The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'He was not often at home with Lucia. She would go to bed before he arrived back from whatever he was doing and sometimes he would be gone by the time she woke up,' said Sr Cabello. 'So there was that, and the way he had always been with our daughter.'

'His neighbours said that Mario appeared to be very ' important to him.'

'That is true. He was very fond of the boy… and Lucia found it difficult to cope with his energy as that puta of a disease took hold of her mind,' said Cabello. 'No, I don't say that he was all bad, and certainly he would not have appeared bad to an outsider. He understood the necessity for charm. It was only by living close to him that you saw his true nature.'

'When did you spend time with him?'

'On holidays down at the coast. He was supposed to be relaxed then, but in many ways he was worse. Constant company made him uneasy. I think the idea of family made him sick.'

'Do you know what happened to his parents?'

'He said they were killed in a car accident when he was nineteen years old.'

'You know more than his lawyer.'

'He wouldn't tell Carlos Vazquez that sort of thing.'

'He told him that his father had been a butcher,' said Falcon. 'And how he used to punish him.'

'You've seen the room he has in his house,' said Cabello. 'He gave Carlos Vazquez an explanation. He never told me what his father had done to him. You see, he is not a normal man. He is at heart a suspicious man, because he believes that people are like he is himself.'

'Lucia didn't like the butchery?'

'That only started after Mario was born. Before then she didn't mind.'

'Were you surprised that she wanted to marry him?'

'It was a difficult time.'

They were stopped at a traffic light. An African boy walked between the cars, hatless in the full sun, selling newspapers. Sr Cabello seemed to need movement to get himself talking. The lights changed.

'As I told you, Lucia was a beautiful woman,' said Cabello, embarking on a story that he'd built inside himself over years. 'There was no shortage of men who wanted to marry her… and she married a man whose father had a large farm outside Cordoba. They went to live in a house on the farm and they were very happy, until Lucia did not conceive. She went for tests. They told her that there was nothing wrong with her and that perhaps they should consider IVF. The husband refused. Lucia always thought that he was afraid to find that he had a problem. Things were said in the heat of the moment that could not be undone and the marriage was dissolved. Lucia came back to live with us. She was twenty-eight years old by now and had missed out on the best of her generation.

'I still owned these pieces of agricultural land in and around Seville. They weren't big pieces of land, but some of them were strategic – without them an area could not be successfully developed. A lot of developers knocked on my door and one of the most persistent was a nameless person represented by Carlos Vazquez.

'Lucia had been working for the Banco de Bilbao. They had a caseta at the Feria de Abril every year. Lucia was a beautiful dancer. She lived for the Feria de Abril and went every night, all night. She looked forward to that time of year. It was a week in which she could forget about all her problems and be herself. That's where she met him. He was an important client at the bank.'

'He was twenty years older than her,' said Falcon.

'She'd missed out on her own generation. All the eligible men were taken. She had no interest in what was left. Then an important man took an interest in her. Her superiors at the bank were happy about it. They started to take notice of her. She was promoted. He was already wealthy. He had found his place in the world. There was certainty with him. All these things were very seductive to someone who thought they'd been left on the shelf.'

'What did you think?'

'We told her to make sure that a man of that age still wanted to have a family.'

'Were you surprised that he hadn't been married before?'

'But he had been married before, Inspector Jefe.'

'Yes, I forgot, Sr Vazquez mentioned a death certificate that had to be supplied.'

'We know only that she came from Mexico City. She might have been Mexican, but we're not sure. As always with Rafael, we were told the minimum that was relevant to us.'

'Were you concerned that his reticence was because of a criminal past?'

'Well now, Inspector Jefe, you have uncovered my shame. I was prepared to overlook his reticence. My financial circumstances then were not like they are now. I had land, but no job. Capital, but no income. Rafael Vega solved those difficulties for me. He made me a partner in a business that paid a large sum of money for several plots of my land. We built apartments financed by the Banco de Bilbao and rented them out. He made me wealthy and gave me an income. That's how an old farmer like me lives in a penthouse in El Porvenir.'

'What did Sr Vega get out of it, apart from your daughter's hand in marriage?'

'One of the other plots I sold to him separately was the key that unlocked a very large development for him in Triana. And there was a second plot, which one of his competitors wanted very badly. When that plot came into Rafael's hands they had to sell out to him. It meant that he could be more generous to me than any other developer.'

'So, he didn't have to marry your daughter?' said Falcon. 'He was offering you a very sweet deal anyway.'

'I have the mentality of a farmer. That land was only going to go to someone who would marry my eldest daughter. I am old-fashioned and Rafael is a traditionalist. He knew the key to unlock the problem. His meeting of Lucia was no accident. It is my shame that

I allowed the business to cloud my judgement of the man. I had no idea how cold a brute he would be to her.'

'Was he violent?'

'Never. If he had beaten her, that would have been the end of it,' said Cabello. 'He reduced her. I mean he… this is difficult… he was reluctant to perform his marital duties. He implied it was her fault, that she was not making herself attractive to him.'

'One thing… did the death certificate of his previous wife give a cause of death?'

'Accidental. He told us she drowned in a swimming pool.'

'Did he have any children from this previous marriage?'

'He said not. He said he wanted children… so it was strange that he didn't want to do what was necessary to make them happen.'

'Did you know of any previous relationships here, before he met Lucia?'

'No. Lucia hadn't heard of any either.'

Falcon took out the plastic sachet containing the partial photograph of the girl that Vega had burnt at the bottom of the garden.

'Do you recognize this person?'

Cabello put on glasses, shook his head.

'She looks foreign to me,' he said.

They arrived at the Instituto on Avenida Sanchez Pizjuan and parked in the hospital grounds. Falcon found the Medico Forense, who showed them into the room for the body identification and left them there for a few minutes. Sr Cabello started to pace the room, nervous at what he'd let himself in for – his daughter dead on the slab. The Medico Forense returned and opened the curtains. Sr Cabello stumbled forwards and had to put a hand up on the glass to steady himself. With the fingers of his other hand he dug into his skull through his thinning hair as if he was trying to tear this unnatural image from his brain. He nodded and coughed against the violence of the emotion. Falcon drew him away from the glass. The Medico Forense supplied the paperwork and Sr Cabello put his signature to his daughter's death.

They went outside into the fierce heat and light whose savagery had sucked all colour from everything so that the trees seemed vague, buildings merged with the white sky and only dust looked as if it belonged in this place. Sr Cabello had shrunk in his suit; his thin neck, loose in its collar, jumped and gasped as he tried to swallow what he'd just seen. Falcon shook his hand and eased him into the car. Cristina Ferrera took the old man round to the hospital entrance. Falcon called Calderon and arranged a meeting for seven o'clock to discuss the autopsies.