The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 27

Tuesday, 30th July 2002

It was still brutally hot outside the city, which crouched in a haze behind Falcón like a beast in its own fetor, but the openness of the rolling plain ahead of him, the swaying brown grasses, the distant hills, made him feel free of the discomfort of his own body. The temperature dropped as he drove through the sierra and, although it never reached below blood heat, the sense of release from the city's feverish concrete into the high greenery of the chestnut trees induced a mild delirium. Or was it Elton John singing 'Benny and the Jets' on the radio?

It was impossible to think that anything terrible could happen out here. Whereas the city drew the poor, the lost, the corrupted and the depraved to the mangled teat of its bristly underbelly, this country seemed untouched. The jostling leaves of the trees filtered the sunlight to the pure, dappled memory of less confused times. Until Falcón turned off the main road to Almonaster la Real.

The charcoal stink of torched forest reached him before the sight of blackened stumps and scorched, defoliated trees with their bark-flayed arms stretched out in the distress of serious burn victims. The forest floor of black-and-grey coals still smouldered, as if panting from the devastating consumption. The white sky provided a pitiless backdrop, as if to emphasize to those doubters who passed through this monochromatic horror that what had happened here was as wrong as war.

The police and firemen he met in the local bar in Almonaster were grim and the townspeople shocked and in despair, as if they were the survivors of some wartime atrocity. They knew things that Falcón, as yet, didn't.

He was led down to the finca, which was several kilometres outside the town and isolated in the forest. There was a kilometre of rough dirt track up to the house, whose windowless, roofless, blackened shell looked like a giant, stoved-in human skull.

Everything wooden in the house had been consumed. The first floor no longer existed. It had burnt or collapsed under the weight of the falling roof on to the concrete below. The ground floor was piled with black terracotta roof tiles, charred beams and furniture, smoking mattresses, screenless televisions and pools of molten, but now hardened, plastic.

They took him down through the concrete floor into the basement, which was badly scorched but intact. It didn't look like any basement he'd ever seen. There were four metal doors, two on either side of a short corridor. The doors had bolts on the outside, which could also be padlocked. None of the rooms had windows. All had burnt wooden pallets and mattresses. They were cells in which people had been kept.

In one of the cells, whose walls were unplastered, revealing the original stone, there was some writing scratched on to a rock in the corner by the bed. It was in Cyrillic script. An enamelled metal plate lay upside down on the floor.

They led him back upstairs and out on to the land whose grass had been burnt off, leaving a bald stretch of black and brown beaten earth, which now looked like the hide of a diseased dog. At the edge of the land, inside what would have been the tree line, were two piles of earth.

'With the forest burnt down we could see these two humps,' said the officer. 'We dug down about a metre and found these -'

Falcón looked down on the skeletal remains of two people nestled in the dark earth.

'We didn't want to dig further until we had proper forensics here, but the local doctor measured them and thinks that they are a boy and a girl of around twelve or thirteen years of age. He thought that they'd been buried for between eight months and a year, given that there is no tissue left.'

'What do you know about how this house was being used?' asked Falcón, needing to get something out, because his rage was reaching uncontainable levels.

'Weekends only and not every weekend. Friday and Saturday nights, mostly.'

'Did you ever meet the owner?'

'Inspector Jefe Montes? Of course. He came and said hello to us. He said he'd bought the house and that some friends were going to do it up and use it as a hunting lodge.'

They walked back to the house and Falcón could see that there were air-conditioning units for the lower and upper floors.

'So they came in the summer as well?' said Falcón, pointing at the blackened boxes.

'Not to hunt, obviously,' said the officer. 'In the end, they didn't do much hunting at all… We didn't think I much about it at the time. And, because Inspector Jefe Montes was the owner, we didn't think anything…'

The officer's voice trailed off. 'Illegal' seemed an ineffective word to describe what had gone on in this house of horror.

'Whoever started this fire had to bring a great deal of petrol up to the house,' said Falcón. 'They probably used plastic jerry cans and they'd have needed a pickup. Can you contact every petrol station in this area and… well, you know what to do.'

