The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 28

Tuesday, 30th July 2002

In the outer office Cristina Ferrera was sitting at a desk, feet hooked round the chair legs, looking at the two paper printouts of the shots of Marty Krugman down by the river. She turned the two A4 sheets round on the desk for Falcón to look at.

The first shot showed Marty off to the left of the frame, sitting on a bench by the river. He was not the focus of the shot. The man sitting next to him was a stranger to both Marty and Falcón.

'The second shot is a blow-up of the background of a larger shot,' said Ferrera.

In this shot Marty Krugman was turned sideways on the bench and was talking to a man Falcón immediately recognized as Mark Flowers.

'And these are off the hard disk?' said Falcón. 'No film negatives?'

She handed over a CD in its box.

'She used two cameras. If she saw something she thought she liked she used 35 mm film. If she was just snapping people generally she used a digital camera.

The only record of these two shots are on this CD and in her laptop.'

'I can see this took a lot of hard, boring work.'

'I know it would have been better to have had negatives,' she said.

'This is good enough,' said Falcón. 'None of this is going to end up in court. Where's Inspector Ramírez?'

'He's downstairs, setting up the interrogation rooms,' said Ferrera. 'He's very excited. He found something good in the arsonist's apartment.'

'I want you to take this to the lab,' said Falcón, handing her the used razor blade he'd found in the finca. 'There are bristles on the blades. It's a long shot, but I want them to run a DNA test on it and make a comparison with Rafael Vega.'

'By the way, Sra Krugman's laptop is in the evidence room,' said Ferrera, 'but I left everything else at the house.'

'What about the keys?'

She pushed them across the desk at him.

'One other thing,' said Falcón, giving her the paper with the Cyrillic script. 'You remember the Russian translator we used with Nadia Kouzmikheva? Ask her to translate that for us. Tomorrow will do.'

Ramírez was sitting in interrogation room 4, with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging down. Smoke rose from the fingers of his right hand. He didn't move when Falcón entered the room. He didn't move until Falcón touched him on the shoulder. He sat back slowly, as if in pain.

'What's the problem, José Luis?'

'I've been checking a tape.'

'What tape?'

'I've revised my opinion of the arsonists. They were bloody idiots, tontos perdidos. They went in there with the minds of petty thieves and before they torched the finca they stole a TV and video recorder. And inside the video recorder…'

'… was a tape,' said Falcón, galvanized by the development.

'And it was what I thought it would be – child pornography. But what I didn't expect was to recognize one of the participants.'

'Not Montes?'

'No, no – thank God. That would have been too. terrible. This was a guy from the barrio. You remember I told you about the one who'd done very well for himself, but it was never enough? He had to come back and tell us all how rich and important he had become… ram it down our throats. He was the cabron on the tape.'

'So this tape is a recording of events filmed in the finca?'

'I presume so, but I didn't get beyond the first minute. I started feeling sick.'

'Elvira's going to have to know about this,' said Falcón. 'But is there any way we can make a copy of it before we send it upstairs?'

Ramírez gave him a long hard look.

'Don't tell me what I think you're going to tell me,' he said.

'Elvira is on our side.'

'Sure he is,' said Ramírez. 'Until someone starts treading on his balls.'

'That's why we make the copy – because they're already treading,' said Falcón. 'But they're in ballet shoes at the moment.'

'You wait,' said Ramírez. 'When they hear about this tape, especially if there's someone important on it, they'll be down here in their cuban heels.'

Ramírez drummed the floor of the interrogation room with his feet.

'Who knows you've got the tape?'

'Nobody. The TV and video recorder were dumped inside the arsonists' front door. It was only when I got them back here that I thought to look and see if the video was loaded.'

'Good. Then we copy the tape, hand over the original, and see what happens.'

'Do you know how to copy tapes?'

'I know you need two VCRs.'

'And we can't do it here,' said Ramírez. 'And we can't ask anybody to explain how it's done in small, easy to understand words, or the whole Jefatura will know.'

