The Silent and the Damned (23 page)

'So he's the book-keeper.'

'Exactly, but since Vega's death he's had freedom of access. He had it before, but he was too scared about getting caught. As I said, he knows the computer system inside out and Vázquez isn't IT savvy enough to stop him.'

'So what are we looking at?' said Falcón. 'Do we have any names for a start?'

'Vladimir Ivanov and Mikhail Zelenov,' said Ferrera, handing over two photos and profiles of the Russians. 'These came through just now from Interpol.'

Vladimir Ivanov (Vlado) had a tattoo on his left shoulder, was fair-haired, blue-eyed with a scar under his jawline on the right side of his face. Mikhail Zelenov (Mikhas) was dark and heavy (132 kg) with green eyes that were just slits in the fat of his face. Their illegal activities covered the full spectrum of mafia activity – prostitution, people-trafficking, gaming, internet fraud and money-laundering. They both belonged to one of the main mafia gangs – Solntsevskaya – which had more than five thousand members. Their sphere of operation was the Iberian peninsula.

'On the two projects which those guys are involved in, there are two sets of books,' said Ramírez. 'The first ones have been prepared by Dourado, based on figures given to him by Vega. The second set have been kept by Vega himself and they show how the projects are really being run.'

'Money-laundering has arrived in the Seville construction industry,' said Falcón.

'The Russians are pretty well financing the whole thing. They supply all labour and materials. Vega Construcciones supplies the architect, the engineers and the supervising site workers.'

'So, who owns the building and what did Rafael Vega get out of it?'

'The ownership details are with Vázquez,' said Ramírez. 'All property deeds and deals are handled by him. We haven't moved on him yet. I thought we should talk first. All we know at the moment is that it's a joint project, with all the cash coming from the Russians and the expertise from Vega… There has to be some balancing out somewhere.'

'Vega
is
providing the shell through which the whole thing can work,' said Falcón. 'So that's significant. But we'll have to fix up a meeting with Vázquez tomorrow. The two of us.'

'What about me?' asked Ferrera. 'I was involved in this part of the investigation, too.'

'I know you were, and I'm sure you've done good work,' said Falcón. 'But Vázquez needs to feel the full weight of seniority in this case. We might even have enough to apply for a search warrant. I'll call Juez Calderón.'

'So what am I going to be doing?' said Ferrera.

'We're losing three men as from tonight,' said Falcón. 'By tomorrow morning we'll all be foot soldiers.'

'But I'll be the only one actually on my feet.'

'We have to find Sergei. He's sixty hours ahead of us now, which means we've probably lost him, but he, at the moment, is our only possible witness. There's got to be one last push at his possible escape routes. I'll ask Juez Calderón if we can put his photo in the press.'

Falcón dismissed them, told them all to go to the bar La Jota and he'd buy them a beer. They filed out. He held Ferrera back.

'I've just had another thought,' he said. 'You got on well with Sr Cabello. I want you to go back to him, and it's going to have to be tonight, because José Luis and I need to go into Vázquez with the information tomorrow morning. I want you to find out from him which properties he sold to Rafael Vega and, in the case of the strategically placed ones, which developments they opened up.'

Falcón drove her to the bar La Jota and bought his round of beers. He called Calderón, no answer. He left the squad in the bar and, on the way to Isabel Cano's office, dropped in on Edificio de los Juzgados. It was silent. The security guard said that Calderón had left at 7 p.m. and that he hadn't seen Inés. Falcón called Pablo Ortega and asked if he could stop by his house to show him some photographs.

'You and your photographs,' said Ortega, irritably. 'As long as you make it quick.'

Isabel Cano's office was open but empty. He knocked on the desktop and she shouted from her office for him to come in. She was sitting at her desk with her heels off, smoking. Her head was thrown back and her hair spilled down the black leather chair. She smiled at him out of the corner of her face.

'Thank God for the weekend,' she said. 'Have you recovered your marbles yet?'

'If anything, the idea has consolidated in my mind.'

'Cops,' she said, wincing at their mental incapacity.

