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

'Something's going on,' said Elvira, pointing him into a chair.

'Whatever it is it doesn't look good.'

'There's political pressure coming from… unseen powers,' said Elvira. 'That article published in the Diario de Sevilla this morning…'

'You didn't seem too concerned by that earlier today.'

'The extensive obituary alongside it was a very care- ' fully angled piece of writing. There were no reasons given for Montes's suicide, and the piece didn't make any claims, but people who "know" were in no doubt when they came away from that article that there were implications – serious ones. There has been a reaction to those implications from senior people at the town hall and important members of the Andalucían parliament. They want to know the state of our… house.'

Falcón started to say something and Elvira held up ;his hand.

'I've just heard two other reports, which could be interpreted as unfortunate holiday accidents or sinister coincidences. Dr Alfonso Martinez, a member of the Andalucían parliament, is now in intensive care after his car left the road on the motorway from Jerez de la Frontera to Cadiz and crashed into a bridge. And the wife of Enrique Altozano found her husband's clothes in a pile on a beach between Pedro de Alcántara and Estepona and alerted the authorities. They are currently searching the coast, but he has not been found. He was the man in the planning department of the Seville town hall who was responsible for awarding licences to new building projects.'

This time Falcón didn't try to say anything.

'Powerful people are like jackals on the prairie. They put their noses to the air for the smell of scandal, and the faintest whiff carries to them from kilometres away,' said Elvira. 'The job of the politician is to always maintain power. He does not necessarily want to deny that something disgraceful has occurred, but he does want to contain it, so that institutions don't completely disintegrate.'

'You're preparing me for something, Comisario,' said Falcón. 'I hope it's not going to be a disappointment in those institutions, or the people that run them.'

'I am telling you how it is, so that we can develop this case in a way that maximizes the number of convictions and minimizes the serious political damage,' said Elvira. 'If we show that we are only interested in taking down everybody involved, we will be prevented from doing that. We have the example of our own government. That, if you remember, was how Felipe Gonzalez survived the death squad scandal.'

'Are you concerned that I might be a fanatical zealot?'

'It would be understandable, given what we know so far of the unpleasantness of this case.'

'Let me get this straight,' said Falcón. 'Two powerful people have either been killed or attempted suicide. This has alerted other powerful people, who have hinted to the Jefatura that, should we want to press this case to its logical conclusion, we will suffer an in- depth examination of the state of our own force. In other words, if we show their corruption to the world, they will show ours.'

'Comisario Lobo said you would understand perfectly.'

'Our problem is that the crucial conviction in this case is the one that will bring down the whole house of cards,' said Falcón. 'I'll tell you what I think has happened, Comisario. Ignacio Ortega took over the procuring work for the paedophile rings from Eduardo Carvajal as he had a connection to the Russians. That connection is strong enough that they were able to award him contracts without consulting Rafael Vega, j Montes was already corrupted at the time of the death of Eduardo Carvajal. He was forced into further incrimination by the purchase of this finca near Almonaster la Real, which Ignacio Ortega helped to restore. As a result of Montes's involvement in the finca, the authorities never bothered to investigate how the house was being used. I'm nearly sure that Rafael Vega was a client. We'll do a few tests which might confirm that to us. Mark Flowers gave us an indication of Vega's tastes when he told us his nickname at the time of the Chilean coup. These two latest casualties you've just told me about could mean that Martinez and Altozano may have been clients, too. To completely stamp this out we should, ideally, take out the Russians, but I don't know how we can get to them. The next rung down is Ignacio Ortega. The problem is that he is not a character who will go down quietly. He will demand from his friends that he be saved, or he will bring down the individuals in these highly valued institutions of ours.'

'Don't allow any of that bitterness to creep into your words,' said Elvira. 'I understand why you should feel like that, but outside people will dismiss you as "difficult" and you will never get what you want. What have you got on Ortega?'

'Very little,' said Falcón. 'He came under suspicion because of his behaviour around the death of his brother. I interviewed his son, who is a heroin addict, and he reluctantly told me about the systematic sexual abuse that he and his cousin had suffered, as well as a number of his friends, when they were children. Favours were being done in the building trade between Ignacio Ortega, Vega and the Russians. The minimum Ortega did was to install the air-conditioning units in Montes's finca. Inspector Ramírez has caught the arsonists who set fire to the finca. We're hoping they will provide a more concrete link to Ignacio Ortega. That will give us the minimum option of holding Ortega on "conspiracy to arson" charges. The next step might be more difficult.'

'The sexual abuse charges against his son don't have much hope, given his drug problems. I know it's wrong, but that's the perception.'

'He said he wouldn't testify against his father, anyway.'

'And Sebastián Ortega has been convicted of a serious crime.'

'Which we are hoping we can prove that he did not commit, but that won't help us with Ortega. We need more time.'

'All right,' said Elvira, sitting back, tired and exasperated. 'See if there's a link between Ignacio Ortega and the arsonists. If there is, we have to plan our next move. And, I don't need to tell you, but you can't talk to Virgilio Guzmán about any of this.'

Tuesday, 30th July 2002

In the outer office Cristina Ferrera was sitting at a desk, feet hooked round the chair legs, looking at the two paper printouts of the shots of Marty Krugman down by the river. She turned the two A4 sheets round on the desk for Falcón to look at.

The first shot showed Marty off to the left of the frame, sitting on a bench by the river. He was not the focus of the shot. The man sitting next to him was a stranger to both Marty and Falcón.

'The second shot is a blow-up of the background of a larger shot,' said Ferrera.

In this shot Marty Krugman was turned sideways on the bench and was talking to a man Falcón immediately recognized as Mark Flowers.

'And these are off the hard disk?' said Falcón. 'No film negatives?'

She handed over a CD in its box.

'She used two cameras. If she saw something she thought she liked she used 35 mm film. If she was just snapping people generally she used a digital camera.

The only record of these two shots are on this CD and in her laptop.'

'I can see this took a lot of hard, boring work.'

'I know it would have been better to have had negatives,' she said.

'This is good enough,' said Falcón. 'None of this is going to end up in court. Where's Inspector Ramírez?'

'He's downstairs, setting up the interrogation rooms,' said Ferrera. 'He's very excited. He found something good in the arsonist's apartment.'

'I want you to take this to the lab,' said Falcón, handing her the used razor blade he'd found in the finca. 'There are bristles on the blades. It's a long shot, but I want them to run a DNA test on it and make a comparison with Rafael Vega.'