'You've got a machine at home and so have I,' said Falcón. 'Get one of your kids to explain to you how to copy a tape and bring your machine over to my place where it's quiet.'

Falcón set up the video ready to show the interviewees what they'd stolen. Ramírez gave him the vehicle details, the record of its sightings in the garages, a copy of the CCTV tape and the hat worn by one of the arsonists, who was called Carlos Delgado.

'Have we got a photo of Ignacio Ortega to show them?' asked Ramírez.

'Not a clear one,' said Falcón. 'But they'll know his name and they'll be very scared to say it, I'm sure. Knock on the door when you need to use the tape.'

'First one to get a confession. Loser buys the beer,' said Ramírez.

The two arsonists were brought down. Ramírez took Pedro Gomez. Falcón sat down with Carlos Delgado and made the necessary introductions to the tape recorder.

'What were you doing on Saturday night and early Sunday morning, Carlos?'

'Sleeping.'

'Were you with your friend Pedro?'

'We live in the same apartment.'

'And he was with you that night?'

'He's in the next room, why don't you ask him?'

'Was anybody else there?'

Carlos shook his head. Falcón showed him a shot of the pick-up.

'Is this yours?'

Carlos looked down, nodded.

'Were you using this vehicle on Saturday night or Sunday morning?'

'We went to see Pedro's aunt in Castillo… about eleven o'clock on Sunday morning.'

'Do you know who was using your vehicle on Saturday night, Sunday morning?'

'No.'

'Is this your hat?'

'Yes,' said Carlos. Then, after a few beats: 'Who are you guys with? You ask about my car… my hat. What the fuck's all this about?'

'We're investigating a very serious sex crime.'

'A sex crime? We haven't committed any sex crime.'

Falcón asked him to come over to the TV screen while he played the CCTV tape from the garage. The screen revealed the grey images of the pick-up arriving, Carlos getting out, filling up the jerry cans and going to pay in the shop. Javier froze the frame.

'That pick-up has the same registration as the one on the table, which you said is yours.'

'We didn't commit any sex crime.'

'But that is your pick-up?'

'Yes.'

'And this person is you, paying for the petrol?'

'That's me, but I didn't -'

'That's OK. That's all I need to know.'

'What's this sex crime?' asked Carlos. 'Somebody rape the girl in the shop?'

'What did you do with the jerry cans, once you'd filled them up?'

'We went home.'

'Straight away?'

'Yes. We bought the petrol for Pedro's aunt.'

'But you'd been to this garage before, and a couple of other ones where you filled two jerry cans in each. And you filled up others at petrol stations on the way out to the turn-off to Aracena. What were you doing out there?'

Silence.

'Why did you drive all the way up to Almonaster la Real with all that petrol in your pick-up?'

'We didn't.'

'You didn't,' said Falcón. 'You know, Carlos, arson is a serious offence, but that's not the only thing we're interested in at the moment. What we want to do is put you away for a very long time for a sex crime as well.'

'I haven't committed any -' 'When you were picked up in your apartment, Inspector Ramírez searched it and found a television and a video recorder in your possession.'

'They're not ours.'

'What are they doing in your apartment with your fingerprints on them?'

'That stuff isn't ours.'

'Come with me.'

'I don't want to come with you.'

'We're just going to the television.'

'No.'

Falcón pushed the television closer. He removed the CCTV tape and put in the other tape. He turned up the volume and pressed play. The scream from the television even made him jump. Carlos Delgado kicked his chair back, waved his hands at the screen and then gripped his thick, curly hair, as if for support.

'No, no, no. Stop it. That's nothing to do with us,' he shouted.

'It was in your possession.'

'Turn it off. Just turn it off.'

Falcón stopped the tape. Carlos was shaken. They sat.

