He went back into the chill of the morgue. He sat with the Medico Forense in his office, the two autopsy reports open on the desk. The doctor puffed on a Ducados whose smoke was sucked up into the air conditioning unit and spat out into the crushing heat.
'Let's start with the easy one,' said the doctor. 'Sra Vega was suffocated to death by the application of a pillow over her face. She was probably unconscious while this was happening, due to a severe slap across the face which dislocated her jaw. It's probable that the heel of the hand made contact with her chin.'
The Medico Forense gave an unintentionally comical slow-motion replay of the blow, his cheek, jowl and lips shunting to one side into a slobbery air kiss.
. 'Very graphic, Doctor,' said Falcon, smiling.
'Sorry, Inspector Jefe,' he said, more self-conscious now. 'You know how it is. Long days in the company of dead people. The heat. The holidays nearly, nearly there. The family already at the coast. I forget who I'm with sometimes.'
'It's all right, carry on, Doctor. You're helping me,' said Falcon. 'What about time of death? It's important for us to know if she died before or after Sr Vega.'
'I'm not going to be much help to you on that. Their deaths occurred within the same hour. Their body temperatures were nearly the same. Sra Vega was only slightly warmer. The ambient temperatures were the same in the kitchen and the bedroom, but Sr Vega was lying bare chested on a tiled floor while his wife was in bed with her face under a pillow. I wouldn't be able to stand up in court and say with any conviction that she'd died after her husband.'
'All right, what about Sr Vega?'
'He died directly as a result of the ingestion of a corrosive liquid. Cause of death was a combination of effects on his vital organs. He'd suffered renal failure, liyer and lung damage… It was a real mess in there. The composition of what he ingested is interesting. I seem to remember it was a regular brand of drain cleaner…'
'That's right: Harpic.'
'Well, normally those gels are a mixture of caustic soda and disinfectant. The caustic element would be about a third of the contents. Of course, that would do your system no good at all, but it would take time
for it to kill a grown man in good health. This product killed him in less than quarter of an hour because it had been powerfully boosted with hydrochloric acid.'
'How easy is that to get hold of?'
'Any hardware store would sell it to you under the name of muriatic acid. It's used for cleaning cement off paving stones, for instance.'
'We'll check his garage,' said Falcon, making a note. 'There's no going back once you've ingested something that strong?'
'Irreparable damage would be done to the throat, digestive tract and, in this case, the lungs as well.'
'How did it get into the lungs?'
'It's very difficult to tell what damage was caused by force or violence and what was caused by the corrosiveness of the liquid. I would say that he, or someone else, had rammed the bottle down his throat. Under those circumstances some of the liquid would inevitably find its way into the lungs. There's evidence of corrosive action in the nasal passages, so product was being coughed up. With the mouth occupied by the bottle the only way out was via the nose.'
'You seem to think he could have accomplished this on his own.'
'I have to say that's doubtful.'
'But not impossible?'
'If you were going to kill yourself in this horrible way I imagine that you would try and put yourself beyond rescue by making sure you ingested as much of the product as possible in the first moments. I think there would be a certain amount of nervousness involved, too… and that would cause you to ram the neck of the bottle down your throat. That of course would also set off the gagging mechanism. I think it would be a messy business, unless there was someone holding the bottle in place and holding the victim steady as well.'
'The floor was clean apart from some droplets close to the neck of the bottle.'
'There was spotting on his chest and clothes, but nothing like the quantities you'd expect if he gagged and spurted it out all over.'
'Any evidence of holding – marks on arms, wrist, neck, head?'
'Nothing on the wrists. There are burn marks on the arms in the crooks of his elbows, but the dressing gown had slipped down and it's possible that happened as he writhed in agony on the floor. There are marks on the head and neck, and claw marks on the throat. I would say they are self-inflicted. He had product on his hands. But the marks could just as easily have been made by someone holding him in a kind of neck lock.'
'You know what I'm trying to do here, Doctor,' said Falcon. 'I've got to go back to Juez Calderon and show him conclusive proof that someone else was in the room with Sr Vega, who was responsible for his death. If I can't do that there may well be no murder inquiry. Now, if I'm not mistaken, you think, like me and the forensics, that it was probably murder.'
'But conclusive proof of another party's presence is more difficult,' said the Medico Forense.
'Is there anything that would link Sr Vega to the death of his wife?'
'I didn't find anything. Sr Vega had only his own tissue under his fingernails from clawing at his throat.'
'Anything else?'
'What's the psychological profile of the victims?'
'She was suffering from mental illness,' said Falcon. 'He doesn't seem to have been suicidal, but there are questionable aspects to his mental state.'
Falcon gave a brief resume of what he'd been told by Dr Rodriguez and how disturbed Vega had been since the beginning of the year.
'I see what you mean,' said the Medico Forense. 'This could go either way.'
'To balance that, the victim had a 9mm handgun, a surveillance system he didn't use and bulletproof windows.'
'Expecting trouble.'
'Or just a nervous, wealthy person close to the Poligono San Pablo.'
'And the unused surveillance system?'
'Nerves again,' said Falcon. 'Maybe his mentally ill wife was paranoid. She showed off to her neighbours about the windows. Or possibly Vega himself wanted to discourage outsiders but not leave a record of people who came to the house.'
'Because he's involved in something criminal?'
'A neighbour saw some Russian visitors who didn't look like they'd come from the Bolshoi.'
'There's plenty of talk about the Russian mafia these days, especially down on the Costa del Sol, but I didn't know they'd reached Seville,' said the Medico Forense.
'This is a nasty way to die, isn't it, Doctor?'
'Revenge or punishment, maybe an example to others. What about his sex life?'
'His father-in-law says he was reluctant to perform his marital duties… ever, even before his wife got depressed. The mother-in-law reckoned he was having an affair which went wrong, which was why he'd been so withdrawn since the beginning of the year,' said Falcon. 'Is there anything else I should know?'
'Just one curious thing. He's had some cosmetic surgery done to his eyes and neck. Nothing extraordinary, just bags removed from under the eyes, and skin removed from the neck to tighten up and reveal the jawline.'
'Everybody's having cosmetic surgery these days.'
'That's true, and this is the curious thing. The work is pretty old. Difficult to say exactly how old, but more than ten years.'
Chapter 9
On the way back to the Jefatura Falcon drove while Ferrera read the autopsy reports. It was lunch time, the
