The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

Chapter 30

Wednesday, 31st July 2002

Strange siesta sleep left Falcón feeling oddly rested but with his brain sitting awkwardly in his head, like a breech birth. The morning's events drifted in his mind slow as river mist. It had been so disastrous that a hysterical positivism staged a small rampage in his head. He sat on the edge of the bed, shaking his head, dredging for laughs, and an idea came to him, which propelled him into the shower where it grew, clearing his mind.

He drove to San Bernardo, hitting the steering wheel at odd intervals, thinking that it wasn't finished between him and Consuelo. She wasn't going to drift away from him that easily. There was still some talking to be done, some persuading. He went up to see Carlos Vázquez and caught sight of himself in the lift mirror: there was a mad determination in him.

'I'd like to speak to the Russians,' said Falcón, walking into Vázquez's office. 'Do you think you could arrange that for me?'

'I doubt it.'

'Why not?'

'They wouldn't have anything to say to you… Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios.'

'You could invite them over – you know, something to do with their projects – and I could join you for the meeting.'

'That would not be possible.'

'Charm them, Sr Vázquez.'

'Vega Construcciones are no longer actively involved in their projects. They have no reason to come and see me,' said Vázquez. 'They sold the buildings.'

'They sold them?'

'They were theirs to sell.'

'Don't you think, Sr Vázquez, given their intricate involvement with your late client, that it would have been judicious to have informed us?'

'I was told not to inform anybody except the third party in the sale.'

'But you didn't think that we deserved some notification?'

'Under normal circumstances I would have told you,' said Vázquez, hands clasped, knuckles white.

'And what was so abnormal about these circumstances?'

Vázquez opened his desk drawer and took out an envelope.

'I bought my children a dog last Christmas. A puppy. They took it down to the coast with them for the holidays,' said Vázquez. 'They called me at the end of last week to say the dog had disappeared. They were all in tears. On Monday morning I received a package sent from Marbella which contained a dog's paw and this envelope.'

Falcón shook out the contents: a single photo of Vázquez's family sitting on the beach looking happy. On the reverse side was a note – 'They're next.'

'What do you think of that for psychology Inspector Jefe?'

Falcón drove to the Jefatura. It occurred to him that since Sunday there had been no more threats from the Russians and now he knew why. They'd accomplished what they set out to do. They'd extricated themselves from the Vega projects and his investigation was now officially over. And their most criminal action had been the slaying of a children's pet.

Ramírez and Ferrera sat in the office, wordless.

'What's going on?' asked Falcón. 'Shouldn't you be down in the lab with Felipe and Jorge?'

'They've been told to work behind closed doors and to only discuss their findings with Comisario Elvira,' said Ramírez.

'What about the razor blade I sent down there?'

'They're not allowed to talk to us about anything.'

'And the arsonists?'

'They're still with us,' said Ramírez. 'We don't know for how much longer. In your absence I called Elvira to ask if we should get them to write their statements. He told me to do nothing. And I'm an expert at that. So, here we are, doing fuck all.'

'Any calls?'

'Lobo wants to see you, and Alicia Aguado wants to know if you're going to be able to take her to the prison this evening.'

'It's not over yet, José Luis,' said Falcón.

He took the lift up to Lobo's office on the top floor. He called Alicia Aguado and arranged to pick her up. He wasn't kept waiting by Lobo, who was now calm. They sat and looked at each other as if there was some disastrous battle plan laid out between them, which had resulted in the deaths of thousands.

'The detective work by you and your squad has been excellent,' said Lobo, which flattery Falcón took to be a bad sign.

'You think so?' said Falcón. 'To me it's been a remarkable catalogue of failures. I have no killer for Vega and a landscape littered with dead bodies.'

'You've cracked a major paedophile network.'

'I don't think I cracked it, exactly. Ignacio Ortega has been ahead of me all the way, as is proven by the fact that I have nothing on him, other than his installation of the air-conditioning units in the finca, and the late Alberto Montes has been tripping me up with his every action,' said Falcón. 'Now Ortega is laughing in my face and the Russians are still out there, free as birds, to continue their trafficking of adults and children for sexual purposes.'

'Ignacio Ortega is finished. He's a marked man. Nobody will go anywhere near him.'

'Applause,' said Falcón. 'He's still living in his comfortable house, running his successful business. He'll keep his head down for a few years and then, because of the nature of his particular obsession, he'll be back. That sort of person has a compulsion to desecrate innocence and it's no less strong than the serial killer's compulsion to feel fresh bodies struggling for life in his hands. And, I don't need to tell you, Comisario, that Ignacio Ortega is just one little link that we've managed to temporarily cut. The big monster, the Russian mafia, is still out there, spreading its tentacles over the whole of Europe. Despite what the public relations section of your mind is telling you, this is one of our most significant failures. And it's a failure that is being perpetrated by the very administration who are supposed to be supporting us.'