Falcón called Elvira and gave him a report. He asked for Felipe and Jorge to be sent out with a change of clothes, because they were certainly going to have to spend the night. He also asked for some manpower to phone around the petrol stations in the Seville area, looking for a pick-up with probably two people who'd filled possibly ten plastic jerry cans with petrol, late Saturday night or very early on Sunday morning. He hung up and told the officer that the area was to be cordoned off and kept under guard. Nobody was to touch anything on the property until the forensics arrived. He checked the air-conditioning boxes on the ground floor but didn't find what he was looking for. He asked for a set of ladders. A car was dispatched to town. Falcón stood in the blackened landscape and drew fury from the destruction.

The car returned with a set of ladders. Falcón leaned them up against the house and found himself mentally praying. He took out an evidence bag and a pair of tweezers and climbed up to the air-conditioning units, one by one. On the third unit he found what he wanted – scorched, but not destroyed, was the peeling sticker of the company that had installed the units: Aire Condicionado Central de Sevilla. Ignacio Ortega's company.

He took out another evidence bag and walked down the rough track and scooped up some dust. He expected it to match the dust found on Vega's old Peugeot.

Ortega. Vega. Montes, he thought. And only one left alive.

Ramírez was bored as he took Falcón's call on his mobile. There were thousands of Maddy Krugman's prints on paper and on hard disk, and the task did not inspire him. His boredom evaporated as Falcón briefed him on Montes's finca near Almonaster la Real.

'Did you check Ignacio Ortega's alibi?' asked Falcón.

'Yes, but that was for the night that Rafael Vega died.'

'Where was he?'

'He was in bed with his wife on the coast.'

'I told him about Pablo's death late on Saturday night and he didn't come back to Seville until Sunday morning.'

'I can ask him for proof of his whereabouts for that week if you want?'

'I don't want to spook him.'

'Well, if he organized that arson attack you already have,' said Ramírez. 'How many people know what happened at Montes's finca?'

'By now the whole of Almonaster la Real. I mean not in detail, but they know it's nasty. They'll probably know about the bodies.'

'So that's all going to be on the news this evening.'

'We haven't got enough on him to link him to what was actually happening at Montes's finca. We'll have to find the arsonists first and they might give us the link,' said Falcón. 'Leave Cristina at the Krugmans' house and go back to the Jefatura and make it all happen, José Luis.'

Falcón went back down into the basement of the house and, with a pen torch in his mouth, copied down the Cyrillic script written on the wall. As he looked around the four cells he realized that the mattresses had all been doused with petrol and set alight, but that there hadn't been enough oxygen to keep them going.

More people were dispatched to town to bring large plastic sheets, which they laid out on the scorched earth. The mattresses and pallets were numbered off and lifted out of the basement and laid on the plastic. Falcón conducted a minute search of the walls of the empty cells.

In the second cell he noticed a dark stain on the floor, coming from the back wall out into the centre of the room. He chipped out a piece of concrete and bagged it. In the fourth cell he found a one-euro coin behind a loose piece of mortar. He bagged that.

Outside they started work on the mattresses, peeling back the outer fabric and working through the stuffing. The mattress from cell two had a shard of curved glass in it, a section of a broken wine goblet. The mattress from cell three had the real treasure: a used Gillette II razor blade, still with some bristles attached.

At 3 p.m. they broke for lunch. Felipe and Jorge had arrived in Almonaster la Real and, over pork chops, chips and salad, Falcón told them to concentrate on the interior of the house before they moved on to exhuming the bodies.

'Square metre by square metre. Photographs all the way. Dust everything for prints, even if they look completely burnt out – all televisions, video recorders, remotes. There's a lot of congealed plastic in there, which might be from videos; see if there's one centimetre of tape available. We're also looking for personal items – money, jewellery, clothing. People come to a place like this, they lose things. I want a finger search of all the land around the house. Be meticulous, do everything by the book. Nobody, and I mean nobody, who has been to this house and been involved with what's been going on here should have the slightest chance of being able to get away with it on a technicality.'

