The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

to the bathroom floor, gagging against her lungs in her throat. Anybody ever cry for you like that, Inspector Jefe?'

Falcon shook his head.

'Have you ever seen someone you love cry for someone else like that? Cry themselves senseless, until their organs seized up?'

Falcon shook his head again.

'She didn't go back to him,' said Marty. 'You can't measure the pride that sits in that woman. It's fatter than a Buddah. And that's what she drew on next. Her pride turned to fury. She used to go up into the attic and scream. Scream until her larynx shredded.'

'Did you ever talk about any of this?' asked Falcon.

Marty shook his head.

'Then the writing started – and Maddy doesn't write,' said Marty. 'She's never kept a diary in her life. Her photographs are her diary. But a few weeks after she realized what sort of a man she'd fallen in love with, she started writing. And why do you think she started writing, Inspector Jefe?'

Falcon shrugged.

'Because she knew I was watching. She knew I'd be burning to see it. And I was. I had to see it. I had to know it. I'd put money into her pain and I wanted my dividend.

'She locked the notebooks away, but I got in there. I know you're interested in psychology, Inspector Jefe. And I'm sorry that those papers don't exist any more, because I doubt you've ever seen anything quite as horrific as the scribblings of Maddy Krugman. She didn't just want him dead, Inspector Jefe. She wanted him to die under prolonged, medically assisted torture. You know, I'm sure sex and torture are connected somewhere in the human brain. Maddy thought so – didn't you, honey?'

'I don't know what you're talking about, Marty,' she said. 'This is definitely your trip and it's a solo one.'

'You don't remember 'the lover's tongue like an electrode on the nipple'? The touch of his penis 'like a cattle prod in the vagina'? You wrote those things.'

'What did you do about it, Marty?' asked Falcon.

'I did what she wanted me to do. I planned it all out for a Saturday afternoon. It was autumn, the light was failing early and, at the weekend, Reza Sangari's part of town was almost silent. I went to see him. I introduced myself. He let me into his apartment and I listened to his apologies. He had a soft voice. It was as seductive as a torturer who doesn't need to find out anything but just wants to cause you pain. I stood amongst the expensive silk carpets where he'd fucked my wife and I was filled with rage by the ease with which he made his excuses. It was surprisingly easy to beat him to death. Did you hear that, Inspector Jefe? I, Marty Krugman, sophisticate, intellectual, aesthete, the man who finds the whole idea of a bullfight loathsome, I found it surprisingly easy to bludgeon a man to death. Something else I learnt: the violence that flowed through my veins at that moment – I haven't felt power like that, ever.

'I came home in the dark, the caveman with his club, and she was there to meet me in her apron. She cooked a special dinner and we ate it by candlelight. It was another of our wordless dinners, except that this one was different because at the end she took off her clothes and asked me to fuck her. And I, with this new blood in my veins, obliged. Now that, Inspector Jefe, was a fuck to remember. I'd finally found the thing that thrilled Maddy Krugman.'

'Don't flatter yourself, Marty,' she said, full of contempt.

'Anyway, the madness ceased in the house. We started living like human beings again. A few days later the news carried the story of Reza Sangari's murder and she was totally impassive. We smoked pot, ate marvellous food and drank expensive wine, and we had a lot of very violent sex.

'The FBI came during the next week sometime. They asked to speak to Maddy in private. I left them to talk. Then they wanted to interview me. She asked if she could talk to me first. We slipped into our roles without a word. She came into the kitchen and told me straight about Reza Sangari for the first time. My performance was flawless. I behaved as if I was stunned by the news, when, in fact, I was just stunned by the brilliance of our act.

'The cops went away, but they kept coming back. I had no alibi. I had a motive. I'd been seen going into the city on the Saturday, although I was pretty sure I hadn't been seen coming back. They came to see me at work. They built up the pressure on me.'

'And the only time you and Maddy spoke about Reza Sangari was when the FBI agents were in the house that first time?' asked Falcon.

'And we never spoke about it again,' said Marty. 'The murder inquiry was suddenly terminated. They found Sangari was heavily in debt due to a cocaine habit. They put it down to a drug killing. We came to Europe. My blood slowed down.'

Maddy Krugman was grunting with incredulity

'This is all in your head, Marty,' she said. 'Pure fantasy.'

'And now she's doing the same again with our friend the judge,' said Marty, swivelling the gun towards

Calderon. 'She wants me to kill you, Sr Calderon. Do you know why?'

Calderon's head wobbled on his shaky neck.

'Because she hates you. She hates what you represent – the roving, predatory male who sows his seed wherever he can. I know her now, like I've never known anybody in my life. That's how deep it goes when you do someone's killing for them. I'm telling you, Juez Calderon, she gets a sexual thrill from the idea of you dead. You lying there with your unseeing eyes open and a hole in your stony heart. It will make her feel brilliant.'

'Shut up, Marty!' she roared. 'Just shut the fuck up.'

'I discovered that unexpected bonus. It lasted for quite a while. It bound us together. It exhilarated our… sex life,' he said, as if puzzled by how little that meant now.

'Until…?' said Maddy, breathing heavily from her outburst.

'Until what?' said Marty.

'Until you started thinking again, you dumb fuck. Until you disappeared inside your fucking head. I was in love with Reza Sangari. He fooled around with other women. I stopped seeing him. And then you killed him – or did you, Marty? Maybe all that is in your head, too. Your weird little fantasy. I didn't set you up to murder him. If you did kill him, you did that all on your own. And once he was dead I needed you and you were there for me, and that's why we were drawn together. This shit you're talking about Esteban, I don't know where you -'

'There's something missing in this story,' said Falcon. 'There's a big gap between the FBI applying pressure and you appearing in Seville as a next-door neighbour to Rafael Vega.'

Three faces turned on Marty. He changed the gun to the other hand, wiped his palm on his trousers, changed it back to his left hand.

'What happened there, Marty?' asked Falcon. 'Homicide cops don't normally let people with an opportunity, no alibi and a strong motive off the hook. The FBI are no different. After years in the job we all have an instinct for murderers and we squeeze them until they crack. Why don't you tell us why they let you off the hook?'

Marty Krugman shrugged. What the hell.

'I met someone on a train,' he said.

Maddy sat up and frowned to herself.

'People don't talk much on commuter trains and they don't normally ask you how you feel about your country, but this guy for some reason wanted to know all the famous theories of Marty Krugman. He wanted to know how good an American I was. He wanted to know how strong my fear was, how ravenous my greed. I think, looking back on it, I qualified on the grounds of fear. I told him that I wanted America to remain the most powerful nation of earth because I know where I stand with them at the helm. We met again some days later and went for a walk in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library. It was freezing cold. There's a good place to eat lunch there – the Bryant Grill. And it was there that this man revealed that he understood the nature of my problem and that he could solve it.'

'What was this man's name?' asked Falcon, looking at Maddy.

'Foley Macnamara,' said Marty, without missing a beat.

Maddy blinked, mouth open a crack.

'We became regulars at the Bryant Grill. Foley told me how important presentation was in the maintenance of control. How the ends justify the means, and how the means necessarily have to be outrageous and quite ruthlessly