The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'I heard about last night's disaster,' said Ramirez. 'Are you all right?'

Falcon nodded, more or less.

'Elvira's already been on the phone, asking to see you as soon as you come in.'

The Comisario was standing at his window, hands behind his back, looking across Calle Bias Infante to the Parque de los Principes. His predecessor, Lobo, used to do the same thing – drawing the illusion of power from surveying a domain.

'Take a seat, Inspector Jefe,' he said, nipping behind his desk, swift and agile, giving his moustache a finger and thumb wipe. 'I've read your report and Juez Calderon's, which arrived first thing this morning. I've already been in touch with the American Consul and he's asked for copies. They should come back to us this morning on the CIA nonsense. They won't want to let that notion build up any authority in our ranks.'

'So you don't give it any credibility, sir?'

'Sounds like the ravings of a deranged mind to me,' said Elvira. 'But then again, when I heard that our government had sent death squads to wipe out ETA terrorist cells I didn't believe that either… I couldn't believe it. So, officially, I would call myself sceptical, whilst privately thinking the whole story completely fantastical.'

'He was deranged,' said Falcon. 'There's no doubt about that. But you can't totally write him off. I'm sure the FBI don't let people off the hook that easily and what he told me about Reza Sangari matches what I found out myself. I see no reason why he should lie about killing the man – unless that, too, was some fantasy which, in his confused mind, he hoped would draw his very strange wife back to him. The stuff he spouted about the Agency… Who knows. I'm sure his wife didn't believe a word of it. It'll be interesting to see what Virgilio Guzman comes back with on the profile of Miguel Velasco.'

'What's Guzman got to do with it?'

'He's a Chilean. He has expatriate contacts who can help with that sort of material,' said Falcon. 'One thing

I do know about these dream faces he mentioned is that Pablo Ortega saw Vega badly spooked in the Corte Ingles one day and I imagine that he'd been seeing one of his visions.'

'You've got to be careful with Virgilio Guzman,' said Elvira. 'There are people who say that he can't seem to take anything at face value any more. He's sees a conspiracy theory in everything.'

'He clarified the 9/11 element of the 'suicide note' and that helped with the identification of Rafael Vega.'

'I thought he came to see you about Montes's suicide?'

'He did. The inclusion of Eduardo Carvajal's name in Vega's address book was why I'd gone to see Montes in the first place,' said Falcon. 'Montes mentioned Russian mafia involvement in the sex trade, and the next thing I find is a Russian connection to Vega. I ask Montes about these Russians and very soon after that he killed himself.'

'And you talked to Guzman about this?'

'I gave it to him as context, but we had an agreement that he would not write about anything circumstantial, only the provable facts. And, as yet, we have nothing that links Montes to the Russians.'

'You're making me very nervous, Inspector Jefe. The Montes suicide is an internal matter at the moment. If there is corruption within the force we have to be extremely careful about how it is handled.'

'A journalist was sent to talk to me in my position as the investigating officer. I was not briefed on what could, or could not, be discussed with him. I believe, with someone of the reputation of Virgilio Guzman, that transparency is the best policy. Have you read the Diario de Sevilla today?'

'Yes. There was a very extensive report on the career of Inspector Jefe Montes.'

Falcon nodded, waited, but nothing more was said.

'I think you should search the Krugmans' house before the Americans come back to us,' said Elvira. 'I've already arranged a warrant.'

Falcon headed for the door. Elvira spoke to the back of his head.

'If Virgilio Guzman approaches you on the events of last night I'd like you to be very oblique about why Juez Calderon was in the apartment. I don't want a scandal about the Juez de Instruccion having had an affair with the deceased.'

'Has he admitted to that?'

'I asked for a separate statement on that subject. He seems to have been obsessed by her,' said Elvira, who added without looking up from his papers: 'I'm surprised that you didn't mention in your statement his action of bravery at the end.'

'His bravery?' asked Falcon.

''As Krugman raised his gun to fire,'' said Elvira, reading from Calderon's statement, ''I threw myself towards him in the hope of distracting his aim. The bullet hit Sra Krugman in the chest. Inspector Jefe Falcon was unable to prevent Sr Krugman from putting the gun into his mouth and killing himself.''

'I'll search the Krugmans' house,' said Falcon, leaving the office.

'Garcia didn't see it either,' said Elvira, as the door closed.

Back in the office Falcon sent Cristina Ferrera off to the lab to pick up the Krugmans' house keys from Felipe and Jorge, who had removed them from the crime scene back in Tabladilla. Ramirez was still slumped at his desk.

'CIA?' he said, incredulous.

Falcon threw up his hands.

'Or not CIA, but some shadowy consultancy connected to the CIA,' he said.

'Fantasy,' said Ramirez.

'Let's say that Guzman's conspiracy theory is correct. If you were part of the American administration responsible for some very ugly things happening in South America during the seventies, and you were worried that Rafael Vega had something that could prove personal involvement by senior members of the US administration… what would you do?'

'Kill him anyway.'

'That's because you're a ruthless bastard, Jose Luis,' said Falcon. 'The fact is, you wouldn't use the CIA, would you? You wouldn't have the power to use it. But there must be ex-CIA men with contacts and influence who have 'debts'. You see what I mean about Crazy Krugman… you can't just dismiss him as a madman.'

'I can,' said Ramirez. 'He's too unstable for that kind of work.'

'What if he's your only option?' said Falcon. 'And what do you make of his final admission, that the Agency didn't want Vega dead because they hadn't found out what they wanted to find out? That's a bit of an anticlimax, isn't it?'

'You mean he was doing all these vital, secret tasks but none of the information he came up with was crucial enough that Vega had to be killed?' said Ramirez. 'Maybe what they were looking for is locked up in Vega's safe- deposit box, for which we still don't have a search warrant.'

'You're beginning to believe, Jose Luis. You'd better remind Juez Calderon, if he comes in for work today.'

The phone rang in the outer office. Ramirez went to answer it while Falcon thought about Krugman. 'They', if they existed, couldn't have been expecting Marty to find papers or a video tape. That would have been too much. What they were looking for were reports on Vega's state of mind. Was this a man about to go to Baltasar Garzon or the Belgian justice system and offer his services, for instance?

'That was the town hall in Aracena,' said Ramirez, leaning against the door jamb. 'They passed a restoration project on Montes's ruined finca valued at twenty million pesetas. A total rebuild, complete remodernization, three-phase electricity – the works.'

Falcon passed the news on to Comisario Elvira, who reacted as if he'd been expecting it all along. He told them to proceed with the Krugman house search. Ferrera came back with the house keys and they drove out to Santa Clara.

The house was cold and silent and looked undisturbed as the three of them snapped on their latex gloves.

'I'll go upstairs,' said Falcon. 'Join me when you've finished down here.'

'What are we looking for?' asked Ferrera.

'A little note from Dr Kissinger saying, 'Keep up the good work,'' said Ramirez. 'That should do it.'

Falcon went upstairs. The door to Maddy Krugman's exhibition room was open. All the photographs had been removed from the walls and only one exhibit was left on a plinth in the centre of the room. It consisted of a cut-out of a blown-up version of Vega standing barefoot in his garden. The cut-out was encased in Perspex and suspended within the transparent block, like the skeletons of autumn leaves, were the ghostly prints of human hands. They all