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

'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, she'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.

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?'