The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 16

Saturday, 27th July 2002

Back at home, in the cool of his bedroom, Falcón stripped off the clothes that had marked him out to Ramírez as an amateur. He stood under the shower and stared out through the fogged glass doors and thought about the way Isabel Cano had spoken to him about Inés – 'an innocent little sweetie'. She knew. Those words that Inspector Jefe Montes had used about Calderón: 'You like him, Inspector Jefe. I'd never have thought it.' He knew. Felipe and Jorge. Perez, Serrano and Baena. The whole of the Edificio de los Juzgados and the Palacio de Justicia. They all knew. That's what happens to you when you're buried in your own life. You don't see anything. You don't even see that someone else is fucking your wife under your nose. He shook his head as he remembered that horrible algebra that the police psychologist had made him use. When did you split up with your wife? When did you last have sex with her? If we separated in July then it must have been May. That was May 2000.

He dressed and left the house. He needed another coffee before he went to pick up Alicia Aguado. He bought El Pais and went to the Cafe San Bernardo and ordered a cafe solo at the bar. Cristina Ferrera called from the Vega Construcciones offices giving him the details of the original owner of the plots who'd sold out to the Russians. Unfortunately the man was on holiday in South America and would not be back until September. She also mentioned that the accountant had hacked into Vega's address book and had found a number for the Russians. A single number for both Russians and it was in Vilamoura in the Algarve, Portugal.

He closed down the phone and tried to read his newspaper, but this time, rather than the humiliation of learning about a tawdry affair running through his mind, he found memories of last night surfacing. The sight of Consuelo astride him, the small strip of her pubic hair hovering over him. Her unswerving stare as she eased him into her. Her words: 'I want to see you inside me.' Christ. His throat was too tight for him to swallow. The newsprint blurred. He had to shake himself back into real life, the cafe, people sitting around.

Sex mattered to Consuelo. She was good at it. When her orgasm was coming she let out a kind of low, feline growl and when she came it was with a massive grunt of effort, like a sprinter hitting the finishing line. She liked to be on top and when it was over she knelt above him, hair hanging down, some of it plastered to her face, panting, unconscious to the world, her breasts shuddering with each breath. He thought sex with Inés had been good. He thought they had hit it off in bed. But now he realized there had been something withdrawn about her, something held back. It was as if she couldn't let herself go to the animal edge of her being. Something in her head told her that this was not quite how she should behave.

Was that true? Is this what the mind does when you've been drawn to another partner? Persuade you that the last one wasn't up to much? Maybe that was what Calderón had seen as well. That with Inés there is none of that difference that Isabel Cano spoke about. Inés is beautiful, intelligent and attractive, but he knows how it's all going to unfold. And it was at that moment, just as his mobile had started to vibrate in his pocket, that he realized it was over. It was none of his business. It didn't matter to him any more. He didn't give a shit about Inés or Calderón or what the hell happened to them in their miserable lives. Something gave way inside him. He had a physical sensation of release, of tension breaking, of ropes flying off and whipping back into the night. He grinned and looked around himself at the whole cafe's magnificent unconcern and then took the call from Alicia Aguado asking him where the hell he was.

Because this wasn't a consultation they kissed hello and she immediately noticed a difference in him.

'You're happy,' she said.

'A few things have fallen into place.'

'You've had some sex.'

'I don't believe you can tell that,' he said. 'And anyway, this isn't an appointment.'

They drove out to Santa Clara for the meeting with Pablo Ortega. There was no answer when Falcón rang the bell by the gate, but he noticed that the wooden door had been left open. They coughed at the stench from the cesspit which Falcón had warned her about. Aguado held on to Falcón's elbow as they made their way to the kitchen on the other side of the house. There was no sign of Ortega and it was past eleven o'clock.

'He's probably walking the dogs,' said Falcón. 'We'll take a seat in the shade by the pool and wait for him.'

'I don't know how he can live with that stink.'

'Don't worry you don't notice it inside. He's had that part of the house sealed off.'

'Walking into that everyday would make me suicidal.'

'Well, Pablo Ortega is not a happy man.'

He sat her down at the table by the pool and walked along the edge towards the deep end. He stood on the small diving board and looked down. There seemed to be a sack sitting on the bottom. He found a pole lying by the side of the pool. It had a net at one end and a hook at the other.

'What are you doing, Javier?' asked Alicia, concerned by his silent activity.

