds of… All I can say is that he wasn't from my profession. He must be in the construction industry.'

'Raúl divided his friends up into celebrities and… useful people for his businesses,' said Falcón. 'I'm surprised you didn't appear in his celebrity photographs.'

'Raúl Jiménez thought Lorca was a brand of sherry. He'd never been near a theatre in his life. He'd like to think of himself as a friend of Antonio Banderas and Ana Rosa Quintana, but he wasn't. It was all a publicity stunt. I was a… No, let's be accurate: I occasionally gave support to my brother by turning up at functions. I knew Raúl and I'd met Rafael, but I wasn't exactly a friend.'

'Well, thank you for explaining that,' said Falcón. 'I'm sorry to have taken up your time.'

'I'm not sure what you're investigating here, Javier.

One moment we're talking about Rafael's suicide, the next you make it sound as if he's been murdered, and now you're looking at Sebastián's case. And that photograph… that must have been taken years ago, before I put on all this weight.'

'There's no date on it. All I can tell you is that it was taken before 1998.'

'And how do you know that?'

'Because the man you're talking to died in that year.'

'So, you already know who he is?'

Falcón nodded.

'I feel as if I'm being accused of something here,' said Ortega, 'when it's just that my memory has been shot to pieces since this business with Sebastián. I've never used a prompter in my life and then twice in the last year I've come to in front of the camera or on the stage, wondering what the hell I'm doing there. It's… ach… you don't want to know. It's silly stuff. Nothing a cop would be interested in.'

"Try me.'

'It's as if reality keeps breaking through the illusion I'm trying to create.'

'That sounds plausible. You've been through a difficult time.'

'It's never happened before,' said Ortega. 'Not even after Gloria left me. Anyway, forget about it.'

'Not all the work I do is about putting criminals behind bars, Pablo. We're servants of the people, too. That means I also try to help.'

'But can you help me with what's going on in here?' he said, tapping his forehead.

'You have to tell me first.'

'Do you know anything about dreams?' said Ortega.

'I have this one where I'm standing in a field with a cool wind blowing at the sweat on my face. I'm in an incredible rage and my hands are hurting. The palms are stinging and the backs of my fingers feel bruised. There's the sound of traffic and I find that my hands are causing me not physical pain but great personal distress. What do you make of that, Javier?'

'It sounds as if you've been hitting somebody.'

Ortega looked through him, suddenly deep in thought. Falcón said he'd let himself out, but there was no reaction. As Falcón reached the gate he realized that he'd forgotten to ask about Sergei. He went back but stopped at the corner of the house because Ortega was standing on the lawn with his hands reaching up to the sky. He sank to his knees. The dogs came out and snuffled around his thighs. He stroked them and held them to him. He was sobbing. Falcón backed away.

The Vegas' garage with its brand-new Jaguar was cleaner than Sergei's accommodation and Falcón knew that there wasn't going to be any muriatic acid anywhere near this car's paintwork. He went down the garden to the barbecue, thinking that Sergei must have had a place where he kept his gardening tools. There was nothing unplanned about this area of the garden. It had been built by a man who understood how to grill meat. Behind the barbecue area there was thick, almost tropical growth. He went round the back of Sergei's quarters and saw that there was a path into this jungle, which obscured a brick shed. He was furious that this hadn't appeared in Perez's report on his search of the garden.

He found a key in the garage and waded back through the thickening heat. The shed was full of sacks of charcoal and the usual barbecue paraphernalia. Sergei kept his tools at one end, along with some small quantities of building materials. On a shelf above there was paint and other liquids, one of which was an opened plastic bottle of muriatic acid with a centimetre left in the bottom. Falcón went back to the car for an evidence bag and used a pen through the loop handle to lift the bottle into it. As he worked, the light dimmed in the shed.

'You're on your own today, Inspector Jefe,' said Maddy Krugman, startling him.

She stood in the doorway, backlit. He could see every curve and crux of her figure through the diaphanous material of her dress. He looked down at her zebra- skin sandals. She leaned against the door jamb, arms folded.

'I prefer it that way, Sra Krugman,' he said.

'You look like a loner to me,' she said. 'Thinking things out, piecing things together. Building the picture in your head.'

'You're keeping a careful eye on me.'

'I'm bored,' she said. 'I can't go out to take my photographs in this heat. There's nobody around down at the river anyway.'

'Is your husband still working for Vega Construcciones?'

'Sr Vázquez and the finance people called him last night and said that he should continue to manage his projects,' she said. 'They don't seem to be pulling the plug… just yet. Would you like some coffee, Inspector Jefe?'

