was a litre of drain cleaner.
Falcon backed away down the corridor and checked the downstairs rooms. The dining room was ultra modern. The table was a thick single sheet of opaque green glass mounted on two stainless steel arches. It was fully laid for ten people. The chairs were white, the floor was white, the walls and light fixtures were also white. In the chill of the air conditioning the dining experience must have been like the inside of a fridge, without the clutter of butter trays and old food. It did not seem to Falcon that any entertaining had ever taken place in this room.
The living room by comparison was like the inside of a confused person's head. Every surface was covered in bric-a-brac – souvenirs from around the world. Falcon saw holidays in which Vega obsessively filmed with the latest technology while his wife devastated the tourist shops. On the mid section of the sofa was a cordless phone, a box of chocolates with half a tray uneaten and three remotes for satellite, DVD and video. On the floor was a pair of pink fluffy slippers. The lights were off, as was the television.
Each of the stairs up to the bedrooms was made out of a slab of absolute black granite. He checked the glass- smooth surfaces as he moved slowly upwards. Nothing. The floor at the top of the stairs was made of black granite inlaid with diamonds of white marble. He was drawn to the door of the master bedroom. The double bed was occupied. A pillow lay over the face of the occupant whose arms lay outside the light duvet on the bed. There was a slim band of a wristwatch on an arm flung out as if reaching for help. A single visible foot had bright-red toenails. He went to the bedside and checked for a pulse while looking down on the two depressions in the pillow. Lucia Vega was dead, too.
There were three other rooms upstairs, all with bathrooms. One was empty, another had a double bed and the last belonged to Mario. The ceiling of the boy's room was painted with a night sky. An old, one-armed teddy bear lay face up on the bed.
Falcon reported the second dead body to Juez Calderon. The Medico Forense was kneeling by Sr Vega's side and working at prising his fingers apart.
'There seems to be a note in Sr Vega's right hand,' said Calderon. 'The body's cooled down quickly in the air con and I want him to get it out without tearing it. Any first thoughts, Inspector Jefe?'
'On the face of it, it looks like a suicide pact. He's smothered his wife and then drunk some drain cleaner, although that's a nasty, lingering way to kill yourself.'
'Pact? What makes you think there was an agreement?'
'I'm just saying that's what it looks like,' said Falcon. The fact that the little boy was left out of it might indicate some collusion. A mother wouldn't be able to bear the thought of the death of her own child.'
'And a father could?'
'It depends on the pressure. If there's the possibility of financial or moral disgrace he might not want his male child to see that or live with the knowledge of it. He would see killing him as a favour. Men have killed their entire families because they think they have failed them and that it's better nobody survives bearing their name and its shame.'
'But you have your doubts?' said Calderon.
'Suicide, whether it's a pact or not, is rarely a spontaneous thing and there are some spontaneous elements to this crime scene. First, the door was not securely locked. Consuelo Jimenez had called to say that Mario had fallen asleep so they were sure he wasn't going to return, but they didn't double lock the door.'
The door was shut, that was enough.'
'If you're about to do something unnatural you would put yourself behind locked doors to make absolutely certain there was no possibility of interruption. It's a psychological necessity. Serious suicides normally take full precautions.'
'What else?'
'The way everything has just been left here: the phone, the chocolates, the slippers. There seems to be a lack of premeditation.'
'Well, certainly on her part,' said Calderon.
That is a point, of course,' said Falcon.
'Drain cleaner?' said Calderon. 'Why would you take drain cleaner?'
'We may find there was something stronger than drain cleaner in the bottle,' said Falcon. 'The reason? Well, he could be meting out punishment to himself… you know, cleaning himself of all his sins. There's also the advantage of it being noiseless and, depending on what else he's taken, irrevocable, too.'
'Well, that does sound premeditated, Inspector Jefe. So there are both spontaneous and planned elements to these deaths.'
'All right… if they were lying on the bed together holding hands, dead, with a note pinned to his pyjamas then I'd be happy to treat it as suicide. As it stands, I would prefer to investigate the deaths as murder before deciding.'
'Perhaps the note in his hand will…' said Calderon. 'But strange to get dressed for bed before you… or is that another psychological necessity? Getting ready for the biggest sleep of all.'
'Let's hope he was the sort who left his security cameras on and the recorders loaded with tapes,' said Falcon, returning to the pragmatic. 'We should have a look in his study.'
They crossed the entrance hall and went down a corridor by the stairs. Vega's study was on the right with a view of the street. There was a leather chair tilted back behind a desk, with a framed poster of this year's bullfights held during the Feria de Abril hanging on the wall.
The desk was a large, empty, light-coloured piece of wood with a laptop and a telephone. Three drawers on castors sat underneath. Behind the door were four black filing cabinets and at the end of the room the recording equipment for the security cameras. There were no LEDs and the plugs were out of the wall sockets. Each recorder had an unused tape inside.
'This doesn't look good,' said Falcon.
The filing cabinets were all locked. He pulled at the mobile set of drawers under the desk. Locked. He went upstairs to the bedroom and found a walk-in closet, with his suits and shirts to the right and her dresses and a vast number of shoes (some worryingly similar) to the left. A tall set of drawers had a wallet, set of keys and some change on top.
One of the keys opened the drawers under the desk. There was nothing unusual in the top two, but as he pulled on the third drawer something at the back butted up against the ream of paper at the front. It was a handgun.
'I haven't seen many of these,' said Falcon. 'This is a Heckler & Koch 9 mm. You own one of these if you're expecting trouble.'
'If you had one of those,' said Calderon, 'would you drink a litre of drain cleaner or blow your brains out?'
'Given the choice…' said Falcon.
The lawyer appeared in the doorway, his dark brown eyes set hard in his head.
'You have no right -' he started.
'This is a murder investigation, Sr Vazquez,' said Falcon. 'Sra Vega is upstairs on the bed, she's been suffocated with a pillow. Any idea why your client should have one of these in his study?'
Vazquez blinked at the gun.
'Seville is one of those curious cities where the wealthy and privileged people of Santa Clara are separated from the drug-ridden disadvantaged ones of the Poligono San Pablo by a small barrio, the paper factory and the Calle de Tesalonica. I imagine he had it for his own protection.'
'Like the security cameras he didn't bother to switch on?' said Falcon.
Vazquez looked at the inert recorders. His mobile went off playing the first few bars of Carmen. The lawmen grinned at each other. Vazquez went down the hall. Calderon closed the door and Falcon knew what he'd suspected as he'd shaken the Juez's hand that morning – there was news and it was relevant to him.
'I wanted you to hear this from me,' said Calderon, 'and not the rumour machine in the Jefatura or the Edificio de los Juzgados.'
Falcon nodded, his larynx suddenly paralysed.
'Ines and I are getting married at the end of the summer,' said Calderon.
He'd known this was coming but the news still rooted him to the floor. It seemed like minutes before his feet, moving at the pace of a diver's on the ocean floor, brought him close enough to shake Calderon's hand. He thought about gripping the judge's shoulder in comradely fashion but the bitterness of his disappointment filled his mouth
