The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 29

Wednesday, 31st July 2002

On the way to the Jefatura Falcón stopped for a cafe solo on the Avenida de Argentina. He felt bleary and down like everybody else in the bar. The heat had wrung all the natural alegria out of the Sevillanos, leaving some introverted version of themselves to wander the streets and populate the bars.

There was no sign of Ramírez or Ferrera in the office. He took the audio tapes of the interviews with the arsonists and the original videotape stolen from the Montes finca and went up to Elvira's office. He met Ramírez coming down.

'I spoke to the arsonists again and asked them how they knew Montes,' said Ramírez. 'Twenty years ago Montes used to run a youth football side for disadvantaged kids. They were on his team. I've just checked it with the inspector from GRUME and I've had a proper look at their files. Montes was involved in helping them with all their brushes with the law.'

'Did they know Montes had killed himself?'

Ramírez shook his head, wished him good luck with Elvira.

He was not allowed in to see the Comisario, not even into the secretary's office. She put him in the corridor with the single-word explanation: Lobo.

Ten minutes later he was called in. Lobo stood by the window, arms folded across his chest – tense, angry. Elvira sat at his desk, his face drawn, as if he'd been there all night.

'What have you got for us?' asked Lobo, leaping the chain of command in his fury.

'Two audio recordings of the arsonists -'

'Did they name Ignacio Ortega?'

'No, they named Alberto Montes.'

Lobo pounded Elvira's table with three devastating blows that jumped his pencils into disarray.

'What else?' said Lobo.

'One video tape with footage from a hidden camera in the finca, showing four men participating in sexual acts with minors.'

'Are any of them known to us?'

'There's a defence lawyer and a TV presenter.'

'Joder,' said Lobo.

'Ramírez can identify one of the other men – a businessman who comes from his barrio. The fourth is unknown.'

'Who knows about this tape?'

'Ramírez and myself.'

'Keep it that way,' said Lobo, still brutal with rage.

'What about the arsonists?' asked Elvira.

'I don't think they knew what they'd stolen.'

'So, the only link between Ignacio Ortega and Montes's finca is that he installed the air-conditioning units,' said Elvira. 'You have no proof that he was procuring children from the Russians for use at the finca. And you have no proof that he brought clients to the finca to participate in sexual acts with minors.'

'That is correct,' said Falcón, knowing this had all gone wrong before he'd even started. 'The only way I could establish that he was taking clients to the finca is by speaking to the men on the tape.'

'Is there anything on the video that proves the footage comes from the Montes finca?' asked Lobo.

'That's difficult to say now that the building has been completely gutted by fire.'

'Have you had a report back from Felipe and Jorge about their findings?'

'Not yet. They probably stayed up in the sierra last night. They were still working at seven o'clock in the evening when I left. The lab technicians here will be working their way through the first batch of evidence. Hopefully there will be some surviving fingerprints on-'

'I tried to call you last night,' said Lobo.

'I had my mobile switched off,' said Falcón. 'I was working on my other case – Rafael Vega.'

'What progress there?'

Falcón gave his report on his meeting with Mark Flowers.

'I think I should have a meeting with the American Consul about that,' said Lobo.

'How does that leave you with your investigation?' asked Elvira.

'Juez Calderón gave me forty-eight hours. My time is up. I'm finished. I have no suspects and, unless Sergei the gardener turns up, I have no possible witnesses or leads,' said Falcón.

'What about this safe-deposit box key you found in Vega's house?' asked Elvira.

'It belongs to a box kept in the name of Emilio Cruz at the Banco Banesto. Juez Calderón has not had time to supply a search warrant yet.'

'You'll keep us informed when he does,' said Elvira.

'You might have to content yourself with the fact that Rafael Vega was a bad man who either punished himself or got what he deserved,' said Lobo.

'I expect Juez Calderón to terminate the case when I see him later this morning,' said Falcón. 'In terms of connecting Ignacio Ortega to the finca, we have one final possibility with the two bodies buried on the property.'

'Any thoughts about what happened there?'

'In the corner of one cell by the bed I found an inscription scratched into the wall in Cyrillic script. I'm having it translated. I suspect that it has something to do with the large stain in the middle of the floor, which I did not see until all contents were removed. The stain is likely to be blood. A sample of the concrete is being tested. In the mattress of the same room I found a piece of glass. I assume there was another piece which was used by the occupants of the cell to slash their wrists. I suspect that these two bodies were suicides.

