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

'How did he take Reza Sangari?'

Silence, while Maddy stubbed out the cigarette with a dozen precise little stabs at the ashtray.

'We nearly didn't make it through,' she said, looking up with her eyes magnified by impending tears. 'That was my first and last affair.'

'Were you still seeing Reza Sangari when he was murdered?'

She shook her head, slowly.

'Did you contemplate leaving your husband for Reza Sangari?'

She nodded.

'And what happened?'

'That is private,' she said.

'I'm sure you had to tell the FBI everything… or did they respect your privacy?'

'It upsets me. I don't want to talk about it.'

'Did you find out about the other women?' asked Falcón, riding over her sensitivities.

'Yes,' she said. 'They were younger than me. They had more resilience.'

'And why, when you see so clearly what sort of a man Esteban Calderón is, did you not spot Reza Sangari?'

'I made the crucial mistake of falling completely and madly in love with him.'

She paced the room, her nerves getting the better of her.

'I used to go into New York City twice a week,' she said. 'I had work from a couple of magazines and I used a studio which happened to be close to Reza's warehouse. He came to the studio one day with a model I was using for a shoot. The model was flying out to LA straight afterwards. Reza asked me out to lunch. By the end of that afternoon we'd had food, wine and he'd made love to me on a pile of pure silk carpets from Qom. That's what it was like. Nothing was ordinary. He was beautiful and I fell for him like I've never fallen for anybody in my life.'

'The model you were using that day, was her name Françoise Lascombs?'

'Yes.'

'She must have been around once she came back from LA. Didn't you see her?'

'Reza was very good at keeping all aspects of his love life separate. And you know how it is with these men – when you were with him you were the only person in the world who mattered. I wasn't thinking of anybody else and certainly not the invisible competition.'

'But you did find out about them?'

'About six months after we started, when I was so in love with him I didn't know what to do with myself, I went into the city on an odd day. I didn't intend to see him but inevitably I ended up at his warehouse. As I went for his doorbell a woman came out and I recognized that happy spring in her step. I didn't go up. I went across the street and stood in a doorway. I was shaking. I don't know whether you know what that sort of betrayal is like – a really appalling sense of breakage. My organs felt lacerated. It took me an hour to stop shaking. Then I decided I would go up and finish with him and, as I crossed the street, another woman converged on his door. I couldn't believe it. I didn't go up. I somehow managed to get home and collapsed. I never saw him again and then somebody killed him over a weekend and they took four days to find the body.'

'And they never found the murderer?'

'It was a long and painful investigation. Never was so much pressure put on so many relationships by the death of one man. The media were on top of it too, because Françoise Lascombs had just become Estee Lauder's girl. The FBI probably had about ten suspects, but they couldn't pin it on any of them. Then they discovered his coke habit. He had something like two hundred grammes in his apartment. I never knew about it, but I suppose he had to be on something just to maintain that lifestyle. They thought that something must have gone wrong in a deal.'

'What do you think?'

'I think about a lot of things – what the affair did to Marty, what it did to me, and I think about Reza and the madness of those months – but I don't let myself think about his end, who killed him or why, because that's where insanity lies.'

'You never suspected Marty?'

'You're kidding – the weekend he was killed I was still struggling to be without Reza. I couldn't bear to be on my own. Marty and I were drunk and stoned and watching old movies. Then, on the Wednesday, the FBI came calling and everything changed.'

'Well… it explains your fascination with the internal struggle.'

'It also explains why I'm disdainful of everything I did before I came here,' she said. 'Dan Fineman was right. I remember his headline, it played on the title of the show: "Short on content, small in stature".'

'You said Sr Vega used to come here for dinner… quite often on his own,' said Falcón. 'That's unusual for a Spanish man with a family.'

'You're so transparent, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'And you've insinuated that before.'

'These aren't trick questions, Sra Krugman,' he said. 'Nor do they necessarily imply any impropriety on your part. I'm just asking if you think he was in love with you, or infatuated with you, as a lot of men seem to be.'

'But not you, Inspector Jefe. I've noticed that,' she said. 'Perhaps your lust is directed elsewhere… maybe that's it, yes, maybe you just don't like me… Your friend Consuelo doesn't like me either.'

'My friend?'

'Or is she a little more passionate than a friend?'

'Do you think Sr Vega was interested in you sexually?' asked Falcón, shouldering through her insinuations. 'You went to see bullfights together.'

'Rafael liked to be accompanied by a pretty woman. That's it. Nothing happened. In the same way that nothing ever happens with the gas man either.'

'Did you know if you had an effect on Sr Vega's mind?'

'You think I was the cause of his disturbed state,' she said. 'You think he was burning papers down the bottom of his garden because of me. You're crazy.'

'He was a man trapped in difficult marital circumstances. He had a wife who was severely depressed, but they had a son together they both loved. He wasn't going to break up his family, but his relationship with his wife was limited by her condition.'

'It's a plausible theory… except I think I was a side attraction for Rafael. His main interest was talking things over with Marty. I mean, Marty would always meet us after the bullfight for tapas, then we'd have dinner and, I'm telling you, those two were still talking long after I went to bed.'

'About what?'

'Their favourite topic. The United States of America.'

'Had Sr Vega lived in America?'

'He spoke American English and he talked about Miami a lot, but he didn't react well to direct questions, so I'm not sure. But Marty's convinced that he'd lived there. Unlike most Europeans, he wasn't full of the usual cliches on the American way of life,' she said. 'He enjoyed talking with Marty because Marty isn't that interested in personal details. Marty was happy to talk about theories, thoughts and ideas without having to know where the guy lived or his favourite colour.'

'Did they talk in Spanish or English?'

'Spanish until they got on the brandy, and then English. Marty's Spanish fell apart with alcohol.'

'Did Sr Vega ever get drunk?'

'I was in bed. Ask Marty.'

'When was the last time Sr Vega and Marty had one of these evenings?'

'The really long sessions happened during the Feria. They'd be up until dawn then.'

Falcón finished his coffee, got to his feet.

'I don't know whether I'll invite you again, if all you're going to do is interrogate me,' she said. 'Esteban doesn't interrogate me.'

'It's not his job to interrogate you. I'm the one who has to go digging in the dirt.'

'And you find out a few things about Esteban on the way.'

'His private life is not my concern.'

'You're used to keeping yourself in tight, aren't you, Inspector Jefe?'

'It's best not to let my sort of job and social life bleed into each other.'

'Very funny, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'You do have a social life, then? Most cops don't. I understand their lives are full of broken relationships, separations from their kids, alcoholism and depression.'