The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 21

Monday, 29th July 2002

Now that Alicia Aguado's involvement in Sebastián Ortega's case was out in the open, Falcón decided to speak to Elvira about his intentions. It had occurred to him that his case for using her was weak and the prison director would obviously prefer to use his own psychologists for the work. He pushed Elvira into speaking to the director on his behalf, citing Alicia Aguado's rapport with the prisoner and her belief in her ability to draw information out. Elvira looked at him steadily throughout, as if he barely believed a word he was saying. He acquiesced silently. Falcón also asked that, due to the shortage of manpower in his squad, somebody else should be used to watch Sra Montes. Elvira said he had his own ideas on that point.

The outer office of the Homicide squad was empty. Ramírez was standing at the window.

'Where's Cristina gone?' asked Falcón.

'She's found a Narcotics guy who thinks he knows how to locate Salvador Ortega,' he said. 'Are you going to tell me about that?'

'What about the postboxes?'

'Just the Emilio Cruz one. None for Montes or Vega,' said Ramírez. 'I've been calling the banks, trying to find a safe-deposit box to fit this key. There's one in the name of Emilio Cruz at the Banco Banesto.'

'That's good,' said Falcón. 'Any news on Montes's lawyer?'

'I spoke to him. He hadn't heard from Alberto Montes in three years. The last time they spoke was to make an adjustment to the will,' said Ramírez, and held up his hand. 'Now you've got to tell me about Salvador Ortega. I know who he is, just tell me why we want to talk to him.'

'Because Pablo used to see him and he might know what the problem was between the brothers,' said Falcón.

'Is that going to help us find Vega's killer?' said Ramírez.

'Think for a moment about how Vega was killed.'

'It was nasty… vindictive. They wanted him to suffer. Mafiosi are like that. They do it to set an example to others who might be thinking of cheating them.'

'That's right, which is why we need to work on clarifying their motive because at the moment all I can see is that Vega was important to their plans,' said Falcón. 'Now, listen to these names and let me tell you that they all knew each other: Raúl Jiménez, Ramon Salgado, Eduardo Carvajal, Rafael Vega, Pablo and Ignacio Ortega.'

'You think there's a paedophile connection,' said Ramírez. 'How do you know the Ortegas knew Carvajal?'

'They were in a shot together on Raúl Jiménez's study wall,' said Falcón. 'And all those names were in

Vega's -' Falcón stopped. 'I've just had a thought. I'll have to check it. Tell me what adjustment Montes made to his will.'

'He added a property to his assets,' said Ramírez. 'A small finca, worth less than three million pesetas.'

'I bet that made your heart leap for a moment.'

'I don't think I would have got the information so easily if it had been a 200-million-peseta villa in Marbella.'

'Did he say where it was?'

'He couldn't remember. He's going to look it up in the copy of the will and call me back.'

'Was there a mortgage on it?'

'He didn't know. He wasn't involved in the purchase of it.'

'When you've got an address for it, check out the deed and see if he ever talked about it to the people in his squad.'

The phone rang in the outer office. Ramírez took it, hunched over and scribbled furiously for a few minutes. He slammed the phone down, triumphant.

'We've got a result on Rafael Vega's ID trace,' he said. 'The first Rafael Vega died back in 1983 at the age of thirty-nine in a shipping accident in the port of La Coruna; the second one died from drinking acid last week.'

'How did he manage that?'

'The first time he died was just at the point when they were changing records from manual to computer. According to the computer records he was still alive. Only by going back to the old paper records did they find the death certificate.'

'He was the right age.'

'He was the right age, physically similar and he had no family. The original Rafael Vega was an orphan who became a merchant seaman. He never married.'

'So, not only was our Rafael Vega trained, but he was well connected in the clandestine world as well,' said Falcón. 'Finally we get the break, José Luis, but…'

'Yes, I know,' said Ramírez. 'He isn't who he says he is… but who the fuck is he?'

'There's an American connection. Krugman was sure he'd lived there and now we know he was getting mail sent to him from there,' said Falcón. 'And there's possibly a Mexican one.'

'The Mexican wife might just be another fake,' said Ramírez. 'It would be more plausible for a man of that age to have been married before.'

'He's looking to me as if he's Central or South American origin now.'

'If you were originally Argentinian, would you use a fake passport from your country of origin?'

'Maybe not, but that still leaves the rest of the subcontinent,' said Falcón. 'Perhaps we need to have a meeting with Juez Calderón. We're due one early this week. I think this classifies as a development.'

He put a call through to Calderón's secretary. The judge was just finishing a meeting. She would talk to him and see if there was a chance before lunch. After lunch was out of the question. Falcón hung up and sat back in his chair.

'What sort of people need the level of secrecy at which Rafael Vega was operating?' he asked.

