The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'We had nothing… like everybody else had nothing. So it was hard, but nobody was alone in their poverty. That wouldn't explain why our father was so brutal with us. Pablo always bore the brunt of it. He said that it was those years dealing with our father that made him into an actor. It wasn't a great childhood. Pablo said it was why he never wanted kids.'

'But he did,' said Falcon. 'And you?'

'I've got two… they're grown up now,' he said.

'Do they live in Seville?'

'My daughter is married and lives in California. My son… my son is still here.'

'Does he work with you?'

'No,' said Ignacio, his mouth snapping shut, dismissing the notion.

'What does he do?' asked Falcon, more to be polite than to intrude.

'He buys and sells things… I'm not really sure what.'

'You mean you don't see so much of him?'

'He has his own life, his own friends. I think I represent something that he wants to rebel against… respectability or… I don't know.'

'So what about Pablo's relationship with Sebastian? Was that coloured by the fact that he didn't want children in the first place?'

'Is there a problem here?' asked Ignacio, squinting up from his glass of beer.

'A problem?' said Falcon.

'All these questions… very personal family questions,' said Ignacio. 'Is there some doubt about what happened here?'

'Not what, but why it happened,' said Falcon. 'We're interested in what triggered your brother's suicide. It might have a bearing on another case.'

'Which case is that?'

'His next-door neighbour's.'

'I heard about that. There was a piece about it in the Diario de Sevilla.'

'You knew him, of course.'

'I… I did know him,' said Ignacio, faltering as if this was not something he immediately wanted to admit. 'And I read there was some doubt about what had happened in his case… but I don't really see how Pablo's death could possibly be linked.'

'Pablo knew him as well… through you.'

'Yes, that's right, Pablo would occasionally come with me to functions in the years when I was trying to get the business off the ground,' said Ortega. 'So why do you think Pablo's suicide was connected to Rafael and Lucia Vega's death?'

'I'm looking at it more from the point of view of strange coincidence at this stage,' said Falcon. 'Three people dead within days of each other in a small barrio like this. That's odd. Did one trigger the other? What were the pressures on Pablo in the lead up to his death'

'For a start, I can tell you that Pablo couldn't kill a chicken. It was one of our father's abuses that he used to force him to do it.'

'Rafael Vega drank, or was forced to drink, a bottle of acid.'

'Pablo was a completely non-violent person,' said Ignacio.

'So what do you think could have triggered your brother's fatal decision?'

'There must have been a letter, surely?' said Ignacio.

'The way it happened was that he and I arranged to meet here yesterday morning. He wanted me, as a professional, to find the body. There was a letter to me explaining that, and a short note to Sebastian.'

'But nothing written to me?' said Ignacio, puzzled. 'What did he write to Sebastian?'

'He said he was sorry and asked for his forgiveness,' said Falcon. 'Do you know why he should write something like that?'

Ignacio coughed against some involuntary sobbing. He pressed the beer glass to his forehead as if trying to cram it into his brain. He broke out of it and hung his head, staring at the floor, as if he was thinking of something plausible to say.

'He was probably sorry that he hadn't been able to show his son enough love,' said Ignacio. 'It's all tied up with our father. I think the same happened between me and my son. I failed him, too. Pablo used to say that damage was passed from generation to generation and it was difficult to break the cycle.'

'Pablo had theories about this, did he?'

'Because he read all these books and plays he had intellectual ideas about it. He said that it was an atavistic trait of fathers to make themselves unknowable to their sons in order to retain power in the family or tribe. Showing love weakened that position, so men's instincts were for aggression.'

'Interesting,' said Falcon. 'But it avoids the issue, which is much more personal. Suicide is a personal matter, too, and most of the time in my job it doesn't matter why it happened, but in this case I want to find out.'

'So do I,' said Ignacio. 'We all feel blame when something like this happens.'

'That's why my questions have to be personal,' said Falcon. 'What can you tell me about Pablo's relationship with his wife – Sebastian's mother? He wasn't married before, was he?'

'No, Gloria was his only wife.'

'When did they marry?'

'In 1975.'

'He was thirty-five.'

'I told him he was leaving it too late,' said Ignacio. 'But he had a career, there were actresses, it was a lifestyle.'

'There were lots of girlfriends before Gloria, then?'

Ignacio's hand rasped against his face as he rubbed the nascent bristles. He glanced at Falcon, a quick shift of the eye whites. It lasted only a fraction of a second but it added to Falcon's unease about this man. He began to think that the reason Ignacio had come round here was not so much to mourn his brother or to help Falcon, but to find out how much was known. It nagged at Falcon's mind that Pablo hadn't written a note to his only brother.

'There were a few,' said Ignacio. 'As I said, our paths didn't cross much. I was just an electrician and he was a famous actor.'

'How did Gloria persuade him to have a child?'

'She didn't. She just got pregnant.'

'Do you know why she left Pablo?'

'She was a little puta,' said Ignacio, some vicious- ness on his thin lips. 'She fucked around and then left the country with someone who would give her the fucking she wanted.'

'Are those your own observations?'

'Mine, my wife's, Pablo's. Anybody who met Gloria knew her for what she was. My wife saw it from day one. This was a woman who should not be married and she proved it by leaving everybody… including Sebastian.'

'And Pablo brought up his son on his own?'

'Well, he went away a lot, so a fair amount of the time Sebastian joined our family.'

'Were your kids the same age?'

'I got married young. Our kids were eight and ten years older,' said Ignacio.

'So after Gloria left, you were Sebastian's father a fair amount of the time.'

Ignacio nodded, drank some beer and lit another cigarette.

'That was all twenty years ago,' said Falcon. 'What about Pablo's relationships in that time?'

'I used to see him in Hola! magazine with women, but we never met any of them. After Gloria we only ever saw him on his own,' said Ignacio. 'You're asking a lot of questions about relationships, Inspector Jefe.'

'Failed relationships can make people suicidal, as can, for instance, the possibility of public shame.'

'Or financial ruin,' said Ignacio, pointing at the room with the cracked cesspit. 'Or the end of a great career. Or the accumulation of all these things in a man about to face retirement, maybe illness and certainly death.'

'Are you surprised he killed himself?'

'Yes, I am. He'd suffered a lot recently with his son's trial, moving house, the building problem here, his fading