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

Silence. Falcón shifted in his chair.

'Inspector Jefe?'

'I don't know.'

'But you think there is… something?'

'It needs more work,' said Falcón, 'which means more time.'

'We have confidence in your abilities and we support you in your endeavours,' said Elvira, 'as long as you do nothing to discredit the force. I'll call the Jefatura in Malaga and arrange for an officer to keep an eye on Sra Jiménez's sister and the children.'

Falcón went back down to his office with one of Elvira's comments niggling in his mind. These Russians know your situation. They do. How do they know it?

'Did you find Pablo Ortega's mobile?' Falcón asked Cristina Ferrera, as he passed through to his office.

'I'm working on the numbers now,' she said. 'He seemed to have used his fixed line for incoming calls only. The mobile was his first choice for making calls.'

'I want to know who he spoke to in the hours before he died,' he said.

'What about the key found in Vega's freezer?' asked Ramírez.

'She can work on that afterwards,' said Falcón. 'What about Vega's ID?'

'It's taking time. They've gone as far back as they can with the computer. Now they're working through manually kept ledgers.'

'And the Argentinians?' asked Falcón, as he dialled Carlos Vázquez's number.

'They're short-staffed because of the holidays,' said Ramírez, coming into Falcón's office. 'They've sent the details back to Buenos Aires.'

Falcón showed him the photograph of Nadia Kouzmikheva. Ramírez beat the wall with the side of his fist.

'Somebody handed that in an envelope to Consuelo Jiménez in a bar. They asked her to give it to me,' Falcón said, and then held up a silencing finger. 'I've got a question about company cars in Vega Construcciones,' he said into the phone.

'There weren't any,' said Vázquez. 'Rafael had a policy of no company cars. Everybody used their own and claimed back their expenses.'

'But presumably there were some pool cars that the company personnel could use for jobs?'

'No. Vega Construcciones used to own lots of vehicles and equipment, but in the end they became too expensive to run. So, from a few years ago, Rafael cut everything back to just the basic equipment required, got rid of all the vehicles and started hiring whatever was needed. Site engineers, architects – everybody uses their own vehicles.'

'Did Sr Vega keep an old car himself for knocking around on the building sites?'

'Not that I know of.'

Falcón hung up.

'Consuelo Jiménez,' said Ramírez, grinning.

'Don't start, José Luis,' said Falcón, putting a call through to Vega Construcciones.

'Why is Cristina working on Pablo Ortega when we know what happened to him?' said Ramírez.

'Call it instinct,' said Falcón. 'What I want you to tell me is who, in the Jefatura, could be talking to the Russians about me?'

He asked for the building supervisor, who confirmed that no cars were kept in the car park other than those personally owned by employees, and that Sr Vega had only one car, which used to be a Mercedes but was now a Jaguar. He hung up and told Ramírez of the threats made to him so far in the investigation and Elvira's comment.

'Why does it have to be someone from the Jefatura? You've been followed from day one. Anybody could be tapping into your mobile calls. Everybody in Seville knows your story.'

Falcón and Ramírez started calling around the car parks in Seville asking if Rafael Vega or Emilio Cruz held an account with any of them. Half an hour later, the car park under the Hotel Plaza de Armas, on Calle Marqués de Paradas, confirmed that Rafael Vega had an annual account which he paid for in cash.

He set off with Ramírez, who retuned the radio away from the news and a series of interviews with locals talking about the forest fire burning outside Almonaster la Real. Alejandro Sanz's plaintive voice filled the car.

'Any news on your daughter, José Luis?' asked Falcón.

'It's going to take longer than they thought,' he said, and switched the subject. 'This car park is perfect for getting out of town quickly.'

'And nobody would see you,' said Falcón. 'Unless you got caught at the traffic lights on el Torneo.'

'So how did you find out about the car?'

'Consuelo saw him driving it once in town,' said Falcón. 'Do you know a lawyer called Ranz Costa?'

'He's not one of the regular criminal lawyers.'

'See if you can get a meeting with him for later this morning,' said Falcón. 'He's Pablo Ortega's lawyer.'

Ramírez punched the numbers into his mobile. Ranz Costa had an office back across the river in Triana. He said he could fit them in for five or ten minutes any time this morning.

They parked in Calle Marqués de Paradas, picked up some latex gloves and a sheaf of evidence bags and walked down the ramp into the basement car park. The supervisor took them to the car, which was an old blue Peugeot 505 diesel estate. The rear number plate was nearly invisible because of dust.

'He was using this off road,' said Ramírez, snapping on his gloves. 'Felipe can analyse this dust, can't he?'

'Do you keep a key for this?' Falcón asked the supervisor, who shook his head, chewing on a toothpick.

'You want to get in the car?' he asked.

'No,' said Ramírez, 'he wants to unlock your brain to see what that fluttering noise is.'

'He doesn't bite,' said Falcón, 'unless you move suddenly.'

The supervisor removed his very unimpressed face from Ramírez and whistled. Two boys appeared in shorts and trainers and nothing else. The supervisor told them to open the car. One produced a screwdriver and the other unbent a length of wire from his pocket. The kid with the screwdriver jammed it in the door and levered the corner open, the kid with the wire flipped the lock. It took two seconds.

'I like a bit of finesse,' said Ramírez, flexing his gloved hands. 'None of that skeleton-key shit.'

'Did Sr Vega ever ask you to wash the car?'

The supervisor, an expert in the small talents of life, flipped the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other for an answer.

The car's interior was covered with a thin film of dust, even the passenger and rear seats, indicating that Vega always travelled alone when he used this car. There were documents in the glove compartment, two door keys on a ring with no tag in the ashtray, and a single card for a hostal residencia in a village called Fuenteheridos in the district of Aracena.

They closed the car, told the supervisor not to touch it and that they'd send a truck to pick it up. Ramírez brushed some dust off the bumper into an evidence bag. On the way back to Falcón's car Cristina Ferrera called to say that Pablo Ortega had made four outgoing calls on the Friday evening before his suicide. The two earliest calls had lasted thirty seconds each and were to a builder and someone called Marciano Ruiz. The third call was a twelve minute one to Ignacio Ortega. The last call was to Ranz Costa and had lasted two minutes.

Ramírez called the builder who said that Ortega had called to cancel their meeting. Falcón knew the theatre director Marciano Ruiz so he called him as they went up to Ranz Costa's offices. Ortega had left an obscene message on his answering machine.

'So what's the link between Pablo Ortega's suicide and Vega's death?' asked Ramírez.

'On paper, nothing other than that they knew each other and were immediate neighbours.'

'But your guts are telling you something different?'

They were shown in to Ranz Costa's office. He was a big bear of a man who, even in severe air conditioning, sweated heavily.

'You had a call from Pablo Ortega on Friday evening,' said Falcón. 'What was that about?'

'He thanked me for re-drafting his will and for the copy I'd sent him by courier that afternoon.'