'What are you doing, Javier?' asked Alicia, concerned by his silent activity.
'There's a sack in the bottom of the pool. Something like an old fertilizer bag.'
The sack was heavy. He had to push it along the bottom to the edge of the pool and then drag it down to the shallow end where he pulled it out. It must have weighed thirty kilos. He undid the twine at the neck of the sack and gasped at its horrific contents.
'What is it?' said Alicia, on her feet, disorientated by the sounds he was making, panicked.
'It's Pavarotti and Callas,' said Falcón. 'Ortega's dogs. This doesn't look good.'
'Someone has drowned his dogs?' she said.
'No,' he said. 'I think he's drowned his own dogs.'
Falcón told her to stay sitting by the pool. He went to the kitchen door, which was shut but not locked. He opened it and the horrific stink of the cesspit was thick in the room. There were two empty bottles of Torre Muga on the table. He went into the sitting room where there was another empty bottle of wine and the box of Cohibas Ortega had offered him last night. No glass. The smell of raw sewage was more powerful and he realized that the seal to the other part of the house had been broken. The door to the hallway was open and across the corridor the door to the room with the cracked cesspit was ajar.
On the floor in the corridor was an empty bottle of Nembutal with no top. He pushed the door open. There were wooden boards and plastic sheeting thrown against the wall, which had a large subsidence crack in it. A hole in the floor had been opened up by workmen so that they could inspect the damage. Fragments of Ortega's shattered wine glass were all over the bare concrete and tiles. There was a burnt- out cigar stub as well. In the hole, just below the surface of the sewage, was the white and yellow sole of Pablo Ortega's right foot. Falcón called the Jefatura on his mobile. He specifically asked that Juez Calderón be notified as the death might be relevant to the Vega case. He also asked for Cristina Ferrera but instructed that Ramírez should be left alone.
He backed out of the room and went up the corridor to the master bedroom. On the smooth untouched burgundy cover of the bed were two letters, one addressed to Javier Falcón and the other to Sebastián Ortega. He left them where they were and went back to Alicia Aguado, who was still sitting by the pool, very frightened. He told her that Pablo Ortega appeared to have committed suicide.
'I can't believe this,' said Falcón. 'I saw him last night and he was on his way to becoming very drunk, but he was affable, charming, generous. He even said that after our meeting today he was going to show me his collection.'
'His mind was made up,' said Alicia, who was holding on to herself as if she was freezing cold in 42°C.
'Damn,' said Falcón to himself, 'I can't help feeling responsible for this. I've stirred things up and it's -'
'Nobody is responsible for another person killing themselves,' said Alicia firmly. 'He has a whole history that won't have been changed, or even particularly stirred up, by talking to Javier Falcón for a couple of hours.'
'Of course, I know that. I suppose what I mean is that I've precipitated it by pushing him too hard.'
'You mean you weren't just talking to him about Sebastián?'
'I thought he had information that might help my investigation.'
'Was he a suspect?'
'Not exactly a suspect. I could just see that I was making him nervous. The questions I was asking him, whether they were about his son or the Rafael Vega case, for some reason disturbed him.'
'Just out of interest, from the psychological point of view,' she said, 'how did he kill himself?'
'He got drunk, took some sleeping pills and drowned himself in the cracked cesspit.'
'He's planned it out pretty carefully, hasn't he?' she said. 'Drowning the dogs -'
'I asked after his dogs last night,' said Falcón. 'He said they were sleeping. He'd probably already killed them.'
'Any suicide note?'
'Two letters: one to me and the other to his son. I've left them until the Juez de Guardia gets here.'
'He knew you were going to be the first person in here this morning,' she said. 'No nasty surprises for anybody but the professional. The gate and doors conveniently left open. He thought it all out down to the last detail of throwing himself in the cesspit.'
'What do you mean?'
'I thought you said that part of the house was sealed off.'
'I did.'
'So he went to the trouble of breaking the seal because it was psychologically important for him to drown himself in shit… his own shit,' she said. 'I'm sure the pills and alcohol would have done the job on their own.'
'Alcohol can induce vomiting.'
'All right. So he was making sure of it as well… but he could have used the pool. Less private, but it was good enough for his dogs.'
'Assuage my guilt, Alicia. Give me a theory,' he said.
'As you know, there's been a build-up of events even before you started coming to see him about Rafael Vega,' she said. 'His son has been jailed in a high-profile case for a nasty crime. He himself was ostracized by his community so that he had to leave his apartment, and there's a story behind that which you still don't know. He's moved here to a place which, on the face of it, suits him. A garden city, a wealthy community, peace and quiet. But it didn't turn out like that. He felt dislocated and craved the involvement of the barrio. The house he bought developed an unpleasant and antisocial problem. To us that would seem an irritating and expensive inconvenience, but to Pablo Ortega it probably achieved some sort of significance in his mind. Then his neighbour died…'
'He wanted to know if Sr Vega had committed suicide.'
'So it was already on his mind,' said Alicia. 'I've left out the fact that his son didn't want to see him either… another isolating factor. Then Javier Falcón arrived on the scene, perceiving an injustice in Sebastián's case and wanting to help. As you know, from your own experience, you can't help without stirring things up. And what came to the surface of Pablo Ortega's mind? Whatever it was, he didn't want to know about it. He didn't think it worth staying alive to face it. So, not only does he not bring the difficult things to the surface, he actually submerges himself. He drowns his memories in his own ordure. His sweet and innocent dogs did not get that treatment.'
Falcón shook his head in dismay.
'You were asking him about his son, Javier, and you said you were putting pressure on him through your investigation. What did you suspect him of having done?'
'I don't want to talk about that just yet. It would help if you came to this with an open mind,' he said. 'That is, if you want to be involved. It doesn't have to be any of your business.'
'I'm involved,' she said. 'I'd like to know what the letters say. And it might be interesting to know what he had in his collection.'
A patrol car pulled up outside the house.
'We've got to do our work first,' he said. 'But I don't think this will take very long.'
An ambulance parked up behind the patrol car. Felipe and Jorge turned up a few minutes later, along with the Juez de Guardia, Juan Romero. There was a quick conference about the relevance of this suicide to the Vega case. Calderón called Romero who gave him Falcón's verbal report. It was decided to treat them separately. Cristina Ferrera arrived in time to hear the decision.
Falcón gave them a tour of the crime scene via the dead dogs by the pool and the interior of the house. Felipe took the crime scene shots while Jorge inspected the dogs and scraped meat from between their teeth. Ferrera checked the telephone for messages and asked the phone company for a breakdown of calls in and out. She searched for a mobile.
The ambulancemen came in and decided that Ortega's body had been weighted to keep it submerged and would have to be winched out via a pulley in the ceiling. They went to get a block and tackle. Felipe and Jorge moved in and bagged all the evidence before moving on to the bedroom. The Médico Forense arrived and sat chatting with Alicia Aguado by the pool while he waited for the body to be lifted out.