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

'My God, there he is, the hijo de puta. That's Eduardo Carvajal. And if I'm not mistaken he's talking to Pablo Ortega and somebody I can't see,' said Montes. 'I should get him out of my sight unless you want to see a grown man cry, Inspector Jefe.'

'Thanks for that,' said Falcón, picking up the photograph.

They shook hands and he headed for the door.

'What work did Eduardo Carvajal do, by the way?' he said, reaching for the door handle.

'He was a property consultant,' said Montes, whose face had turned haggard again after its relative calm during the Ortega discussion. 'He used to work for Raúl Jiménez, here in Seville in the construction business, until the late seventies, early eighties. He was from a wealthy family who had a lot of property in the Marbella area. When he left Raúl Jiménez he developed that land and sold it off. He made contacts. He knew all the right people. He started finding holiday companies plots of land to build hotels. He had the town halls eating out of his hand, so all the building permissions and the licences went through and he had the connections for the finance. He made a fortune.'

'So his big promise to you was entirely believable?'

'Completely.'

Falcón nodded, opened the door.

'On the Ortega case,' said Montes. 'I don't attach any blame to my men – which doesn't mean I haven't spoken to them about how to handle it next time, but you need to be strong to stand up to the sort of gilded personality that is Juez Calderón.'

'And it's his job to put together a case that will give the fiscales the best chance of success in court,' said Falcón. 'That's where very tricky moral decisions have to be made and Juez Calderón is a very able man.'

'You like him, Inspector Jefe,' said Montes. 'I'd never have thought it.'

'I've only worked with him once… on the Raúl Jiménez case. He handled it very well. He handled me very well when I was not in a fit state to be running an investigation.'

'Success changes a man,' said Montes. 'Some people are destined for a very high form of it. Others, like me, have reached their level and have to be content with it or go mad. Juez Calderón isn't even forty years old and yet he's achieved things that some judges never do in an entire career. It's a hard act to maintain… to reach even greater heights. Sometimes things have to be forced a little so that the star's distinctive glow retains its brightness. Judgement is affected by ambition and mistakes get made. People like that fall very hard and fast. Do you know why, Inspector Jefe?'

'Because people like to see them broken,' said Falcón.

'I think there are plenty of people out there waiting,' said Montes.

Thursday, 25th July 2002

On the way back downstairs he stopped off and picked up Sebastián Ortega's file to take back home with him. In the office Ramírez was still hammering out his report with his big intrusive forefingers. Cristina Ferrera had spoken to the phone company and found that the last call received at the Vegas' house had been from Consuelo Jiménez at around 11 p.m. She'd typed up her report and left. Falcón sat opposite Ramírez, who glared at the screen like a critic inserting exquisitely savage remarks into a review.

'Anything I should know about Rafael Vega's business?'

'He employed Russian and Ukrainian labour,' said Ramírez. 'Some legal like Sergei, some not.'

'How did you find out about the non-legal labour?'

'They didn't turn up for work today – or rather they were told to go away when they did, and that left two projects with skeleton crews.'

'What about the offices?'

'Vázquez wouldn't let us search without a warrant, but he was quite accommodating about Sergei.'

'Did he have anything to say about the labour force?'

'Not his concern. He wasn't running Vega Construcciones day to day. He was just the lawyer… with a non executive role on the board, which, since Vega's death, has become executive.'

'Did you see the accountant – Sr Dourado?'

'The Golden Boy. Yes, we saw him. He explained the business to us and showed us the accounts.'

'Did he explain how the illegal labour force was being dealt with in the numbers?'

'We're not at the specifics stage of the investigation. We were talking in more general terms about structure, finding out if the company was solvent, if there were any financial time bombs, or if there was some nasty penalty clause from a project which was eating into profits.'

'Talk me through the structure of the company.'

'Vega Construcciones is the holding company for a collection of separate projects. Each project is a company with its own board, comprising a representative from Vega Construcciones, someone from the investors/venture capitalists, and someone from the financial institution providing the backing. I suppose it's to stop a fuck-up in one project bringing down the whole company,' said Ramírez. 'Anyway, the holding company has shown a decent profit for the last three years and there didn't seem to be anything going badly wrong with any of the current projects. There was no catastrophe pending. If it was a business problem that resulted in his death, it's more likely to have been something to do with the partners in the projects.'

'Did you see any names?'

'Not yet,' said Ramírez. 'How did it go at the Instituto?'

'Take a look when you're finished. There's nothing really meaty in there that would persuade a judge that it was definitely a murder. We're going to have to work hard to find a motive from Vega's three closest neighbours, who all seemed to be benefiting from their relationship with him and who were all at home last night asleep, as you'd expect. That's why we have to find Sergei. He was closest to the crime scene. If anybody saw anything, he did.'

'I haven't had a good look at that passport yet, but someone who's totally innocent doesn't keep a false document in their freezer,' said Ramírez. 'You've already had people drifting past your front door with stolen plates, and the smell of Russians is very strong down at Vega Construcciones. So we know there's something in this case that's not right. We're finding things out every day. Eventually one of those things will be a motive.'

'I've got to go,' said Falcón, looking at his watch.

'Oh, yes, shrink night tonight. Maybe I'll have to start seeing her,' said Ramírez, grinning, tapping his temple. 'She can help me straighten out my noodles.'

'Still no news on your daughter?'

'Not until they're completely finished.'

Falcón drove home. He needed another shower and time to relax before he saw Alicia Aguado. As he came into the house he had the same sense of unease he'd had the night before. He found himself listening again.

He dumped the Ortega file in his study and went upstairs, showered and changed into jeans and a black T-shirt. He came back down to the kitchen and drank water. He went to his study and lay down on the chaise longue. He did some breathing exercises and was beginning to feel quite calm when he was transfixed by something alien on the pinboard above his desk which he hadn't seen earlier. He got up slowly, as if stealth was important. He walked in a crouch to his desk and leaned against it. On the board was a photograph of Inés. It had been stuck there by a pin with a red plastic head which pierced her throat.

By 9.30 p.m. he was sitting in the S-shaped chair in Alicia Aguado's consulting room. She put her fingers to his wrist. She needed this technique even more now that she'd lost the last vestiges of her sight to retinitis pigmentosa.

'You're tired,' she said.

'I'm at the end of the second day of a new investigation,' he said. 'A double death and lots of emotional upheaval.'