Robert Wilson - The Silent and the Damned

‘Unless he was a madman,’ said Vázquez. ‘One of those serial killers laying down a challenge.’

‘Well, first of all, there’s no challenge. A half-note in Sr Vega’s handwriting is not what I would call a psychotic attempt to communicate. It’s too oblique. Secondly, the crime scene does not contain any of the qualities we associate with a psychopathic killer. They are the sort of people who think about body placement for instance. They introduce elements of their obsessions into the picture. They show that they have been here, that an intricate mind has been at work. There’s nothing casual about a serial killer’s montage. A bottle of drain cleaner is not left where it fell. Everything has importance.’

‘So what normal person would kill a man and his wife and want to have it investigated?’ asked Vázquez.

‘A murderer who had good reason to hate Sr Vega and wanted him to be revealed for the man he was,’ said Falcón. ‘As you may know, murder inquiries are very intrusive processes. To find the motive we have to conduct a post mortem, not just on the body but on the victim’s life. We have to go into everything – business, social, public, private and as personal as we can get. Perhaps Sr Vega himself…’

‘But, Inspector Jefe, you can never get inside a man’s head, can you?’ said Sr Vázquez.

‘The other possibility is that Sr Vega himself is trying to communicate with us. By balling this note in his fist he may be telling us to investigate the crime.’

‘You didn’t let me finish,’ said Vázquez. ‘The one thing my job has taught me is the three voices of man: the public one to address the world, the private one he keeps for his family and friends, and the most troubling one of all – the voice inside his own head. The one he uses to talk to himself. Successful people like Sr Vega have very powerful inner voices and something I’ve noticed about that kind of person…he never lets anybody have access to it – not his parents, not his wife, not his first-born child.’

‘That’s not the point –’ said Falcón.

‘The point is that we get insights,’ said Calderón, cutting in. ‘A man’s actions, the way he behaves with people…different people, it all tells us something about him.’

‘In my experience, they tell you what he wants you to think,’ said Vázquez. ‘Let me show you something about Sr Vega and you give me your insight. Can we walk across this kitchen floor yet?’

Felipe and Jorge were brought in to check and clear a corridor across the kitchen floor. Falcón gave Vázquez a pair of latex gloves. They crossed the kitchen to a door on the other side which opened on to a room whose three walls were made up of floor-to-ceiling stainless steel fridges. Hanging on the clear wall was an impressive array of knives, choppers and saws. The white tiles of the floor were pristine and gave off the faint smell of a pine detergent. In the middle of the room was a wooden table with a top thirty centimetres thick. Its bleached surface was a crosshatching of cuts and notches with a declivity in the middle, its edge furred from constant use. Falcón felt a strange sense of dread looking at that table.

‘And this is where he keeps the bodies, is it, Sr Vázquez?’ asked Calderón.

‘Look in the fridges and freezers,’ said the lawyer. ‘They’re full of bodies.’

Calderón opened a fridge door. Inside was a half-carcass of beef with hooves removed. The visible meat was a deep, dark red, almost black in parts where it wasn’t pearled with membrane or covered in thick, creamy yellow fat. The fridges on either side contained several lambs and a pink pig. The latter’s head had been removed and hung on a hook, ears stiff, eyes closed with long white lashes making it look at restful sleep. The other doors opened on to freezers with cuts of frozen meat packaged and stored in baskets or just thrown into the dark frosty depths.

‘What do you make of that?’ asked Vázquez.

‘He wasn’t a vegetarian,’ said Calderón.

‘He enjoyed butchering his own meat,’ said Falcón. ‘Where did he get it from?’

‘From specialized farms up in the Sierra de Aracena,’ said Vázquez. ‘He didn’t think there was a single butcher in Seville who had the first idea about handling meat, neither hanging it nor cutting it up.’

‘Does that mean he used to be a butcher?’ asked Falcón. ‘Do you know when and where that was?’

‘All I know is that his father used to be a butcher before he was killed.’

‘Before he was killed? What does that mean? He was murdered or –?’

‘That was the expression he used to describe the death of his parents. “They were killed.” He never offered an explanation and I didn’t ask for one.’

‘How old was Sr Vega?’

‘Fifty-eight years old.’

‘So, born in 1944…five years after the Civil War ended. They didn’t die in wartime,’ said Falcón. ‘You don’t know when they were killed?’

‘Is this relevant, Inspector Jefe?’ asked Vázquez.

‘We’re building a picture of the victim’s life. It would have had a significant effect on Sr Vega’s mental state if, say, they died in a car accident when he was still a boy. If they were murdered, that would be something else altogether. That leaves unanswered questions and, especially if there was no retribution, it could breed a determination, not necessarily to find out why, which could be beyond his capabilities, but to prove something to himself. To find out who he was in this world.’

‘My God, Inspector Jefe, ‘said Vázquez, ‘perhaps it’s your own experience that’s made you so eloquent on the matter but I’m sorry I can’t help you with that kind of information. I’m sure there are records…’

‘How long have you known him?’ asked Calderón.

‘Since 1983.’

‘Was that here…in Seville?’

‘He wanted to buy a plot of land. It was his first project.’

‘And what had he been doing before that?’ asked Falcón. ‘Butchery doesn’t buy you very much land.’

‘I didn’t ask him. He was my first client. I was twenty-eight years old. I didn’t want to do or ask anything that might lose me the work.’

‘So his background didn’t bother you – the possibility that he might rip you off?’ asked Falcón. ‘How did you meet?’

‘He came in off the street one day. You probably don’t know this about business, Inspector Jefe, but you have to take risks. If you want to be sure about everything you don’t set up your own practice…you work for the State.’

‘Did he have an accent?’ asked Falcón, ignoring the slight.

‘He spoke in Andaluz, but it didn’t sound as if he was born to it. He’d been abroad. I know he spoke American English, for instance.’

‘You didn’t question him about any of that?’ asked Falcón. ‘I mean, over lunch or a beer, not in an interrogation room.’

‘Look, Inspector Jefe, I just wanted the man’s business. I didn’t want to marry him.’

The Médico Forense put his head round the door to say he was going upstairs to look at Sra Vega’s body. Calderón went with him.

‘Was Sr Vega married when you first met him?’ asked Falcón.

‘No,’ said Vázquez. ‘There were no divorce proceedings, although I think he produced a death certificate of a previous spouse. You’ll have to ask Lucía’s parents.’

‘When did they marry?’

‘Eight…ten years ago, something like that.’

‘Were you invited?’

‘I was his testigo. ’

‘A trusted man in every respect,’ said Falcón.

‘What do you make of my client’s hobby?’ asked Vázquez, wanting to take back control of the interview.

‘His parents “were killed”. His father was a butcher,’ said Falcón. ‘Perhaps this is his way of keeping a memory alive.’