'Someone who was a covert intelligence operative for a government or a terrorist organization,' said Ramírez. 'Someone involved in the drugs trade.'

'What about an arms dealer?' said Falcón. 'The Russian connection. Where's the easiest place to get military hardware?'

'Russia, via the mafia,' said Ramírez. 'And the money is coming from the building projects. Those land deals were done directly between the original owners and the Russians. No money trail to Vega.'

'Plausible, but that just gives us more questions. Who is he supplying and, before we let our imagination run completely wild,' said Falcón, 'why kill him?'

'A terrorist organization that doesn't want a lead to their door,' said Ramírez.

Calderón's secretary called back and said that he could see them in half an hour. They drove to the Edificio de los Juzgados and went straight up to Calderón's office. He was facing away from his desk, looking through the slats of the blinds, smoking. He heard them come in. He told them to sit.

'Case or no case?' he asked, without turning around.

'Complications,' said Falcón, and talked him through the secret life of Rafael Vega.

As Falcón spoke, Calderón turned in his chair. If the last time Falcón had seen him he'd looked as though he'd come back to the city after being lost in the mountains, now he looked as stricken as a man who'd had to eat his comrades in order to survive. He was haggard, the smudges beneath his eyes were now grape-dark and his forehead was stepped with furrows. He seemed to have lost weight. His neck did not fill his collar. Falcón finished. Calderón nodded, he seemed pensive but distracted. The new information did not galvanize his ambition.

'Well, you've got a bit more background information on Vega now,' he said, 'but you still haven't given me any real development in the case – no witness, no motive. What exactly do you want?'

'We could start with a search warrant for the safe- deposit box in the Banco Banesto,' said Ramírez, cutting in, exchanging a look with Falcón.

'Whose box is it?' asked Calderón.

'It's Vega's, of course,' said Ramírez, puzzled by the judge's lack of comprehension, 'but in the name of Emilio Cruz.'

'I'll work on it,' said Calderón. 'What else?'

'We have theories. We want more time,' said Falcón, and gave him the examples of the Russian mafia connection to military hardware, and the names of the men who all appeared to know each other from Vega's address book and Raúl Jiménez's photographs.

'That's all conjecture,' said Calderón. 'Where's the evidence? Vega has been running a successful construction business in Seville for nearly twenty years. He's built it more or less from scratch. So, he happens to run his business in a certain way and…'

'You seem to be forgetting that he's a man with perfect fake Spanish documents and an Argentinian alias with Moroccan visas for a quick getaway,' said Ramírez. 'I hardly think that level of secrecy would classify him as, say, a married man embarking on illicit affairs.'

Calderón shot him a look that whistled past his ear.

'I can see that,' said the judge. 'Obviously the man had a past. He's escaped from something and rebuilt his life. Maybe his past has caught up with him in some way, but that doesn't help you determine which direction you're going to take. You're talking about arms dealing, drug running, people-trafficking and terrorism, but you haven't shown me a lead that would indicate a direction. You've just got theories. The Russian land deals look odd, agreed. Their connection to Vega is unhealthy, to say the least. But we have no access to the original owner of the plots. You can look up the sale price on the deed, but that won't tell you much because everybody puts a low value on land sales for tax purposes. There has to be a chain of logic that the Juez Decano can see if public money is to be spent chasing these… notions.'

'You don't see any connection between Sr Vega's death and the suicide of his neighbour?' said Ramírez.

'You haven't told me of one, apart from names in an address book and people appearing together in photographs,' said Calderón, stifling a yawn. 'Juez Romero said he couldn't see any either. The two deaths seem to be a coincidence, with the difference that there's no doubt in one case and some uncertainty in the other. An uncertainty which is in our minds and not in any evidence you've brought before me.'

'What about the note referring to a famous terrorist act?' said Ramírez.

'That is a slice of information as relevant to the court as his files on war crimes tribunals, or the fact that he kept a battered old car in a garage, or that he wasn't who he says he was. It's all information, but like the anonymous threats it's not connected to anything,' said Calderón. He turned to Falcón. 'You're not saying anything, Inspector Jefe.'

'Are we wasting our time with this?' said Falcón, weary of it all now that Calderón's listlessness had seeped into his own bloodstream. 'We might find more bits of fascinating information which supply neither witness nor motive. We're down to three people because of the holidays. We have a serious situation in the Jefatura…'

'I heard about that,' said Calderón, staring into his desk, hands clasped between his knees.

'Our chances of finding the only witness, Sergei, grow slimmer by the day. Do we finish with it or carry on? If we carry on, which direction should we take?'