'A local Juez de Instruction was being used at the crime scene at the finca. I would suggest that a Juez de Instruction is appointed to oversee the case here, as this is where all the evidence will be processed and will be where we hope to convict Ignacio Ortega.'

'That is being discussed with the Juez Decano de Sevilla at the moment,' said Elvira. 'What do you intend to do now, Inspector Jefe?'

'The obvious move is to establish a link to Ignacio Ortega by questioning one or more of the men on the video tape. Once he's confirmed as the central figure in this paedophile network we can bring him in and proceed in the direction of the Russian mafiosi – Vladimir Ivanov and Mikhail Zelenov,' said Falcón. 'I realize that the last element in that very ugly equation might be the most difficult to satisfy.'

Elvira's drawn features eased away from the intensity of Falcón's glare. They both ended up looking at the darkening cumin complexion of Lobo's furious face.

'For the moment, Inspector Jefe,' he said, 'in the light of what you've just told us about one of our senior officer's involvement in this case, I am going to ask you to do nothing and say nothing.'

In the silence that followed that request, which included a weighty admission, the questions started stacking up in Falcón's mind. He couldn't ask a single one. He said good morning and went to the desk to pick up the tapes.

'Best to leave those,' said Lobo.

Falcón's hand withdrew as if the wolf had snapped.

Down in the outer office Ramírez was sitting with his feet up, smoking. He put a finger to his lips, nodded next door and mouthed the words Virgilio Guzmán.

'I can't talk to you now, Virgilio,' said Falcón, walking behind Guzmán and into his chair.

'About what?'

'Anything.'

'What about Alfonso Martinez and Enrique Altozano?'

'One is in intensive care, the other has disappeared.'

'Enrique Altozano miraculously reappeared this morning,' said Guzmán. 'Doesn't that sound like someone who's been told the coast is clear?'

'It can sound like anything to speculative minds.'

'All right,' said Guzmán. 'Shall I tell you about Miguel Velasco?'

'I already know about him.'

'What do you know?'

'That he was in the Chilean military…'

'That's a bit vague.'

'Is it going to help me to know any more than that?'

'I'll give you the short history and then you tell me,' said Guzmán. 'He was born in 1944, the son of a Santiago butcher. He was an alumnus of the Catholic University and a member of Patria y Libertad. His mother died in 1967 from a heart attack. He joined the Chilean military in 1969. After the coup he was transferred to the force that was eventually to become the DINA in June 1974. His father, who did not like Allende's politics but also did not agree with the Pinochet coup, disappeared in October 1973 and was never seen again. During his service with the DINA he became one of the chief interrogators at the Villa Grimaldi and a close personal friend of the Head of the DINA – Colonel Manuel Contreras.'

'That note he held in his hand when he died, I heard that it was an inscription on a cell wall in the Villa Grimaldi,' said Falcón. 'I was also told he was known by the MIR as El Salido.'

'Perhaps you didn't hear about his work at the Venda Sexy,' said Guzmán. 'That was the name of a torture centre at 3037 Calle Iran, in the Quflu quarter of Santiago de Chile. It was also known as La Discoteca because loud music was heard coming from it day and night. Before Miguel Velasco was moved to the Villa Grimaldi he devised the techniques practised there. He forced family members to watch and participate in taboo sexual acts such as incest and paedophilia. Sometimes he would encourage his fellow torturers to join in.'

That helps explain things… or rather, not explain but…'

Tell me.'

'Finish the biography, Virgilio.'

'He was an outstanding interrogator, and from the Villa Grimaldi he was moved to one of the active cells in Operation Condor, specializing in kidnappings, interrogations and assassinations abroad. In 1978 he was moved to the Chilean Embassy in Stockholm, where he headed covert operations against the Chilean expatriate community. He transferred back into the military in late 1979 and it's believed that he received some CIA training prior to developing a lucrative "drugs for arms" business. That trade was exposed in 1981 and there followed a trial in which he acted as a witness for the prosecution. In 1982 he was put into a witness protection programme, from which he disappeared almost immediately.'

'Stockholm?' asked Falcón.

'The Swedish Prime Minister, Olaf Palme, was vociferous in his disgust at the Pinochet regime. In the days after September 11th, the Swedish Ambassador in Santiago, Harald Edelstam, ran around the capital extending asylum to anyone who was resisting the coup and so Stockholm, naturally, became a centre for a European anti-Pinochet movement. A DINA/CNI cell was set up there to run drug-smuggling operations in Europe and to spy on Chilean expatriates.'

'Interesting… but none of it helps me any more,' said Falcón. 'That case is about to be closed.'

