The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

by Robert Wilson

Ignacio nodded, drank some beer and lit another cigarette.

  'That was all twenty years ago,' said Falcón. 'What about Pablo's relationships in that time?'

  'I used to see him in Hola! magazine with women, but we never met any of them. After Gloria we only ever saw him on his own,' said Ignacio. 'You're asking a lot of questions about relationships, Inspector Jefe.'

  'Failed relationships can make people suicidal, as can, for instance, the possibility of public shame.'

  'Or financial ruin,' said Ignacio, pointing at the room with the cracked cesspit. 'Or the end of a great career. Or the accumulation of all these things in a man about to face retirement, maybe illness and certainly death.'

  'Are you surprised he killed himself?'

  'Yes, I am. He'd suffered a lot recently with his son's trial, moving house, the building problem here, his fading career, but he was dealing with it all. He was a mentally resilient person. He wouldn't have survived my father's beatings without having reserves. I can't think what would have made him take such drastic action.'

  'This is a difficult question,' said Falcón, 'but did you have any reason to question your brother's sexual orientation?'

  'No, I didn't,' he said, flat and hard.

  'You seem very certain.'

  'As certain as I can be,' said Ignacio. 'And remember he was a public figure with photographers on his back. They'd have loved to tell the world that Pablo Ortega was a maricdn.'

  'But if something like that was about to be revealed, do you think he could have taken it? Would that have been enough to tip him over the edge, given his other problems?'

  'You still haven't told me how he did it.'

  Falcón gave him the gruesome details. Ignacio's body shook with emotion. He became ugly with grief. He buried his face in his hands, the cigarette burning out of the back of his fingers.

  'Did Pablo ever show you his art collection?' asked Falcón, to ease him out of his distress.

  'He showed it to me, but I didn't take much notice of that arty stuff he was into.'

  'Did you ever see this piece?' asked Falcón, drawing the Indian erotic painting out from behind the Francisco Falcón landscape.

  'Oof!' said Ignacio, admiring. 'Chance would be a fine thing… But doesn't that prove something to you, Inspector Jefe?'

  'It's the only painting to feature a woman,' said Falcón, thinking that he'd gone off on the wrong tack here. This was not going to work with Ignacio Ortega.

  'The painting in front of it,' said Ignacio, looking around his legs, 'that's got your name on it – Falcón.'

  Something lit up in Ignacio's mind and Falcón realized with dismay that he'd possibly ruined the whole interrogation. Nobody had missed the story of Francisco Falcón.

  'Now, Pablo did tell me about that business,' said Ignacio. 'He knew Francisco Falcón personally… and the thing about him was that he did turn out to be a maricon. And you're the Inspector Jefe, who, if I remember rightly, was his son.'

  'No, he wasn't my father.'

  'Now I understand. That's why you think Pablo's a maricon, isn't it? Because your father was one, too. You think they're -'

  'He wasn't my father and I don't think that at all. It's a theory.'

  'It's rubbish. The next thing you'll be telling me is that Rafael was one, too, and they were having a "relationship" and he couldn't bear -'

  'Are you surprised that Pablo didn't leave you a letter?' asked Falcón, trying to retrieve the situation, wanting to needle Ignacio at the same time.

  'I am… Yes, I am.'

  'When was the last time you talked?'

  'Just before I went away on holiday,' he said. 'I wanted to know if he'd made any progress on the cesspit, and I had someone in mind who might have a different approach to the problem.'

  'When we gave Sebastián the letter from his father he batted it off the table, as if he didn't want to know. Then he broke down very badly and had to be wheeled back to his cell,' said Falcón. 'You were a father to him, as you've said, can you explain any of that? He seems to despise Pablo, and yet he was devastated by his death.'

  'I can't tell you any more than I have already,' said Ignacio. 'All I can say is that Sebastián was a very complicated boy. It didn't help that his mother left him. It probably wasn't good for his father to have been away so much. I'm not qualified to explain that sort of reaction.'

  'Have you been to see him in jail?'

  'Pablo said he wasn't seeing anybody. I sent my wife out to the prison in the hope she could talk to him, but he refused to see her as well.'

