‘What age group are we looking at?’
‘Take it up to forty-five just to be safe … as long as they’re fit and healthy,’ said Falcon. ‘Do you know anybody in Vice who would look through that material on Salgado’s computer and give us an opinion on where it’s come from?’
Ramirez nodded, always a man who built up favours. They ran through Sergio’s profile just to be sure. Falcon turned at the stairs as he was leaving.
‘If Greta knows anybody on that shortlist who has had any kind of French education, or spent time in France or North Africa, highlight them.’
Falcon stepped over the police tape at Salgado’s house and let himself in. The house was empty and, devoid of the activity of the crime scene, lifeless. There wasn’t even any sadness. There was just the sterility of a man of borrowed tastes. The walls had been repainted downstairs. There was no bric-a-brac, no photographs, no clutter. The furniture was all clean lines. Only one painting hung in the living room, an almost colourless acrylic abstract. In the study, in the middle of the bookcase, was the only photograph on display — Francisco Falcon and Ramon Salgado, arms around each other, smiling.
He went upstairs to the room at the top, which gave out on to the small roof terrace, where they believed Sergio had got in. Felipe and Jorge had left the room exactly as they’d found it. Even the key to the door was still on the floor where it had originally been. He blinked at it and called Felipe on his mobile and asked him where he’d left the key.
‘We put it back in the door rather than risk having it kicked about on the floor,’ he said.
‘In that case … he’s been back,’ said Falcon.
‘Where was the key?’
‘On the floor by the door where we first found it,’ said Falcon. ‘Why would anyone come back to the scene of the crime, Felipe?’
‘Because they’d left something there?’ said Felipe.
‘That means he’s lost something,’ said Falcon, and a high palm in the neighbouring garden swayed in the breeze and rattled its leaves. The hairs came up on Falcon’s neck and he listened hard. He wouldn’t still be here? Not in daylight. He began a slow methodical search of the house. It was empty. He went back to the room where Salgado’s body had been found. He stood in front of the desk and replayed the scene in his imagination.
Salgado came round as Sergio was stuffing the socks back into his mouth. He bit him. Sergio retaliated by hitting him three times in the face. Then he pulled back, holding his wounded thumb or forefinger. Where would he go? The kitchen was the nearest place. He went to the sink where he tore off the latex glove and washed the wound. He was probably in a panic and still bleeding with nothing to cover the cut, no plasters around here.
Kitchen roll. He’d have torn off a piece of kitchen roll, covered the wound and gone up to the bathroom. He’d be rattled by now, his nerve not quite as solid as it had been before. He might have been angry, too. He’d have wanted to finish the thing and get out as fast as possible. So he’d go back to Salgado, set up the terrible contraption, make his phone call and watch him die. Then he’d leave, fast.
Why did he call this morning? Was he worried? When did he end the call? When I asked him about his thumb. Did that give him the answer? It must have done. He knew that I didn’t know it had been his finger.
Images shunted in Falcon’s brain. Reels of memory unspooled their secrets. His mother coming in to the bathroom to wash him in his bath, rub his back with soap. She was all ready to go out to a party. She took off her rings and set them in a seashell on the edge of the bath.
Falcon went back to the sink in the kitchen. He understood it now. That was how Salgado hung on for three punches to the face. The ring was giving him purchase. He must have dragged the ring over the knuckle and when Sergio stripped off the torn glove it fell in the sink. Or did it? It was a stainless-steel sink. The noise of a metal ring hitting the sink, that would have drawn his attention — but if it went straight down the plug hole … He put his fingers to the hole. It had a rubber flap surrounding it. No noise. It would have gone straight down into the waste- disposal unit. He took out his pen torch. There was nothing visible in the hole. He called Felipe again and asked him about the sink, which the forensic admitted to giving only a visual inspection.
There was an unused box of tools in a cupboard under the stairs. In forty minutes Falcon had disconnected the waste-disposal unit and removed it whole. He drove it round to the Jefatura. Felipe and Jorge were still working. They cracked open the unit’s housing and dismantled the grinders, which seemed to be jammed. They scraped out all the vegetable matter on to a sheet of glass and Jorge teased it all apart and there it was: one silver ring, mangled.
‘He must have tried to get it out,’ said Felipe. ‘Failed, decided to mangle it and that seized up the unit. Then he’d have had to face stripping it down, so he left it.’
‘Can you straighten it out, see what it looks like?’ said Falcon.
Felipe set to work and almost immediately asked Jorge to go back to the vegetable matter in the waste unit. He’d found evidence of a setting, which meant that a stone must be missing.
‘The odd thing about this,’ said Felipe, ‘is that I’m sure that this was a woman’s ring originally. Look —’
He had the ring under a microscope and when Falcon looked down it he pointed to the band of the ring.
‘A different quality of silver has been used to enlarge it,’ said Felipe. ‘You can see where it’s been cut and the new metal inserted. It’s been well done. The only difference is in the colour of the silver.’
‘What do you know about silver?’
Felipe shook his head. Jorge announced he’d found the stone. It was a small sapphire. They mounted the ring on some plasticine and laid the stone in its setting.
‘That is a woman’s ring, no doubt about it,’ said Felipe.
‘Why does a man wear a woman’s ring?’
‘A lover?’ said Felipe.
‘If a woman gave you a ring as a token, would you wear it? Would you go to the trouble of enlarging it and wearing it?’ asked Falcon.