'I can sense some disappointment in you, Javier.'

'You can sense what you like, Virgilio, I've got nothing to talk to you about.'

'People think I'm a bore, because a lot of my sentences start with the phrase "When I was working the death squads story…"' said Guzmán.

Ramírez grunted his agreement from the outer office.

'You must have learned a lot…'

'During that investigation I always managed to turn up in people's offices at crucial times,' said Guzmán. 'Call it Zeitgeist or tapping into the collective unconscious. Do you believe in all that crap, Javier?'

'Yes.'

'You've become monosyllabic, Javier. It's one of the first signs.'

'Of what?'

'That I haven't lost my sense of timing,' said Guzmán. 'What do you think the collective unconscious is?'

'I'm not in the mood, Virgilio.'

'Where have I heard that before?'

'In your own bed,' Ramírez shouted from the outer office.

'Have a go, Javier.'

'You're not going to talk your way in here,' said Falcón, pushing over a note with his home address and 10 p.m. written on it.

'Do you know why I left Madrid?' said Guzmán, ignoring the note. 'I was pushed. If you ask people why, they'll tell you that I'd started to live in a hall of mirrors. I didn't know what was real any more. I was paranoid. But the reality was that I was pushed because

I'd become a zealot. I got that way because the stories I would run with always had something that made me writhe with rage. I couldn't control it. I'd become the worst thing possible – the emotional journalist.'

'We don't allow that in the police force, either… or we all start cracking up.'

'It's an incurable disease,' said Guzmán. 'I know that now, because when I read what Velasco used to get up to in the Venda Sexy I hit that same white-hot vein of rage. That's what he used to do to human beings. Not just torture them, but fill them with his own appalling corruption. And the next thing I know I'm back to thinking that was Pinochet. That's what Pinochet thought of human beings. And why was he there? Because Nixon and Kissinger wanted him there. They would rather have someone who promoted the electrocution of genitals, the raping of women, the abuse of children than… than what? Than a tubby, bespectacled little Marxist who was going to make life difficult for the rich. Now you see my problem, Javier. I have become what my bosses used to call me – my own worst enemy. You're not allowed to feel, you're only allowed to report the facts. But, you see, it's in that feeling that my instinct lies and it hasn't failed me, because I know that the rage I felt when I found out about Miguel Velasco's speciality guided me here this morning. And it's guided me here because it wants my nose to be in the door of the cover-up as it slams shut.'

Guzmán snatched up the note, kicked back his chair and stormed out.

Ramírez loomed large in the doorway, looking back at the vapour trail left by Guzmán in the outer office.

'He's going to do himself some harm if he carries on like that,' said Ramírez. 'Is he right?'

'Did you see me come back with anything?' asked Falcón, opening his hands to show no tapes.

'Lobo's a good man,' said Ramírez, pointing a big finger at him. 'He won't let us down.'

'Lobo's a good man in a different position,' said Falcón. 'You don't get to be Jefe Superior de la Policía de Sevilla unless people want you to be. He has political pressure on his shoulders and he has a big mess in his own house, left by Alberto Montes.'

'What about the bodies of those two kids up in the Sierra de Aracena? They've been seen. Everybody knows about them. No one can hide that sort of thing.'

'If they were local kids, then of course not. But who are they?' said Falcón. 'They've been dead a year. The only piece of really usable evidence we've got from the house is the video tape and, as Lobo pointed out, we can't even prove that what they were doing took place in Montes's finca. Our only chance is if we're allowed to interview those people on the tape.'

Ramírez walked over to the window and put his hands up against the glass.

'First of all we had to listen to Nadia Kouzmikheva's story and do nothing. Now we're going to watch these cabrones walk away, too?'

'Nothing is certain.'

'We have the tape,' said Ramírez.

'After what Montes has done we have to be very careful about the tape,' said Falcón. 'That is not something to proceed with lightly. Now I'm going out.'

'Where to?'

'To do something that I hope will make me feel better about myself.'

On the way out of the office he bumped into Cristina Ferrera, who had been to see the Russian translator about the inscription on the wall of the finca.

'Leave it on my desk,' said Falcón. 'I can't bear to look at it.'

Falcón drove across the river and along Avenida del Torneo. As the road swung away from the river towards La Macarena he turned right and into La Alameda. He parked and walked along Calle Jesus del Gran Poder. This was Pablo Ortega's old barrio. He was looking for a house on Calle Lumbreras, which belonged to the parents of the boy, Manolo Lopez, who had been the victim in Sebastián Ortega's case. He had not called ahead because he didn't think the parents would welcome this new intrusion, especially given what he'd heard about the father's health problems.

