The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'A last question on the will and we'll leave you alone,' said Falcon. 'Ignacio was a wealthy man, I doubt he was expecting any money from his brother.'

'He'd always wanted the Louis XV chair from Pablo's collection.'

Falcon grunted as he remembered Ignacio's professed lack of interest in the collection.

'So why had the brothers fallen out?' asked Ramirez.

'I just do the legal documents,' said Ranz Costa. 'I never involve myself…'

He didn't finish. The two lawmen had already left his office.

On the way down from Ranz Costa's office Falcon called Ignacio to remind him about the body identification. He also called Inspector Jefe Montes and said that he'd like to drop by later on that morning and talk about the two Russian names he'd mentioned to him on Friday evening. Montes said he could drop in any time, he wasn't going anywhere.

Falcon took Ramirez back to the Jefatura. He wanted Felipe to analyse the dust sample while Ramirez followed up on the hostal residencia in Fuenteheridos. Falcon drove to the Instituto Anatomico Forense.

Ignacio Ortega and Falcon stood in the room with the curtain drawn over the glass panel. They waited in silence while the body was brought up from the morgue and the Medico Forense prepared the paperwork.

'When did you say was the last time you spoke to Pablo?' asked Falcon.

The night before I went away,' he said.

'Pablo's mobile telephone company has informed us that you had a twelve-minute call with him on the evening before he died. Can you explain that to me, Sr Ortega?'

Silence while Ignacio looked at the unopened curtain.

'Ranz Costa told us that Pablo changed his will before he died. Do you know what those changes were?'

Ignacio nodded.

'Was that what was discussed in the phone call he made to you on Friday evening?'

Ignacio's head stayed still.

'I was surprised at how you seemed more concerned about whether your brother had written to you, and what he had written to Sebastian, than you were by the fact of his suicide,' said Falcon, thinking this was a man who needed to be riled up.

That turned Ignacio, whose two eyes punched into Falcon's face like industrial riveters.

'You have no right to talk to me like that,' he said. 'I am not one of your suspects. I have not been accused of anything. My brother killed himself. I am dealing with that in my own private way, which is no business of yours. You're as curious to know why he killed himself as I am, but you have no right to poke your nose into my family affairs unless you can prove that I was in some way responsible for my brother's death when I was on the coast at the time.'

'You lied to me about the last time you spoke to your brother,' said Falcon. 'Detectives never like being lied to. We get suspicious and think you have something to hide.'

'I have nothing to hide. My conscience is clear. What family matters passed between Pablo and me are private.'

'You know, we're thinking of reopening Sebastian's case, as well as giving him some psychological help…'

'You can do what you like, Inspector Jefe.'

The Medico Forense informed them that the body was now ready. Ignacio turned to the curtains, which opened. He confirmed his brother's identity, signed the papers and left without another word or glance in Falcon's direction.

Falcon drove back to the Jefatura with three thoughts knocking around in his head. Why did Ignacio Ortega bother him so much? It was clear he hadn't killed his brother, but there was something locked up in the man's head that made Falcon think that he had some responsibility. How do you crack a hard nut like Ignacio Ortega? And how do you find out what the dead men have locked away in their heads? Police work might be easier if it were possible to download the mind's contents on to screen. The software of life. What would that look like? Fact distorted by emotion. Reality transformed by illusion. Truth painted over by denial. That would take some program to disentangle.

His mobile rang.

'Diga,' he said.

'Are you on your way back?' asked Ramirez.

'I'm on the Plaza de Cuba.'

'Good, because Inspector Jefe Montes has just jumped out of his second-floor window and landed on his head in the car park.'

Falcon accelerated down the Avenida de Argentina. His tyres squealed on the hot tarmac as he turned into the Jefatura car park. There was a crowd gathered beneath the window from which he'd seen Montes looking out only last week thinking… thinking: has the moment come?

The ambulance lights flashed almost invisibly in the glare of the brutally bleaching light that beat down on the scene in the car park. Women's faces stared out from the dark ground-floor office windows, mouths covered. Men stood at first-floor windows, heads viced in their hands, squeezing out this unnatural image. Falcon pushed through the crowd in time to see the paramedics officially give up on the inert Montes. His shoulder and head looked as if they were buried in dark bloody tarmac soft enough to take this terrible indentation. But Falcon knew from the look of it what that body would reveal on the slab: shattered shoulder, compound fracture of the collarbone, broken neck vertebrae, severed spinal cord, smashed skull, catastrophic brain haemorrhage.

Members of Montes's squad were in the crowd. They were crying. Comisario Elvira came out of the Jefatura and made a carefully designed speech to disperse the crowd. His eyes fell on Falcon. He told him to have photographs taken, the body removed and to make an initial verbal report within the hour. The Juez de Guardia arrived with the Medico Forense.

As the crowd dispersed, Ferrera took three of them off to make witness statements. Falcon told Ramirez to seal off Montes's office. Felipe took the necessary shots. The paramedics removed the body under instruction from the Juez de Guardia. The crime scene cleaners moved in and washed away the blood, which was already congealing in the sun.

As Falcon went up to his office to get a fresh notebook, he had a terrible sense of convergence – Vega, Ortega and now Montes. The homicide squad three men short because of the holiday season. Each death not apparently connected and yet somehow being the precursor of the next.

He found Ferrera, gave her Salvador Ortega's details and told her to speak to someone in the Narcotics squad. A current address was all he wanted. He also told her to check all post offices in the Seville area to see if either Rafael Vega or an Argentinean called Emilio Cruz held a postbox for receiving mail.

'Is this more important than Rafael Vega's key?'

'Did you get anywhere with that?'

'He doesn't have a safe-deposit box in the Banco de Bilbao. That was as far as I got.'

'Work on the key later,' he said. 'It'll take time.'

He picked up his notebook and walked slowly up the stairs to the second floor where Ramirez stood with a master key for Montes's office. The members of GRUME were lined up in the corridor, waiting. Felipe came up from the car park sweating with his camera.

Ramirez opened the door. Felipe took his shots and left. Falcon shut the window. They looked around, sweating, while the air conditioning reasserted itself. On Montes's desk was a sheet of notepaper covered in his handwriting and a sealed envelope addressed to his wife. Falcon and Ramirez moved round to read the writing on the notepaper, which was addressed to 'My Fellow Officers':

It probably seems ridiculous to you that I should have taken my own life so close to retirement. I should have been able to bear the pressure of my job for a little longer, but I could not. This is no reflection on the men and women with whom it has been my honour to work.

I joined the police force with the belief that I could do some good. I had a strong sense of the value of the policeman in society. I have not been able to do the good that I intended. I have felt increasingly powerless to act against the new waves of depravity and corruption which are now sweeping through my country and the rest of Europe.

I have been drinking, hoping that it would dull my senses to what was happening around me. I did not succeed.