'I might as well tell you that Montes's wife was caught retrieving a box from a storage warehouse which contained one hundred and eighty thousand euros,' said Lobo. 'But we're satisfied from the interviews we've conducted so far that he was acting alone.'

'More applause,' said Falcón. 'What are we going to say to the stunned population of Almonaster la Real about the two bodies, the boy and the girl, found dead at the finca? What's going to happen to the four men on the tape? What's going to happen to the other children -'

'Felipe and Jorge will make a full report of their findings,' said Lobo methodically, 'and that will form a part, as will every aspect of your investigation, of a file which Comisario Elvira will present to me. We are already conducting an internal investigation within the Jefatura. We've named the fourth man on the tape. Everything has been documented.'

'And there'll be a reading of it in the Andalucían parliament?'

Silence.

'And all these people will appear in court?'

'The reason why we have an organized society and not chaotic anarchy is that people believe in our institutions,' said Lobo. 'When Franco died in 1975, what happened to all his institutions? What happened to the

Guardia Civil? You can't tear them apart and throw them all out, for the simple reason that they are the only people who know how to run things. So what do you do? You curb their powers, you control their recruitment, you change the institution, from the inside out. That's why people believe in us now. That's why they no longer fear us. That's why the Guardia Civil no longer operates as a secret police force.'

'Talk to Virgilio Guzmán about that,' said Falcón. 'The point is that nobody from this case is going to face justice, not because they don't deserve to, but because our institution has dirty linen and the administration that controls us is using that, because theirs is even dirtier.'

'They're all marked men,' said Lobo. 'You'll see – people will lose their power, have contracts taken away from them, lose their status… they will suffer.'

'They might not realize their ambitions, which will be their little tragedy,' said Falcón, 'but they'll remain at liberty, which will be ours.'

'So you believe that we should expose everybody, reveal the corruption within -'

'Yes,' said Falcón. 'And start again.'

'All those years as a cop and you've learnt nothing about human nature,' said Lobo. 'How long will it be before the Russian mafia starts working on the next generation?'

'I'm having my say, Comisario, that's all,' said Falcón, feeling that weakness coming back into his arms.

'You know, Javier, this is not something peculiar to Spain,' said Lobo. 'It's happening all over the world. We've just had the CIA on our doorstep, and what were they doing? Preserving their institutions.

Maintaining the dignity of office of the President of the United States and the Secretary of State.'

'Is that what the Consul told you?'

'In so many words,' said Lobo.

'So you didn't see the "recording" that Flowers said proved Krugman's innocence?'

'The Consul confirmed that it existed.'

'Such trust between institutional powers!' said Falcón. 'You didn't see that recording because there isn't one. Flowers gave Krugman an alibi because it was probably his decision to end the uncertainty about what secrets Vega was holding – the man had become too unstable to predict. I think Krugman killed him when Flowers gave him the man's real identity and – let's have a moment's silence for the forgotten Lucia – he also had to kill his completely innocent wife.'

'I cannot call the integrity of the US Consul into question to his face, Javier,' said Lobo, annoyed now.

'I know these things, Comisario. I'm naive in the workings of power but not totally inexperienced. But every time something like this happens – and let's remember the financial impropriety of your predecessor, which put you in the exalted office you hold now. Every time something like this happens, a little of that dirt rubs off on me. I scrub and I scrub, but there's always that understain showing through. I start thinking I'll have to get back into my suits, just to give myself the illusion that good can still prevail.'

'We need men like you and Inspector Ramírez, Javier,' said Lobo. 'Don't be in any doubt about that.'

'Do you? I'm not so sure. The tools of the good are so pathetic and predictable when compared to those of the bad,' said Falcón. 'If we're these dirty people with a deep understanding of ingrained dirt from our years working in these corrupted institutions, maybe we should learn something from that. All this first-hand knowledge of the forces of darkness should not go to waste.'

'Well, that is a dangerous path to tread,' said Lobo.

Back in the office Ramírez and Ferrera looked up for the chink of hope. Falcón stood before them and opened his hands to show the emptiness within. He went into his office. There was a small piece of paper in the middle of his desk on which he knew was written the translation of the inscription found at the finca. He put his hands on either side of it and braced himself to read it.

I'm sorry, Mummy, but we cannot do this any more.

He left the office without a word and went to pick up Alicia Aguado. He was glad to be with her. She was happy and looking forward to her next session with Sebastián. She was pleased by his progress. Pablo's death had released him from his past and he was revealing things in days that would normally have taken months to extract.