  'What about before he was sent to prison? He was a young man who didn't need looking after any more when Pablo was away. Did you see him then?'

  'We saw him. He came for lunch sometimes when he was at the Bellas Artes… before he dropped out.'

  'Why did he drop out?'

  'It was a pity. Pablo said he was very good. There was no apparent reason. He just lost interest in it.'

  'When did Gloria die?'

  'Some time around 1995 or 1996.'

  'Was that when Sebastián finished with his art course? He'd have been about twenty.'

  'That's true. I'd forgotten that. He'd been seeing her every year since he was about sixteen. He'd go to the USA every summer.'

  'He looked like her, didn't he? More like her than Pablo.'

  Ignacio shrugged, a sharp jerk as if a fly was irritating him. Falcón could see the questions building up in the man's head.

  'In the letter he wrote to you, Inspector Jefe, did Pablo mention me?'

  'He put a note at the bottom asking that you be informed,' said Falcón. 'He might have posted something to you. If he did, we'd be very interested to see it.'

  Ignacio, having sat on the edge of his seat the whole interview, eased back into his chair.

  'I suppose he could have posted something to his lawyer as well,' said Falcón. 'Do you know which lawyer is holding the will?'

  Ignacio hunched forward again at this question.

  'Ranz Costa,' he said, his mind elsewhere. 'Ranz

  Costa did the deed on this property, so I'm sure he's got the will.'

  'I suppose he's on holiday?'

  'He's my lawyer, too. He doesn't go on holiday until August,' said Ignacio, standing up, putting his beer down, crushing out the cigarette. 'Do you mind if I take a quick look around? Just to see my brother's place and things.'

  'The room where he died is still officially a crime scene, so you'd better not go in there,' said Falcón.

  Ignacio went off into the house. Falcón waited and went to the corridor. Ignacio was in the bedroom. The door was open a crack. Ignacio was madly searching the room. He went under the bed. He lifted the mattress. He surveyed the room, mouth set, eyes penetrating- He went through the clothes in the wardrobe, checked the pockets. Falcón backed down the hall and resumed his seat.

  They left the house soon after. Falcón locked up and watched Ignacio's silver Mercedes disappear into the heat. He went back to Consuelo, who opened the door with the El Mundo Sunday magazine hanging from her fingers. They went into the living room where they both collapsed on the sofa.

  'How's Ignacio taking it?' she asked.

  'Do you know Ignacio Ortega?'

  'I've met him at Raúl's construction industry functions. I spent more time with his wife than I did with him. He's a rather uninteresting self-made man with not a grain of culture in him. Given Pablo's talent and intellectual capacity… you can barely believe they're brothers.'

  'Do you know anything about his son?'

  'I know his name is Salvador and that he's a heroin addict. He lives somewhere in Seville.'

  'Ah, well, that's a little more than Ignacio was prepared to admit.'

  'That's what you find out when you talk to the wife.'

  'How is he with his wife?'

  'He's not what you'd call a "new man". He's of the macho generation. The wife does what she's told,' said Consuelo. 'She was scared of him. If we were talking and he joined us, sh
e'd shut up.'

  'Anyway, it's Sunday,' said Falcón, waving it all away. 'Let's try and forget about it for the rest of the day.'

  'Well, I'm glad you came back,' she said. 'I was about to fall into a Sunday depression. You stopped me reading about Russia. No, that's not quite true. I turned on the news to try to stop thinking about Russia and I found myself looking at the forest fire, which didn't help. The noise of it. I've never heard fire before, Javier. It was like a beast crashing through the woods.'

  'The fire in the Sierra de Aracena?'

  'It's destroyed 2,500 hectares and the wind is still blowing up there,' she said. 'The firefighters say it was arson. You wonder what the matter is with people.'

  'Tell me about Russia. I'm interested in Russia.'

  'It's more about statistics.'

  'They're the worst thing about the news,' said Falcón. 'I think editors have a dictum: "If you haven't got a story, give them a statistic." They know that our imagination will do the rest.'

