Robert Wilson - The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

The doorbell sounded in the hall. He locked up the cabinet and went to answer it. Sra Krugman was wearing a black linen top and a skirt, bias-cut, with a scarlet silk sash hanging down the side. On the end of her long white arm was a plastic thermos jug.

'I thought you might like some coffee, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'Spanish strength. None of your American sock water here.'

'I thought there'd been a coffee revolution in America,' he said, thinking other things.

'The levels of penetration have been uneven,' she said. 'It cannot be guaranteed.'

He let her pass, closed the door to the grotesque heat. He didn't want this intrusion. Maddy fetched cups and saucers. He shouted upstairs to Ferrera but she didn't want any coffee. They went into Vega's office and sat at the desk. Maddy smoked and flicked ash into her saucer. She made no attempt at conversation.

Her physical, or rather, sexual presence filled the room. Falcón still felt nauseous and he had nothing to say to her. His mind raced as he drank the coffee.

'Do you like bullfights?' she asked, looking above his head just as the silence had reached screaming point.

'I used to go a lot,' he said, 'but I haven't been since… for well over a year now.'

'Marty wouldn't take me,' she said, 'so I asked Rafael. We went on several occasions. I didn't understand it, but I liked it.'

'A lot of foreigners don't,' said Falcón.

'I was surprised,' she said, 'at how quickly the violence became tolerable. When I saw the first picador's lance go in I didn't think I'd be able to take it. But, you know, it sharpens your sight. You don't realize how soft focus everyday life is until you've been to a bullfight. Everything stands out. Everything is defined. It's as if the sight of blood and the prospect of death wakes up in us something atavistic. I found myself tuning into a different level of awareness, or rather an old one, that the boredom in our lives has gradually smothered. By the third bull I was quite used to it, the brilliance of the blood welling up from a particularly deep lance wound and cascading down the bull's foreleg wasn't just bearable but electrifying. We must be hard-wired for violence and death, don't you think, Inspector Jefe?'

'I remember a sort of ritualistic thrill on the faces of the Moroccans in Tangier when they killed a sheep for the festival of Aid el Kebir,' said Falcón.

'Bullfighting must be an extension of that,' she said. 'There's ritual, theatre, thrills… but there's something else, too. Passion, for instance and, of course… sex.'

'Sex?' he said, the whisky lurching in his stomach.

'Those beautiful guys in their tight costumes performing so gracefully with every muscle in their bodies, in the face of terrible danger… possible death. That is the ultimate in sexiness, don't you think?'

'That's not the way I see it.'

'How do you see it?'

'I go to see the bulls,' said Falcón. 'The bull is always the central figure. It's his tragedy and the greater his nobility the finer his tragedy will be. The torero is there to shape the performance, to bring out the bull's noble qualities and in the end to dispatch him and give us, the audience, our catharsis.'

'You can tell I'm an American,' she said.

'That's not how everybody sees it,' said Falcón. 'Some toreros believe that they are there to dominate the bull, even to humiliate it and showcase their masculine prowess in the process.'

'I've seen that,' she said, 'when they thrust their genitals at the bull.'

'Ye-e-s,' said Falcón nervously. 'Quite often the spectacle is a travesty, even in the best arenas. There have been Ladies Only nights and other…'

'Decadence?' said Maddy, filling in.

'Greek tragedy is quite rare these days,' said Falcón, 'whereas soap opera isn't.'

'So how are we supposed to keep ourselves noble in such a world?'

'You have to concentrate on the big things,' said Falcón. 'Like Love. Compassion. Honour… that sort of stuff.'

'It sounds almost medieval now,' she said.

Silence. He heard Ferrera leave the house. She walked in front of the study window.

'You said something to me yesterday in English?' he said, wanting to get rid of her now.

'I don't remember,' she said. 'Did it make you angry?'

'Lighten up. You told me to lighten up.'

'Yes, well, today's a different day,' she said. 'I read your story on the internet last night.'

'Is that why you've come over this morning?'

'I'm not here to scavenge – whatever you might think of my photographs.'

'I thought the stories of your subjects, the causes of their internal struggle, were not your concern.'

'This isn't about my work.'

'Unfortunately this is about mine. I have to get on, Sra Krugman. So, if you'll excuse me…' he said.

The front doorbell rang. He went to open it.

'I locked myself out. Inspector Jefe,' said Ferrera.

Maddy Krugman sauntered out between them. Ferrera followed Falcón to the study where he sat back in the chair.

'Tell me,' he said, staring out of the window, wondering what Maddy Krugman was after.

'Sra Vega was a manic depressive,' said Ferrera.

'We know she had trouble sleeping.'

'There's quite a range of drugs in his bedside table.'

'That was locked, as I remember, and the keys are here.'

'Lithium, for instance,' said Ferrera. 'He was probably handing the drugs out to her… or so he thought. I found a duplicate key in her wardrobe, along with a secret stash of eighteen sleeping pills. There's plenty of evidence of obsessive-compulsive behaviour in there, too. I also found a lot of chocolate in the fridge and more ice cream in the freezer than a small child could possibly eat.'

'What about her relationship with her husband?'

'I doubt they were having sex, given her condition and the fact that he was handing out the drugs to her,' said Ferrera. 'He was probably getting his sex from elsewhere… but that didn't stop her buying an extensive range of sexy underwear.'

'What about the child?'

'She had a picture of her and the child just after the birth on her bedside table. She looks fantastic – radiant, beautiful and proud. I think it's a photograph she looked at a lot. It reminded her of the woman she used to be.'

'Postnatal depression?'

'Could be,' said Ferrera. 'She didn't go out much. There's stacks of mail-order catalogues under the bed.'

'She let the child sleep over at a neighbour's house quite often.'

'Difficult to cope when your life runs away from you like that,' said Ferrera, her eyes dropping to the lipstick-smeared coffee cup. 'Was she that neighbour?'

'No, another one,' said Falcón, shaking his head.

'She didn't look the mothering type.'

'So what do you think happened here?' asked Falcón.

'There's enough despair in this house to lead you to believe that having decided to kill himself he would have had to kill her to put her out of her misery.'

'Why did he dislocate her jaw?'

'To knock her out?'

'Doesn't that seem too violent? She was probably groggy with sleep anyway.'

'Perhaps he did it as a way of finding the violence in himself,' said Ferrera.

'Or perhaps she heard the death agonies of her husband and surprised the murderer, who then had to deal with her,' said Falcón.

'Where's the pad Sr Vega wrote his note on?'

'Good question. It hasn't been found. But it's possible that it was an old piece of paper he had in his dressing- gown pocket.'

'Who bought the drain cleaner?'

'Not the maid,' said Falcón.

'Do we know when it was bought?'

'Not yet, but if it was from a supermarket it won't be much help.'

'It looks as if Sra Vega was on her own that night, indulging herself as usual,' said Ferrera. 'She spends a lot of time on her own and she's well prepared for it.'