When they arrived in the observation cell it was obvious that Sebastián was glad to see her. He sat and bared his wrist, impatient. Falcón could hardly concentrate on their discussion. His conversation with Lobo was still spiralling through his mind and forming a triple helix with Ignacio Ortega and the Russians. Every avenue of contact to the Russians had been cut – Vega, Montes and Krugman were all dead and Vázquez paralysed with fear. The only way left was the darkest path of all, through Ignacio Ortega, and that was where the three strands of his triple helix met – Lobo's last words to him.

Some intensity from the observation cell broke through to him and he concentrated on the dialogue for a moment.

'How old were you?' asked Aguado.

'I was fifteen. It wasn't an easy time for me. School was difficult. My home life was constantly disrupted. I was unhappy.'

'Tell me how it came out.'

'We were driving to Huelva. He was appearing in a play there and we were going to carry on to Tavira in Portugal and spend the weekend on the beach.'

'Why did you choose that moment?'

'I didn't choose it. I got angry with him. I got angry with him telling me what a wonderful guy his brother was. How considerate he was. How helpful. My father was useless at running his finances and Ignacio was constantly helping him out. He also sent electricians and plumbers around to the house to do repairs. He even rewired the house free of charge. It was nothing to Ignacio. It didn't cost him anything. He put it all through his company. But my father thought he was a great guy for doing all this. He didn't see what Ignacio was up to. He didn't see how much his brother loathed him, how much he despised him for his talent and his fame. So in one of these moments, when Pablo was polishing away at his brother's gilded image, I told him.'

'Can you remember your exact words?'

'I remember everything as if it just happened,' said Sebastián. 'I said: "You know, when you used to go away on tour and you left me with your brother…" and my father turned to me and smiled and his face was full of love for what he was about to hear – another wonderful thing about Ignacio. It was so pathetic I nearly couldn't bring myself to say it, but my anger got the better of me and I rammed it home. I said:… he used to sexually abuse me every night." He lost control of the car. It came off the road and we ended up in a ditch. He started hitting me, slapping me around the head and face, so I opened the window and clambered out into the ditch. He came after me, heaving open his own door like a man coming out of a tank.

'The thing about my father was that you never knew when he was acting. He could do anger and turn around and do love. But that afternoon there was no mistaking his rage. He caught up with me in the field by the road. He grabbed me by the hair and swung me around. He slapped me about the face and head, with the front and back of his massive hands, until I was a ragdoll. He pulled my face up to his and I saw his sweat and his teeth and his lips stretched white and the smell of his breath as he forced me to take back my words. He made me say to him that I had lied. He made me beg for his forgiveness. And when I did, he gave it to me and said that we would never speak about this day ever again.

'And we didn't. We never really spoke to each other again after that day'

'Do you think he talked to Ignacio about it?'

'I'm sure he didn't. I would have known about it. Ignacio would have come after me to frighten me back into silence.'

They sat quietly for a moment. Alicia weighed the enormity of that day in her mind. Falcón sat outside remembering the dream Pablo had told him and his subsequent collapse on the lawn. He could see the thoughts in Alicia's twitching unseeing eyes. Was this the right time? What should my next question be? What question will unlock the reasoning behind Sebastián's extreme action?

'Have you been thinking over the past few days why your father killed himself?' she asked.

'Yes, I have. I've thought very hard about his note to me,' said Sebastián. 'My father loved words. He loved to talk and write. He liked his own voice. He liked to be verbose. But in that letter he reduced himself to one line.'

Silence. Sebastián's head trembled on his neck.

'And what did that line mean to you?'

'It meant that he believed me.'

'And why do you think he'd come to that conclusion?'

'Before I was convicted, my father had reached a point in his life when he never questioned himself. Whether it was to do with his belief in his own brilliance, or the sycophants around him, I don't know. But he never thought that he might be wrong, or have made a mistake… Until I was arrested. Once they put me in here I refused to see him, so I can't be sure, but I think that was when doubt started to creep into his mind.'

'He had to leave the barrio,' said Alicia. 'He was ostracized.'

'They didn't much like him in the barrio. He thought they all loved him in the same way that all his audiences loved him, but he never bothered with any of them as individual people. They were just there for the further glorification of Pablo Ortega.'

That must have given him reason to doubt.'

'That, and the fact that his work was drying up gave him reason to start living in his own head more. And, as I know, if you do that you come across all sorts of doubts and fears, and they grow large in your loneliness. He probably spoke to Salvador, too. He wasn't a bad man, my father. He took pity on Salvador and helped him with money for his drugs. I doubt Salvador would have told him straight, because of the force of my father's personality and his own fear of Ignacio, but once there was doubt in his mind he might have started to pick up on things. And when they were added to his doubts he might have found the answer to that horrible equation in his head, which was the sum of all his fears. It must have been devastating for him.'

'But don't you think that this was an incredibly drastic action on your part – to put yourself in here?'

'You don't think I did this just to get my father's attention, do you?'

'I don't know why you did this, Sebastián.'