'Child abuse is a very serious offence,' said Falcón. 'People convicted of such crimes go to prison for a long time and have miserable lives there. Most choose to go into solitary confinement for the seven to ten years of their sentence.'

'We stole the television and the video recorder,' said Carlos.

'Where from?'

Carlos told the story. They'd been paid 1,500 euros to buy petrol and been given directions and a key to the finca. They'd set fire to the place, as they'd been asked to do, and they stole the stuff on the way out. That was all. They had no idea what was in it. They just wanted a bit of extra cash for the equipment. Falcón nodded, encouraging more exonerating detail.

'Who paid you the fifteen hundred euros to do this?' he asked.

'I don't know his name.'

'How do you know him? How does he know you?' asked Falcón. 'You don't ask just anybody to burn a house down. That's a serious thing, isn't it? There has to be some trust. You only trust people you know.'

Silence from Carlos as he swallowed hard.

'Are you afraid of this man?' asked Falcón.

Carlos shook his head.

'How old are you?'

'Thirty-three.'

'You're a Sevillano. You've never lived anywhere else?'

'That's right.'

'Still got friends from your childhood?'

'Pedro. Pedro's the only one.'

'You're the same age?'

He nodded, unable to think where this was going.

'When was the last time you saw your old childhood friend Salvador Ortega?'

Carlos was stunned. He sat there blinking, uncomprehending.

'I don't know anybody called Salvador Ortega,' he said.

Falcón felt something cold developing in his stomach.

'Was the name of the man who gave you fifteen hundred euros to burn down the finca Ignacio Ortega?'

Carlos shook his head. Falcón looked into his eyes and knew that he'd never heard that name before, that it inspired no fear, no dread and no horrific memories.

'Tell me the name of the man who paid you to burn down the finca. Speak clearly, please.'

'Alberto Montes.'

Falcón left the room and knocked on Ramírez's door. He leaned against the wall in the corridor feeling sick.

'You got him already?' asked Ramírez, closing the door.

'I didn't get the right result, though,' said Falcón. 'I should have thought this out properly. I've been believing in my own stupid instinct too much. He's just named Alberto Montes.'

'Joder,' said Ramírez, thumping the wall.

'And now it's all fallen into place,' said Falcón. 'This is precisely what Montes would have done. He'd panic, or his self-disgust would finally get the better of him, or both, and he'd just want to get rid of the problem. Burn the place down. Except… the whole sierra caught fire, thousands of hectares were destroyed. And he'd blown it again. That's why he jumped.

'The day I saw Ignacio Ortega I knew he was a cunning little bastard and I didn't think. He's on a different level. The reason why we're getting the pressure is that he's told those people to put pressure on us. He would never do anything as stupid and unsubtle as arson. He's gone straight to the top of his client list and told them to stop us dead, or face the consequences.'

Carlos and Pedro were sent back down to the cells without writing their statements. Falcón took the audio tape of Carlos's confession and kept it with him. He picked up Maddy Krugman's laptop from the evidence room. Ramírez went home. They reconvened at Falcón's house and copied the tape. It was grim viewing, but they realized it was the product of a secret camera hidden in the wall of one particular room. It featured only four clients. The businessman from Ramírez's barrio, a well-known defence lawyer, a TV presenter and an unknown.

'This is how the Russians get things done,' said Ramírez, as they packed everything away. 'I don't know why they do it. I'm not a clever lawyer or businessman and I can't think of any sexual excitement that would induce me to expose myself to such risk.'

'This isn't about sex,' said Falcón. 'This is about damage. Having had damage done to you, or doing damage to others. Sex is a long way from what's going on on that tape.'

'Whatever,' said Ramírez, pouring out another two beers. 'We've done this. We've made the copy of the tape. And now what? We're fucked, aren't we? This isn't going anywhere. As soon as it comes out that Montes paid the arsonists, we're dead in the water. We have to keep our mouths shut or they go through us with a hobnail enema.'

