The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

by Robert Wilson

  'When they don't know the camera is there?' asked Falcón.

  'One step further than that,' said Marty. 'When they believe themselves to be completely alone.'

  'That makes me sound like a snoop,' she said. 'I'm not a -'

  'Yes, you are,' said Marty, laughing…

  'No, I'm not,' she said, 'because that implies that I'm interested in what people are doing, and that's not it.'

  'What is it?' asked Marty. Then, turning to Falcón, he added, 'She never shoots me.'

  'It's the internal struggle,' she said. 'I hate it when you make me say these things. It's just not -'

  'Have you got any shots of Sr Vega?' said Falcón.

  They left Marty on the sofa and went upstairs. One of three bedrooms had been converted into a darkroom. While Maddy looked through her contact sheets Falcón checked the books on the shelves and pulled out one with Madeleine Coren on the spine. There was a photograph of her on the inside flap – a creamy beauty with sparkling eyes, challenging the camera to come closer. She had the dazzle of youth then, which had been skimmed down by life's natural damage to its present translucence. There was still something of the celebrity about her, that quality that film producers look for: not beauty, but watchability. She absorbed things from around her – available light, unused energy and anything anybody might want to give. Falcón opened the book, tore himself away from her profile. He could feel his bone marrow weakening.

  Her photographs at first seemed to be about loneliness: old people sitting on park benches, a young man standing at a rail overlooking a river, a woman in a towelling robe on a roof terrace in Manhattan. Gradually, as the camera's eye moved closer, other things became evident: contentment on the old person's face, possibility in the young man's eyes, dreaminess in the woman's face.

  'They're facile, those early ones,' said Maddy. 'The idea was just a gimmick. I was only twenty-two. I didn't know anything. Take a look at these -'

  She handed him six black-and-white prints. The first three showed Rafael Vega in a white shirt and dark trousers, hands in pockets, standing on his well-clipped lawn. The camera was looking over his shoulder at his profile. His jaw was tight. Falcón waited for the shot to tell him something. Then he saw what it was.

  'He's barefoot.'

  'That was 14th January this year.'

  'What was he doing?'

  'That's not the point… remember,' she said. 'I'm not a snoop. Look at these. They're taken down by the river. I go there a lot. I can sit with a big zoom lens on a tripod and people will stop on Calle Bétis and the bridges. I pick up a lot of contemplative looks. People go to the river for a reason… don't they?'

  The three shots she gave him were close-ups of head and shoulders. In the first Rafael Vega was wincing, in the second he was gritting his teeth, eyes screwed up, and in the third his mouth had cracked open.

  'He's in pain,' said Falcón.

  'He was crying,' said Maddy. 'There's saliva at the corners of his mouth.'

  He gave her back the photos. They were intrusive and he didn't like them. He returned her book to the shelf.

  'And you didn't think any of this was worth mentioning before?'

  'This is my work,' she said. 'This is how I express myself. I wouldn't have shown you them if Marty hadn't pushed me.'

  'Even though it could have a bearing on what happened in the Vegas' house last night?'

  'I answered your questions – the last time we spoke, how the Vegas got along, whether he was having an affair. I just didn't relate any of that to these shots because the point is that we should never know about them. They were not taken for the purposes of investigating causes.'

  'Why were they taken?'

  'These are shots of people suffering in intensely private moments, but out in the open. They have chosen not to hide in their homes but to walk it out of themselves in the presence of other human beings.'

  Falcón remembered the hours he'd spent walking the streets of Seville in the past fifteen months. The contemplation of the fundamentals of his existence were too unsettling for the confines even of his sprawling house on Calle Bailen. He'd walked it all out of himself, stared it all into the sloe-black waters of the Guadalquivir, shaken it all off into the empty sugar sachets and cigarette ends on the floors of anonymous bars. It was true. He had not sat at home with his horrors piling up in his mind. There was solace in the wordless company of strangers.

  Maddy was standing close to him. He was aware of her smell, the body under its thin sheath of silk, the exquisite pressure, the flimsiness of the barrier. She hovered, expectant, confident of her ability. Her white throat trembled as she swallowed.

