The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

by Robert Wilson

  Madeleine Coren in FBI Murder Inquiry

  The New York photographer Maddy Coren has been helping the FBI with their murder inquiry following the discovery of Reza Sangari's bludgeoned body in his Lower East Side apartment.

  The FBI could not reveal why they were talking to Ms Coren in connection with the Iranian carpet dealer's murder. They have only stated that no charges have been brought against the thirty-six-year-old photographer whose latest show 'Minute Lives' has just moved from the St Louis Art Museum. John and Martha Coren, who still live in Belleville, St Clair would make no comment on their daughter's FBI interview. Maddy Coren currently lives in Connecticut with her husband, the architect Martin Krugman.

  The journalist's name was Dan Fineman and after reading it through a few times Falcón began to pick up the slightly mischievous tone of the piece. Its news- worthiness was hardly worth the column inches. He entered 'Minute Lives' into the search engine and a review came up with the headline 'Short on content. Small in stature.' The by-line was the same Dan Fineman. A man with a grudge.

  Falcón typed Reza Sangari into the search engine. His murder had been well covered at a local and national level, and from these articles he was able to piece together the full story.

  Reza Sangari was just thirty years old. He was born in Tehran. His mother was from a banking family and his father originally ran his own carpet factory until they left prior to the Iranian revolution in 1979. Reza was brought up in Switzerland but went to the USA to study Art History at Columbia University. After graduation he bought a warehouse on the Lower East Side from which he developed his carpet import and sales business. He converted the second floor into an apartment, which was where his dead body was found on 13th October 2000. He had been murdered three days earlier; he had taken two blows to the head with a blunt instrument, which had not killed him, but he had fallen sideways on to a brass bedstead which had. The weapon that caused the first wounds was never found. Because of the wide-ranging nature of the investigation and Sangari's international client list the FBI took over from the New York homicide cops and contacted all his clients and social acquaintances. They found he was seeing a number of women but not one in particular. There was no evidence of a break-in and nothing obvious had been stolen. There was nothing missing from the inventory. The FBI had been unable to develop any suspects in the case despite extensive interviews with the women he was seeing at the time of his death. Some of the names of these women had crept into the media because they were famous. They were: Helena Valankova (dress designer), Françoise Lascombs (model) and Madeleine Krugman. The last two were married women.

  Chapter 11

  Friday, 26th July 2002

  Falcón woke up and reached for a pen and notebook which he kept by the bed to record his dreams. This time he wrote:

  She could have found out about the other women and done it.

  He could have found out she was having an affair and done it.

  Or it could be nothing at all.

  He allowed his brain the run of this circuit for a few minutes and then wrote:

  He could have killed Reza S. and not told her.

  She could have killed Reza S. and not told him.

  Or there could be some complicity.

  Or it could be nothing at all.

  He'd slept badly. The Ortega file was all over the bed, along with Alicia Aguado's dictaphone and tapes. He'd been up for hours, too spooked to go to sleep, and had recorded the Ortega file as he read it. Before he got under the shower he checked the strip of paper he'd stuck over the door. It was unbroken. At least he hadn't been sleepwalking. He let the water pummel his head and some of his frustration left him as a new possibility about Inés's photograph came to him.

  The heat in the gallery outside his room smothered him. He looked down on the trickling fountain. He rippled past the pillars on his way to the kitchen. He ate a round of fresh pineapple and some toast drizzled with olive oil. He took his pills. His mind roved around the loneliness of the house. Inés had called it 'mad and enormous', which it was – a sprawling, illogical, labyrinthine expression of the state of Francisco Falcón's bizarre mind.

  It came to him with a clarity that must have been obvious to everyone except himself, caught up in his months of self-absorption: Why live here any more? This is not your house and it will never be your home. Let Manuela have it. The only reason she's pursuing you through the courts is that she'd have to sell everything and take on a huge mortgage to be able to afford it.

  He felt free. He started to punch out Manuela's number on his mobile and stopped himself just in time. He'd go through his lawyer, Isabel Cano. No sense in presenting things to Manuela on a plate. When people did that she just demanded more. The mobile rang.

  'We have a meeting here at 9 a.m.,' said Calderón, tense and businesslike. 'I'd like you to come to that alone, if you don't mind, Javier.'

  On the way to the Jefatura he dropped off the tapes at Alicia Aguado's consulting room in Calle Vidrio. Before going to his office he took the photograph of Inés to the lab along with some blank stock that he'd been using to print out his snaps. He asked Jorge to run a test to see if the paper was the same. Back in his office he read through the reports left on his desk. He collected all the necessary papers for his meeting and put them in his briefcase, separate from his internet findings about Madeleine Krugman nee Coren. He put the photograph of Pablo Ortega and Carvajal in there as well. He wanted to see the actor's reaction to it. He called Isabel Cano: still no answer from her office. Ramírez and Ferrera turned up as he was leaving. He told Ramírez that Calderón wanted to see him alone and that he should keep trawling through Vega's offices while the rest of the squad went door-to-door looking for Sergei and/or the mystery woman he'd been seen talking to.

