She could have found out about the other women and done it.
He could have found out she was having an affair and done it.
Or it could be nothing at all.
He allowed his brain the run of this circuit for a few minutes and then wrote:
He could have killed Reza S. and not told her.
She could have killed Reza S. and not told him.
Or there could be some complicity.
Or it could be nothing at all.
He'd slept badly. The Ortega file was all over the bed, along with Alicia Aguado's dictaphone and tapes. He'd been up for hours, too spooked to go to sleep, and had recorded the Ortega file as he read it. Before he got under the shower he checked the strip of paper he'd stuck over the door. It was unbroken. At least he hadn't been sleepwalking. He let the water pummel his head and some of his frustration left him as a new possibility about Inés's photograph came to him.
The heat in the gallery outside his room smothered him. He looked down on the trickling fountain. He rippled past the pillars on his way to the kitchen. He ate a round of fresh pineapple and some toast drizzled with olive oil. He took his pills. His mind roved around the loneliness of the house. Inés had called it 'mad and enormous', which it was – a sprawling, illogical, labyrinthine expression of the state of Francisco Falcón's bizarre mind.
It came to him with a clarity that must have been obvious to everyone except himself, caught up in his months of self-absorption: Why live here any more? This is not your house and it will never be your home. Let Manuela have it. The only reason she's pursuing you through the courts is that she'd have to sell everything and take on a huge mortgage to be able to afford it.
He felt free. He started to punch out Manuela's number on his mobile and stopped himself just in time. He'd go through his lawyer, Isabel Cano. No sense in presenting things to Manuela on a plate. When people did that she just demanded more. The mobile rang.
'We have a meeting here at 9 a.m.,' said Calderón, tense and businesslike. 'I'd like you to come to that alone, if you don't mind, Javier.'
On the way to the Jefatura he dropped off the tapes at Alicia Aguado's consulting room in Calle Vidrio. Before going to his office he took the photograph of Inés to the lab along with some blank stock that he'd been using to print out his snaps. He asked Jorge to run a test to see if the paper was the same. Back in his office he read through the reports left on his desk. He collected all the necessary papers for his meeting and put them in his briefcase, separate from his internet findings about Madeleine Krugman nee Coren. He put the photograph of Pablo Ortega and Carvajal in there as well. He wanted to see the actor's reaction to it. He called Isabel Cano: still no answer from her office. Ramírez and Ferrera turned up as he was leaving. He told Ramírez that Calderón wanted to see him alone and that he should keep trawling through Vega's offices while the rest of the squad went door-to-door looking for Sergei and/or the mystery woman he'd been seen talking to.
The Edificio de los Juzgados was building up for an active morning. The stink of humanity sweating in hope and fear had reached an animal intensity and there was no air-conditioning unit in the world that could cope. Falcón went up to Calderón's first-floor office, which overlooked the car park and the El Prado de San Sebastián bus station. The judge was smoking. There were six butts already in the ashtray, each one smoked down to the filter. Falcón closed the door. Calderón's eyes were smudged dark underneath. He still had the intense look of someone returning to civilization after an experience in the wild. Falcón laid the autopsies and police reports in front of him and sat down.
Calderón read fast, his lawyer's brain taking in the large quantities of detailed information. He sat back with a freshly lit cigarette and sized up Falcón. He seemed on the brink of saying something personal but veered away from it as if this might be too confrontational too early.
'What do you make of all this then, Javier?' he asked. 'The foundations for the building of a murder case haven't exactly been laid by these autopsies. I'm surprised the Médico Forense wasn't prepared to commit himself more at this stage.'
'Officially,' said Falcón. 'Unofficially, like all of us at the Jefatura, he's extremely doubtful that it was suicide, which is why he doesn't want to release Sr Vega's body for burial just yet.'
'Let's look at the mental states of the deceased,' said Calderón. 'Sra Vega had a serious enough condition that she was taking lithium. Her husband was not only behaving strangely, as we've seen in Madeleine Krugman's photographs, but had also been to see two, possibly three doctors about his anxiety.'
Falcón knew that Calderón had wanted to say her name, had felt the need for its sweetness on his lips and tongue. It decided him that the internet downloads in his briefcase should stay there.
'The crime scene…' Falcón started.
'Yes, the crime scene,' said Calderón. 'That seems to be explicable in any number of ways. Suicide or murder, with between one and three people involved in the deaths. You have no suspects. There's not even the vaguest mention of a motive in any report. You have no witnesses. Sergei the gardener is still missing.'
'We're working on that. We have a photo ID and we know he was seen talking to a woman in a bar near the Vegas' house quite recently. We're also going door-to-door in Santa Clara and the Poligono San Pablo,' said Falcón. 'As far as motive goes, we're going to have to work hard on the Russian angle and -'
'Let's not get too excited about the Russians until we know who they are and we've seen the extent of their involvement from the accountant's reports. I know there's a lot of money-laundering going on in Marbella and places along the Costa del Sol, but so far all we've had here in Seville is a sighting by Pablo Ortega of a few Russians making a social visit seven months ago.'
'I was followed home on Wednesday night by a blue Seat with plates stolen in Marbella, and there's Russian and Ukrainian illegal labour on Vega's building sites,' said Falcón. 'There are enough questions over the state of the crime scene, the state of the body, the deceased's relationship with his son and potentially harmful outside influences to justify further inquiry.'
'OK, I take your point about the Russians. Let's try and work that up into something,' said Calderón. 'Sticking with the suicide angle for the moment, what about the boy?'
'Vega's domestic circumstances were not totally desperate. Even Sr Cabello, who has no love for his son-in-law, conceded that Vega was very fond of the boy,' said Falcón.
'He drank acid rather than shoot himself with a gun, which could indicate that he was punishing himself for unknown sins and protecting his son from possibly seeing a violent death. Maybe he killed himself precisely because there was something he couldn't bear his son to know about him,' said Calderón. 'If you had a son, Javier, what could you not bear him to know about you?'
'If he knew that I was a war criminal, I'd find it difficult to face him,' said Falcón. 'The difference between the war criminal and the murderer is that self-knowledge could be possible. Once history had moved on, the war criminal might see that he had been persuaded through a combination of political thought, national fervour and fear to have gone from being an ordinary man to becoming a merciless killer with a sense of duty to the regime and self-righteousness. Later in life, especially if he was being hunted down, he might reflect on what he'd done and feel a deep sense of shame. I could not imagine looking into my son's eyes and have him know that I was capable of such mercilessness.'
Silence. More smoking from the judge.
'We're doing what two law men should never do,' said Calderón.
'Back to business,' said Falcón. 'We found a false passport in one of Vega's freezers. It's Argentinian in the name of Emilio Cruz. We're checking that out and Rafael Vega's ID.'