  'We should go back downstairs,' said Falcón.

  'There was something else I wanted to show you,' she said, and led him across the corridor to another bedroom, which had a bare tiled floor and more of her photographs on the walls.

  His attention was grabbed by a colour shot of a blue pool with a white necklace of tiles in a green lawn with a purple flame of bougainvillea in one corner and a white cushioned lounger in the other. A woman sat on the lounger in a black bathing costume under a red hat.

  'That's Consuelo Jiménez,' he said.

  'I didn't know you knew her,' said Maddy.

  He went to the window. Across the road Consuelo's garden was visible.

  'I had to get up on the roof for the angle,' she said.

  To his left he could see the Vegas' entrance and driveway through the trees.

  'Do you know what time Sr Vega came back home last night?'

  'No, but it was rarely before midnight.'

  'You wanted to show me something?' he said, turning back in to the room.

  On the back wall behind the door, framed in black, was a print 75 cm by 50 cm of a man staring down from a bridge, under which it was clear his whole life was flowing. The features of the man did not compute at first. There was too much going on in the face. It was a shock for him to discover that he was looking at himself – a Javier Falcón he'd never seen before.

  Chapter 5

  Wednesday, 24th July 2002

  Back at the crime scene next door everybody had moved upstairs into the Vegas' bedroom. Calderón had already signed off the levantamiento del cadáver for Sr Vega. The body was in a bag on a trolley in the hallway, waiting in the air conditioning to be loaded on to the ambulance and taken down to the Instituto Anatómico Forense on Avenida Sánchez Pizjuan.

  The crime scene team were now congregated around the bed, looking down at Sra Vega, hands behind backs, solemn as if in prayer. The pillow was off her face and had been put in a plastic bag and leaned against the wall. Her mouth was open. The top lip and teeth were set in a snarl as if she'd left life bitterly. Her lower jaw was off centre.

  'She'd been hit once with the right hand,' Calderón explained to Falcón. 'The jaw's dislocated… Probably knocked her unconscious. The Médico Forense thinks it was done with the flat of the hand, rather than a closed fist.'

  'What was the time of death?'

  'Same time as the husband: three, three thirty. He can't be more accurate than that.'

  'Sra Jiménez said she used sleeping pills, two a night, to knock herself out. She must have woken up and had to be subdued before being suffocated. Is there any link between this death and Sr Vega's yet?'

  'Not until I get them back to the Instituto,' said the Médico Forense.

  'We're hoping for some sweat or saliva on the upper side of the pillow,' said Felipe.

  'This strengthens your case for an unknown murderer, Inspector Jefe,' said Calderón. 'I can't see a husband dislocating his wife's jaw.'

  'Unless, as I said, she woke up, perhaps got out of bed just as Sr Vega came in full of intent. She might have seen something different in him, become hysterical and he felt the need for violence,' said Falcón. 'I'm still keeping an open mind on this. Any ghosts in here'

  'Ghosts?' asked Calderón.

  'Something that makes a crime scene look "off", not as it shoul
d be,' said Falcón. 'We all had the same feeling about Sr Vega's body in the kitchen. Somebody else had been there.'

  'And here?'

  Jorge shrugged.

  'She was murdered,' said Felipe. 'Nobody was trying to make this scene look like anything else. Whether it was Sr Vega remains to be seen. All we've got is the pillow.'

  'What did the neighbours have to say?' asked Calderón, moving away from the others in the room.

  'We have some conflicting views,' said Falcón. 'Sra Jiménez has known Sr Vega for some time and did not consider him the suicidal type. She also noted the new car and said he was about to go on holiday to San Diego. Sra Krugman, however, showed me these photographs, taken recently, of Sr Vega in private, clearly distressed and possibly unstable. She let me have this contact sheet.'

  Calderón looked over the images, frowning.

  'He's barefoot in his garden in January,' said Falcón. 'And there's another one of him crying down by the river.'

  'What's she doing, taking these photographs?' asked Calderón.