'There's a sack in the bottom of the pool. Something like an old fertilizer bag.'

The sack was heavy. He had to push it along the bottom to the edge of the pool and then drag it down to the shallow end where he pulled it out. It must have weighed thirty kilos. He undid the twine at the neck of the sack and gasped at its horrific contents.

'What is it?' said Alicia, on her feet, disorientated by the sounds he was making, panicked.

'It's Pavarotti and Callas,' said Falcón. 'Ortega's dogs. This doesn't look good.'

'Someone has drowned his dogs?' she said.

'No,' he said. 'I think he's drowned his own dogs.'

Falcón told her to stay sitting by the pool. He went to the kitchen door, which was shut but not locked. He opened it and the horrific stink of the cesspit was thick in the room. There were two empty bottles of Torre Muga on the table. He went into the sitting room where there was another empty bottle of wine and the box of Cohibas Ortega had offered him last night. No glass. The smell of raw sewage was more powerful and he realized that the seal to the other part of the house had been broken. The door to the hallway was open and across the corridor the door to the room with the cracked cesspit was ajar.

On the floor in the corridor was an empty bottle of Nembutal with no top. He pushed the door open. There were wooden boards and plastic sheeting thrown against the wall, which had a large subsidence crack in it. A hole in the floor had been opened up by workmen so that they could inspect the damage. Fragments of Ortega's shattered wine glass were all over the bare concrete and tiles. There was a burnt- out cigar stub as well. In the hole, just below the surface of the sewage, was the white and yellow sole of Pablo Ortega's right foot. Falcón called the Jefatura on his mobile. He specifically asked that Juez Calderón be notified as the death might be relevant to the Vega case. He also asked for Cristina Ferrera but instructed that Ramírez should be left alone.

He backed out of the room and went up the corridor to the master bedroom. On the smooth untouched burgundy cover of the bed were two letters, one addressed to Javier Falcón and the other to Sebastián Ortega. He left them where they were and went back to Alicia Aguado, who was still sitting by the pool, very frightened. He told her that Pablo Ortega appeared to have committed suicide.

'I can't believe this,' said Falcón. 'I saw him last night and he was on his way to becoming very drunk, but he was affable, charming, generous. He even said that after our meeting today he was going to show me his collection.'

'His mind was made up,' said Alicia, who was holding on to herself as if she was freezing cold in 42°C.

'Damn,' said Falcón to himself, 'I can't help feeling responsible for this. I've stirred things up and it's -'

'Nobody is responsible for another person killing themselves,' said Alicia firmly. 'He has a whole history that won't have been changed, or even particularly stirred up, by talking to Javier Falcón for a couple of hours.'

'Of course, I know that. I suppose what I mean is that I've precipitated it by pushing him too hard.'

'You mean you weren't just talking to him about Sebastián?'

'I thought he had information that might help my investigation.'

'Was he a suspect?'

'Not exactly a suspect. I could just see that I was making him nervous. The questions I was asking him, whether they were about his son or the Rafael Vega case, for some reason disturbed him.'

'Just out of interest, from the psychological point of view,' she said, 'how did he kill himself?'

'He got drunk, took some sleeping pills and drowned himself in the cracked cesspit.'

'He's planned it out pretty carefully, hasn't he?' she said. 'Drowning the dogs -'

'I asked after his dogs last night,' said Falcón. 'He said they were sleeping. He'd probably already killed them.'

'Any suicide note?'

'Two letters: one to me and the other to his son. I've left them until the Juez de Guardia gets here.'

'He knew you were going to be the first person in here this morning,' she said. 'No nasty surprises for anybody but the professional. The gate and doors conveniently left open. He thought it all out down to the last detail of throwing himself in the cesspit.'

'What do you mean?'

'I thought you said that part of the house was sealed off.'

'I did.'

'So he went to the trouble of breaking the seal because it was psychologically important for him to drown himself in shit… his own shit,' she said. 'I'm sure the pills and alcohol would have done the job on their own.'

'Alcohol can induce vomiting.'

'All right. So he was making sure of it as well… but he could have used the pool. Less private, but it was good enough for his dogs.'

'Assuage my guilt, Alicia. Give me a theory,' he said.

