The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'Cops,' she said, wincing at their mental incapacity.

'We lead very sheltered lives.'

'But it doesn't mean you've got to be stupid,' said Isabel. 'Please don't make me capitulate when I've only just started on Manuela. It's bad for my image.'

'Can I sit down?'

She waved vaguely at a chair with her cigarette fingers. Falcon liked Isabel Cano but sometimes she could be abrasive. There was no subject too delicate not to be slapped on the table and filleted like so much fish.

'You know what I've been through, Isabel,' he said.

'Actually, I don't,' she said, surprising him. 'I can only imagine what you've been through.'

'Well, that'll do,' said Falcon. 'The fact is I feel like a man who's lost everything. All the things that made me human were brought into question. People need a living structure to give themselves a sense of belonging. All I have is memory, which is unreliable. But what I do have is a brother and a sister. Paco is a good man who will always do the right thing. Manuela is complicated for a whole bunch of reasons but which all boil down to the fact that she didn't get the love she wanted from Francisco.'

'I don't feel sorry for her and nor should you,' said Isabel.

'But despite what I know about Manuela – her avarice, possessiveness and covetousness – I need her to be my sister. I need to hear her call me her hermanito, her little brother. It's sentimental, illogical and offensive to your legal mind… but it's the way it is.'

Isabel's leather chair creaked. The air conditioning breathed. The city slumped in silence.

'And you think you'll get it by giving her the house?'

'By coming to an agreement on the house, which I no longer want to live in, I will open up the possibility. If I don't, I will have to bear the brunt of her hate.'

'You might think you need her, but she knows she doesn't need you. You have become dispensable because you are no longer a full-blood relative. You are just a barrier,' said Isabel. 'When you give people like Manuela something, all they want is more. They are incapable of love. Your gift will not give what you crave, but it will create resentment, lending her hate more purpose.'

Each sentence was like a slap across his face, as if she was bringing a hysteric back to reality.

'You're probably right,' he said, shaken by her verbal brutality, 'but my nature dictates that I have to take a risk and hope you're proved wrong.'

She threw up her hands and said she'd draft a letter

for him to read. He offered to take her for a drink and a tapa in El Cairo but she declined.

'I'd offer you a drink here, but I don't keep any in the office,' she said.

'Let's go to El Cairo, then,' said Falcon.

'I don't want what we're going to talk about now to have any chance of local broadcast.'

'Have we got anything else to talk about?'

'What you mentioned to me this morning.'

'Esteban Calderon,' said Falcon, sitting back down.

'Did you ask me about him now because he's going to get married to Ines?'

'They announced it on Wednesday,' he said.

'Do you remember who handled your divorce with Ines?'

'You did.'

'So why is Esteban's history any business of yours?'

'I'm concerned… for Ines.'

'Do you think that Ines is some kind of innocent little sweetie who needs to be protected?' said Isabel. 'Because I can tell you she's not. This house you're so keen to give away to Manuela… I had to fight tooth and nail to stop Ines from claiming half of it. You don't have to worry about her, she knows everything there is to know about Esteban Calderon, I can assure you.'

Falcon nodded as small worlds, previously closed to him, opened up.

'You called Esteban a hunter this morning. What's he hunting?'

'Difference. He doesn't know that yet,' said Isabel. 'But that's what he's always been looking for.'

'And what is this difference?'

'Someone whose face he cannot read and whose mind he doesn't understand,' said Isabel. 'Women have always thrown themselves at Esteban. They've tended to be women from his professional life. They all have legal minds. He knows their architecture from the moment they walk into the room. He plays with them in the hope that they will not be as they seem. Then he finds that they're the same as all the others and he gets bored. The hunt starts again. He's doomed to the relentless movement of a shark, that man.'

Falcon drove out of the darkening city, the real world brutalized by the heat seemed very distant as his hands shifted automatically from gear stick to steering wheel within the cool cockpit of the car. The street lights sliced shadows across the window as he drove down the banks of oleander on Avenida de Kansas City. Neon made promises out of the darkness and high palms held up the tent of the night sky. Nothing reached him apart from the red and green of the traffic lights. He lived in his head while his automaton drove him to Santa Clara. Isabel's words about Calderon and Ines ran through his mind like a news bar in lights. Falcon knew he'd been through a patch of madness, but now he was confronting the extraordinary lunacy of the perfectly sane people around him.

The only thing they had not discussed was the brief glimpse she'd given Falcon that morning of the hurt that had come to the surface at the mention of Calderon's name. He now realized that it had nothing to do with Calderon himself. The judge had become insignificant in Isabel's mind. What had surfaced was the memory of her betrayal as a wife and mother, who had been prepared to jeopardize her husband and family. What she'd shown him was the savage regret which had been lashed to that memory.

He had to pull off the Avenida de Kansas City beneath the red hovering neon of La Casera to take a call from Cristina Ferrera, who'd spoken to Sr Cabello. Falcon opened up his city map and marked off the plots of land Cabello had sold to Vega and the two major developments that were opened up by their sale. Before he hung up he told her to keep an eye on Nadia.

It was only after this call that he began to wonder what he was doing going for dinner with Consuelo.

Chapter14

Friday, 26th July 2002

As he pulled up outside Pablo Ortega's house he remembered Montes standing at his window. He should have asked him about the Russians. He called the Jefatura and got a mobile number for Montes.

Montes answered the call. From the background noise he was clearly in a bar, and in their first exchange revealed himself to be very drunk.

'This is Javier Falcon from the Grupo de Homicidios,' he said. 'We spoke yesterday…'

'Did we?'

'In your office. We spoke about Eduardo Carvajal and Sebastian Ortega.'

'I can't hear you,' said Montes.

Music and voices blared.

'Shut the fuck up!' Montes roared, to total indifference. 'Momentito.'

Traffic noise. A car horn.

'Can you hear me, Inspector Jefe?' said Falcon.

'Who are you?'

Falcon started again. Montes apologized elaborately. Now he remembered perfectly.

'We also talked about the Russian mafia.'

'I don't think so.'

'You explained the people-trafficking business.'