'We lead very sheltered lives.'

'But it doesn't mean you've got to be stupid,' said Isabel. 'Please don't make me capitulate when I've only just started on Manuela. It's bad for my image.'

'Can I sit down?'

She waved vaguely at a chair with her cigarette fingers. Falcón liked Isabel Cano but sometimes she could be abrasive. There was no subject too delicate not to be slapped on the table and filleted like so much fish.

'You know what I've been through, Isabel,' he said.

'Actually, I don't,' she said, surprising him. 'I can only imagine what you've been through.'

'Well, that'll do,' said Falcón. 'The fact is I feel like a man who's lost everything. All the things that made me human were brought into question. People need a living structure to give themselves a sense of belonging. All I have is memory, which is unreliable. But what I do have is a brother and a sister. Paco is a good man who will always do the right thing. Manuela is complicated for a whole bunch of reasons but which all boil down to the fact that she didn't get the love she wanted from Francisco.'

'I don't feel sorry for her and nor should you,' said Isabel.

'But despite what I know about Manuela – her avarice, possessiveness and covetousness – I
need
her to be my sister. I need to hear her call me her
hermanito,
her little brother. It's sentimental, illogical and offensive to your legal mind… but it's the way it is.'

Isabel's leather chair creaked. The air conditioning breathed. The city slumped in silence.

'And you think you'll get it by giving her the house?'

'By coming to an agreement on the house, which I no longer want to live in, I will open up the possibility. If I don't, I will have to bear the brunt of her hate.'

'You might
think
you need her, but she
knows
she doesn't need you. You have become dispensable because you are no longer a full-blood relative. You are just a barrier,' said Isabel. 'When you give people like Manuela something, all they want is more. They are incapable of love. Your gift will not give what you crave, but it will create resentment, lending her hate more purpose.'

Each sentence was like a slap across his face, as if she was bringing a hysteric back to reality.

'You're probably right,' he said, shaken by her verbal brutality, 'but my nature dictates that I have to take a risk and hope you're proved wrong.'

She threw up her hands and said she'd draft a letter

for him to read. He offered to take her for a drink and a tapa in El Cairo but she declined.

'I'd offer you a drink here, but I don't keep any in the office,' she said.

'Let's go to El Cairo, then,' said Falcón.

'I don't want what we're going to talk about now to have any chance of local broadcast.'

'Have we got anything else to talk about?'

'What you mentioned to me this morning.'

'Esteban Calderón,' said Falcón, sitting back down.

'Did you ask me about him now because he's going to get married to Inés?'

'They announced it on Wednesday,' he said.

'Do you remember who handled your divorce with Inés?'

'You did.'

'So why is Esteban's history any business of yours?'

'I'm concerned… for Inés.'

'Do you think that Inés is some kind of innocent little sweetie who needs to be protected?' said Isabel. 'Because I can tell you she's not. This house you're so keen to give away to Manuela… I had to fight tooth and nail to stop Inés from claiming half of it. You don't have to worry about
her,
she knows everything there is to know about Esteban Calderón, I can assure you.'

Falcón nodded as small worlds, previously closed to him, opened up.

'You called Esteban a hunter this morning. What's he hunting?'

'Difference. He doesn't know that yet,' said Isabel. 'But that's what he's always been looking for.'

'And what is this
difference?'

'Someone whose face he cannot read and whose mind he doesn't understand,' said Isabel. 'Women have always thrown themselves at Esteban. They've tended to be women from his professional life. They all have legal minds. He knows their architecture from the moment they walk into the room. He plays with them in the hope that they will not be as they seem. Then he finds that they're the same as all the others and he gets bored. The hunt starts again. He's doomed to the relentless movement of a shark, that man.'

Falcón drove out of the darkening city, the real world brutalized by the heat seemed very distant as his hands shifted automatically from gear stick to steering wheel within the cool cockpit of the car. The street lights sliced shadows across the window as he drove down the banks of oleander on Avenida de Kansas City. Neon made promises out of the darkness and high palms held up the tent of the night sky. Nothing reached him apart from the red and green of the traffic lights. He lived in his head while his automaton drove him to Santa Clara. Isabel's words about Calderón and Inés ran through his mind like a news bar in lights. Falcón knew he'd been through a patch of madness, but now he was confronting the extraordinary lunacy of the perfectly sane people around him.