'As you know, there's been a build-up of events even before you started coming to see him about Rafael Vega,' she said. 'His son has been jailed in a high-profile case for a nasty crime. He himself was ostracized by his community so that he had to leave his apartment, and there's a story behind that which you still don't know. He's moved here to a place which, on the face of it, suits him. A garden city, a wealthy community, peace and quiet. But it didn't turn out like that. He felt dislocated and craved the involvement of the barrio. The house he bought developed an unpleasant and antisocial problem. To us that would seem an irritating and expensive inconvenience, but to Pablo Ortega it probably achieved some sort of significance in his mind. Then his neighbour died…'

'He wanted to know if Sr Vega had committed suicide.'

'So it was already on his mind,' said Alicia. 'I've left out the fact that his son didn't want to see him either… another isolating factor. Then Javier Falcón arrived on the scene, perceiving an injustice in Sebastián's case and wanting to help. As you know, from your own experience, you can't help without stirring things up. And what came to the surface of Pablo Ortega's mind? Whatever it was, he didn't want to know about it. He didn't think it worth staying alive to face it. So, not only does he not bring the difficult things to the surface, he actually submerges himself. He drowns his memories in his own ordure. His sweet and innocent dogs did not get that treatment.'

Falcón shook his head in dismay.

'You were asking him about his son, Javier, and you said you were putting pressure on him through your investigation. What did you suspect him of having done?'

'I don't want to talk about that just yet. It would help if you came to this with an open mind,' he said. 'That is, if you want to be involved. It doesn't have to be any of your business.'

'I'm involved,' she said. 'I'd like to know what the letters say. And it might be interesting to know what he had in his collection.'

A patrol car pulled up outside the house.

'We've got to do our work first,' he said. 'But I don't think this will take very long.'

An ambulance parked up behind the patrol car. Felipe and Jorge turned up a few minutes later, along with the Juez de Guardia, Juan Romero. There was a quick conference about the relevance of this suicide to the Vega case. Calderón called Romero who gave him Falcón's verbal report. It was decided to treat them separately. Cristina Ferrera arrived in time to hear the decision.

Falcón gave them a tour of the crime scene via the dead dogs by the pool and the interior of the house. Felipe took the crime scene shots while Jorge inspected the dogs and scraped meat from between their teeth. Ferrera checked the telephone for messages and asked the phone company for a breakdown of calls in and out. She searched for a mobile.

The ambulancemen came in and decided that Ortega's body had been weighted to keep it submerged and would have to be winched out via a pulley in the ceiling. They went to get a block and tackle. Felipe and Jorge moved in and bagged all the evidence before moving on to the bedroom. The Médico Forense arrived and sat chatting with Alicia Aguado by the pool while he waited for the body to be lifted out.

Felipe handed over the letters to Falcón unopened in evidence bags. The ambulancemen chipped away at the ceiling until they found a reinforced concrete beam and started drilling. Falcón took the letters into the sitting room to read. Ferrera hadn't found the mobile. He sent her out to speak to the neighbours to see what

Ortega's movements had been in the last twenty-four hours.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

27th July 2002

Dear Javier,

I think you must have realized now that I chose you and I am sorry if this has upset you. You are the professional and, as I said, I like you and I want this, the last scene of my final act, to pass safely into your hands.

Just in case there is some doubt, or some opportunistic burglar has happened on the scene and messed up my tragedy, I would like to declare unequivocally that I have taken my own life. This was not a snap decision. It was certainly not provoked by any recent developments but is a culmination of events. I have come to the end of my road and found it a cul- de-sac, with no possibility of retracing my steps and doing all the things that I should have done. It was a dead end with only one exit and I chose it with clear eyes, if not a clear conscience.

My reasons for having taken my own life are the only reasons a suicide can have. I am weak and I am selfish. I have neglected my son. This has been the stamp of all my family and personal relationships and has happened probably because I am consumed by vanity. The reward for this is my loneliness. My son is in prison. My family have grown tired of me. My community has thrown me out. My profession has shunned me. Vanity, in case you do not know this, requires an audience. Life inside my bubble has become intolerable. I have no one to perform to and therefore I am no one.

It probably seems absurd that someone of my fame and in my comfortable circumstances should have chosen this end. I can feel myself on the brink of a long and rambling explanation, but it would only be the Torre Muga speaking. My apologies for the inconvenience, Javier. Please give the other letter to my son, Sebastián. I hope you succeed in helping him where I have so singularly failed.

