The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'Dan Fineman was an asshole I knew from high school. He always wanted to fuck me but he made my flesh crawl. He never aspired to anything greater than writing for the St Louis Times and when he got there he took his revenge.'

'He wrote another article about you,' said Falcón. 'You might not have seen it.'

'That was the only show I ever did in St Louis. First and last.'

'This wasn't to do with the arts. It was a local news story.'

'I only went back to St Louis to see my parents for Thanksgiving and Christmas.'

'When did you say your mother died?'

'I didn't,' she said, 'but it was on December 3rd 2000. You know who you remind me of, Inspector Jefe?'

'Americans only seem to know one Spaniard and I don't look anything like Antonio Banderas.'

'Columbo,' she said, not thinking this at all but wanting to get back at him. 'A much better-looking Columbo. You ask a load of questions that don't seem to have any bearing on the case and then, bang, you nail the culprit.'

'Fictional police work is always more entertaining than the real thing.'

'Marty said from the beginning that you weren't like any cop he'd ever seen.'

'And I suppose he'd have come across quite a few in the months before you arrived here?'

She rested her chin on her thumb and tapped her nose with her finger.

'You never said what Dan Fineman wrote about, Inspector Jefe.'

'How you were helping the FBI with their inquiries into the murder of your ex-lover, Reza Sangari.'

'You're a very thorough person,' she said.

'You looked me up on the internet,' said Falcón. 'I looked you up.'

'Then you won't need to ask me anything,' she said. 'And, anyway, none of it's relevant to what happened to the Vegas.'

'Have you had any other affairs since you've been married to your husband?' he asked.

She narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips and smoked about two centimetres in a single drag.

'Are you seriously trying to put me and Rafael together, Inspector Jefe?' she asked. 'Is that how your mind works? You see a pathetically obvious pattern in things and your policeman's brain snaps the two together.'

Falcón sat still, his eyes fixed on her, waiting for the cracks to appear. Instead, something dawned in her face and she sat up on the edge of the sofa.

'I've got it,' she said. 'How stupid of me. Columbo – disconnected questions. This is about the judge, isn't it? You think I'm embarking on an affair with Juez Calderón. And, yes, I read the story… Javier Falcón. His fiancé is your ex-wife. Is that what this is all about'

There was some colour in Maddy Krugman's cheeks. She was angry. Falcón wouldn't have minded blocking out the glare coming from her green eyes, the flames of her red hair. He realized that the two of them were prepared to hurt each other and she didn't mind the idea of that.

'Now that I've discovered that your motive for leaving America was a little more complicated than you've led me to believe, I have to look at things from a different perspective.'

'So what was all that stuff about Esteban?'

'You mentioned him, not me,' he said. 'I was interested because he decided to postpone a meeting he had with me yesterday. I now find out it was because he was with you.'

'Do you still love your ex-wife, Inspector Jefe?'

'That's got nothing to do with anything.'

'Why are you so curious about Esteban?' she asked. 'It shouldn't be any of your business what he does with his private life. And you shouldn't give a damn about your ex-wife… but you do.'

'They're getting married. I'm under no illusions.'

'You've given yourself away, Inspector Jefe,' she said. 'You're under no illusions, but you wouldn't mind the chance, I bet.'

'You're like a defence lawyer putting words into the mouth of a prosecution witness.'

'And you've got nobody to object to,' she said, looking sadly around the living room before fixing on him again, 'Any woman over the age of twenty would take one look at Esteban Calderón and know him for what he is.'

'Which is?'

'A ladies' man who's always looking,' she said. 'You don't see it because you're not the type. I hope your ex-wife isn't a romantic.'

'And what if she is?'

'She'd be under the illusion that she could make that kind of man change,' she said. 'But I can promise you one thing… she knows what he's like. No woman could miss it. Why do you think Esteban was around here with his tail wagging on the first day of your investigation?'

'How does your husband take that sort of thing?' asked Falcón.

'Marty's got nothing to worry about,' she said. 'He trusts me.'

'How did he take Reza Sangari?'

Silence, while Maddy stubbed out the cigarette with a dozen precise little stabs at the ashtray.

'We nearly didn't make it through,' she said, looking up with her eyes magnified by impending tears. 'That was my first and last affair.'

'Were you still seeing Reza Sangari when he was murdered?'

She shook her head, slowly.

'Did you contemplate leaving your husband for Reza Sangari?'

She nodded.

'And what happened?'

'That is private,' she said.

'I'm sure you had to tell the FBI everything… or did they respect your privacy?'

'It upsets me. I don't want to talk about it.'

'Did you find out about the other women?' asked Falcón, riding over her sensitivities.

'Yes,' she said. 'They were younger than me. They had more resilience.'

'And why, when you see so clearly what sort of a man Esteban Calderón is, did you not spot Reza Sangari?'

'I made the crucial mistake of falling completely and madly in love with him.'

She paced the room, her nerves getting the better of her.

'I used to go into New York City twice a week,' she said. 'I had work from a couple of magazines and I used a studio which happened to be close to Reza's warehouse. He came to the studio one day with a model I was using for a shoot. The model was flying out to LA straight afterwards. Reza asked me out to lunch. By the end of that afternoon we'd had food, wine and he'd made love to me on a pile of pure silk carpets from Qom. That's what it was like. Nothing was ordinary. He was beautiful and I fell for him like I've never fallen for anybody in my life.'

'The model you were using that day, was her name Françoise Lascombs?'

'Yes.'

'She must have been around once she came back from LA. Didn't you see her?'

'Reza was very good at keeping all aspects of his love life separate. And you know how it is with these men – when you were with him you were the only person in the world who mattered. I wasn't thinking of anybody else and certainly not the invisible competition.'

'But you did find out about them?'

'About six months after we started, when I was so in love with him I didn't know what to do with myself, I went into the city on an odd day. I didn't intend to see him but inevitably I ended up at his warehouse. As I went for his doorbell a woman came out and I recognized that happy spring in her step. I didn't go up. I went across the street and stood in a doorway. I was shaking. I don't know whether you know what that sort of betrayal is like – a really appalling sense of breakage. My organs felt lacerated. It took me an hour to stop shaking. Then I decided I would go up and finish with him and, as I crossed the street, another woman converged on his door. I couldn't believe it. I didn't go up. I somehow managed to get home and collapsed. I never saw him again and then somebody killed him over a weekend and they took four days to find the body.'

'And they never found the murderer?'

'It was a long and painful investigation. Never was so much pressure put on so many relationships by the death of one man. The media were on top of it too, because Françoise Lascombs had just become Estee Lauder's girl. The FBI probably had about ten suspects, but they couldn't pin it on any of them. Then they discovered his coke habit. He had something like two hundred grammes in his apartment. I never knew about it, but I suppose he had to be on something just to maintain that lifestyle. They thought that something must have gone wrong in a deal.'