'Elvira gave me a lecture about not being too zealous in the pursuit of justice in this case,' said Falcón. 'Institutions are protected by powerful people who want to hold on to power and they will ensure that I never get what I want. But when you see something like this, and that finca out in the sierra, and you begin to understand the level of corruption that made it possible, I start thinking that maybe we should clear the whole lot out and start again. I've realized that I'm very naive when it comes to these elevated heights of operation.'

'Well, you know who that will include, if you want to clear out the old,' said Ramírez, tapping his chest. 'My past is not so sweet. I think that priest I confessed to aged a decade when he heard me out.'

'What are we talking about, José Luis? A few favours from hookers?'

'It's not good,' he said, shrugging. 'In this sort of atmosphere, nobody gets let off.'

'You're not in the same league as these people.'

'And you know what it is about these people?' said Ramírez, the beer hitting his empty stomach. 'That cabron from the barrio – he's successful, wealthy, has a couple of houses here, some more on the coast, a yacht, a speedboat, more cars than trousers, and yet he still wants more. You see, there's only so much lobster you can eat, only so much champagne you can drink, only so many pretty girls you can fuck for money… and then what?'

'The excitement of the forbidden fruit,' said Falcón. 'So, maybe I was wrong, before. Maybe it isn't about damage, at this level. Maybe it's about power. The power to do these things with impunity.'

'I'd better go. I can see where this evening is heading,' said Ramírez. 'But I tell you, once they get hold of the Montes shit, they're going to make sure we live in fear.'

'Did you see the printouts Cristina found of Marty Krugman?'

'I didn't recognize the guy he was talking to.'

'He's called Mark Flowers,' said Falcón. 'He's the communications officer at the American Consulate.'

'Hah! Not so crazy Krugman.'

'There's probably a very reasonable explanation for it.'

'They were lovers,' said Ramírez. 'Good night.'

Desperate for some good news, Falcón called Alicia Aguado and was glad to find her still elated after her session with Sebastián Ortega. The first big step had been taken. He'd revealed the extent of the sexual abuse he'd suffered at the hands of Ignacio Ortega. Despite the horror of what the boy had been through, the breakthrough had made her happy – the healing process had started. Falcón longed for that sort of job satisfaction. Instead, on nights like these, with the arrowroot stalks of fortune up in the air, he could only see his work as a desperate shoring-up of the breakdowns, a sticky plaster applied to the gourd-sized stinking abscess in the body of society. He wished her well and hung up.

He hid the video behind two locked doors in Francisco's old studio. Back in the study, he checked he had Krugman's house keys, the laptop, the printout of Mark Flowers, and his loaded revolver. He drove out to Santa Clara and parked his car in Consuelo's driveway. He went in to explain his night's work to her and she insisted on feeding him. She was not herself. She was listless, quiet, distracted, even depressed. She said she was missing her children, that she was worried about them even with the police protection, but there seemed to be something else as well. At 10.30 p.m. he walked across to the Krugmans' house, let himself in and went upstairs and put Maddy Krugman's laptop back in her work room. He went to the bedroom, switched off his mobile, lay down and dozed fitfully.

At two o'clock in the morning his eyes opened to a sharp click from downstairs. He waited and listened to the complete silence of a good thief at work. There was no sound for several minutes. Then a flashlight came on in the corridor outside the bedroom. He was a first- rate, methodical thief, not a cheap, rowdy one, prone to defecating on the floor. He went into Maddy Krugman's work room. There was a sound like a nylon zip opening as the thief booted up the laptop.

Even breathing sounds loud when a good thief is at work. But while he was waiting for the laptop to boot up he was using the time to go through the physical prints. Falcón used that noise to get off the bed, wait for the feeling to come back into his right hand, take out his revolver and walk down the corridor towards the light bouncing in the room.

'Are you looking for this?' he asked, holding out his gun.

The thief looked up from the laptop, whose screen lit his irritation. He sat back on Maddy's work stool and put his hands on his close-cropped head and looked bored.