A grim determination settled over the lunch table. Calls were made to the neighbouring towns of Cortegana and Aracena for more people to help with the finger search of the land. By the time they returned to the finca there were thirty people. Falcón put twenty-six on to the finger search and four to help Felipe and Jorge lifting things out of the house.

All findings were photographed in situ, logged in a school exercise book with the photograph number and bagged. Any large items with discernible prints were wrapped in plastic. Falcón asked Elvira to have two lab technicians standing by to receive the material and process the evidence.

By 7 p.m. they had completed the finger search of the land and about two-thirds of the house interior. Ramírez called.

'I've found your arsonists,' he said. 'I'm putting a squad together to go and pick them up now. They live out in Tres Mil Vivendas and I don't want them getting away from us in that little hell hole.'

'That was quick work, José Luis.'

'I got lucky,' he said. 'I reckoned they'd be doing this at night, so I started with all the late-night garages on the road out to Aracena. I thought they might not be stupid but, in this heat, they could easily be lazy. I reckoned they wouldn't fill all the jerry cans up at one petrol station and draw attention to themselves, but they might want to do it on the way. Two of the garages remembered a pick-up with two guys filling plastic jerry cans, but neither of them had close-circuit television. I worked back from there until I found a petrol station with CCTV, and this was where I got lucky. The guys came back twice to fill up. I went out there to view the tapes. Both guys were wearing hats, so they knew they were vulnerable to CCTV, and I didn't get a sight of them or the vehicle because it was parked on the other side of the pumps. But the second time there was a truck parked where they wanted to be, so they had to come into the light between the shop and the pumps. The CCTV cameras were pointed so that they picked up the activity on that part of the forecourt. Their registration number just slid beautifully into view.'

'Have you got names?'

'Yes, and they've both got police records for petty theft and burglary, and one of them picked up an assault conviction too, but neither of them has been done for arson.'

'I'm on my way back with the first vanload of evidence.'

He closed down the mobile, which rang again instantly. Alicia Aguado told him she could find a friend to take her out to the prison for her next session with Sebastián Ortega.

One of the Aracena police officers with a relative in Seville volunteered to accompany the vanload of evidence. Falcón headed back to the city alone at speed, as if he was rushing towards a brilliant conclusion. He had to pull over to take three calls on the way back.

The first was from Cristina Ferrera, saying that she'd been through Maddy Krugman's prints and hard disk and come across two shots of Marty Krugman sitting with a different stranger in each. In one he was animated and talking, in the other he seemed to be waiting. In both shots he was either in the background or off to one side. The one in which he appeared in the background had been taken from the hard disk and she'd had to blow up that section of the shot to confirm it was him.

The second call was from Ramírez, confirming that they'd arrested the two arsonists and he was conducting a search of their apartment.

The third call came from Elvira just as he was about to hit the main road into Seville. The Comisario wanted to see him as soon as he arrived back in the Jefatura.

Falcón went straight up to Elvira's office. His secretary had already left. The Comisario's door was open. Elvira sat at his desk, staring into it as if contemplating a terrible loss.

'Something's going on,' said Elvira, pointing him into a chair.

'Whatever it is it doesn't look good.'

'There's political pressure coming from… unseen powers,' said Elvira. 'That article published in the Diario de Sevilla this morning…'

'You didn't seem too concerned by that earlier today.'

'The extensive obituary alongside it was a very care- ' fully angled piece of writing. There were no reasons given for Montes's suicide, and the piece didn't make any claims, but people who "know" were in no doubt when they came away from that article that there were implications – serious ones. There has been a reaction to those implications from senior people at the town hall and important members of the Andalucían parliament. They want to know the state of our… house.'

Falcón started to say something and Elvira held up _; his hand.

'I've just heard two other reports, which could be interpreted as unfortunate holiday accidents or sinister coincidences. Dr Alfonso Martinez, a member of the Andalucían parliament, is now in intensive care after his car left the road on the motorway from Jerez de la Frontera to Cadiz and crashed into a bridge. And the wife of Enrique Altozano found her husband's clothes in a pile on a beach between Pedro de Alcántara and Estepona and alerted the authorities. They are currently searching the coast, but he has not been found. He was the man in the planning department of the Seville town hall who was responsible for awarding licences to new building projects.'