Con un abrazo,

Pablo Ortega

PS I never showed you my collection. Please enjoy it at your leisure.

PPS Please inform my brother, Ignacio. His number is in the address book on the kitchen table.

Falcón read the letter through several times until his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an electric winch. He stood at the door as Ortega's stained and bloated body emerged from under the floor. The masked ambulancemen pulled him away from over the hole and lowered him on to the concrete. He had a large flat rock taped to his chest and another one shoved down his blue shorts. Falcón called in the Médico Forense and asked Felipe to take more shots.

He went to sit with Alicia Aguado and read her Ortega's letter.

'I don't think he's as drunk as he makes out.'

'There were three empty bottles of Muga in there.'

'They weren't inside him when he wrote this letter,' she said. 'He's stated his guilt, but he's been very careful not to admit to anything. The denial that his suicide has anything to do with "recent developments" seems to be important. He is in denial. He cannot face up to whatever it is that he believes will be revealed by these recent developments.'

'The only recent developments I know about are Rafael Vega's death and me volunteering to help his son.'

Cristina Ferrera came back from talking to the few neighbours she could find. Ortega had walked his dogs yesterday morning. He'd been out in his car twice at about 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Both trips were for about an hour and a half each.

'Would you bother to walk your dogs if you were going to kill them?' asked Falcón.

'It seems to have been a routine,' said Ferrera. 'His neighbour walked his dog at the same time. And even condemned men get fed and exercised.'

'Killing them is to do with his admitted selfishness and vanity. They were a part of him, only he knew how to love them,' said Alicia Aguado. 'You saw him yesterday morning before he went out, Javier. What did you talk about then?'

'I was interested in his relationship with Rafael Vega, how he knew him, whether he'd met him through Raúl Jiménez and whether he knew any of the people around those men. I had a photograph of him with some people at a party which seemed to unnerve him. I also talked to him about his son's case. Then 1 left, but – no, that's not quite right. He told me about a recurring dream, then I left, but I came back to ask him about something I'd forgotten and I saw him sink to his knees in the garden, weeping.'

Alicia Aguado asked about the dream and he described Ortega's vision of himself in a field with his hurting hands.

'I read your report of your first meeting,' said Ferrera. 'He was very different then.'

'Yes, he was much more the actor. Most of that interview was performance,' said Falcón. 'He was more serious in subsequent talks. The pressure was building.'

'What were you being accusatory about, Javier?' asked Aguado.

'I don't want to talk about it until I've got it clear in my mind,' he said. 'I've got a lot more work to do on that.'

Jorge called Falcón over for a crime scene conference. They were convinced it was suicide. They had found nothing to lead them to believe it happened any other way. Ortega's fingerprints were over everything. Juan Romero asked the Médico Forense for his opinion.

'Time of death was about 3 a.m. Cause was drowning. There was a single mark on his forehead which probably happened as he fell into the hole. My pre-lab inspection verdict is that he committed suicide.'

Juez Romero signed off the levantamiento del cadáver. Falcón told him that he would inform the next of kin as the dead man had requested. The paramedics removed the body and those of the two dogs. Felipe and Jorge left. Falcón told Ferrera to follow up on the phone numbers on Monday and let her go. He went to the kitchen, found the address book and called Ignacio Ortega on his mobile, which was turned off. He told Romero they would delay telling the press about Ortega's death until his brother had been informed.

The ambulance and cars moved off towards Avenida de Kansas City. A patrol car remained with an officer to keep an eye on the house. The news announcement of Ortega's death might arouse public interest. Falcón offered to take Alicia Aguado home but she was keen to hear a description of the Ortega collection mentioned in the suicide letter.

The collection, which Ortega had moved into the living room when the cesspit cracked, was distributed around one end of the room, the small pieces on tables, the bigger carvings on the floor and the paintings leaning up against the walls. There was a sheet of paper taped to an antique table in the living room listing all the pieces in the collection with their purchase dates and prices. Falcón ran his eye down the eighteen pieces on the list to the Francisco Falcón painting he'd seen on his first visit.

'This is interesting,' he said. 'Ortega bought the Francisco Falcón painting on 15th May 2001. That was after he'd been revealed as a fraud. And he picked it up for a quarter of a million pesetas.'

'What did they used to sell for?'