  The Edificio de los Juzgados was building up for an active morning. The stink of humanity sweating in hope and fear had reached an animal intensity and there was no air-conditioning unit in the world that could cope. Falcón went up to Calderón's first-floor office, which overlooked the car park and the El Prado de San Sebastián bus station. The judge was smoking. There were six butts already in the ashtray, each one smoked down to the filter. Falcón closed the door. Calderón's eyes were smudged dark underneath. He still had the intense look of someone returning to civilization after an experience in the wild. Falcón laid the autopsies and police reports in front of him and sat down.

  Calderón read fast, his lawyer's brain taking in the large quantities of detailed information. He sat back with a freshly lit cigarette and sized up Falcón. He seemed on the brink of saying something personal but veered away from it as if this might be too confrontational too early.

  'What do you make of all this then, Javier?' he asked. 'The foundations for the building of a murder case haven't exactly been laid by these autopsies. I'm surprised the Médico Forense wasn't prepared to commit himself more at this stage.'

  'Officially,' said Falcón. 'Unofficially, like all of us at the Jefatura, he's extremely doubtful that it was suicide, which is why he doesn't want to release Sr Vega's body for burial just yet.'

  'Let's look at the mental states of the deceased,' said Calderón. 'Sra Vega had a serious enough condition that she was taking lithium. Her husband was not only behaving strangely, as we've seen in Madeleine Krugman's photographs, but had also been to see two, possibly three doctors about his anxiety.'

  Falcón knew that Calderón had wanted to say her name, had felt the need for its sweetness on his lips and tongue. It decided him that the internet downloads in his briefcase should stay there.

  'The crime scene…' Falcón started.

  'Yes, the crime scene,' said Calderón. 'That seems to be explicable in any number of ways. Suicide or murder, with between one and three people involved in the deaths. You have no suspects. There's not even the vaguest mention of a motive in any report. You have no witnesses. Sergei the gardener is still missing.'

  'We're working on that. We have a photo ID and we
know he was seen talking to a woman in a bar near the Vegas' house quite recently. We're also going door-to-door in Santa Clara and the Poligono San Pablo,' said Falcón. 'As far as motive goes, we're going to have to work hard on the Russian angle and -'

  'Let's not get too excited about the Russians until we know who they are and we've seen the extent of their involvement from the accountant's reports. I know there's a lot of money-laundering going on in Marbella and places along the Costa del Sol, but so far all we've had here in Seville is a sighting by Pablo Ortega of a few Russians making a social visit seven months ago.'

  'I was followed home on Wednesday night by a blue Seat with plates stolen in Marbella, and there's Russian and Ukrainian illegal labour on Vega's building sites,' said Falcón. 'There are enough questions over the state of the crime scene, the state of the body, the deceased's relationship with his son and potentially harmful outside influences to justify further inquiry.'

  'OK, I take your point about the Russians. Let's try and work that up into something,' said Calderón. 'Sticking with the suicide angle for the moment, what about the boy?'

  'Vega's domestic circumstances were not totally desperate. Even Sr Cabello, who has no love for his son-in-law, conceded that Vega was very fond of the boy,' said Falcón.

  'He drank acid rather than shoot himself with a gun, which could indicate that he was punishing himself for unknown sins and protecting his son from possibly seeing a violent death. Maybe he killed himself precisely because there was something he couldn't bear his son to know about him,' said Calderón. 'If you had a son, Javier, what could you not bear him to know about you?'

  'If he knew that I was a war criminal, I'd find it difficult to face him,' said Falcón. 'The difference between the war criminal and the murderer is that self-knowledge could be possible. Once history had moved on, the war criminal might see that he had been persuaded through a combination of political thought, national fervour and fear to have gone from being an ordinary man to becoming a merciless killer with a sense of duty to the regime and self-righteousness. Later in life, especially if he was being hunted down, he might reflect on what he'd done and feel a deep sense of shame. I could not imagine looking into my son's eyes and have him know that I was capable of such mercilessness.'

  Silence. More smoking from the judge.

  'We're doing what two law men should never do,' said Calderón.

  'Back to business,' said Falcón. 'We found a false passport in one of Vega's freezers. It's Argentinian in the name of Emilio Cruz. We're checking that out and Rafael Vega's ID.'

  Calderón nodded, crushed out his cigarette, lit another.

  'Vázquez said that Vega's parents were "killed", implying they did not die of natural causes,' said Falcón. 'Who were they? What happened to them? That could be interesting.'

  'For background, yes,' said Calderón.

  'And there something else that's not in the report. I found a file in Vega's study entitled Justicia. Inside there were articles and downloads on criminal courts such as the ICC -'

  'There's your war crimes, Javier.'

  '- Baltasar Garzón and the Belgian justice system,' said Falcón. 'This is very specific material for someone in the construction industry, even if he did have an interest in current affairs. Put this together with the strange note in his hand at time of death and the false passport, and maybe we're looking at someone who had sensitive information which could do damage to people.'