They walked out into the sunlight. She checked the contents of his evidence bag. He locked the shed.

'We can cut through here to our place,' she said, leading him towards a break in the hedge by Sergei's quarters.

Falcón went back to the house, put the evidence bag inside the garage and shut the door. He followed her through the hedge and up the garden to her house thinking about how he was going to introduce Reza Sangari into the mix.

He sat on the sofa in the chill of the living room while she made the coffee. Her sandals had low heels on them which clicked softly on the marble floor. Even out of the room there was still this subliminal sexual presence. She poured the coffee and lowered herself on to the other end of the sofa.

'You know what it feels like out here when I'm all on my own day after day?' she said. 'It feels like I'm in limbo. It's one of those weird incongruities of life that I've found my social life has improved one hundred per cent since Rafael died. He used to be just about our only guest. But now you come around and yesterday I spent some time with Esteban…'

'Juez Calderón?'

'Yes,' she said. 'He's a nice guy and very cultured, too.'

'When did you see him?'

'I ran into him in town in the morning and we met up later and had an evening together,' she said. 'He took me to some odd bars in the centre that I would never go into by myself. You know, those places with a thousand jamones hanging from the ceiling, sweating into those conical plastic cups over the heads of fat guys with their black hair combed back in brilliant rails, smoking cigars and adjusting their trousers every time a woman walks by'

'What time was that?'

'You can't stop being a detective, can you?' she said. 'It was about six until ten o'clock.'

She crossed her legs. Her dress slipped back towards her lap. She kicked the sandal off her foot.

'I saw that you had a show called "Minute Lives",' said Falcón. 'What was that about?'

'Or "Minute Lives",' she said, rolling her eyes. 'I never like that stupid title. It was my agent's idea. They like things to be catchy and commercial. I've got the book upstairs, if you'd like to see.'

She stood and flipped the hem of her dress out with her fingertips.

'It's OK, 'said Falcón, wanting to keep this on the ground floor. 'I just wanted to know the subject matter.'

She walked over to the sliding doors and put her hands up on the glass and looked out into the garden. Again the light streamed through her clothes. Falcón squirmed. Everything seemed to be calculated.

'They were shots of very ordinary people taken at work or in their homes. They were people in a big city with small lives and the shots were just clips of their life story – your imagination was supposed to do the rest.'

'I read a review of the show,' said Falcón. 'It was by somebody called Dan Fineman. He didn't seem to like it.'

He watched the back of her head, her neck and shoulders as his words crept into her mind. She was as still as a night animal with a host of predators. She turned suddenly and with an intake of breath came back for her coffee. She lit a cigarette and thumped her back into the sofa.

'Dan Fineman was an asshole I knew from high school. He always wanted to fuck me but he made my flesh crawl. He never aspired to anything greater than writing for the St Louis Times and when he got there he took his revenge.'

'He wrote another article about you,' said Falcón. 'You might not have seen it.'

'That was the only show I ever did in St Louis. First and last.'

'This wasn't to do with the arts. It was a local news story.'

'I only went back to St Louis to see my parents for Thanksgiving and Christmas.'

'When did you say your mother died?'

'I didn't,' she said, 'but it was on December 3rd 2000. You know who you remind me of, Inspector Jefe?'

'Americans only seem to know one Spaniard and I don't look anything like Antonio Banderas.'

'Columbo,' she said, not thinking this at all but wanting to get back at him. 'A much better-looking Columbo. You ask a load of questions that don't seem to have any bearing on the case and then, bang, you nail the culprit.'

'Fictional police work is always more entertaining than the real thing.'

'Marty said from the beginning that you weren't like any cop he'd ever seen.'

'And I suppose he'd have come across quite a few in the months before you arrived here?'

She rested her chin on her thumb and tapped her nose with her finger.

'You never said what Dan Fineman wrote about, Inspector Jefe.'

'How you were helping the FBI with their inquiries into the murder of your ex-lover, Reza Sangari.'

'You're a very thorough person,' she said.

'You looked me up on the internet,' said Falcón. 'I looked you up.'

'Then you won't need to ask me anything,' she said. 'And, anyway, none of it's relevant to what happened to the Vegas.'

'Have you had any other affairs since you've been married to your husband?' he asked.

She narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips and smoked about two centimetres in a single drag.

'Are you seriously trying to put me and Rafael together, Inspector Jefe?' she asked. 'Is that how your mind works? You see a pathetically obvious pattern in things and your policeman's brain snaps the two together.'

Falcón sat still, his eyes fixed on her, waiting for the cracks to appear. Instead, something dawned in her face and she sat up on the edge of the sofa.

