The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

were prepared for all eventualities including violence, although he didn't think it would come to that.

Two guards brought Sebastian Ortega in and sat him down at the table. Falcon had not seen a photograph of him before this meeting and so was unprepared for the man's beauty. He had none of the physical traits of his father. He was slim, 1.85 metres, with blond hair and tobacco coloured eyes. He had high, fragile cheekbones, which didn't look as if they could survive much prison violence. He moved with a slow grace and sat with his long- fingered artistic hands resting on the table in front of him. He used the fingers of one hand to polish each individual nail of the other. The prison psychologist made the introductions. Sebastian Ortega did not take his eyes off Alicia Aguado for one moment and when the psychologist had finished he leaned forward slightly.

'Excuse me,' he said, in a high, almost girlish voice, 'but are you blind?'

'Yes, I am,' she replied.

'That's an affliction I wouldn't mind,' he said.

'Why?'

'We believe too much in what our eyes tell us,' he said. 'They draw us into enormous disappointments.'

The prison psychologist, who was standing at the side of the table, explained to him that Falcon had come here to give him some news. Ortega did not acknowledge him but sat back, nodded, and left his fidgeting hands on the table.

'I'm sorry to have to tell you, Sebastian, that your father died at three o'clock this morning,' said Falcon. 'He took his own life.'

There was no reaction. More than a minute passed while the good-looking face remained unmoved.

'Did you hear the Inspector Jefe?' asked the psychologist.

A single nod and a lowering of the eyelids. The prison officials looked at each other.

'Do you have any questions for the Inspector Jefe?' asked the psychologist.

Sebastian breathed in and shook his head.

'He wrote this letter to you,' said Falcon, laying it down on the table.

Sebastian's hand snapped out of its small unconscious task to bat the letter to the floor. As it skittered over the tiles, tension grew in his body – tendons and sinew stood out in his wrists and forearms. He gripped the edge of the table as if he was trying not to fall backwards and the table shook with a muscular spasm. His face started to break up and with a terrible sob he shunted the chair out from under him and fell to his knees. His features were contorted with pain, eyes squeezed shut, teeth bared. Alicia Aguado put her hands out, feeling the air in front of her. Sebastian's body convulsed once more and he fell to the floor.

Only at this moment did any of the men in the room react. The chairs and table were pulled out of the way and they all stood over Sebastian, who had now gone foetal, holding himself. His head writhed against the polished floor and he coughed up great dry sobs of emotion, as if chunks of pumice were lodged in his chest.

The nurse knelt, opened his bag and took out a syringe. The guards hovered. Alicia felt her way around the table and reached out for Sebastian's trembling frame.

'Don't touch him,' said one of the guards.

She put a hand out which found the back of Sebastian's neck. She stroked him, whispered his name. The convulsions smoothed out. He relaxed his grip on his shins. The sobbing up until that moment had been dry, but now he wept like Falcon had never seen anybody weep before. Tears and saliva poured out of him. He tried to get his hands to his face to hide this awful outpouring, but he seemed to be too weak. The guards stepped back, no longer disturbed, just slightly embarrassed. The nurse replaced the syringe in the bag. The psychologist weighed the situation and decided to let it continue.

After ten minutes of sustained weeping Sebastian rolled on to his knees and buried his face in his arms on the floor. His back shuddered. The psychologist decided that he should be taken back to his cell and given a sedative. The guards tried to get him to stand but he had no strength in his legs. He was unmanageable in this state and they put him down on the floor and went to get a wheelchair. Falcon retrieved the letter and gave it to the psychologist… The guard returned with a trolley from the prison hospital. Sebastian was wheeled away.

The psychologist decided he'd better read the letter to see if the contents would disturb Sebastian any more. Falcon could see that there were very few words on the page.

Dear Sebastian,

I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say.

Please forgive me.

Your loving father,

Pablo

Falcon and Alicia drove out of the bleached landscape of the prison and back into the crushing heat of the city. Alicia Aguado stared out of the window, the lifeless terrain flickered past her unseeing eyes. Questions came to Falcon but he didn't ask them. After that emotional display, everything seemed banal.

'Even after all these years,' said Alicia, 'I'm still astonished by the terrifying power of the mind. We have this organism sitting in our heads which, if we allow it, can completely destroy us to the point where we will never be the same again… and yet it's ours, it belongs to us. We have no idea what we've got sitting on our shoulders.'

Falcon said nothing. She wasn't looking for a reply.

'You witness something like that,' she said, flapping her hand in the vague direction of the prison, 'and you cannot imagine what has gone on in that man's mind. What has passed between him and his father. It was as if the news of his father's death went straight to the core of his being and ripped him open and out came all these incredibly powerful, uncontainable, polarized emotions. He was probably barely alive, just existing on automatic. He'd put himself in prison, in solitary confinement. His personal contact is almost zero. He's ceased to function as a human being, and yet the mind still has to find a way out.'

'Why do you think he's relieved to be there, as your friend was saying?'

'I suppose he'd got to the point where he was afraid of what his uncontrollable mind might do.'

'Do you think you can talk to him?'

'Well, I'm here at Sebastian's moment of crisis – his father's suicide – and I think we've formed a bond. If the prison authorities let me, I'm sure I can help him.'

'I know the prison director,' said Falcon. 'I'll tell him your work could be valuable to my investigation into Vega's death.'

'But you do think that there's a connection?' she said. 'This whole thing with Pablo… I can hear your brain chewing it over.'

'I know, but I'm just not sure what it is.'

He dropped Alicia Aguado off at her house and had another go at contacting Ignacio Ortega, whose mobile was still switched off. Consuelo called him and asked if he wanted to meet for lunch at Casa Ricardo, a bar halfway between her restaurant and Falcon's home. He decided to drop the car at home and walk. He parked between the orange trees and went to open the doors. As he reached for his keys a woman called to him from across the street. Maddy Krugman had just come out of a shop which specialized in hand-painted tiles. Her casual behaviour did not persuade him that this was an accidental meeting.

'So this is your house,' she said, as they stood between the two files of orange trees that led up to the wooden doors. 'The famous house.'

'The infamous house,' he said.

'That's my favourite shop in Seville,' she said. 'I think I'm going to take their entire stock back to New York with me.'

'Are you leaving?'

'No, not immediately,' she said. 'But in the end. You know, we all go back to where we started.'

He wasn't sure what she meant or that she knew either. He toyed with the possibility of wishing her well on her shopping trip and disappearing into his house, but he couldn't quite find the rudeness to do it.

'Would you like to see inside the infamous house?' he said. 'I could offer you a drink.'

'That's very nice of you, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'I've been out shopping. I'm exhausted.'

They went in. He sat her down under the arches of the patio in front of the trickling fountain and went to fetch a bottle of La Guita and some olives. When he came back she was across the patio looking through the glass doors