Robert Wilson - The Silent and the Damned

‘I don’t think he liked his father that much.’

‘So he did give you some personal revelations?’

‘Over the last…nearly twenty years I’ve gleaned some small pieces of information. His father being hard on his only son was one of them. A favourite punishment was to make his son work in the cold store in just a shirt. Rafael suffered from arthritis in his shoulders, which he put down to that early treatment.’

‘Perhaps butchery gives him a sense of control. I mean, not just because he’s good at it but because he’s reducing something large and unmanageable down to comprehensible and usable pieces,’ said Falcón. ‘And that’s the work of the constructor. He takes the vast and complex architect’s plans and dismantles them into a series of jobs involving steel, concrete, bricks and mortar.’

‘I think the few people who knew about his hobby found it more…sinister.’

‘The idea of the urbane businessman hacking his way down the spine of a dead beast?’ said Falcón. ‘I suppose, there is a certain brutality to the work.’

‘A lot of people who had dealings with Sr Vega thought they knew him,’ said Vázquez. ‘He understood what made people tick and he had learnt how to charm. He had an instinct for a person’s strengths and weaknesses. He made men feel interesting and powerful, and women, mysterious and beautiful. It was shocking to see how well it worked. I realized some time ago that I didn’t know him…at all. It meant that he trusted me, but only with his business, not with his private thoughts.’

‘You were his testigo, that’s a little more than a business relationship.’

‘You know there was a business element to his relationship with Lucía…or rather Lucía’s family.’

‘They had land?’ asked Falcón.

‘He made them very wealthy people,’ said Vázquez, nodding.

‘And not very inquisitive about his mysterious past?’

‘I only wanted to show you that being his testigo did not imply a more intimate relationship…’

‘Than he had with his wife?’

‘You’ll be talking to Lucía’s parents, I’m sure,’ said Vázquez.

‘How was he with his son, Mario?’

‘He loved his son. The child was very important to him.’

‘It seems odd that he should have waited until he was over fifty before starting a family.’

Silence, while Vázquez riffled through his lawyerly mind.

‘I can’t help you there, Inspector Jefe,’ he said.

‘But I’m making you think.’

‘I mentioned the death certificate. I was just going over other conversations.’

‘You met him when he was nearly forty years old. He had money enough to buy land.’

‘He had to borrow as well.’

‘Still, someone of that generation, with that sort of money, would normally have a family.’

‘You know, he never talked about his life, that part of it before he and I met.’

‘Apart from his father’s butchery business.’

‘And that only came up because of the planning permission needed to build this room when he renovated the house. I saw the drawings. It needed an explanation.’

‘When was that?’

‘Twelve years ago,’ said Vázquez. ‘But I didn’t get the full family history.’

‘He told you how he was punished by his father.’

‘It was just fragments. There was no major discussion.’

Felipe, the older of the two forensics, put his head round the door.

‘Do you want to talk about this now, Inspector Jefe?’

Falcón nodded. Vázquez gave him his card and the house keys and said he’d be in Seville for at least another week before the August holidays. As he turned to leave he told Falcón to open the door on the other side of the butcher’s room. It gave on to the garage, in which there was a brand-new silver Jaguar.

‘He took delivery of that last week, Inspector Jefe,’ said Vázquez. ‘ Hasta luego. ’

Falcón joined the forensics in the kitchen. Felipe was watching Jorge working his way around the foot of the kitchen units.

‘What have we got?’ asked Falcón.

‘Nothing so far,’ said Felipe. ‘The floor has been recently cleaned.’

‘The work surfaces?’

‘No, there are prints all over those. It’s just the floor,’ said Felipe. ‘You’d have thought with a litre of drain cleaner in his guts he’d have gone into convulsions. You ever had gallstone trouble, Inspector Jefe?’

‘Fortunately not,’ he said, but he caught the glimmer of horror in Felipe’s eye. ‘Don’t they say it’s the closest a male can get to the pain of childbirth?’

‘I told my wife that and she reminded me both her babies were nearly four kilos each and that a gallstone is about nine grammes.’

‘There’s very little sympathy in the pain stakes,’ said Falcón.

‘I thrashed around on the bathroom floor like a lunatic. There should be latent prints everywhere.’

‘Fingerprints on the bottle?’

‘One set, very strong and clear…which is surprising, too. I wouldn’t have thought Sr Vega would buy his own drain cleaner. There should be others.’

‘It must have been doctored with something stronger, or with poison, or he must have taken pills. Conventional drain cleaner would take some time, wouldn’t it?’

‘Strange way to do it, if you ask me,’ said Jorge, from the foot of the kitchen units.

‘Well, I think this points to what we all saw when we first took a look at the crime scene,’ said Falcón.

‘It didn’t look right,’ said Felipe.

‘I thought it was “off”, too,’ said Jorge.

‘Nothing you can put your finger on?’ said Falcón.

‘It’s always the same with these scenes,’ said Felipe. ‘It’s what’s missing that matters. I took one look at the floor and thought: No, I’m getting nothing from that.’

‘Did you hear about the note?’

‘Weird,’ said Jorge. ‘“…the thin air you breathe…” what’s that?’

‘Sounds pure,’ said Falcón.

‘And the 9/11 stuff?’ asked Jorge. ‘We’re a long way from New York.’

‘He was probably bankrolling al-Qaeda,’ said Felipe.

‘Don’t joke about it,’ said Jorge. ‘Anything can happen these days.’

‘All I know is that this is wrong,’ said Felipe. ‘Not so wrong that I’m totally convinced that he was murdered, but wrong enough to make me suspicious.’

‘The position of the bottle?’ asked Falcón.

‘Had it been me, I’d have drunk it and flung it across the room,’ said Jorge. ‘There should be droplets everywhere.’

‘And there aren’t any, except at the point where the bottle lay just over a metre from the body.’

‘But there are some drops?’

‘Yes, they’ve dripped from the neck of the bottle.’

‘Any between the body and the bottle?’

‘No,’ said Felipe, ‘which again is odd, but not…impossible.’

‘Just as he could have thrashed around on the floor wiping away any latents and droplets with his dressing gown?’

‘Ye-e-es,’ said Felipe, unconvinced.

‘Give me some conjecture, Felipe. I know you hate it, but just give me some.’

‘We only deal in facts here,’ said Felipe, ‘because facts are the only things that stand up in court. Right, Inspector Jefe?’

‘Come on, Felipe.’

‘I’ll say it,’ said Jorge, getting to his feet. ‘We all know what’s missing from this crime scene and that is…a person. We’re not sure what they did, or whether they were involved even. We just know that somebody was here.’

‘So we have a phantom,’ said Falcón. ‘Any of you believe in ghosts?’

‘Now they really don’t go down well in a court of law,’ said Felipe.