The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'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 Falcon. 'Any of you believe in ghosts?'

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

Chapter 3

Wednesday, 24th July 2002

Consuelo Jimenez opened the door to Javier Falcon and led him down the corridor to her L-shaped sitting room overlooking a manicured lawn, whose greenness was lurid in the bleaching sunlight. The water in the blue pool, with its necklace of white tiles, trembled against its confinement pushing silky rhomboids towards the garden house, whose walls and roof were blasted by purple bougainvillea.

Falcon stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling sliding doors with his hands clasped behind his back, feeling self- consciously official. Consuelo sat on the sofa dressed in a tight cream silk skirt and a matching blouse. They were tense but oddly comfortable with each other.

'Do you like bougainvillea?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said, without thinking, 'it gives me hope.'

'I'm beginning to find it trite.'

'Perhaps you see too much of it here in Santa Clara,' said Falcon. 'And framed by these windows it looks like a painting that says nothing.'

'I could have a man endlessly diving naked into the pool and call it my Hockney vivant,' she said. 'Can I get you anything? I've made some iced tea.'

He nodded and looked at her figure as she went to the kitchen. His blood stirred at the sight of the muscles in her calves. He glanced around the room. There was a single painting on the wall of a large cerise canvas with a dark blue widening stripe diagonally across it. The surfaces of tables and a sideboard contained photographs of her children – individuals and grouped. Apart from a dark blue sofa which turned a right angle with the L-shaped room and an armchair there was little else. He turned back to the facile garden thinking that she'd mentioned Hockney because this barrio, in the incessant sunshine, was much more like California than Andalucia.

Consuelo Jimenez handed him an iced tea and pointed him into the armchair. She lounged on the sofa, nodding her foot at him, her low-heeled sandal hanging from her toes.

'It doesn't feel like Spain out here,' said Falcon.

'You mean we're not falling over each other like a basket of puppies.'

'It's quiet.'

They sat in silence for a moment – no traffic, no church bells ringing, no whistling, no handclapping down the streets.

'Double-glazing,' she said. 'And I live with noise all the time in the restaurants. I live my Spanish life three times over while I'm there so when I'm out here it's like… the afterlife. I'd have thought you'd be the same, doing what you do.'

'I prefer to be in the midst of things these days,' said Falcon. 'I've done my time in limbo.'

'I'm sure in that massive house of your father's you don't exactly feel in… I mean, not your father… Sorry.'

'I still refer to Francisco Falcon as my father. It's a forty-seven-year habit which I haven't been able to break.'

'You've changed, Inspector Jefe.'

'Call me Javier.'

'Your style is different.'

'I cut my hair. I've given up suits. There's been a relaxation of standards.'

'You're not so intense,' she said.

'Oh, I am. I've just realized that people don't like it, so I hide it. I've learnt to keep smiling.'

'I had a friend whose mother gave her the advice: 'Keep moving, keep smiling.' It works,' said Consuelo. 'We live in an age of glibness, Javier. When was the last time you had a serious conversation?'

'I have them all the time.'

'With someone other than yourself.'

'I've been seeing a clinical psychologist.'

'Of course you have, after what you've been through,' she said. 'But that's not conversation, is it?'

'Very little of it,' he said. 'Sometimes it's like an absurd self-indulgence, other times vomiting.'

She snatched at the cigarettes on the table, lit one up and sank back satisfied.

'I'm annoyed with you,' she said, pointing at him with the lit cigarette. 'You never called me and we were supposed to have dinner… remember?'

'You moved house.'

'Does that mean you tried?'

'I haven't had much time,' he said, smiling.

'Smiling doesn't work with me,' she said. 'I know what it means. You'll have to learn some new strategies.'

'Things have been coming to a head,' he said.

'In the therapy?'

'Yes, that, and I have legal problems with my sister Manuela. My half sister.'

'She's the acquisitive one, I seem to remember.'

'You've read all the scandal.'

'You'd have to have been in a coma to avoid it,' she said. 'So what does Manuela want?'

'Money. She wanted me to write a book about my life with Francisco, including all the journals, and my take on the murder case that brought it all to light. Or rather she wanted me to work with her journalist boyfriend, who would ghost the book for me. I refused. She got angry. Now she's working on proving that I'm not the rightful heir to Francisco Falcon's house, that I am not his son… You see how it goes.'

'You have to fight her.'

'She has very different mental processes. She thinks how Francisco used to think, which was probably why he never liked her,' said Falcon. 'She's a manipulator and a public relations expert which, combined with her energy, ambition and wallet, is lethal.'

'I'll buy the dinner.'

'It's not that bad. It's just something that adds to the background pressure of life.'

'What you need is some foreground pleasure, Javier,' she said. 'That brother of yours, the bull breeder, Paco. Is he any help to you?'

'We get on well. There's been no change there, but this kind of thing is not his strength. He needs Manuela, too. She's his vet and one word to the authorities about any possible threat of BSE in his herd and he'd be finished.'

'You are remarkably sane.'

Thank you,' he said, and decided not to tell her that it was probably the drugs.

'But, having disdained it, I now think you are in need of some glibness and fun.'

Silence. Falcon tapped his notebook. A sad inevitability compressed her lips. She smoked it away.

'Bring on the questions, Inspector Jefe,' she said, beckoning him to her.

'You can still call me Javier.'

'Well, Javier, at least you've learnt a few things.'