  'Both the Krugmans and Ortega mentioned some anti-American sentiment in their interviews,' said Calderón.

  'It didn't seem to be as general as that. I think Vega's anger was more directed towards government. Marty Krugman even said he was pro-America.'

  'Whatever, I only mentioned that because the US administration are against the ICC, which is directly related to the post 9/11 world, and there's Vega's weird note, as you said.'

  'I read something about that in El Pais yesterday, but I didn't understand why.'

  'The bland reason is that the US government doesn't want any of its citizens unfairly prosecuted,' said Calderón. 'The more piquant reason is that the world after 9/11 is in need of more policing. The cops are the US military. The Americans want to reserve the right to decide what's fair. They also don't want any member of the administration indicted for war crimes. They are the most powerful nation on Earth, they're exerting influence wherever they can. Plenty of people don't like their tactics – "If you don't support us, we'll cut military aid." But it's a complex world. Just as one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist, so one person's fair military target is another's atrocity.'

  'Then don't you think an interesting line of inquiry could be to look at why Vega had the remotest interest in the ICC and other judicial systems?'

  'I don't know what he was expecting from it, because the ICC only came into being on 1st July this year and it can't look at crimes committed before that date. The Belgian justice system and Baltasar Garzón just means you've got to steer clear of Europe if you're worried about being indicted or arrested. So don't narrow your vision too much, Javier,' said Calderón. 'Keep concentrating on the details as well. Has any muriatic acid been found on the property?'

  'Not yet. We haven't been able to fully search the property. My squad is spread all over the place trying to find Sergei as well as looking into Vega's business.'

  'You know what I'm looking for: motive, suspect, reliable witness,' said Calderón. 'What I don't want to hear about are things that weren't there. If you don't find any muriatic acid it's only an indicator, it doesn't mean anything. No more… ghosts.'

  Calderón did a passable imitation of a man drowning at his desk.

  'This is why we don't like talking about our hunches in front of judges.'

  'I'm being glib,' said Calderón. 'I know you're concentrated on the realities and the facts, but at the moment all we've got is nuance and hint – Russian mafia involvement, Vega's obsession with international courts, the Carvajal paedophile ring…'

  'We haven't discussed that yet.'

  'It's just names in an address book. Some of them are crossed out. There's no meat, Javier. There aren't even skeletons in here, they're just phantasms.'

  'There you go again.'

  'You know the meat I'm looking for and I'm not letting you launch a full murder investigation until I get it,' said Calderón. 'We'll reconvene for a case update early next week and if you still can't bring me anything that stands up in court then we'll have to move along.'

  Calderón sat back, lit another cigarette – the man smoking more than Javier could remember – and became lost in his own thoughts.

  'You wanted to see me alone,' said Javier, just to nudge Calderón out of his groove.

  'Apart from not wanting Inspector Ramírez thumping me into submission -'

  'He's more subdued these days,' said Falcón. 'His daughter's undergoing tests in the hospital.'

  'Nothing serious, I hope,' said Calderón, on automatic, the news shooting past him while his mind wrestled with his own predicament. 'I didn't know that you and Inés were still in contact.'

  'We're not,' said Falcón, who then gave an absurdly elaborate explanation of how he came to be in El Cairo with her.

  'Inés seemed very nervous,' said Calderón.

  'Look what happened the last time she got married,' said Falcón, opening his hands, opting to look ridiculous. 'She seemed to be worried that you were having doubts. I -'

  'Why would she think I was having doubts?' asked Calderón, and Falcón felt the diamond bits of the judge's drilling mind cut into him.

  'She thought you seemed nervous, too.'

  'And what did you say to that?'

  'That it was quite natural for a man to feel nervous under these circumstances. I myself had felt the same nervousness,' said Falcón. 'And nervousness is easily misinterpreted as doubt.'

  'Did you doubt?' asked Calderón.

  'I never doubted her,' said Falcón, the sweat streaming down his back.
<
br />   'That wasn't the question, Javier.'

  'I probably did doubt. In retrospect I was probably afraid of change, of my incapacity…'

  'For what?'

  Falcón's chair creaked as he writhed on the skewer of the judge's questions.

  'I was a different man then, more distant,' said Falcón. 'That's why I go to the shrink.'

  'And now?'

  With that last light inquiry, Calderón's cycle was complete. Falcón was almost grateful to receive the implicit warning that he should keep his nose out of the judge's private life.

  'It's a long haul,' he said.

  Falcón sat at his desk replaying the dialogue. He was relieved that he hadn't brought up the internet downloads about Maddy Krugman. That might have turned Calderón savage. The judge knew that Falcón had seen something. But under their delicate personal circumstances Falcón couldn't start talking about Maddy's involvement in the FBI inquiry until he was certain of the facts. He pitied the two lives he saw on their way to destruction as he dialled his lawyer, Isabel Cano.

  She agreed to see him for a maximum of ten minutes. He drove to her small office on Calle Julio Cesar and made his way past the three law students in the outer office. She greeted him in her bare feet. He sat down and laid out his proposal to her for cutting a deal with Manuela.