'He'd have had to pay around two million,' said Falcón. 'It was a good buy because they've come back up again now. The old-fashioned collectors wanted to get rid of everything they had by Francisco Falcón when the news first broke. But now there's a different market for the work. They're a sort of post-modern crowd who have a new take on "What is real art?" Between them and the infamy hunters and the celebrity criminal ghouls they've rebuilt the price.'

'So he knew Francisco, but only bought one of his paintings once he'd been exposed,' said Aguado. 'That's telling us something.'

He told her about the Picasso drawing of a centaur and how Ortega used it as a test.

'Talk me down the list,' she said. 'I'll stop you if I need more information.'

'Two carved African ebony figures of boys holding spears, Ivory Coast. One mask, Zaire.'

'Describe the mask, Javier,' she said. 'Actors are experts on masks.'

'It's sixty centimetres long, twenty wide. It has red hair, two slit eyes and a long nose. There's pieces of bone and shards of mirror stuck in the mouth like teeth. It's a pretty terrifying thing, but beautifully shaped. Bought in New York in 1996 for nine hundred and fifty dollars.'

'It sounds like a witch doctor's mask. Carry on.'

'The next four are Meissen figurines, all male.'

'I hate figurines,' she said.

'One mirror, full length with a rococo gilt frame. Paris. 1984. Nine thousand francs.'

'Something to look at himself in with a halo of gold.'

'A Roman glass bottle, opaque with the colours of the rainbow. A set of eight silver coins, also Roman. One gilt chair – Louis XV. London 1982. For which he paid nine thousand pounds.'

'That's expensive enough to be his throne.'

'One horse, bronze at full gallop – Roman. One bull's head – Greek. One shard of pottery of a boy running – Greek. A piece by Manuel Rivera called Anatomia en el Espejo.'

'Anatomy through a mirror? What's that?'

'Metal fabrics on wood. Mirror image. Difficult to describe,' said Falcón. 'There's also a painting here by Zobel called Dry Garden and an Indian erotic painting.'

'What sort of eroticism?'

'A pretty graphic depiction of a man with an oversized penis having sex with a woman,' said Falcón. 'And that's it.'

'A very complicated man with his figures, masks and mirrors,' she said. 'Is there any indication as to how the collection was originally set out?'

Falcón looked through the drawers of the antique desk and found a series of photographs of the collection, each one dated on the back. In all of them Pablo Ortega was seated on the Louis XV chair. He found the most recent shot, which included all the pieces except the Indian erotic painting and the Zobel. Then he realized that the Zobel was positioned so that Ortega was looking at it and the Indian painting was such a recent acquisition it hadn't been included. He described the layout to Alicia Aguado.

'He seems to be showing us the Beauty and the Beast. The mask from Zaire is both. All the pieces on one side seem to be the stuff of beauty, nobility and magnificence: Picasso's centaur, the bull's head, the galloping horse, the running boy. I'm simplifying it because there are complications. Centaurs are monsters, too. What's the boy running away from? There are the coins and the beautiful, but empty, Roman bottle. Also the Rivera painting reflected in the gilt mirror. I don't understand that.'

'And the other side?'

'The fraudulent Francisco Falcón. Ortega spent his life pretending. The beautiful figurines locked in porcelain – the actor in his roles. And the inference of "I am as hollow as they are". The mirror is a hard, reflective thing that gilds his narcissism.'

'And the black ebony boys?'

'I don't know – guarding his secrets or keeping them?'

'And why is he always looking at the Dry Garden?'

'That's probably his vision of death – beautiful but desiccated,' she said. 'You know you can't use any of this in court, Javier.'

'No,' he said, laughing at the absurdity. 'I'm just hoping for an insight. Pablo told me he had everything on show in this collection. He had nothing to hide. What's your overall impression?'

'It's a very male collection. The only female figure is in the Indian erotic painting. Even the non-human pieces are masculine: horses, bulls and centaurs. What happened to his wife, Sebastián's mother?'

'She died of cancer but – this is interesting – not before she'd run off… and I'll quote Pablo directly on this… not before she'd "run off to America with a guy with a big dick".'

'Oh dear,' said Alicia, in mock dismay. "Trouble in the bedroom. Now I'm wondering with all these mirrors, masks and figures whether the biggest role he ever played was himself in his own life, pretending to be a strong, powerful, sexually potent male when in fact… he wasn't.'

'Maybe it's time for us to speak to his son,' said Falcón.