He walked through the cooking smells of olive oil and garlic and up to the house where the boy's parents lived. It was a small apartment building in need of repair and paint. He rang the doorbell. Sra Lopez answered it and stared hard at his police ID. She didn't want him to come in, but couldn't find the confidence to ask him to leave them alone. The apartment was small, airless and very hot. Sra Lopez sat him down at a table with a lace cover and a bowl of plastic flowers and went to bring her husband. The room was full of Mariolatry. Virgins hung on walls, found themselves cornered on bookshelves and blessed stacks of magazines. A candle burned in a niche.

Sra Lopez steered her husband into the room as if he was a lame cow in need of milking. He looked to be in his late forties but was very unsteady on his feet, which made him seem older. She got him into a chair. One arm seemed to be dead, hanging useless at his side. He picked up Falcón's ID card with a shaky hand.

'Homicidios?' he said.

'Not on this occasion,' said Falcón. 'I wanted to talk to you about your son's kidnapping.'

'I can't talk about that,' he said, and immediately started to get to his feet.

His wife helped him out of the room. Falcón watched the complicated process in a state of increasing desolation.

'He can't talk about it,' she said, coming back to the table. 'He hasn't been the same since… since…'

'Since Manolo disappeared?'

'No, no… it was afterwards. It was after the trial that he lost his job. His legs started to behave strangely, they felt as if they had ants crawling all over them. He became unsteady. One hand started shaking, the other arm seemed to give up. Now he does nothing all day. He moves from here to the bedroom and back… that's it.'

'But Manolo is all right, isn't he?'

'He's fine. It's as if it never happened. He's on holiday… camping with his nephews and cousins.'

'So, you have much older children as well?'

'I had a boy and a girl when I was eighteen and nineteen, and then twenty years later Manolo came along.'

'Did Manolo have any reaction to what had happened to him?'

'Not exactly to what happened to him,' said Sra Lopez. 'He's always been a happy boy in himself. He was more disturbed by what happened to Sebastián Ortega. He finds it difficult to imagine him in prison.'

'So, what's been bothering your husband?' said Falcón. 'He seems to be the one who has reacted badly.'

'He can't talk about it,' she said. 'It's something to do with what happened with Manolo, but I can't get him to say what it is.'

'Is he ashamed? That's not an unusual reaction.'

'For Manolo? He says not.'

'Would you mind if I talk to him on his own?'

'You won't get anywhere.'

'I have some new information which might help him,' he said.

'The last door to the left at the end of the corridor,' she said.

Sr Lopez was lying on the dark wooden bed under a crucifix. A ceiling fan barely disturbed the thick stale air. He had his eyes closed. One hand twitched where it lay across his stomach. The other lay dead by his side. Falcón touched him on the shoulder. His eyes stared out from a frightened mind.

'All you have to do is listen to me,' said Falcón. 'I am no man's judge. I've come here to try to put things right, that's all.'

Sr Lopez blinked once, as if this was a devised sign language.

'Investigations are strange things,' said Falcón. 'We set off on a journey to find out what happened, only to find that more things happen on the way. Investigations have a life of their own. We think we are running them, but sometimes they run us. When I heard what Sebastián Ortega had done, it had nothing to do with the investigation I was working on, but I was fascinated by it. I was fascinated because in those cases it's very rare for the victim to be allowed to leave and for him to bring the police to where the perpetrator is waiting to be arrested. Do you understand what I'm saying, Sr Lopez?'

He blinked once again. Falcón told him about the Jefatura and how stories circulate and how he'd heard about what had really happened in Manolo's case. The demand for a stronger statement to help the prosecution's case was not an unusual occurrence. That Sebastián would not defend himself against the stronger statement was unforeseen and resulted in a much harsher sentence than the actual crime merited.

'I have no idea what is playing on your mind, Sr Lopez. All I know is – through no fault of your own, and perhaps because of Sebastián's own mental problems – an unnecessarily severe justice has been done. I am here to tell you that, if you so wish, you can help balance the scales. All you have to do is call me. If I do not hear from you, you will never see me again.'

Falcón left his card on the bedside table. Sr Lopez lay on the bed, staring up at the slow fan. On the way out Falcón said goodbye to Sra Lopez, who took him to the door.

'Pablo Ortega told me that he had to leave this barrio because nobody would talk to him any more, or serve him in shops and bars,' said Falcón as he stood on the landing. 'Why was that, Sra Lopez?'

