The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'Not all the work I do is about putting criminals behind bars, Pablo. We're servants of the people, too. That means I also try to help.'

'But can you help me with what's going on in here?' he said, tapping his forehead.

'You have to tell me first.'

'Do you know anything about dreams?' said Ortega.

'I have this one where I'm standing in a field with a cool wind blowing at the sweat on my face. I'm in an incredible rage and my hands are hurting. The palms are stinging and the backs of my fingers feel bruised. There's the sound of traffic and I find that my hands are causing me not physical pain but great personal distress. What do you make of that, Javier?'

'It sounds as if you've been hitting somebody.'

Ortega looked through him, suddenly deep in thought. Falcon said he'd let himself out, but there was no reaction. As Falcon reached the gate he realized that he'd forgotten to ask about Sergei. He went back but stopped at the corner of the house because Ortega was standing on the lawn with his hands reaching up to the sky. He sank to his knees. The dogs came out and snuffled around his thighs. He stroked them and held them to him. He was sobbing. Falcon backed away.

The Vegas' garage with its brand-new Jaguar was cleaner than Sergei's accommodation and Falcon knew that there wasn't going to be any muriatic acid anywhere near this car's paintwork. He went down the garden to the barbecue, thinking that Sergei must have had a place where he kept his gardening tools. There was nothing unplanned about this area of the garden. It had been built by a man who understood how to grill meat. Behind the barbecue area there was thick, almost tropical growth. He went round the back of Sergei's quarters and saw that there was a path into this jungle, which obscured a brick shed. He was furious that this hadn't appeared in Perez's report on his search of the garden.

He found a key in the garage and waded back through the thickening heat. The shed was full of sacks of charcoal and the usual barbecue paraphernalia. Sergei kept his tools at one end, along with some small quantities of building materials. On a shelf above there was paint and other liquids, one of which was an opened plastic bottle of muriatic acid with a centimetre left in the bottom. Falcon went back to the car for an evidence bag and used a pen through the loop handle to lift the bottle into it. As he worked, the light dimmed in the shed.

'You're on your own today, Inspector Jefe,' said Maddy Krugman, startling him.

She stood in the doorway, backlit. He could see every curve and crux of her figure through the diaphanous material of her dress. He looked down at her zebra- skin sandals. She leaned against the door jamb, arms folded.

'I prefer it that way, Sra Krugman,' he said.

'You look like a loner to me,' she said. 'Thinking things out, piecing things together. Building the picture in your head.'

'You're keeping a careful eye on me.'

'I'm bored,' she said. 'I can't go out to take my photographs in this heat. There's nobody around down at the river anyway.'

'Is your husband still working for Vega Construcciones?'

'Sr Vazquez and the finance people called him last night and said that he should continue to manage his projects,' she said. 'They don't seem to be pulling the plug… just yet. Would you like some coffee, Inspector Jefe?'

They walked out into the sunlight. She checked the contents of his evidence bag. He locked the shed.

'We can cut through here to our place,' she said, leading him towards a break in the hedge by Sergei's quarters.

Falcon went back to the house, put the evidence bag inside the garage and shut the door. He followed her through the hedge and up the garden to her house thinking about how he was going to introduce Reza Sangari into the mix.

He sat on the sofa in the chill of the living room while she made the coffee. Her sandals had low heels on them which clicked softly on the marble floor. Even out of the room there was still this subliminal sexual presence. She poured the coffee and lowered herself on to the other end of the sofa.

'You know what it feels like out here when I'm all on my own day after day?' she said. 'It feels like I'm in limbo. It's one of those weird incongruities of life that I've found my social life has improved one hundred per cent since Rafael died. He used to be just about our only guest. But now you come around and yesterday I spent some time with Esteban…'

'Juez Calderon?'

'Yes,' she said. 'He's a nice guy and very cultured, too.'

'When did you see him?'

'I ran into him in town in the morning and we met up later and had an evening together,' she said. 'He took me to some odd bars in the centre that I would never go into by myself. You know, those places with a thousand jamones hanging from the ceiling, sweating into those conical plastic cups over the heads of fat guys with their black hair combed back in brilliant rails, smoking cigars and adjusting their trousers every time a woman walks by'

'What time was that?'

'You can't stop being a detective, can you?' she said. 'It was about six until ten o'clock.'

She crossed her legs. Her dress slipped back towards her lap. She kicked the sandal off her foot.

'I saw that you had a show called 'Minute Lives',' said Falcon. 'What was that about?'

'Or 'Minute Lives',' she said, rolling her eyes. 'I never like that stupid title. It was my agent's idea. They like things to be catchy and commercial. I've got the book upstairs, if you'd like to see.'

She stood and flipped the hem of her dress out with her fingertips.

'It's OK, 'said Falcon, wanting to keep this on the ground floor. 'I just wanted to know the subject matter.'

She walked over to the sliding doors and put her hands up on the glass and looked out into the garden. Again the light streamed through her clothes. Falcon squirmed. Everything seemed to be calculated.

'They were shots of very ordinary people taken at work or in their homes. They were people in a big city with small lives and the shots were just clips of their life story – your imagination was supposed to do the rest.'

'I read a review of the show,' said Falcon. 'It was by somebody called Dan Fineman. He didn't seem to like it.'

He watched the back of her head, her neck and shoulders as his words crept into her mind. She was as still as a night animal with a host of predators. She turned suddenly and with an intake of breath came back for her coffee. She lit a cigarette and thumped her back into the sofa.

'Dan Fineman was an asshole I knew from high school. He always wanted to fuck me but he made my flesh crawl. He never aspired to anything greater than writing for the St Louis Times and when he got there he took his revenge.'

'He wrote another article about you,' said Falcon. 'You might not have seen it.'

'That was the only show I ever did in St Louis. First and last.'

'This wasn't to do with the arts. It was a local news story.'

'I only went back to St Louis to see my parents for Thanksgiving and Christmas.'

'When did you say your mother died?'

'I didn't,' she said, 'but it was on December 3rd 2000. You know who you remind me of, Inspector Jefe?'

'Americans only seem to know one Spaniard and I don't look anything like Antonio Banderas.'

'Columbo,' she said, not thinking this at all but wanting to get back at him. 'A much better-looking Columbo. You ask a load of questions that don't seem to have any bearing on the case and then, bang, you nail the culprit.'

'Fictional police work is always more entertaining than the real thing.'

'Marty said from the beginning that you weren't like any cop he'd ever seen.'

'And I suppose he'd have come across quite a few in the months before you arrived here?'

She rested her chin on her thumb and tapped her nose with her finger.

'You never said what Dan Fineman wrote about, Inspector Jefe.'

'How you were helping the FBI with their inquiries into the murder of your ex-lover, Reza Sangari.'