'I'm not interested in you,' said Falcón. 'I'm interested in what you do when you've found what he wants.'

'I call him and we meet down by the river.'

'Call him and tell him you got lucky,' said Falcón. 'Slow movements.'

The thief made the call, which took seconds because he said only one word: 'Romany'. They went down to Falcón's car and the thief drove them back into the city. They parked on Cristobal Colón and went down the steps to the walkway by the river. They waited in the dark. After some minutes footsteps came down on to the walkway. A man stood looking around. Falcón came at him from the shadows.

'Is this what you're looking for, Mr Flowers?' asked Falcón, holding out the printout lit by his pen torch.

Flowers nodded, studying the shot.

'I think we should take a seat,' he said.

The thief ran off up the steps. Flowers handed back the printout. He took out a handkerchief.

'Sorry for underestimating you, Inspector Jefe,' said Flowers, wiping his brow and face. 'I came down here from Madrid ten months ago. The Madrilenos have a rather jaded view of the Sevillano mentality. I should have been less crude in my methods.'

'Ten months ago?'

'We're taking a more active interest in our North African friends and the way they come into Europe since last September.'

'Of course you are,' said Falcón. 'And how did Marty Krugman fit into all that?'

'He didn't,' said Flowers. 'The Vega business was a side issue, although we got a fright when we heard about his "suicide note", until we found out where that came from.'

'Which was?'

'It had been scratched on to the wall of one of the cells in the Villa Grimaldi torture centre in Santiago de Chile by an American called Todd Kravitz, who was held there for a month in 1974 before being "disappeared",' said Flowers. The full inscription reads: We will be in the thin air you breathe from 9/11 until the end of time. Poetic enough to stick in his mind and come back nearly thirty years later to haunt him.'

'He mentioned to his doctor that he was having sleepwalking problems,' said Falcón, 'but not the unconscious writing.'

The pressures on a mind that didn't know it was guilty,' said Flowers.

'Let's talk about Marty Krugman,' said Falcón. 'Why don't we start with what he was doing, and who was he doing it for?'

That's a little more awkward for us to discuss.'

'This isn't America, Mr Flowers. I'm not wearing a wire. My only interest as the Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios is who murdered Rafael Vega and why.'

'I have to take precautions,' said Flowers.

Falcón stood. Flowers frisked him expertly, found the gun immediately. They sat back down.

'The Vega business was not strictly a government operation,' said Flowers. 'It was more of an Agency issue – Company business. The tying up of loose ends.'

'But there was co-operation between the FBI and the Agency, which extended to allowing Krugman to walk away from the Reza Sangari killing.'

'They couldn't make a case without Marty cracking up and confessing the whole thing to them, and I told you about his trips to Chile in the seventies. What I didn't tell you was that the Chilean authorities did eventually catch up with him and he spent three weeks in the London Clinic, which was another torture centre, on Calle Almirante Barroso. In three weeks of punishment he didn't give anybody up. The only reason he didn't suffer the same fate as Todd Kravitz was because it was later on in the game and the human rights people were being more assiduous by then. This was not a guy who was going to crack under some FBI questioning.'

'So you thought it was fitting that he should be reporting back to you on someone who had been a notorious member of that regime?' said Falcón.

'Most Europeans think that Americans have no sense of irony, Inspector Jefe.'

'Was that why you didn't give him any information on Rafael Vega's real identity?'

'One of the reasons,' said Flowers. 'But if you're supposed to be reporting back on the state of mind of a person, it's better not to have your insight distorted by history.'

'What was so important about Vega's state of mind?'

'This was a guy we lost track of in 1982 when he absconded from a witness protection programme.'

'So that was true about him testifying in a drug- trafficking trial?'

'That was the surface truth. He held some damaging information about US Army officers and Agency personnel who were involved in running drugs for arms back in the late seventies and early eighties, so we cut a deal. He would act as a witness in a show trial and we would give him a new identity and fifty thousand dollars. He took both and disappeared. We couldn't find him anywhere.'