This time Falcón didn't try to say anything.

'Powerful people are like jackals on the prairie. They put their noses to the air for the smell of scandal, and the faintest whiff carries to them from kilometres away,' said Elvira. 'The job of the politician is to always maintain power. He does not necessarily want to deny that something disgraceful has occurred, but he does want to contain it, so that institutions don't completely disintegrate.'

'You're preparing me for something, Comisario,' said Falcón. 'I hope it's not going to be a disappointment in those institutions, or the people that run them.'

'I am telling you how it is, so that we can develop this case in a way that maximizes the number of convictions and minimizes the serious political damage,' said Elvira. 'If we show that we are only interested in taking down everybody involved, we will be prevented from doing that. We have the example of our own government. That, if you remember, was how Felipe Gonzalez survived the death squad scandal.'

'Are you concerned that I might be a fanatical zealot?'

'It would be understandable, given what we know so far of the unpleasantness of this case.'

'Let me get this straight,' said Falcón. 'Two powerful people have either been killed or attempted suicide. This has alerted other powerful people, who have hinted to the Jefatura that, should we want to press this case to its logical conclusion, we will suffer an in- depth examination of the state of our own force. In other words, if we show their corruption to the world, they will show ours.'

'Comisario Lobo said you would understand perfectly.'

'Our problem is that the crucial conviction in this case is the one that will bring down the whole house of cards,' said Falcón. 'I'll tell you what I think has happened, Comisario. Ignacio Ortega took over the procuring work for the paedophile rings from Eduardo Carvajal as he had a connection to the Russians. That connection is strong enough that they were able to award him contracts without consulting Rafael Vega, j Montes was already corrupted at the time of the death of Eduardo Carvajal. He was forced into further incrimination by the purchase of this finca near Almonaster la Real, which Ignacio Ortega helped to restore. As a result of Montes's involvement in the finca, the authorities never bothered to investigate how the house was being used. I'm nearly sure that Rafael Vega was a client. We'll do a few tests which might confirm that to us. Mark Flowers gave us an indication of Vega's tastes when he told us his nickname at the time of the Chilean coup. These two latest casualties you've just told me about could mean that Martinez and Altozano may have been clients, too. To completely stamp this out we should, ideally, take out the Russians, but I don't know how we can get to them. The next rung down is Ignacio Ortega. The problem is that he is not a character who will go down quietly. He will demand from his friends that he be saved, or he will bring down the individuals in these highly valued institutions of ours.'

'Don't allow any of that bitterness to creep into your words,' said Elvira. 'I understand why you should feel like that, but outside people will dismiss you as "difficult" and you will never get what you want. What have you got on Ortega?'

'Very little,' said Falcón. 'He came under suspicion because of his behaviour around the death of his brother. I interviewed his son, who is a heroin addict, and he reluctantly told me about the systematic sexual abuse that he and his cousin had suffered, as well as a number of his friends, when they were children. Favours were being done in the building trade between Ignacio Ortega, Vega and the Russians. The minimum Ortega did was to install the air-conditioning units in Montes's finca. Inspector Ramírez has caught the arsonists who set fire to the finca. We're hoping they will provide a more concrete link to Ignacio Ortega. That will give us the minimum option of holding Ortega on "conspiracy to arson" charges. The next step might be more difficult.'

'The sexual abuse charges against his son don't have much hope, given his drug problems. I know it's wrong, but that's the perception.'

'He said he wouldn't testify against his father, anyway.'

'And Sebastián Ortega has been convicted of a serious crime.'

'Which we are hoping we can prove that he did not commit, but that won't help us with Ortega. We need more time.'

'All right,' said Elvira, sitting back, tired and exasperated. 'See if there's a link between Ignacio Ortega and the arsonists. If there is, we have to plan our next move. And, I don't need to tell you, but you can't talk to Virgilio Guzmán about any of this.'