The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 17

Saturday, 27th July 2002

On the way to the prison, which was outside Seville in Alcalá, Falcón called the director, whom he knew well, and explained the situation. The director was at home but said that he would make all the necessary calls. The prisoner would be made available to him on his arrival and there was no problem about bringing Alicia Aguado in with him. He made it clear that a prison psychologist would also have to be present and a nurse, in case Sebastián Ortega had to be sedated.

The prison, out on a burnt piece of landscape on the road to Antequera, oscillated so violently in the waves of heat shimmering off the ground that at times it completely disappeared to the eye. They drove through the outer gates, between two chain-link fences topped by razor wire, and up to the prison walls, where they parked.

After the brutality of the heat outside the security checks in the cool, institutional corridors were a relief. As they came closer to where the prisoners were kept the stink of incarcerated men became more powerful. The air ticked with bored minds bent on compressing time while they rebreathed the strong hormonal brew of bottled frustrations. They were taken to a room with a single high window which was barred on the outside. There was a table and four chairs. They sat. Ten minutes later the prison psychologist on duty came and introduced himself.

The psychologist knew Sebastián Ortega and believed him to be harmless. He explained that the prisoner was not totally silent but rarely said any more than the bare minimum. A nurse would be along in a moment and they were prepared for all eventualities including violence, although he didn't think it would come to that.

Two guards brought Sebastián Ortega in and sat him down at the table. Falcón had not seen a photograph of him before this meeting and so was unprepared for the man's beauty. He had none of the physical traits of his father. He was slim, 1.85 metres, with blond hair and tobacco coloured eyes. He had high, fragile cheekbones, which didn't look as if they could survive much prison violence. He moved with a slow grace and sat with his long-fingered artistic hands resting on the table in front of him. He used the fingers of one hand to polish each individual nail of the other. The prison psychologist made the introductions. Sebastián Ortega did not take his eyes off Alicia Aguado for one moment and when the psychologist had finished he leaned forward slightly.

'Excuse me,' he said, in a high, almost girlish voice, 'but are you blind?'

'Yes, I am,' she replied.

'That's an affliction I wouldn't mind,' he said.

'Why?'

'We believe too much in what our eyes tell us,' he said. 'They draw us into enormous disappointments.'

The prison psychologist, who was standing at the side of the table, explained to him that Falcón had come here to give him some news. Ortega did not acknowledge him but sat back, nodded, and left his fidgeting hands on the table.

'I'm sorry to have to tell you, Sebastián, that your father died at three o'clock this morning,' said Falcón. 'He took his own life.'

There was no reaction. More than a minute passed while the good-looking face remained unmoved.

'Did you hear the Inspector Jefe?' asked the psychologist.

A single nod and a lowering of the eyelids. The prison officials looked at each other.

'Do you have any questions for the Inspector Jefe?' asked the psychologist.

Sebastián breathed in and shook his head.

'He wrote this letter to you,' said Falcón, laying it down on the table.

Sebastián's hand snapped out of its small unconscious task to bat the letter to the floor. As it skittered over the tiles, tension grew in his body – tendons and sinew stood out in his wrists and forearms. He gripped the edge of the table as if he was trying not to fall backwards and the table shook with a muscular spasm. His face started to break up and with a terrible sob he shunted the chair out from under him and fell to his knees. His features were contorted with pain, eyes squeezed shut, teeth bared. Alicia Aguado put her hands out, feeling the air in front of her. Sebastián's body convulsed once more and he fell to the floor.

Only at this moment did any of the men in the room react. The chairs and table were pulled out of the way and they all stood over Sebastián, who had now gone foetal, holding himself. His head writhed against the polished floor and he coughed up great dry sobs of emotion, as if chunks of pumice were lodged in his chest.

The nurse knelt, opened his bag and took out a syringe. The guards hovered. Alicia felt her way around the table and reached out for Sebastián's trembling frame.

'Don't touch him,' said one of the guards.

She put a hand out which found the back of Sebastián's neck. She stroked him, whispered his name. The convulsions smoothed out. He relaxed his grip on his shins. The sobbing up until that moment had been dry, but now he wept like Falcón had never seen anybody weep before. Tears and saliva poured out of him. He tried to get his hands to his face to hide this awful outpouring, but he seemed to be too weak. The guards stepped back, no longer disturbed, just slightly embarrassed. The nurse replaced the syringe in the bag. The psychologist weighed the situation and decided to let it continue.

After ten minutes of sustained weeping Sebastián rolled on to his knees and buried his face in his arms on the floor. His back shuddered. The psychologist decided that he should be taken back to his cell and given a sedative. The guards tried to get him to stand but he had no strength in his legs. He was unmanageable in this state and they put him down on the floor and went to get a wheelchair. Falcón retrieved the letter and gave it to the psychologist… The guard returned with a trolley from the prison hospital. Sebastián was wheeled away.

The psychologist decided he'd better read the letter to see if the contents would disturb Sebastián any more. Falcón could see that there were very few words on the page.

Dear Sebastián,

I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say.