'OK, you're annoyed. I can see you've done good work and found interesting information,' said Calderón, catching Falcón's tone and trying to get some enthusiasm into his voice. 'At the moment, in my mind, given the psychological profile of the victim – of which we have clear evidence from a doctor and Maddy Krugman's photographs – and even taking your new findings into consideration, I am still more inclined to believe that Vega killed his wife and then himself. If you can accept that, I will return a verdict of suicide. If you're still curious enough to carry on, I'll give you forty-eight hours.'

'To go in which direction?' asked Ramírez.

'Whichever you like,' said Calderón. 'Do you have any chance of talking to the Russians face to face?'

'They're in Portugal,' said Falcón. 'It's possible they'll come over to look at their investments.'

'Who would they contact?'

'Probably Carlos Vázquez.'

'There's a man with something to hide,' said Ramírez.

'What about finding out who Vega really is?' said Falcón.

'How?' asked Calderón, half turning back to the window.

The American connection,' said Falcón. 'Let's say he was living there twenty years ago, and that he had escaped from something and rebuilt his life. I've just remembered that detail in the autopsy report about the old plastic surgery. It seems a likely scenario. Maybe he had a criminal record or was known in some way to the FBI.'

'Do you have contact with the FBI?' asked Calderón.

'Of course.'

'So you're going to take my offer of forty-eight hours?'

On the way down from Calderón's office Falcón took a call from Elvira, who had just spoken to his boss, Comisario Lobo, and between them they'd decided that Falcón should run the investigation into Montes's suicide. Falcón asked Elvira if he could supply a good and responsive FBI contact who would help with the identification of Rafael Vega, and reminded him about the prison director.

In the car he called Carlos Vázquez and after being kept waiting for some minutes was told that he was out. The lawyer's offices were just up the road from the Edificio de los Juzgados. They decided to make an unscheduled visit.

'What's up with Juez Calderón?' asked Ramírez as they got into the car. 'We're not going to see a search warrant with his mind in that state.'

'I think he might have met his match,' said Falcón.

'La Americana's fucked his brains out?' said Ramírez.

'It might be a bit more serious than that.'

'She's done that to him?' said Ramírez incredulous. 'I thought Juez Calderón was more experienced than that.'

'Than what?'

'To fall down on rule number one,' said Ramírez 'and to fall down on it before he's even got married.'

'What's rule number one?'

'Don't get involved,' said Ramírez. 'That's the way to fuck up your entire life.'

'Well, he's involved and all we can do is…'

'Sit and watch,' said Ramírez, clapping his hands as if he was about to watch his favourite soap opera.

'Montes told me there were plenty of people who wanted to see Juez Calderón fall from grace.'

'Who?' said Ramírez, face bland with innocence, fingers to his chest. 'Me?'

They went up in the lift, Ramírez staring at the numbers of the floors as they lit up. His shoulders were humped up like the neck muscles of a wild bull.

'This time, Javier, I lead, you follow,' he said, and they stormed out of the lift straight past the receptionist, who held up a single purple talon in an attempt to stop them.

They did the same to Vázquez's secretary, who followed them into her boss's office. Vázquez was drinking water from a plastic cup and standing by the dispenser looking out of the window.

'In a murder investigation,' said Ramírez, in a voice full of pent-up rage. 'You never refuse to talk to the Inspector Jefe unless you want all kinds of shit to come down on your head.'

Vázquez looked pugnacious enough to square off against Ramírez, but even he could see that the Inspector was up for anything, including violence. He waved the secretary out.

'What do you want?'

'First question,' said Ramírez. 'Look into my eyes and tell me what you know about Emilio Cruz.'

Vázquez looked blank. The name meant nothing to him. They sat down.

'What provision did Sr Vega make for the running of his company in the event of his death?' asked Falcón.

'As you know, each project had Sr Vega, a company representative and an investor on the board. In the event of his death the projects would be managed by the remaining company representative, with the proviso that all financial and legal decisions be referred to a temporary board in the holding company, consisting of myself, Sr Dourado and Sr Nieves, who is the senior architect.'

'How long would this temporary state of affairs last?'

'Until a suitable director for the company was found.'

'Whose job is it to find such a person?'

'The temporary board.'

'Who do the clients refer to?'

'The temporary board.'

'And who would get the initial phone call?'

'Me.'

'So when did the Russians contact you?' asked Ramírez.

'They haven't.'

'Look, Sr Vázquez, it's been nearly a week since Sr Vega died,' said Ramírez, conspiratorial, friendly. 'There's a lot of money in those Russian projects, which are unmanaged. Do you really expect us to believe -'

'They're not unmanaged. They've still got the company representative looking after them.'

'Who is?'

'Sr Krugman, the architect.'

'That's a good choice,' said Falcón. 'The outsider.'

'Who does Sr Krugman get his instructions from?'

'He hasn't received any from me because I haven't heard from the client. He is just carrying on with the project.'