  'It's her work,' said Falcón. 'The way she expresses herself.'

  'Taking shots of people's private distress?' said Calderón, raising an eyebrow. 'Is she weird?'

  'She told me that she was interested in the private, inner struggle,' said Falcón. 'You know, that voice that Sr Vázquez talked about. The one nobody ever hears.'

  'But what's she doing with it?' asked Calderón. 'Recording the face but not the voice… I mean, what's the point?'

  'The voice is loud in the head but silent to the outside world,' said Falcón. 'She's interested in the distressed person's need to be out in the open… amongst his fellow strangers, walking his pain out of himself.'

  They exchanged a look, left the room and went into Mario's bedroom. Calderón gave him back the contact sheet.

  'What's all that bullshit about?' said Calderón.

  'I'm telling you what she said.'

  'Is she getting some… vicarious experience from this?'

  'She's got a photograph of me on her wall,' said Falcón, still seething. 'A blow-up of me staring down into the river from the Puente de Isabel II, for God's sake.'

  'She's like some paparazzo of the emotions,' said Calderón, wincing.

  'Photographers are strange people,' said Falcón, who was one himself. 'Their currency is perfect moments from real life. They define their idea of perfection to themselves and then pursue it… like prey. If they're lucky they find an image that intensifies their idea, makes it more real… but in the end they're capturing ephemera.'

  'Ghosts, internal struggles, captured ephemera…' said Calderón. 'This is unusable stuff.'

  'Let's wait for the autopsy. That should give us something tangible to work with. In the meantime I'd like to find Sergei, the gardener, who was physically the closest person to the crime scene and discovered the body.'

  'There's another ghost,' said Calderón.

  'We should search his rooms down at the bottom of the garden.'

  Calderón nodded.

  'Maybe I'll go across and take a look at Sra Krugman's photographs while you search the gardener's rooms,' said Calderón. 'I want to see these shots full size.'

  Falcón tracked the judge with his eyes back to the second crime scene. Calderón exchanged words with the Médico Forense, rolling his mobile in his hand like a bar of soap. He trotted down the stairs in a hurry. Falcón shrugged away the unsettling thought that

  Calderón seemed oddly self-conscious and keen, which was not part of his usual knowing style.

  As he sweated his way down the unshaded lawn Falcón noticed a pile of blackened paper in the grill on the paved barbecue area. The uppermost paper had been crumpled and was thoroughly burned so that it disintegrated at the touch of his pen. Beneath it were pages that had not been so completely consumed by fire, on which there was discernible handwriting.

  He called Felipe down to the garden with his forensic kit. He looked it over wearing his custom-made magnified goggles.

  'We're not going to save much of this,' he said, 'if anything.'

  'They look like letters to me,' said Falcón.

  'I can only make out partial words, but the writing has that rounded look of a female hand. I'll take a shot of it before we wreck it.'

  'Give me the partial words you can see.'

  Felipe called out some words which at least confirmed the language as Spanish and he took a couple of shots with his digital camera. The blackened paper collapsed as he dug in deeper with his pen. He found a partial line 'en la escuela' – in the school – but nothing else. At the bottom of the pile he came across paper of a different quality. Felipe lifted some filigree remains from the blackened flakes.

  'This is a modern photograph,' he said. 'They're very flammable. The chemicals blister as the paper underneath burns and all that's left is this. Older photographs don't burn so easily. The paper is thicker and higher quality.'

  He teased out some paper which was glossy black and curled at the edges but still white in the middle. He turned it over to reveal a black-and-white shot of a girl's head and shoulders. She was standing in front of a woman whose presence had been reduced to a ringed hand resting on the girl's clavicle.

  'Can we date it?'

  'This sort of stock hasn't been used commercially in Spain for years, but it could have been developed privately or come from abroad where they are still using that kind of stuff. So… tricky,' said Felipe. 'The girl's hairstyle looks a bit old-fashioned.'

  'Sixties, seventies?' asked Falcón.

