The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

A growing oppression has weighed down on my shoulders until at times I have felt unable to rise from my chair. I have felt trapped and unable to speak to anyone.

I only ask that you, my friends, protect my family and forgive me for this last disastrous act of mine.

Falcon read the letter out to the squad members crowding the door. The women cried open-eyed, staring in disbelief. He asked if someone who knew Sra Montes would accompany Ramirez to give her the letter and break the news to her personally. Montes's number two stepped forward and he and Ramirez left.

There was nothing of interest in the office and the interviews with the various members of the squad, who were all shaken, were monosyllabic. By the time he'd finished, Ramirez was back, having left the inspector of GRUME with Sra Montes. They sealed Montes's office and went back down to their own, where Cristina Ferrera was on the phone. Falcon told her to check for postboxes in the name of Alberto Montes as well. She nodded and scribbled down the name.

Ramirez followed him into his office and they stood at the window overlooking the car park, which was already clean and dry.

'You think Montes was on the take?' asked Ramirez.

'Some of the words he used in his letter were interesting,' said Falcon. 'Like: 'I have not been able to do the good I intended', 'powerless against corruption', 'growing oppression', 'trapped' and finally the phrase that really drew my attention: 'protect my family'. Why should anybody say anything like that? 'Look after' maybe, but 'protect'? This was a guy whose subconscious was leaking into his everyday life and he couldn't bear it.'

Ramirez nodded and stared into the car park, imagining himself crumpled, corrupted, damaged beyond repair. The man discarded from life.

'You didn't get the idea that he was on the take from that letter,' said Ramirez. 'So what else do you know?'

'I don't know what I know.'

'Don't start with that shit.'

'I mean it. I think Montes thought I knew something,' said Falcon.

'Well, if he was on the take, he's looking like the source for any information the Russians have on you.'

'Montes thought I was putting pressure on him, which I wasn't. I was just asking him about these Russians… to see if he'd heard of them. Nothing more than that.'

'His mind did the rest,' said Ramirez.

'And now I feel like an archaeologist who's found a few unusual shards of pottery and been asked to rebuild a civilization from them.'

'Tell me the shards,' said Ramirez. 'I'm good at gluing things back together.'

'I'm almost too embarrassed to tell you,' said Falcon. 'They're hints revived from the old Raul Jimenez case. Some names from Rafael Vega's address book. The Russian mafia involvement in the two Vega Construcciones projects. Their threats. The timing of Ortega's death. The timing of this suicide today. They're not even solid enough to be called shards, and if they are they might not be from the same pot but just dislocated fragments.'

'Let's get some things straight in our heads about Vega,' said Ramirez. 'First of all, he's security conscious: the handgun – which I checked and it wasn't licensed – the bulletproof windows, the surveillance system, even if he didn't use it, the front door…'

'The front door which is normally fully locked at night but which we discovered only shut on the morning of his death.'

'As was the back door into his garden, meaning…'

'Possibly indicating,' said Falcon, correcting him, 'that Vega let someone into the house late at night whom he knew.'

'All his immediate neighbours knew him socially,' said Ramirez, 'but nobody called first to say they were coming round, if indeed they did.'

'We know from Pablo Ortega that the Russians used to visit him at home,' said Falcon. 'But as Vazquez said, Vega was 'facilitating their business needs' so their motive for wanting him removed is not clear. Marty Krugman put up the possibility that Vega was in some way cheating the Russians.'

'Was that based on anything?'

'Speculation. I asked him why the mafia might want Vega dead,' said Falcon. 'We should compare the two sets of books on the Russian projects Dourado told you about.'

'The Russians – and we're pretty sure it is them – are rattled enough to make threats against you and Consuelo Jimenez,' said Ramirez.

'It's heavy-handed stuff if they're worried about a bit of money-laundering.'

'Money makes the mafia tick,' said Ramirez.

'Or is there something worse in the Vega scenario which might come to light in the course of an intrusive murder investigation?'

'I took a closer look at the Argentinian passport he had in the name of Emilio Cruz this morning,' said Ramirez. 'It also had a valid Moroccan visa in it. In fact, there were five Moroccan visas in there. Four had expired without being used. The fifth was valid until November 2002. That means he could have been in Tangier in five hours by car and ferry, even less by air.

Somebody who keeps themselves in that state of readiness is used to it.'

'You mean he's trained?' said Falcon.

'The only question is whether it's crime, terrorism or government that's trained him.'

'The compartmentalizing style of management,' said Falcon. 'Nobody knows what anybody else is doing. Krugman talked about the importance of hierarchy, the discipline on the sites. He said he had no experience of it, but that it felt like a military style of working.'

'Maybe he's been militarily trained by a government and is using it for the purposes of crime or terrorism.'

'The only reason we're thinking about terrorism is because of the 9/11 reference in the note he had in his hand,' said Falcon. 'I don't know how much importance we can attach to a note that was traced over from an indentation in his own hand and written in English. Marty Krugman talked to him endlessly about 9/11 and he couldn't make any sense of it.'

Cristina Ferrera knocked on the door.

'There's a postbox in the name of Emilio Cruz in the post office in San Bernardo,' she said. 'But don't get too excited. It's empty and there's been nothing in it since last year.'

'What sort of mail used to arrive there for him?'

'He remembers there being a letter every month with US stamps on it.'

'Anything on Alberto Montes?'

'Nothing yet,' she said, closing the door.

The two men turned back to the window.

'What did the letter to his wife say?'

' 'I'm sorry… forgive me… I've failed…' – the usual shit,' said Ramirez.

'Anything about being protected or looked after?'

'At the end he said: 'Don't worry, you'll be well looked after,'' said Ramirez. 'Are we being paranoid here?'

'And his second in command, his inspector? Did he have anything to say.'

'Nothing. Shocked by the whole thing.'

'Just like the rest of the squad,' said Falcon. 'If he was on the take, he was doing it on his own.'

'And if he was on the take he's got to keep it somewhere. He's also got to let his wife know where it is and she's got to go and collect it or do something with it.'

'I'm going to make my verbal report to Comisario Elvira now,' said Falcon. 'Find out who Montes used as a lawyer.'

Before Falcon could make his verbal report, Elvira had a photocopy of the letter made and went through it with one of his pencils as if it was a piece of homework. Falcon stuck to the facts in his report and offered no conjecture.