'I've got it,' she said. 'How stupid of me. Columbo – disconnected questions. This is about the judge, isn't it? You think I'm embarking on an affair with Juez Calderón. And, yes, I read the story… Javier Falcón. His fiancé is your ex-wife. Is that what this is all about'

There was some colour in Maddy Krugman's cheeks. She was angry. Falcón wouldn't have minded blocking out the glare coming from her green eyes, the flames of her red hair. He realized that the two of them were prepared to hurt each other and she didn't mind the idea of that.

'Now that I've discovered that your motive for leaving America was a little more complicated than you've led me to believe, I have to look at things from a different perspective.'

'So what was all that stuff about Esteban?'

'You mentioned him, not me,' he said. 'I was interested because he decided to postpone a meeting he had with me yesterday. I now find out it was because he was with you.'

'Do you still love your ex-wife, Inspector Jefe?'

'That's got nothing to do with anything.'

'Why are you so curious about Esteban?' she asked. 'It shouldn't be any of your business what he does with his private life. And you shouldn't give a damn about your ex-wife… but you do.'

'They're getting married. I'm under no illusions.'

'You've given yourself away, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'You're under no illusions, but you wouldn't mind the chance, I bet.'

'You're like a defence lawyer putting words into the mouth of a prosecution witness.'

'And you've got nobody to object to,' she said, looking sadly around the living room before fixing on him again, 'Any woman over the age of twenty would take one look at Esteban Calderón and know him for what he is.'

'Which is?'

'A ladies' man who's always looking,' she said. 'You don't see it because you're not the type. I hope your ex-wife isn't a romantic.'

'And what if she is?'

'She'd be under the illusion that she could make that kind of man change,' she said. 'But I can promise you one thing… she knows what he's like. No woman could miss it. Why do you think Esteban was around here with his tail wagging on the first day of your investigation?'

'How does your husband take that sort of thing?' asked Falcón.

'Marty's got nothing to worry about,' she said. 'He trusts me.'

'How did he take Reza Sangari?'

Silence, while Maddy stubbed out the cigarette with a dozen precise little stabs at the ashtray.

'We nearly didn't make it through,' she said, looking up with her eyes magnified by impending tears. 'That was my first and last affair.'

'Were you still seeing Reza Sangari when he was murdered?'

She shook her head, slowly.

'Did you contemplate leaving your husband for Reza Sangari?'

She nodded.

'And what happened?'

'That is private,' she said.

'I'm sure you had to tell the FBI everything… or did they respect your privacy?'

'It upsets me. I don't want to talk about it.'

'Did you find out about the other women?' asked Falcón, riding over her sensitivities.

'Yes,' she said. 'They were younger than me. They had more resilience.'

'And why, when you see so clearly what sort of a man Esteban Calderón is, did you not spot Reza Sangari?'

'I made the crucial mistake of falling completely and madly in love with him.'

She paced the room, her nerves getting the better of her.

'I used to go into New York City twice a week,' she said. 'I had work from a couple of magazines and I used a studio which happened to be close to Reza's warehouse. He came to the studio one day with a model I was using for a shoot. The model was flying out to LA straight afterwards. Reza asked me out to lunch. By the end of that afternoon we'd had food, wine and he'd made love to me on a pile of pure silk carpets from Qom. That's what it was like. Nothing was ordinary. He was beautiful and I fell for him like I've never fallen for anybody in my life.'

'The model you were using that day, was her name Françoise Lascombs?'

'Yes.'

'She must have been around once she came back from LA. Didn't you see her?'

'Reza was very good at keeping all aspects of his love life separate. And you know how it is with these men – when you were with him you were the only person in the world who mattered. I wasn't thinking of anybody else and certainly not the invisible competition.'

'But you did find out about them?'

'About six months after we started, when I was so in love with him I didn't know what to do with myself, I went into the city on an odd day. I didn't intend to see him but inevitably I ended up at his warehouse. As I went for his doorbell a woman came out and I recognized that happy spring in her step. I didn't go up. I went across the street and stood in a doorway. I was shaking. I don't know whether you know what that sort of betrayal is like – a really appalling sense of breakage. My organs felt lacerated. It took me an hour to stop shaking. Then I decided I would go up and finish with him and, as I crossed the street, another woman converged on his door. I couldn't believe it. I didn't go up. I somehow managed to get home and collapsed. I never saw him again and then somebody killed him over a weekend and they took four days to find the body.'

'And they never found the murderer?'