Please forgive me.

Your loving father,

Pablo

Falcón and Alicia drove out of the bleached landscape of the prison and back into the crushing heat of the city. Alicia Aguado stared out of the window, the lifeless terrain flickered past her unseeing eyes. Questions came to Falcón but he didn't ask them. After that emotional display, everything seemed banal.

'Even after all these years,' said Alicia, 'I'm still astonished by the terrifying power of the mind. We have this organism sitting in our heads which, if we allow it, can completely destroy us to the point where we will never be the same again… and yet it's ours, it belongs to us. We have no idea what we've got sitting on our shoulders.'

Falcón said nothing. She wasn't looking for a reply.

'You witness something like that,' she said, flapping her hand in the vague direction of the prison, 'and you cannot imagine what has gone on in that man's mind. What has passed between him and his father. It was as if the news of his father's death went straight to the core of his being and ripped him open and out came all these incredibly powerful, uncontainable, polarized emotions. He was probably barely alive, just existing on automatic. He'd put himself in prison, in solitary confinement. His personal contact is almost zero. He's ceased to function as a human being, and yet the mind still has to find a way out.'

'Why do you think he's relieved to be there, as your friend was saying?'

'I suppose he'd got to the point where he was afraid of what his uncontrollable mind might do.'

'Do you think you can talk to him?'

'Well, I'm here at Sebastián's moment of crisis – his father's suicide – and I think we've formed a bond. If the prison authorities let me, I'm sure I can help him.'

'I know the prison director,' said Falcón. 'I'll tell him your work could be valuable to my investigation into Vega's death.'

'But you do think that there's a connection?' she said. 'This whole thing with Pablo… I can hear your brain chewing it over.'

'I know, but I'm just not sure what it is.'

He dropped Alicia Aguado off at her house and had another go at contacting Ignacio Ortega, whose mobile was still switched off. Consuelo called him and asked if he wanted to meet for lunch at Casa Ricardo, a bar halfway between her restaurant and Falcón's home. He decided to drop the car at home and walk. He parked between the orange trees and went to open the doors. As he reached for his keys a woman called to him from across the street. Maddy Krugman had just come out of a shop which specialized in hand-painted tiles. Her casual behaviour did not persuade him that this was an accidental meeting.

'So this is your house,' she said, as they stood between the two files of orange trees that led up to the wooden doors. 'The famous house.'

'The infamous house,' he said.

'That's my favourite shop in Seville,' she said. 'I think I'm going to take their entire stock back to New York with me.'

'Are you leaving?'

'No, not immediately,' she said. 'But in the end. You know, we all go back to where we started.'

He wasn't sure what she meant or that she knew either. He toyed with the possibility of wishing her well on her shopping trip and disappearing into his house, but he couldn't quite find the rudeness to do it.

'Would you like to see inside the infamous house?' he said. 'I could offer you a drink.'

'That's very nice of you, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'I've been out shopping. I'm exhausted.'

They went in. He sat her down under the arches of the patio in front of the trickling fountain and went to fetch a bottle of La Guita and some olives. When he came back she was across the patio looking through the glass doors at some of Francisco Falcón's paintings of Seville.

'Are these…?'

'They're his real work,' he said, giving her a glass of manzanilla. 'He didn't have to cheat to do these. He was better than that, though. This was his subconscious mind belittling him. If he'd kept at it he'd have painted bare-breasted gypsies and doe-eyed children piddling into fountains.'

'What about your work?'

'I don't have any.'

'I read that you were a photographer.'

'I was interested in the concept of photography as memory,' he said. 'I had no talent for the art. What about you? How do you see it? What do you see as the point of photographing disturbed and anguished people?'

'What bullshit did I give you before?'

'I don't remember… probably something about capturing the moment,' said Falcón, remembering that, in fact, that had been his bullshit.

They walked back to the table. He leaned against a pillar. She sat, crossed her legs and sipped the manzanilla.

'I'm empathizing,' she said, and Falcón knew he wasn't going to hear anything that would make any difference to him. 'When I see people like that I remember the prison of my own anguish and the pain I caused Marty. There's an emotional response. I was surprised, once I started looking, how many of us there were out there. The shots are of individuals, but once you assemble them in a room they become like a tribe. They are an expression of the reality of the human condition. Shit – it doesn't matter how hard I try it always sounds like gallery talk. Don't you find that? Words have a way of flattening things out.'

He nodded, bored by her already. He wondered what Calderón. saw in her, apart from the blue veins under the white skin, cold as marble. This one was living life out as a project. Falcón stifled a yawn.

'You're not listening to me,' she said.

He came round to find her standing quite close to him, close enough for him to see the red blood spots in the green of her iris. She licked her lips, applying some natural gloss. Her sexuality, in which she was so confident, shimmered beneath the silk of her loose blouse. She moved her head, a slight tilt, to tell him that he could kiss her now, while her eyes said that this could turn into something frantic on the marble flags of the patio if he wanted. He turned his head away. He was slightly revolted by her.