She looked flustered and embarrassed; her hands shifted about, straightening her clothes. She eased herself behind the door and shut it without answering his question.

In the flinching brightness of the street Falcón took a call from Juez Calderón, who wanted to see him about the Vega case. Before he got back into his car he went into a bar on the Alameda and ordered a cafe solo. He showed his police ID and asked the same question of the barman as he had of Sra Lopez. He was an older guy, who looked as if he'd seen a few things in his time as a bar owner at the seedier end of the Alameda.

'We all knew Sebastián,' he said, 'and we liked him. He was a good boy until… he did wrong. When he did what he did, people started to talk about how abusers start out as the abused. Conclusions were drawn and it wasn't helped by the fact that nobody much liked Pablo Ortega. He was an arrogant prick who thought the whole world loved him.'

The sweat cooled quickly on Falcón's body as he sat in Calderón's office, waiting for him to come back from another meeting. As Calderón took his seat it was clear that whatever had been troubling him over the past days had gone. He was his usual solid self. The certainty had returned.

Falcón told him he was finished with the Vega case, that he'd found out everything there was to know about him, except who'd killed him. He gave Calderón a compilation report on what he'd learnt from Mark Flowers and Virgilio Guzmán.

'Have you checked this "recording" of Marty Krugman in the American Consulate from the night of Sr Vega's death?'

'Comisario Lobo is going to talk the whole issue through with the Consul,' said Falcón. 'I don't expect to hear whether that recording existed or not.'

'So you think Marty Krugman killed Rafael Vega?'

'I do,' said Falcón. 'And despite his wife's denial on Monday night, I think she drove him to kill Reza Sangari.'

'If he hadn't killed Reza Sangari you don't think he'd have been able to kill Rafael Vega?'

'I don't think he was developing a taste for it, but there's no doubt that he'd been excited by the power he felt from his first experience,' said Falcón. 'And when he found out who Vega really was, whether by his own deduction or being told by Mark Flowers, he felt he had the power to do it again. I think he killed Sangari passionately and Vega intellectually.'

'And Sra Vega?'

'That was the problem. Krugman knew Mario was staying at Sra Jiménez's house so he didn't have to worry about the boy. He also knew that Lucia Vega was a heavy sleeper. He and Rafael had long discussions sometimes in Vega's house and they never disturbed her, but he didn't know that she took two sleeping tablets a night to knock herself out – the second one at around three in the morning. So when Rafael Vega went into his death agonies she probably came downstairs, saw the horror and ran back up to the bedroom with Krugman in pursuit. That's why her jaw was broken. She was screaming and he hit her. Then he had to kill her, too, which would explain why Krugman was so unstable from the outset.'

'And all these threats from the Russians?'

'Perhaps they were just trying to discourage us from investigating too hard and finding out about their money-laundering arrangements.'

'Is that all?' asked Calderón. 'That's a bit heavy- handed, don't you think?'

'They're heavy-handed people,' said Falcón.

'You're depressed, Javier.'

And you're not, thought Falcón, but he said: 'I failed in the Vega case. I failed to prevent the Krugmans from dying before my very eyes and… yes, well, my psychologist tells me it's bad to use the word "fail" with the first person singular, so I'll shut up.'

'I've heard rumblings,' said Calderón.

'It's lunchtime.'

'Tectonic rumblings coming from the Jefatura,' said Calderón. 'Heads will roll. Jobs will be lost. Pensions terminated.'

'Because Montes jumped out of his office window?'

'That was the start of it,' said Calderón, back to enjoying himself in the intrigue of the moment. 'What about Martinez and Altozano?'

Falcón shrugged. Calderón could find out for himself why the Russians were really threatening.

'You know something, Javier, don't you?'

'So do you,' he said, oddly irritated by the familiarity.

'I know the Juez Decano and the Fiscal Jefe had a meeting behind closed doors for one hour this morning, and you don't often get them in the same building in the same room.'

'Those rumblings you heard are the sound of the powers that control us closing ranks,' said Falcón.

'Tell me,' said Calderón.

'We're the blind, the deaf and the dumb today, Esteban,' he said, and got to his feet. 'I'd still like that search warrant for Vega's safe-deposit box. We might as well satisfy our curiosity.'

'I'll have that ready for you this afternoon,' said

Calderón, checking his watch, joining him at the door. 'I'll walk down with you. Inés and I have got some shopping to do.'