'It was a long and painful investigation. Never was so much pressure put on so many relationships by the death of one man. The media were on top of it too, because Françoise Lascombs had just become Estee Lauder's girl. The FBI probably had about ten suspects, but they couldn't pin it on any of them. Then they discovered his coke habit. He had something like two hundred grammes in his apartment. I never knew about it, but I suppose he had to be on something just to maintain that lifestyle. They thought that something must have gone wrong in a deal.'

'What do you think?'

'I think about a lot of things – what the affair did to Marty, what it did to me, and I think about Reza and the madness of those months – but I don't let myself think about his end, who killed him or why, because that's where insanity lies.'

'You never suspected Marty?'

'You're kidding – the weekend he was killed I was still struggling to be without Reza. I couldn't bear to be on my own. Marty and I were drunk and stoned and watching old movies. Then, on the Wednesday, the FBI came calling and everything changed.'

'Well… it explains your fascination with the internal struggle.'

'It also explains why I'm disdainful of everything I did before I came here,' she said. 'Dan Fineman was right. I remember his headline, it played on the title of the show: "Short on content, small in stature".'

'You said Sr Vega used to come here for dinner… quite often on his own,' said Falcón. 'That's unusual for a Spanish man with a family.'

'You're so transparent, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'And you've insinuated that before.'

'These aren't trick questions, Sra Krugman,' he said. 'Nor do they necessarily imply any impropriety on your part. I'm just asking if you think he was in love with you, or infatuated with you, as a lot of men seem to be.'

'But not you, Inspector Jefe. I've noticed that,' she said. 'Perhaps your lust is directed elsewhere… maybe that's it, yes, maybe you just don't like me… Your friend Consuelo doesn't like me either.'

'My friend?'

'Or is she a little more passionate than a friend?'

'Do you think Sr Vega was interested in you sexually?' asked Falcón, shouldering through her insinuations. 'You went to see bullfights together.'

'Rafael liked to be accompanied by a pretty woman. That's it. Nothing happened. In the same way that nothing ever happens with the gas man either.'

'Did you know if you had an effect on Sr Vega's mind?'

'You think I was the cause of his disturbed state,' she said. 'You think he was burning papers down the bottom of his garden because of me. You're crazy.'

'He was a man trapped in difficult marital circumstances. He had a wife who was severely depressed, but they had a son together they both loved. He wasn't going to break up his family, but his relationship with his wife was limited by her condition.'

'It's a plausible theory… except I think I was a side attraction for Rafael. His main interest was talking things over with Marty. I mean, Marty would always meet us after the bullfight for tapas, then we'd have dinner and, I'm telling you, those two were still talking long after I went to bed.'

'About what?'

'Their favourite topic. The United States of America.'

'Had Sr Vega lived in America?'

'He spoke American English and he talked about Miami a lot, but he didn't react well to direct questions, so I'm not sure. But Marty's convinced that he'd lived there. Unlike most Europeans, he wasn't full of the usual cliches on the American way of life,' she said. 'He enjoyed talking with Marty because Marty isn't that interested in personal details. Marty was happy to talk about theories, thoughts and ideas without having to know where the guy lived or his favourite colour.'

'Did they talk in Spanish or English?'

'Spanish until they got on the brandy, and then English. Marty's Spanish fell apart with alcohol.'

'Did Sr Vega ever get drunk?'

'I was in bed. Ask Marty.'

'When was the last time Sr Vega and Marty had one of these evenings?'

'The really long sessions happened during the Feria. They'd be up until dawn then.'

Falcón finished his coffee, got to his feet.

'I don't know whether I'll invite you again, if all you're going to do is interrogate me,' she said. 'Esteban doesn't interrogate me.'

'It's not his job to interrogate you. I'm the one who has to go digging in the dirt.'

'And you find out a few things about Esteban on the way.'

'His private life is not my concern.'

'You're used to keeping yourself in tight, aren't you, Inspector Jefe?'

'It's best not to let my sort of job and social life bleed into each other.'

'Very funny, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'You do have a social life, then? Most cops don't. I understand their lives are full of broken relationships, separations from their kids, alcoholism and depression.'

Falcón couldn't help thinking that he scored two, maybe three, out of four.

'Thank you for your time,' he said.

'We should try meeting socially, just to see if we really get along without all this stuff getting in the way,' she said. 'I'm interested in the cop with artistic vision. Or is your mind made up about me? I'd hate you to think I was some stereotype, like the femme fatale.'

'I'll go back the way I came,' he said, heading for the sliding doors out into the garden, and he could tell he'd annoyed her.

'Columbo always left his last question for the doorstep,' she said to the back of his head.

'I'm not Columbo,' he said, and sealed her back in with the sliding door.