The only thing they had not discussed was the brief glimpse she'd given Falcón that morning of the hurt that had come to the surface at the mention of Calderón's name. He now realized that it had nothing to do with Calderón himself. The judge had become insignificant in Isabel's mind. What had surfaced was the memory of her betrayal as a wife and mother, who had been prepared to jeopardize her husband and family. What she'd shown him was the savage regret which had been lashed to that memory.

He had to pull off the Avenida de Kansas City beneath the red hovering neon of La Casera to take a call from Cristina Ferrera, who'd spoken to Sr Cabello. Falcón opened up his city map and marked off the plots of land Cabello had sold to Vega and the two major developments that were opened up by their sale. Before he hung up he told her to keep an eye on Nadia.

It was only after this call that he began to wonder what he was doing going for dinner with Consuelo.

As he pulled up outside Pablo Ortega's house he remembered Montes standing at his window. He should have asked him about the Russians. He called the Jefatura and got a mobile number for Montes.

Montes answered the call. From the background noise he was clearly in a bar, and in their first exchange revealed himself to be very drunk.

'This is Javier Falcón from the Grupo de Homicidios,' he said. 'We spoke yesterday…'

'Did we?'

'In your office. We spoke about Eduardo Carvajal and Sebastián Ortega.'

'I can't hear you,' said Montes.

Music and voices blared.

'Shut the fuck up!' Montes roared, to total indifference.
'Momentito.'

Traffic noise. A car horn.

'Can you hear me, Inspector Jefe?' said Falcón.

'Who are you?'

Falcón started again. Montes apologized elaborately. Now he remembered perfectly.

'We also talked about the Russian mafia.'

'I don't think so.'

'You explained the people-trafficking business.'

'Ah, yes, yes, the people… business.'

'I have a question. There are two Russians who are connected to my investigation into the death of Sr Vega, the constructor – you remember?'

Silence. He shouted Montes's name.

'I'm waiting for the question,' Montes said.

'Do the names Vladimir Ivanov and Mikhail Zelenov mean anything to you?'

Concentrated nasal breathing came over the ether.

'Did you hear me?' asked Falcón.

'I heard you. They don't mean anything to me, but my memory is not what it should be. I've had a couple of beers, you see, and I'm not at my best tonight.'

'We'll talk Monday then,' said Falcón, and hung up.

Falcón had a strong sense of circling, as if he was a bird of prey high up in the thermals and there were things going on down in the terrestrial world that could be of interest. He leaned against the roof of his car, tapping his forehead with his mobile. It was unusual for Montes, a married man, to be drunk early on a Friday evening in a crowded bar, probably alone. Was that an evasive reaction to the two names? Had he seemed drunker at the end of the conversation than he was at the beginning?

Ortega buzzed him into his stinking, flyblown courtyard. He wasn't as edgy as he'd been on the phone because he'd reached the affable stage of drunkenness. He was wearing a voluminous white shirt untucked over blue shorts. He offered Falcón a drink. He himself was sipping from a massive glass of red wine.

'Torre Muga,' he said. 'Very good. Would you like some?'

'Just a beer,' said Falcón.

'A few prawns with your beer?' he asked. 'Some jamon… Iberico de bellota? I bought it today in the Corte Ingles.'

Ortega went to the kitchen and came back fully supplied.

'I'm sorry I was sharp with you on the phone,' he said.

'I shouldn't be bothering you with these things on a Friday night.'

'I only go out at the weekend if I'm working,' said Ortega, who had been completely smoothed out by the excellence of the Torre Muga. 'I'm a very bad member of the audience. I see all the techniques. I never lose myself in the play. I prefer reading books. I'm sorry if I'm rambling, this is my second glass and, as you can see, they are quite some glasses. I must find a cigar. Have you read a book by… it'll come to me.'