  'These are the Russian statistics,' she said, reading. 'The number of illegitimate births doubled between 1970 and 1995. This meant that by 1997 twenty-five per cent of all births were illegitimate. Most of the illegitimate children were born to single mothers who couldn't keep themselves alive and look after a child at the same time, so they abandoned them. In December 2000 the Orthodox Church reckoned that there were between two and five million vagabond children in Russia.'

  'Ah, right, your obsession with children,' said Falcón. 'Two to five million.'

  'Now for the only good statistic. The fertility rate in Russia is nearly the lowest in the world. Nearly. And it was then that I realized why this article has been written in a Spanish newspaper because the only country with a fertility rate lower than Russia is

  'Spain,' said Falcón.

  'That's why your timing was perfect,' said Consuelo. 'I'd just started on that Sunday thinking, that the whole world has gone wrong.'

  'I have a temporary solution to the world crisis.'

  'Tell me.'

  'Manzanilla. A swim. Paella. Rosado. And a long siesta that goes right through to Monday.'

  He woke up in the night disturbed by a vivid dream. He was walking down a path in a dense wood. Coming towards him were two children, a boy and a girl, of around twelve years old who he knew were brother and sister. Walking between them was a totemic bird wearing a frightening mask. As they met, the bird explained: 'I need these two lives.' The look on the children's faces was one of unbearable dread and he felt himself powerless to help. He thought it had woken him up until, as he lay there, he realized that the television was on downstairs. Voices were speaking in American-English. Consuelo was still asleep next to him.

  The light from the TV pulsated in the dark as he entered the living room. He turned it off with the remote. It felt warm and he noticed that the sliding door to the pool was open about half a metre.

  He turned on the light. Consuelo came down the stairs still half asleep.

  'What's going on?'

  'The TV was on,' said Falcón. 'Did we leave that door open?'

  Consuelo was suddenly awake, her eyes wide open. She pointed and let out a shout as if there was something bad in the room.

  He followed her finger. Lying on the coffee table was a group photograph of her children. Someone had drawn a large red cross on the glass.

  Chapter 20

  Monday, 29th July 2002

  The news told him that the fire was still burning outside Almonaster la Real as Falcón made his way to the Jefatura. Fifty kilometre per hour winds were not making the firefighters' task any easier and they were having to let it burn rather than actively save the forest.

  He went straight up to the office of his immediate boss, Comisario Elvira, whose secretary sent him in. Elvira sat at his desk. He was a small, neat man with a pencil moustache and black hair, which he kept in a side parting made with the same laser precision as the Prime Minister's. He was a completely different animal to his predecessor, Andres Lobo, who seemed to have a greater understanding of the primordial mire from which men came. Elvira was a man who kept his pencils straight.

  Falcón gave a verbal report of his weekend's work and put in a request for some discreet police protection for Consuelo Jiménez's children, who were down at the coast near Marbella with her sister.

  'Were you staying with Sra Jiménez last night?' asked Elvira.

  Falcón faltered. Nothing was sacred in the Jefatura.

  This has not been the first threat since the beginning of the Vega investigation,' said Falcón, evasive on that point. 'I met her for lunch on Saturday and she told me someone from the Jefatura had given her an envelope for me. This photograph was inside.'

  Elvira drew the evidence bag towards him and inspected Nadia tied to the chair.

  'This Ukrainian woman disappeared after helping us with our inquiries,' said Falcón.

  'Anything else?'

  'Day one a car with stolen plates followed me to my house. Day two I found a photograph of my ex-wife stuck on the board above my desk at home with a pin through her throat.'

  'These Russians are people who seem to know your situation, Inspector Jefe,' said Elvira. 'What are you doing about these threats?'

  'I think the design of the threats is to put pressure on me directly,' said Falcón. 'If there had been an initial threat which had been developed I would be more concerned, but each one has been different and specific to my situation. They are trying to distract me from my purpose and get me to refocus my attention away from the Vega inquiry.'

  'So you're not tempted to reassign any of your resources?'

  'If, by that, you mean will I take responsibility for maintaining the small resource at my disposal on the Vega case, then, yes, I will.'