He took his wrist away from her and covered his head with his arms. He rocked to and fro on his chair for several minutes.

'Perhaps we've had enough for today,' she said, finding his shoulder.

He calmed down, disentangled himself. Held out his wrist again.

'I was scared of what I had growing in my own mind,' he said.

'Let's take this up tomorrow,' said Alicia Aguado.

'No, I'd like to try and get this out,' he said, putting her fingers to his wrist. 'I'd read somewhere… I couldn't help reading this sort of thing. The newspapers are full of stories of child abuse and my eyes used to close in on every story because I knew they were relevant to me. I extracted things from these stories which created doubt in me, and I began to find a corner of myself that I could no longer trust. It grew from there, until it became a certainty in my head. Only a matter of time before… before…'

'I think this is too much for you today, Sebastián,' she said. 'You're driving your mind too hard.'

'Please let me get this out,' he said. 'Just this one thing.'

'What did you extract from these stories?' said Alicia Aguado. 'Just tell me that.'

'Yes, yes, that was the beginning of it,' he said. 'What I saw in these stories that was relevant to me was that… the abused become abusers themselves. When I first read that I didn't think it could be possible… that I could end up with the same sly little look that Uncle Ignacio had when he sat on my bed at night. But when you're lonely, doubt creates more doubt, and I really began to think that it could be something that might happen to me. That I wouldn't be able to control it. Already, I found that kids liked me and I liked them. I loved to share in their innocence. I loved to be with them in their unconscious world. No past horrors, no future worries, just the glorious unravelling present. And the thought grew that eventually I might do something unspeakable, and I lived in constant fear of it. And then one day I couldn't bear it any longer and I thought that I would just do it. When the moment came, though… I couldn't, but it didn't matter any more because the fear inside me was already so great.

I let him go, Manolo, and while I waited for the police to come I found myself praying for them to put me in a cell and throw away the key.'

'But you couldn't do it, Sebastián,' she said. 'You didn't do it.'

'My fear was not telling me that. My fear was telling me that eventually it would happen.'

'But what did you feel when you faced the reality of your intention?'

'I felt nothing but revulsion. I felt that this would be a very wrong, unnatural and cruel thing to do.'

Falcón dropped Alicia back in Calle Vidrio and continued home. He went to his study with a bottle, and a glass full of ice. The whisky tasted good after the day he'd had. He sat in his study with his feet up on the desk, thinking about the man he'd been only twelve hours ago. He wasn't depressed, which surprised him. He felt oddly solid, connected and determined, and he realized that anger was holding him together. He wanted to get Consuelo back and he wanted to bury Ignacio Ortega.

Virgilio Guzmán arrived punctually at 10 p.m. Falcón poured him a whisky and they sat in the study. After the morning's outburst, he'd expected Guzmán to come in hard about the cover-up he'd smelt in the Jefatura, but he seemed more interested in talking about his holiday in Mallorca, which was coming up in a week's time.

'What's happened to the crusading journalist who stormed out of my office this morning?' asked Falcón.

'Drugs,' said Guzmán. 'The whole reason I left Madrid was to come down here and lead a more relaxed lifestyle. I get a whiff of that story and I go mad. My blood pressure went through the roof. Now I'm on tranquillizers and, you know, life's really quite nice when it comes to you filtered.'

'Does that mean you're dropping the story?'

'Doctor's orders.'

They sat in silence while Falcón tested that for veracity.

'Did someone talk to you, Virgilio?'

'It's a very close-knit community down here,' said Guzmán. 'The paper's not going to run with it unless somebody else cracks it open first. And you know something, Javier? I don't give a shit. That's drugs for you.'

'How about giving me some advice, as an impartial observer?'

'Don't make me drink too much whisky,' he said. 'It doesn't mix with the drugs.'

Falcón told him everything about the cover-up: the Montes finca, the dead bodies up in the sierra, the arsonists, the tape – both the original and the copy upstairs. Guzmán listened and nodded throughout as if this was stuff that came to his ears every day.

'What do you want from all this?' said Guzmán. 'What's your minimum requirement?'

'To put Ignacio Ortega away for a very long time.'

'That's understandable. He sounds like a very nasty piece of work.'

'Do you think I'm being too narrow-minded?' said Falcón. 'Should I be gunning for our hallowed institutions?'

'That's the whisky talking,' said Guzmán. 'You haven't got a chance. Concentrate on Ortega.'

'He seems to be well protected by his connections.'

'So, how do you weaken that protection to get at him?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, that's your training. You're trained to think within the limits of the law,' said Guzmán, putting down his empty whisky glass. 'I'm going now before it's too late.'

'And you're not going to tell me?'

'It wouldn't be right for me to tell you. I don't want that responsibility,' said Guzmán. 'The answer's in front of you, but I don't want to be the one to infect your mind.'