  'Maybe. She certainly doesn't look like a girl from the pueblo. And the woman's hand on her shoulder doesn't look as if it's done any manual labour. I'd have said they were well-off foreigners. I've got some cousins out in Bolivia who look a bit like this, you know, just not up to date.'

  They bagged the piece of photograph, found some shade and cleaned themselves up.

  'You burn old letters and photographs if you're putting your house in order,' said Felipe.

  'Or your head,' said Falcón.

  'Maybe he did kill himself and we're just imagining things.'

  'Why would you burn this sort of stuff?' said Falcón. 'Painful memories. A part of your life you don't want your wife to find out about…'

  'Or a part of your life you don't want your son to find out about,' said Felipe, 'when you die.'

  'Perhaps it could be dangerous material if it falls into the wrong hands.'

  'Whose hands?'

  'I'm just saying, you burn this sort of thing to get rid of it because it's either painful, embarrassing or dangerous.'

  'It could just be a picture of his wife as a girl,' said Felipe. 'What would that mean?'

  'Have we tracked down Sra Vega's parents yet?' asked Falcón. 'They should really be looking after the boy, rather than Sra Jiménez.'

  Felipe told him that Perez was working on it. They went down to the gardener's house. The door was not locked. The two rooms were stuffy, airless and stripped of all possessions. The mattress was half off the bed as if he kept something under there, or perhaps just slept on it outside. The only other furniture in the bedroom was an upturned box, used as a bedside table. The kitchen had a gas ring and bottle of butane. There was no fridge and only dried food out on a sideboard.

  'The staff didn't see much of the Vega luxury,' said Felipe.

  'Better than living in Tres Mil Viviendas,' said Falcón. 'Why run?'

  'Allergic to police,' said Felipe. 'These guys get asthmatic when they see 091 on the wall of the phone booth. A dead body… well, you don't hang around waiting for the disaster to happen, do you?'

  'Or he might have seen something or someone,' said Falcón. 'He must have been aware of Sr Vega burning his papers, probably saw him standing out in the garden in his bare feet. Maybe he even saw what happened last night.'

  'I'll take some prints and run them through the computer,' said Felipe.

  Falcón walked back up to the house, his shirt sticking to his bac
k. He called Perez on his mobile.

  'Where are you?' asked Falcón.

  'Now, I'm in the hospital. Inspector Jefe.'

  'I left you searching the garage and the outside of the house.'

  'I did that.'

  'What about all the burnt papers in the barbecue?'

  'They were burnt. I made a note of it.'

  'Did you hurt yourself?'

  'No.'

  'What are you doing in the hospital then?'

  'Sra Jiménez sent the maid over, saying she was having trouble with the boy, Mario. She thought it would be good for him to see a familiar face, get the grandparents over.'

  'Did you speak to Juez Calderón about this?'

  'Yes.'

  'He didn't mention it to me.'

  'He had other things on his mind.'

  'Like what?'

  'He's not going to tell me, is he?' said Perez. 'I could see he was preoccupied, that's all.'

  'Just tell me why you're in the hospital,' said Falcón, who had never quite got used to Perez's maddening style of working and reporting.

  'I arrived at the apartment of Sr and Sra Cabello, who are the parents of Sra Vega,' he said. 'They're both in their seventies. They let me in. I tell them what's happened and Sra Cabello collapses. I thought it was shock, but Sr Cabello says she has a weak heart. I call an ambulance and give her first aid. She's stopped breathing. I have to give her heart massage and mouth to mouth. Inspector Jefe. The ambulance arrives and fortunately has a defibrillator on board. She's now in intensive care and I'm sitting here with Sr Cabello. I've called his other daughter and she's on her way down from Madrid on the AVE.'

  'Have you spoken to Sra Jiménez?'

  'I don't have a number for her.'

  'Juez Calderón?'

  'His mobile's turned off.'

  'Me?'

  'We're talking now, Inspector Jefe.'

  'All right, good work,' said Falcón.

  Back in the cool of the house Falcón's insides felt like smouldering wreckage. Everybody was standing around impatiently. Both bodies were bagged and lying on stretchers in the hallway.

  'What are you waiting for?' asked Falcón.