'So, after Sr Vega's death who told the illegal labour not to show?' asked Ramírez.

'What illegal labour?'

'We can physically wring this stuff out of you, if you'd prefer,' said Ramírez. 'Or you could talk to us like a normal, law-abiding human being.'

'Are you scared, Sr Vázquez?' asked Falcón.

'Scared?' said Vázquez, asking himself, hands clasped, knuckles blanching, especially around the gold signet ring on his third finger. 'Why should I be scared?'

'Have you been told not to talk to us on pain of something nasty happening to you or your family?'

'No.'

'All right, we'll go to the town hall and file a report on these two projects,' said Ramírez. 'The fact that illegal labour has been used should be enough.'

'There's no illegal labour.'

'That sounds as if you're in touch with these projects.'

'I am,' said Vázquez. 'You told me about illegal labour being used last week. I made my inquiries. There is no illegal labour being used.'

'And the two sets of books for each project that we saw in Vega Construcciones offices last week?'

'There's only one set of books.'

'Not according to Sr Dourado,' said Ramírez.

'That's not what he told me,' said Vázquez.

'The Russians have been busy.'

On the way back to the Jefatura they stopped off in Vega Construcciones offices and asked Sr Dourado about the two sets of books. He had no recollection of the discovery of an alternative set of books in Vega's computer system. Even when Ramírez threatened him with a warrant his smile didn't waver. He welcomed the search.

Falcón and Ramírez drifted down the office corridors in silence, all purpose gone from this aspect of their investigation.

'We played this very badly,' said Falcón. 'We trusted these people too much.'

'Dourado was going to help us. I know it. I was there. I saw the printouts. He talked me through them. I should have taken a fucking copy.'

'He didn't look scared to me,' said Falcón. 'Vázquez seemed scared, but Dourado looked cheerful.'

'They know what they're doing, these Russians,' said Ramírez. 'Vázquez thinks he's in charge, so they get him by the balls and squeeze hard. With Golden Boy, they need his knowledge of the computer system, so they tickle his.'

Falcón tried not to allow these images to infect his imagination. He said he'd go and talk to Krugman while Ramírez went back to the Jefatura and pushed Elvira to make FBI contact.

Krugman was standing at his office window, looking out through a pair of binoculars. Falcón knocked. Krugman beckoned him in. The man seemed strangely energized, his eyes were bright, pupils dilated and sparkling.

'You're still running your Russian projects,' said Falcón.

'That's right.'

'Have they contacted you by any chance?'

'Of course they have. They've got a twenty million euro investment there, you don't let that sort of money run around on its own.'

'That's interesting,' said Falcón. 'Were you aware of any financial irregularities…?'

'That's business. I'm an architect.'

'Were you aware of illegal labour on the sites?'

'Yes. There's illegal labour on all building sites.'

'Are you prepared to sign -?'

'Don't be a crazy fool, Inspector Jefe. I'm trying to help.'

'When did you speak to the Russians?'

'Yesterday.'

'What did you discuss?'

'They told me to carry on running the projects, but said that I shouldn't talk to the police. I told them that I would have to speak to the police because they were coming to my house and office all the time. They said that I shouldn't talk about the projects.'

'What language were you speaking?'

'English. They don't speak Spanish.'

'Do you know who you're dealing with, Sr Krugman?'

'Not personally, but I used to work in New York City and I've come across the Russian mafia before in my own back yard. They're powerful people who, with a few exceptions, are quite reasonable as long as you see things their way. You could try taking them on if you thought it would serve a very important purpose. But in the end you're looking for Sr Vega's murderer, or the reason he committed suicide, and I doubt they're going to be able to help you, because I'm pretty sure that the very last thing they wanted was for Sr Vega to die.'

Falcón nodded. Krugman sat back in his chair.

'What were you looking at with the binoculars?'

'Just keeping an eye on things, Inspector Jefe,' he said, very seriously, then he laughed. 'Only kidding. I bought them today. I'm just seeing what I can see.'

Falcón stood up to leave. He was disturbed by Krugman's evangelical look.

'Have you seen my wife recently?' asked Marty, as Falcón held out his hand.

'I saw her in the street on Saturday,' said Falcón.

'Where was that?'

'In a tile shop in Calle Bailén, near my house.'

'You know she's really very fascinated by you, Inspector Jefe.'

'Only because she has some rather strange specialist interests,' said Falcón. 'Personally, I don't like her intrusions.'

'I thought it was just a few snaps of you on the bridge,' said Krugman. 'Or was it more than that?'

'That was enough,' said Falcón, 'to make me feel as if she was trying to take something from me.'

'Well, that's Maddy's unique problem,' said Krugman. 'As your friend, the judge, will find out.'

Krugman turned to the window and put the binoculars to his face.