The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'I am… Yes, I am.'

'When was the last time you talked?'

'Just before I went away on holiday,' he said. 'I wanted to know if he'd made any progress on the cesspit, and I had someone in mind who might have a different approach to the problem.'

'When we gave Sebastián the letter from his father he batted it off the table, as if he didn't want to know. Then he broke down very badly and had to be wheeled back to his cell,' said Falcón. 'You were a father to him, as you've said, can you explain any of that? He seems to despise Pablo, and yet he was devastated by his death.'

'I can't tell you any more than I have already,' said Ignacio. 'All I can say is that Sebastián was a very complicated boy. It didn't help that his mother left him. It probably wasn't good for his father to have been away so much. I'm not qualified to explain that sort of reaction.'

'Have you been to see him in jail?'

'Pablo said he wasn't seeing anybody. I sent my wife out to the prison in the hope she could talk to him, but he refused to see her as well.'

'What about before he was sent to prison? He was a young man who didn't need looking after any more when Pablo was away. Did you see him then?'

'We saw him. He came for lunch sometimes when he was at the Bellas Artes… before he dropped out.'

'Why did he drop out?'

'It was a pity. Pablo said he was very good. There was no apparent reason. He just lost interest in it.'

'When did Gloria die?'

'Some time around 1995 or 1996.'

'Was that when Sebastián finished with his art course? He'd have been about twenty.'

'That's true. I'd forgotten that. He'd been seeing her every year since he was about sixteen. He'd go to the USA every summer.'

'He looked like her, didn't he? More like her than Pablo.'

Ignacio shrugged, a sharp jerk as if a fly was irritating him. Falcón could see the questions building up in the man's head.

'In the letter he wrote to you, Inspector Jefe, did Pablo mention me?'

'He put a note at the bottom asking that you be informed,' said Falcón. 'He might have posted something to you. If he did, we'd be very interested to see it.'

Ignacio, having sat on the edge of his seat the whole interview, eased back into his chair.

'I suppose he could have posted something to his lawyer as well,' said Falcón. 'Do you know which lawyer is holding the will?'

Ignacio hunched forward again at this question.

'Ranz Costa,' he said, his mind elsewhere. 'Ranz

Costa did the deed on this property, so I'm sure he's got the will.'

'I suppose he's on holiday?'

'He's my lawyer, too. He doesn't go on holiday until August,' said Ignacio, standing up, putting his beer down, crushing out the cigarette. 'Do you mind if I take a quick look around? Just to see my brother's place and things.'

'The room where he died is still officially a crime scene, so you'd better not go in there,' said Falcón.

Ignacio went off into the house. Falcón waited and went to the corridor. Ignacio was in the bedroom. The door was open a crack. Ignacio was madly searching the room. He went under the bed. He lifted the mattress. He surveyed the room, mouth set, eyes penetrating- He went through the clothes in the wardrobe, checked the pockets. Falcón backed down the hall and resumed his seat.

They left the house soon after. Falcón locked up and watched Ignacio's silver Mercedes disappear into the heat. He went back to Consuelo, who opened the door with the El Mundo Sunday magazine hanging from her fingers. They went into the living room where they both collapsed on the sofa.

'How's Ignacio taking it?' she asked.

'Do you know Ignacio Ortega?'

'I've met him at Raúl's construction industry functions. I spent more time with his wife than I did with him. He's a rather uninteresting self-made man with not a grain of culture in him. Given Pablo's talent and intellectual capacity… you can barely believe they're brothers.'

'Do you know anything about his son?'

'I know his name is Salvador and that he's a heroin addict. He lives somewhere in Seville.'

'Ah, well, that's a little more than Ignacio was prepared to admit.'

'That's what you find out when you talk to the wife.'

'How is he with his wife?'

'He's not what you'd call a "new man". He's of the macho generation. The wife does what she's told,' said Consuelo. 'She was scared of him. If we were talking and he joined us, she'd shut up.'

'Anyway, it's Sunday,' said Falcón, waving it all away. 'Let's try and forget about it for the rest of the day.'

'Well, I'm glad you came back,' she said. 'I was about to fall into a Sunday depression. You stopped me reading about Russia. No, that's not quite true. I turned on the news to try to stop thinking about Russia and I found myself looking at the forest fire, which didn't help. The noise of it. I've never heard fire before, Javier. It was like a beast crashing through the woods.'

'The fire in the Sierra de Aracena?'

'It's destroyed 2,500 hectares and the wind is still blowing up there,' she said. 'The firefighters say it was arson. You wonder what the matter is with people.'

'Tell me about Russia. I'm interested in Russia.'

'It's more about statistics.'

'They're the worst thing about the news,' said Falcón. 'I think editors have a dictum: "If you haven't got a story, give them a statistic." They know that our imagination will do the rest.'

'These are the Russian statistics,' she said, reading. 'The number of illegitimate births doubled between 1970 and 1995. This meant that by 1997 twenty-five per cent of all births were illegitimate. Most of the illegitimate children were born to single mothers who couldn't keep themselves alive and look after a child at the same time, so they abandoned them. In December 2000 the Orthodox Church reckoned that there were between two and five million vagabond children in Russia.'

'Ah, right, your obsession with children,' said Falcón. 'Two to five million.'

'Now for the only good statistic. The fertility rate in Russia is nearly the lowest in the world. Nearly. And it was then that I realized why this article has been written in a Spanish newspaper because the only country with a fertility rate lower than Russia is

'Spain,' said Falcón.

'That's why your timing was perfect,' said Consuelo. 'I'd just started on that Sunday thinking, that the whole world has gone wrong.'

'I have a temporary solution to the world crisis.'

'Tell me.'

'Manzanilla. A swim. Paella. Rosado. And a long siesta that goes right through to Monday.'

He woke up in the night disturbed by a vivid dream. He was walking down a path in a dense wood. Coming towards him were two children, a boy and a girl, of around twelve years old who he knew were brother and sister. Walking between them was a totemic bird wearing a frightening mask. As they met, the bird explained: 'I need these two lives.' The look on the children's faces was one of unbearable dread and he felt himself powerless to help. He thought it had woken him up until, as he lay there, he realized that the television was on downstairs. Voices were speaking in American-English. Consuelo was still asleep next to him.

The light from the TV pulsated in the dark as he entered the living room. He turned it off with the remote. It felt warm and he noticed that the sliding door to the pool was open about half a metre.

He turned on the light. Consuelo came down the stairs still half asleep.

'What's going on?'

'The TV was on,' said Falcón. 'Did we leave that door open?'

Consuelo was suddenly awake, her eyes wide open. She pointed and let out a shout as if there was something bad in the room.

He followed her finger. Lying on the coffee table was a group photograph of her children. Someone had drawn a large red cross on the glass.

Chapter 20

Monday, 29th July 2002

The news told him that the fire was still burning outside Almonaster la Real as Falcón made his way to the Jefatura. Fifty kilometre per hour winds were not making the firefighters' task any easier and they were having to let it burn rather than actively save the forest.