The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

'You were done for dealing, weren't you?'

'I was, but I wasn't dealing. I was just caught with too much on me. That was why I only got four years.'

'Was Pablo disappointed in you?'

'The only time he got angry with me was when I stole something from his collection,' said Salvador. 'It was a just a drawing, some smudges on paper. I sold

it for twenty thousand pesetas' worth of gear. Pablo said it was worth three hundred thousand.'

'He wasn't angry?'

'He was furious. But, you know, he never hit me, and by my father's standards he was well within his rights to flay me alive.'

'And after that you did the deal?'

'Once he'd calmed down and got the drawing back.'

'How much did you see of Sebastián in that time?'

'A fair amount when Sebastián started at the Bellas Artes. Then I didn't see him for a bit until I heard Pablo had bought him a small apartment on Jesus del Gran Poder. I used to go there to get off the street to shoot up. When Pablo found out, he built another clause into our deal. I had to promise not to see Sebastián until I was clean. Pablo said he was in a fragile state and he didn't want to add drugs to the problem.'

'Did you keep to that?'

'Sebastián was never interested in drugs. He had other strategies for blocking out the world.'

'Like what?'

'He called it "a retreat into beauty and innocence". He had a room in his apartment which he'd soundproofed and blocked out the light. I used to shoot up in there. He painted luminous points on the ceiling. It was like being wrapped in a velvet night. He used to lie in there and listen to his music and the tapes he'd made of himself reading poetry.'

'When did he make this room?'

'As soon as Pablo bought the apartment… five or six years ago.'

'Why did he buy him the apartment?'

'They were finding it difficult to live together. They used to fight… verbally. Then they stopped talking to each other.'

'Did Pablo ever beat Sebastián?'

'Not that I saw or heard about.'

'What about your father?'

Silence.

'I mean when he was living with your family,' said Falcón.

Salvador seemed to be having trouble with his breathing. He began to hyperventilate. Ferrera got behind him and calmed him down with her hands on his shoulders.

'Would you like to help Sebastián?' asked Falcón.

Salvador nodded.

'There's nothing to be ashamed of in here,' said Falcón. 'Anything you say will only be used to help Sebastián.'

'But there is something to be ashamed of in here -' he said, suddenly livid, thumping himself in the chest.

'We're not here to judge you. This isn't a trial of morality,' said Ferrera. 'Things happen to us when we're young and we have no way of -'

'What happened to you?' said Salvador viciously, pulling himself away from her touch. 'What the fuck has ever happened to you? You're a fucking policewoman. Nothing has happened to you. You don't know anything that happens out there. You come from the safe world. I can smell it on you – your soap. You leave the safe world and just ruffle the surface of things where we live, catching people doing their little wrongs. You have no idea what it's like on the other side.'

She moved back from him. Falcón thought she was shocked at first, but she was just asserting her presence. She was telling Salvador something with her silence and he couldn't look at her. The atmosphere in the interrogation room was more dramatic than if she'd stripped naked.

'You think because of the way I look and the job I do that nothing has ever happened to me?'

'Go on then,' said Salvador, goading her, 'tell me what's happened to you, little policewoman.'

Silence, as Ferrera weighed things in her mind.

'I don't have to tell you this,' she said, 'and it's not something I particularly want my superior officer to know about me. But I am going to tell you because you need to know that shameful things happen to others, even little policewomen, and they can be talked about and people will not judge. Are you listening to me, Salvador?'

They made eye contact and he nodded.

'Before I became a policewoman I was training to be a nun. The Inspector Jefe knows that much about me. He also knows I met a man and that I became pregnant. It meant that I stopped my training and got married. But there's something else he doesn't know, which I am very ashamed of and it will cost me a lot to say it in front of him.'

Salvador didn't respond. The silence was ringing in the room. Ferrera breathed in. Falcón wasn't sure he wanted to hear this, but it was too late. She was determined.

'I come from Cadiz. It's a port town with some rough people. I was staying with my mother, who did not know that I'd met this man. I'd reached the point where I was going to have to tell the nuns what had happened in my life, and I decided I would go and see the man I loved and talk to him first. I was still a virgin because I believed in the sanctity of marriage and that I should come whole to it. On the way to my lover's apartment that night I was attacked by two men who raped me. It was very quick. I didn't resist. I was pathetically small and weak in their hands. In a matter of ten minutes they did what they wanted with me and left me totally defiled. I staggered back to my mother's apartment. She was already asleep. I showered and got into bed shaking and shattered. I woke up hoping it had been a bad dream, but I was aching all over and full of shame. A week later, when the bruising had died down I went to bed with my lover. The day after that I told the nuns I was leaving. I am still not completely sure who is the father of my first child.'

She eased her leg back until she felt the seat of the chair and dropped down into it so that it rocked. She seemed exhausted. Salvador's eyes fell away from hers to the cigarette in his hand, which trembled.

'The reason I don't see my father any more is that I hate him,' he said. 'I hate him with a hate so massive that if I saw him I'd commit an act of serious violence. I hate him because he is a betrayer of trust, and not just any trust. He is the betrayer of the greatest trust available to human beings – the trust between parent and child. He beat me to keep me scared. To stop me from even thinking about telling anyone what he was doing to me. He beat me because he knew the legend of his beatings would be passed around the neighbourhood and all the kids would be scared of him, too. And when they came to the house he was so sweet to them they let him do whatever he wanted, but they never dared talk. Those men ruined you. My own father ruined me until I was twelve years old. Then it stopped. I thought I could deal with it. I thought I could smoke it away. Smoke away my childhood and get clear of him and start my own life. It might have been possible. But then Uncle Pablo brought Sebastián to the house. And that is my shame. That is why I am like this. Because I said nothing while my father did to Sebastián what he'd done to me. I should… I should have protected him. I should, as you say, have been his elder brother. But I wasn't. I was a coward. And I saw him ruined.'

After some minutes real life creaked back into the room. One of the lights buzzed. The tape machine tickered.

'When did you last see your Uncle Pablo?' asked Falcón.

'I saw him on Friday morning, just for half an hour. He gave me some money. We talked. He asked me whether I knew why Sebastián had done the things that he'd done. I knew what he was getting at, what he wanted from me. But I couldn't tell him what I've just told you. I couldn't admit how I'd failed to Sebastián's father, my uncle, who had helped me so much. I think he'd already worked it out or he'd known it all along and hadn't been able to believe it of his own brother. He was looking to me for the final corroboration of the facts. I should have been able to tell him, but I didn't. At the end of our talk he hugged me and kissed my head. He hadn't done that since I was a small boy. I cried into his shirt. We walked to the door of the apartment and he patted the side of my face with one of his massive hands and he said: "Don't judge your father too harshly. He had a hard life. He took all the beatings for us when we were children. All of them. He was a tough little bastard. He took it all in silence."'