They went downstairs and through the bear pit of justice, where people bowed and scraped to the young judge. He was back in his element. The horrors were off the horizon. They went through security. Inés was on the other side. Falcón kissed her hello. She put an arm around Calderón's back and he pulled her to his chest, kissed her on the head. Inés gave Falcón a tinkling wave before she turned with a little back kick of her high heels and a big, happy smile thrown over her shoulder. Her hair swung across her back like the girls' in the shampoo ads.

Falcón watched them go and tried to imagine what could have possibly passed between them since that fatal Monday night. And with that thought came the answer: absolutely nothing. They had clung to each other in the terror of their possible loneliness, wished it all away and thrown their arms open to what life had been before. Was that the man that Isabel Cano had said was on the hunt for difference? Was that the woman whose stamp of approval Falcón had thought he so desperately needed? He watched them heading towards the city and a life of small, hurtful destructions.

Consuelo called, asking to meet for lunch. She sounded as she had done last night – distant and preoccupied. They agreed to meet at his home on Calle Bailén and he would do the cooking. Falcón bought food in the Corte Ingles on his way home. He emptied his mind in the kitchen. He sliced onions, fried them slowly in olive oil until caramelized. He boiled up potatoes and poured oloroso sherry over the onions and reduced it to a syrup. He cleaned and seasoned the tuna, made a salad. He arranged the prawns with wedges of lemon and mayonnaise. He drank chilled manzanilla and sat in the shade on the patio to wait for Consuelo.

She arrived at two o'clock. As soon as he let her into the house he knew that something was wrong. She was closed off, shut in. He'd had this feeling from women before, a sense that everything will be withheld until the air is cleared. Her mouth did not respond to his kiss. Her body kept its distance. He felt the quickening plummet in his stomach of the lover who is about to be told something very kindly. He led her to the kitchen as if they were condemned and this was their last meal.

They ate the prawns and drank manzanilla while he told her that the Vega case was officially closed. He got up to fry the tuna steaks. He reheated the oloroso syrup and poured it over the fish. He sat down with the pan between them unable to bear it any longer.

'You've got tired of me already,' he said, serving her a steak.

'Quite the opposite,' she said.

'Or is it my profession?' he said. 'I know you've come here to tell me something, because I've been told this sort of thing before.'

'You're right, but it's not because I'm tired of you,' she said.

'Is it because of what happened on Sunday? I can understand that. I know how important your children are to you. I'd have been -'

'I've learnt to recognize what I want, Javier,' she said, shaking her head. 'It's taken me a lifetime but I have learned that valuable lesson.'

'Not many people do,' said Falcón, serving himself a tuna steak, which now looked banal on his plate.

'I used to be a romantic. You're talking to a woman who once fell in love with a duke, remember? Even when I came down here, I still entertained those romantic illusions. Once I had my children I realized I didn't need to fool myself any more. They gave me all the love, the real unconditional kind, that I needed and I returned it doubled. I had an affair to satisfy my physical needs. You met him – that idiot Basilio Lucena – and you understood the relationship that we had. It wasn't love. It was much less complicated and manageable than that.'

'You don't have to let me down lightly' said Falcón. 'You can just say: "I don't want to do this any more."'

'This is me being honest with a man for the first time in my life,' she said, looking him straight in the eye.

'I thought that what we had going between us was a good thing. It felt right,' said Falcón, the emotion rising in his throat. 'For the first time in my life, it felt absolutely right.'

'It is a good thing, but it is not what I want now.'

'You want to devote yourself to your children?'

'That's part of it,' she said. 'The rest is me. We have a good thing going now, but it will change. And I don't want the intensity, the complications, the responsibility… But most of all, and this is my failing, I do not want the daily confrontation with my weakness.'

'Your weakness?'

'I have weaknesses. Nobody sees them but they are there,' she said. 'This is my big weakness. You know everything about me, every terrible thing because our relationship started in the terrible arena of a murder investigation. But you don't know this: I am hopeless in love and I cannot bear it.'

'How do you know, if you've only had the illusion of it before?'

'Because it's already started,' she said.

She stood up, the tuna untouched, the sauce congealing on the plate. She came round to his side of the table. He tried to say things. He wanted to talk her out of it. She put her fingers on his lips. She held his face, ran her hand over his hair and kissed him. He felt the wetness of her tears. She pulled back, squeezed his shoulder once and left.

The door slammed. He looked at his plate. There was nothing that could get past what he had growing in his throat. He scraped the tuna into the bin, looked at the brown smear left on the plate and then he hurled it against the wall.