  'Just out of interest, have you eliminated Sra Jiménez from your inquiries?'

  'We have no suspect, no witness and no motive.'

  'And another thing… Pablo Ortega – I understand you took a psychologist there with the intention of trying to help his son. She also accompanied you to the prison. Is there any connection between this case and the Vegas' deaths?'

  Silence. Falcón shifted in his chair.

  'Inspector Jefe?'

  'I don't know.'

  'But you think there is… something?'

  'It needs more work,' said Falcón, 'which means more time.'

  'We have confidence in your abilities and we support you in your endeavours,' said Elvira, 'as long as you do nothing to discredit the force. I'll call the Jefatura in Malaga and arrange for an officer to keep an eye on Sra Jiménez's sister and the children.'

  Falcón went back down to his office with one of Elvira's comments niggling in his mind. These Russians know your situation. They do. How do they know it?

  'Did you find Pablo Ortega's mobile?' Falcón asked Cristina Ferrera, as he passed through to his office.

  'I'm working on the numbers now,' she said. 'He seemed to have used his fixed line for incoming calls only. The mobile was his first choice for making calls.'

  'I want to know who he spoke to in the hours before he died,' he said.

  'What about the key found in Vega's freezer?' asked Ramírez.

  'She can work on that afterwards,' said Falcón. 'What about Vega's ID?'

  'It's taking time. They've gone as far back as they can with the computer. Now they're working through manually kept ledgers.'

  'And the Argentinians?' asked Falcón, as he dialled Carlos Vázquez's number.

  'They're short-staffed because of the holidays,' said Ramírez, coming into Falcón's office. 'They've sent the details back to Buenos Aires.'

  Falcón showed him the photograph of Nadia Kouzmikheva. Ramírez beat the wall with the side of his fist.

  'Somebody handed that in an envelope to Consuelo Jiménez in a bar. They asked her to give it to me,' Falcón said, and then held up a silencing finger. 'I've got a question about company cars in Vega Construcciones,' he said into the phone.

&n
bsp; 'There weren't any,' said Vázquez. 'Rafael had a policy of no company cars. Everybody used their own and claimed back their expenses.'

  'But presumably there were some pool cars that the company personnel could use for jobs?'

  'No. Vega Construcciones used to own lots of vehicles and equipment, but in the end they became too expensive to run. So, from a few years ago, Rafael cut everything back to just the basic equipment required, got rid of all the vehicles and started hiring whatever was needed. Site engineers, architects – everybody uses their own vehicles.'

  'Did Sr Vega keep an old car himself for knocking around on the building sites?'

  'Not that I know of.'

  Falcón hung up.

  'Consuelo Jiménez,' said Ramírez, grinning.

  'Don't start, José Luis,' said Falcón, putting a call through to Vega Construcciones.

  'Why is Cristina working on Pablo Ortega when we know what happened to him?' said Ramírez.

  'Call it instinct,' said Falcón. 'What I want you to tell me is who, in the Jefatura, could be talking to the Russians about me?'

  He asked for the building supervisor, who confirmed that no cars were kept in the car park other than those personally owned by employees, and that Sr Vega had only one car, which used to be a Mercedes but was now a Jaguar. He hung up and told Ramírez of the threats made to him so far in the investigation and Elvira's comment.

  'Why does it have to be someone from the Jefatura? You've been followed from day one. Anybody could be tapping into your mobile calls. Everybody in Seville knows your story.'

  Falcón and Ramírez started calling around the car parks in Seville asking if Rafael Vega or Emilio Cruz held an account with any of them. Half an hour later, the car park under the Hotel Plaza de Armas, on Calle Marqués de Paradas, confirmed that Rafael Vega had an annual account which he paid for in cash.

  He set off with Ramírez, who retuned the radio away from the news and a series of interviews with locals talking about the forest fire burning outside Almonaster la Real. Alejandro Sanz's plaintive voice filled the car.

  'Any news on your daughter, José Luis?' asked Falcón.

  'It's going to take longer than they thought,' he said, and switched the subject. 'This car park is perfect for getting out of town quickly.'