'I was half listening,' he said, 'but I've got a lot on my mind and I'm meeting someone for lunch, so I should really be getting on.'

'I must go, too,' she said. 'I have to get back.'

Her hands trembled with rage as she picked up her bag of hand-painted tiles. He thought she might throw them at his head, one by one. There was something destructive in her nature. She was like a spoilt child who would break things just so that others couldn't enjoy them.

The walk to the front door was punctuated by the anger of her heels on the marble. She kept ahead of him so that he couldn't see her humiliation while she gathered up the fragments of the face she had lost and rearranged them into disdain. He opened the door, she shook his hand and headed off towards the Hotel Colón.

The Casa Ricardo was on Hernan Cortes at the meeting of three streets. It was a bar that could only exist in Seville, where the religious and the secular constantly rub shoulders. Every centimetre of the walls in the bar and small restaurant at the back was covered in framed photographs of the Virgin, the brotherhoods and all the paraphernalia of Semana Santa. The sound system played processional marches from Holy Week while people leaned against the bar drinking beers, eating olives and jamon.

Consuelo was waiting for him at a table in the back with a chilled half-bottle of manzanilla. They kissed each other on the mouth as if they'd been lovers for months.

'You look tense,' she said.

He tried to think of something other than Pablo Ortega, which he couldn't talk about.

'It's just developments. We keep finding things out about Rafael Vega that make him more of a mystery man.'

'Well, we all knew he was a secretive guy,' said Consuelo. 'I once saw him leave his house in his car, the Mercedes he had before he bought the Jaguar. And an hour later I was in town at a traffic light and this old dusty Citroen or Peugeot Estate pulls up alongside me and in the driver's seat was Rafael. If it had been anybody else I'd have knocked on the window and said hello, but with Rafael, I don't know… you just didn't intrude on Rafael.'

'Did you ever ask him about it?'

'First of all he never responded to direct questioning and, anyway, so what if he's in a different car? I just assumed it was an office car he used for going out to building sites.'

'You're probably right, it's nothing. You get to the point where every little thing has meaning.'

They ordered a revuelto de bacalao, some clams and langoustines, a bright orange bowl of salmorejo and grilled red peppers spiked with garlic. Consuelo filled their glasses. Falcón calmed down.

'I've just had a… confrontation with Maddy Krugman.'

'That puta americana didn't come to your house on your day off?' asked Consuelo.

'She ambushed me in the street,' he said. 'That's the third time. She's come round twice when I've been to the Vegas' house… offering coffee, wanting to talk.'

'Joder, Javier, she's stalking you.'

'There's something of the vampire about her, except she doesn't feed on blood.'

'My God, you let her get that close?'

'I think she feeds on what she doesn't have herself,' said Falcón. 'Her talk is full of arty phraseology about "empathizing", and "emotional response" and "the prison of her anguish", but she has no idea what they mean. So when she sees people who are really suffering she photographs it, captures it to try and make it hers. When I lived in Tangier the Moroccans believed that photographers were stealing their souls. And that's what Maddy Krugman does. She's sinister.'

'You're making her sound like your prime suspect.'

'Maybe I'll send her to the prison of her anguish.'

Consuelo pulled him to her and kissed him hard on the mouth.

'What was that for?'

'You don't have to know everything.'

'I'm an Inspector Jefe, it's in my nature.'

The food arrived. Consuelo released him and poured more manzanilla. Before they started eating he beckoned her forward across the table so that they were cheek to cheek.

'I can't say this too loudly in here,' said Falcón, his lips just brushing her ear, 'but there's another reason why I'm looking a bit tense. It's just that… I'm falling in love with you.'

She kissed his cheek, held his hand.

'How do you know?'

'Because when I came in here and saw you waiting for me I've never felt so happy to know that the empty chair was mine.'

'You're all right,' she said. 'You can stay.'

He sat back, held his glass up to her and drank.

They chose a bottle of white wine to drink with the sea bass they'd ordered after the starters.

'I'm sorry, I forgot,' she said, going through her handbag. 'Somebody from your office…'

'My office?'

'I assumed he was from the Jefatura. He told me to give you this -'

She handed over an envelope.

'Nobody knows I'm here,' said Falcón, 'except you. Tell me what he said again.'

'He said, "I understand you're meeting Inspector Jefe Falcón here. Could you please make sure he gets this." And he gave me that envelope.'

'He was Spanish?'

'Sevillano.'

Falcón turned the white envelope over in his hands. It was very thin. He held it up to the light and could see that it had a single item in it. He knew it was another threat and shouldn't be opened in front of Consuelo. He nodded and put it in his pocket.

He took a taxi home and went straight to his study where he kept latex gloves. He used a paper knife to open the envelope and shook out a photograph which had been folded into a single sheet of paper.

Nadia Kouzmikheva's naked body was very white with the flash from the camera. She was blindfolded and tied to a chair with her arms painfully stretched over the back. On the grimy wall behind her was a single handprint the colour of rust and in black was written: El precio de la came es barato. The price of meat is cheap.