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

Falcón couldn't help thinking that he scored two, maybe three, out of four.

'Thank you for your time,' he said.

'We should try meeting socially, just to see if we really get along without all this stuff getting in the way,' she said. 'I'm interested in the cop with artistic vision. Or is your mind made up about me? I'd hate you to think I was some stereotype, like the femme fatale.'

'I'll go back the way I came,' he said, heading for the sliding doors out into the garden, and he could tell he'd annoyed her.

'Columbo always left his last question for the doorstep,' she said to the back of his head.

'I'm not Columbo,' he said, and sealed her back in with the sliding door.

Friday. 26th July 2002

On the way back to pick up the evidence bag containing the bottle of muriatic acid, his mobile vibrated in his pocket.

'Digame, José Luis,' he said.

'They've found a Ukrainian hooker in the Poligono San Pablo who they're pretty sure is Sergei's mystery friend,' said Ramírez. 'She doesn't speak much Spanish, but she reacted to the photo of Sergei when they showed it to her.'

'Take her down to the Jefatura and get a translator,' said Falcón. 'Don't interrogate her until I get there.'

'It's nearly lunchtime.'

'Do what you can.'

Back in the Jefatura, Nadia Kouzmikheva, dressed in a black mini-skirt, a white halter-neck top and flat shoes with no stockings, paced the floor of the interrogation room while Policía Carlos Serrano watched her through the pane of glass in the door. She'd already gone through three of his cigarettes and he was hoping that the translator was a smoker and would arrive soon.

Ramírez and Falcón walked down the corridor with a female Russian translator from the university. Serrano opened the door for them. Introductions were made. The two women sat together on one side of the table, the men on the other. The translator lit a cigarette. Ramírez looked over his shoulder as if there might be a waiter. Serrano opened the door.

'Another ashtray, Carlos,' Ramírez said.

Falcón explained the purpose of the interview while looking at Nadia's passport and finding the visa, which still had six months to run. The Ukrainian girl's shoulders relaxed a couple of microns.

'She's enrolled in a language school,' said Ramírez.

'We're not here to make your life difficult,' said Falcón to the girl. 'We need your help.'

In the passport photo her hair was dark brown. The roots were still visible under the rough peroxide job she'd presumably done herself. She had green eyes under blue eye shadow which did not quite obscure the fact that her left eye was recovering from some damage. Her skin was white and blotchy as if she had not seen the sun for some months. She had fresh bruises on her upper arms. He smiled to encourage her. She smiled back, revealing a tooth missing from behind the incisor. He positioned the photo of Sergei in the middle of the table.

'Where do you come from in the Ukraine?' he asked.

The translator repeated the question to the side of the girl's head.

'Lvov,' she said, playing with her cigarette in red chapped fingers.

'What did you do in Lvov?'

'I worked in a factory until it closed. Then I did nothing.'

'Sergei came from Lvov… Did you know him?'

'There's nearly a million people in Lvov,' she said.

'But you knew him,' said Falcón.

Silence. More smoking through trembling lips.

'I can see that you are afraid,' said Falcón. 'I can see that you have been beaten by the people you have been working for. They are probably threatening your family, too. We won't interfere with any of that if you don't want us to. We only want to know about Sergei because he was working for someone who is now dead. He is not a suspect. We want to talk to him to see if he has any information for us. I would like you to tell us how you know Sergei, when you last saw him and what he said to you. Nothing will leave this room. You can return to your apartment when you want.'

He didn't take his eyes off her. She'd learnt some ugly lessons about human beings and she was staring back at him to see if there were cracks in his nature – any faltering, any shift of gaze, any telltale tic – that might mean more pain for her. She looked at her watch, a cheap, pink plastic thing with a big flower for a face.

'I have thirty-eight minutes to get back to my apartment,' she said. 'I'll need a little money to keep people quiet about where I've been.'

'How much?'

'Thirty euros will be enough.'

Falcón unfolded a twenty and a ten and laid them on the table.

'Sergei and I are friends. We come from the same village outside Lvov. He used to work in a technical college teaching mechanics. He earned twenty-seven euros a month,' she said, looking down on the money that Falcón had given her so easily. 'I was earning seventeen euros a month. It wasn't so much a living as a slow death. Sergei came to see me one day, very excited. He'd heard from friends that Portugal was a good place to go to get into Europe, that in Europe you could earn twenty-seven euros a day. We went to the embassy in Warsaw to get our visas and that's where we met the mafia. They got us our visas, they arranged transport. You paid in dollars – eight hundred each. We already knew about the rumours that the mafia were big in Lisbon. We had heard that they take you off the bus, beat you and put the young women into prostitution and the men into slave labour until they've paid off a never-ending debt. So we decided that we would not go to Lisbon. The bus stopped at a service station outside Madrid. I met a Russian girl there in the toilets. She told me not to go to Lisbon and gave me a cigarette. She introduced me to a Spanish man who said he could get me work in a restaurant in Madrid. I asked if he could get Sergei some work and he said that he could wash dishes, no problem. They pay six hundred euros a month. We left the bus.'

She shrugged, stubbed out the cigarette and Ramírez gave her another.

'There was no restaurant. We were taken to an apartment where we were told we could stay. They left us there saying they would be back in the morning. Later there was a knock on the door and three big Russians came in. They beat us up very badly and took our passports. All three men raped me. Sergei was taken away. I was locked in the apartment. Every day men came to have sex with me and left without a word. After three months the three Russians came back with another Russian. He made me strip and inspected me as if I was an animal. He nodded and left. I had just been sold. They brought me to Seville and put me in a flat. They treated me very badly for six months and then things got a little better. I was allowed to leave the apartment to work in a club. I served drinks and did… other things. They gave me my passport but dislocated my finger,' she said, holding up her hand, ' so that I would remember… They needn't have bothered. I was scared anyway. Too scared to run – and where would I go with no money and looking like this? They told me my family's address and what they would do to them. They also told me that they had Sergei here and what would happen to him if I ran.'

She asked for water. Serrano brought in a chilled bottle. She smoked hard. The translator didn't look as if she'd be able to bear much more of Nadia's story.

'I am allowed a little money for food and cigarettes. I am trusted, but one mistake and I'm beaten and locked up in the apartment,' she said, pointing at her eye. 'This was from my last mistake. They saw me in a bar talking to Sergei. It was the second time I'd seen him. We met by accident one night and he told me where he worked.'

'How long ago was that?'

'Six weeks,' she said. 'I was beaten and locked up for two weeks.'