'But you knew about the wife and daughter?'

'That's all we could do, keep an eye on them and hope that he resurfaced. He was careful. He didn't come back for his daughter's wedding, which we were all expecting, and we assumed he was dead. We stopped watching, but we did send someone down to his wife's funeral.'

'When was that?'

'Not that long ago, something like three years – I can't remember exactly. But the funeral was when we found him again. He'd finally thought he was safe,' said Flowers. 'We researched his life, found that he was a successful businessman and thought that we had nothing to worry about, until the Russian mafia connection came to light about eighteen months ago.'

'Did you think he was in the arms dealing business again?'

'We just thought we'd better take a closer look at Rafael Vega,' said Flowers. 'But, I lied to you earlier, we did train him. He knew our ways. He knew our type of people. So we looked for other candidates and that was where the FBI came in. Marty Krugman was our perfect candidate – apart from some instability in his marriage.'

'Do you know what I'm feeling now, Sr Flowers?' said Falcón. 'That you're giving me just enough information to satisfy my curiosity.'

'The full story would take a long time.'

'One moment you're talking about tying up loose ends and the next you're talking about reporting on his state of mind.'

'It was both.'

'What "loose ends" were you really nervous about?'

'We had begun to think that he might be operating again in some way,' said Flowers. 'It's an addictive profession, Inspector Jefe. We found out that he'd bought a passport in the name of Emilio Cruz and that he'd taken Moroccan visas.'

'I assumed that was his escape route.'

'What did he need to escape from?'

'Maybe it was from you, Sr Flowers,' said Falcón.

'He had the Emilio Cruz passport before we put Marty Krugman next to him, before we discovered his Russian mafia connection.'

'Why did he run from the witness protection programme in the first place?'

'They're living deaths, those things,' said Flowers. 'I'd have done the same.'

'Did he have good reason to believe that his daughter's family was not killed in an accident?'

'That was twenty years after he'd absconded,' said Flowers. 'It's one of the unfortunate side effects of an addiction to this profession – you can never take things at face value. People die in road accidents all the time, Inspector Jefe.'

'And did you discover what the Russian mafia connection was all about?'

'He allowed them to launder money through his projects and they indulged his paedophilia. I understand he liked to watch. El Salido, remember?'

'So what was Marty's job – if you already knew all that?'

Silence from Sr Flowers. A big, bored sigh.

'When did you tell him that Rafael Vega was Miguel Velasco?' asked Falcón.

'No, no, you're wrong there, Inspector Jefe. I'm not lying to you about that,' said Flowers. 'You're thinking we told him, and because of his past involvement in Chilean politics that was enough to incite him to murder.'

'Forcing a man to drink acid…' said Falcón.

'It's a nasty way to die,' said Flowers. 'It sounds like a revenge killing. But I want to be clear on that. We did not give away Vega's real identity. We did not want Vega dead. You have to believe Marty when he told you -'

'So what did you want to know?'

'We're not sure.'

'This doesn't sound very convincing, Sr Flowers,' said Falcón.

'Probably because it's the truth, and we've developed this magnificent myth about American infallibility'

'How about this for a theory…' said Falcón. 'You wanted to know his state of mind because you were worried that he had information that would further compromise more important members of the US administration of that era. The Secretary of State, for instance.'

'We were worried that if he did have something he might look for ways of using it against us, but we didn't know what it could be.'

'Who is "us"?' asked Falcón.

'That is all I'm saying on the matter,' said Flowers. 'You told me that your concern was whether Krugman killed him, and I can tell you that he didn't. Be satisfied.'

'How can I be sure of that?'

'Because Marty Krugman was with me on the night that Rafael Vega died, from between two and five o'clock in the morning,' said Flowers. 'I have a timed and dated recording of that meeting because it took place in the American Consulate.'