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

'He said he was a consultant and that he provided information for certain departments. He said that he only worked in the business and political arenas, never military.

'He liked my profile: I'd never worked for the government, I had a well-documented career as an architect, I already spoke near-perfect Spanish. All they wanted me to do was go to Seville, make contact with an estate agency and they would put us next to Rafael Vega.'

'For a start, Marty, we did not intend to go to Seville. If you remember, we took a small house in Provence. That was where we were going to spend a year, to try and live the life of that stupid fucking book - if you remember.'

'But we went to Barcelona to see my old pal Gaudi and we ended up in Seville, Maddy,' he said. 'All I had to do was to keep up the flow of information about Vega, his situation, what he was thinking and any plans he might have. In return, the thrust of the Reza Sangari Investigation would be redirected. We would be free to leave the country and restart our lives. No admission of guilt was implied.'

'This is crazy,' said Maddy, burying her face in her hands. 'You can't tell these people this stuff.'

'Did you know who you were spying on?' asked Falcón.

'I only found that out as things started to develop in Rafael Vega's life. The theory being that, the less I knew, the more convincing I could be.'

'Who was your contact here in Seville?'

'His code name was "Romany". I used to meet him down by the river, between the bridges.'

'Did he give you Rafael Vega's real identity?'

'Don't tell me you believe this stuff, Inspector Jefe?' said Maddy. 'Because I can tell you… I mean, this proves that we are dealing with an insane person here.'

'I learnt everything about him myself,' said Marty, ignoring her. 'Which meant I learnt nothing for months. We discussed all sorts of things, but he never talked about himself. He was completely watertight until the end of last year when for the first time he got really drunk in my company and started to talk about his "other life". I didn't learn everything in one go. I had to piece it together from a series of discussions, but what was causing his distress was that he'd been married before, to a woman who'd died some years ago in Cartagena in Colombia. They'd had a daughter, who had subsequently married and had children herself. He'd kept in touch with his daughter and the news he'd received at the end of last year was that she, her husband and the children had been killed when a truck had forced their car off the road. It was a- devastating blow and, of course, he had no one to talk to except me.'

'Did he believe it was a genuine accident?' asked Falcón.

'In his confused and stricken state the real paranoia of the man came out,' said Marty. 'He didn't know whether it was his enemies coming back at him or just divine retribution.'

'So he told you what he'd been doing in his "other life"?' asked Falcón. 'Why he'd had to cut himself off from his wife and daughter?'

'Not exactly,' said Marty. 'He told me he'd started seeing faces from his past.'

Maddy spread her hands as if this was proof of the man's complete delusion.

'In dreams?' asked Falcón.

'I think they started as dreams and then dream and reality began to merge and that's what was frightening him. While they were dream faces he found himself intrigued by why his mind had marked them out. Once he started to see these same faces on living people, he thought he was going mad. He wouldn't go and see anybody about it. He said that he'd started taking something for his anxiety. But the faces kept coming at him in parks, shops, cafes, and still he couldn't work out who they were.

'It came out that he'd been in the military,' said Marty. 'And using some very simple powers of deduction I reasoned that he'd been involved in the Chilean military take-over of 1973. I put it to him that some very unpleasant things happened in the process of the Pinochet revolution and that perhaps these faces were from people who'd suffered at the hands of the new regime. And as I was saying this I knew I'd hit home. He retreated into his head and spoke to himself and I heard him say: "They were the ones who didn't ask for their mothers." I think that they were people he'd tortured.'

'Was that why you killed him, Marty?' asked Falcón.

'I understand your need to tidy things up, Inspector Jefe,' said Marty. 'So pin the killing on me if you must. But this was a man who was going to do the job himself.'

'What about the Agency?' said Maddy, more provocatively this time.

'They didn't want him dead,' said Marty. 'They still hadn't found out what they wanted to know.'

'And what was that?' asked Falcón.

'They didn't know. They were just sure he had something that could be damaging to them or their interests.'

'Do you think these people are going to believe that bullshit?' said Maddy, hitting high, screechy notes. 'My husband is a CIA undercover agent? You're pathetic, Marty Krugman. You are fucking pathetic and always have been.'

'And now, gentlemen,' said Marty. 'This is over.'

The bullet entered her chest to the right of her left breast. Marty slid to the floor with his back against the wall. He put the barrel of the gun into his mouth. Falcón threw himself at Marty, trying to knock the gun away, but everything had been calculated. Marty pulled the trigger and the white wall spattered red behind him.

Tuesday, 30th July 2002

Not much strength is required to throw off a cotton sheet, but Falcón couldn't find it. His arms had been weakened by last night's failures. He was glad he'd already written his report; his fingers felt like squid. Comisario Elvira had insisted on him faxing the report through, after he'd delivered his verbal account while driving Calderón back to his apartment.

Snapshots of last night's events flipped through his mind. The close-up of the light going out in Marty Krugman's eyes. Calderón paralysed on the sofa, his face full of horror at the blood spreading out into Maddy Krugman's silk top. The young patrolman surveying the carnage in the room and gagging into his hand. Garcia pushing past them to shake his head at the human mess. The three of them going downstairs, Calderón holding on to the bannister. The police marksman, unused, sitting in the front of Garcia's car with his case on his knees. The drive back with Calderón on the mobile, giving Inés a monosyllabic account. Inés in strappy, pointy, high-heeled shoes, standing in the glare of the headlights in the street outside the apartment building. Calderón, with his hands weighing thirty kilos apiece by his sides, as Inés engulfed him in her arms. Their faces as he moved off – hers with lower lip trembling, eyes sparkling with tears, and his lifeless apart from one shift of the eyes to the corners, which said: 'You've seen me, Javier Falcón, now go, get away, let me be.'

The distance that seven hours of deep, anaesthetic sleep had put between him and these events had made them seem like a journalist's account of a crime committed in the 1950s. He felt different, as if a surgeon had mistakenly removed something that had never troubled him, and the result was going to change his life.

His conversation with Consuelo came back to him. He'd called her lying in bed, just moments before he blacked out. The last exchange:

'Marty Krugman was clearly insane,' she said.

'Was he?'

He drove to the Jefatura, black and sick in his stomach, as if he'd drunk coffee on a bad hangover. He gripped the steering wheel tightly. As he came into the empty outer office he saw Ramírez standing at the window, leaning forward, supporting himself on his hands.

'I heard about last night's disaster,' said Ramírez. 'Are you all right?'