The Silent and the Damned (36 page)

Falcón tried not to allow these images to infect his imagination. He said he'd go and talk to Krugman while Ramírez went back to the Jefatura and pushed Elvira to make FBI contact.

Krugman was standing at his office window, looking out through a pair of binoculars. Falcón knocked. Krugman beckoned him in. The man seemed strangely energized, his eyes were bright, pupils dilated and sparkling.

'You're still running your Russian projects,' said Falcón.

'That's right.'

'Have they contacted you by any chance?'

'Of course they have. They've got a twenty million euro investment there, you don't let that sort of money run around on its own.'

'That's interesting,' said Falcón. 'Were you aware of any financial irregularities…?'

'That's business. I'm an architect.'

'Were you aware of illegal labour on the sites?'

'Yes. There's illegal labour on all building sites.'

'Are you prepared to sign -?'

'Don't be a crazy fool, Inspector Jefe. I'm trying to help.'

'When did you speak to the Russians?'

'Yesterday.'

'What did you discuss?'

'They told me to carry on running the projects, but said that I shouldn't talk to the police. I told them that I would have to speak to the police because they were coming to my house and office all the time. They said that I shouldn't talk about the projects.'

'What language were you speaking?'

'English. They don't speak Spanish.'

'Do you know who you're dealing with, Sr Krugman?'

'Not personally, but I used to work in New York City and I've come across the Russian mafia before in my own back yard. They're powerful people who, with a few exceptions, are quite reasonable as long as you see things their way. You could try taking them on if you thought it would serve a very important purpose. But in the end you're looking for Sr Vega's murderer, or the reason he committed suicide, and I doubt they're going to be able to help you, because I'm pretty sure that the very last thing they wanted was for Sr Vega to die.'

Falcón nodded. Krugman sat back in his chair.

'What were you looking at with the binoculars?'

'Just keeping an eye on things, Inspector Jefe,' he said, very seriously, then he laughed. 'Only kidding. I bought them today. I'm just seeing what I can see.'

Falcón stood up to leave. He was disturbed by Krugman's evangelical look.

'Have you seen my wife recently?' asked Marty, as Falcón held out his hand.

'I saw her in the street on Saturday,' said Falcón.

'Where was that?'

'In a tile shop in Calle Bailén, near my house.'

'You know she's really very fascinated by you, Inspector Jefe.'

'Only because she has some rather strange specialist interests,' said Falcón. 'Personally, I don't like her intrusions.'

'I thought it was just a few snaps of you on the bridge,' said Krugman. 'Or was it more than that?'

'That was enough,' said Falcón, 'to make me feel as if she was trying to take something from me.'

'Well, that's Maddy's unique problem,' said Krugman. 'As your friend, the judge, will find out.'

Krugman turned to the window and put the binoculars to his face.

Back at the Jefatura Ramírez sat smoking in the outer office. He said that Cristina Ferrera was on her way back with Salvador Ortega, who'd been found in a 'shooting gallery' in the Poligono San Pablo. He also informed him that Virgilio Guzmán, the crime editor for the
Diario de Sevilla,
was being patient in his office. This was unnerving because Virgilio Guzmán did not do stories any more.

Virgilio Guzmán was a few years younger than Falcón but his life and work had aged him considerably. Before coming down to Seville he had been in Bilbao and Madrid, covering ETA terrorist activity. His ambition and tenacity had cost him his marriage, the constant tension had left him with high blood pressure and heart arrhythmia and, he believed, not seeing his six-year-old son had given him colon cancer, from which he'd made a full recovery at the cost of a length of his guts. He'd had to leave the fear of his work to live in fear of his anatomy.

It had changed him. His wife had left him before the cancer diagnosis because he was too hard a man.

Now he had softened, not to mush just to flesh and blood but it had not dulled any of his journalistic sharpness. He had the vital journalist's tool: an infallible nose for when things were not right. And he knew that the first suicide by a senior officer in the Jefatura meant that something, somewhere, was rotten. He was polite. He asked if he could put the dictaphone on the desk between them. He clicked it on and sat back with his notebook.

Falcón did not say a word. He made an instant decision about Guzmán – this was a man he could trust and not just by reputation alone. He also thought, and he sniffed at his own naivety on this matter, that with only forty-eight hours left to make a case for Vega's murder, Guzmán, with his extensive experience, might be able to bring different information to the game which could develop into different leads and directions. All this might cost him something from the Montes inquiry, but then the exposure of corruption, and its cutting out, should be a good thing – shouldn't it?

'So, Inspector Jefe, I understand that you are conducting the investigation into the death of your colleague, Inspector Jefe Alberto Montes?'

Falcón said nothing for two long minutes during which Guzmán looked up, blinking like a subterranean animal.

'I'm sorry, Inspector Jefe,' he said, shrugging into the flak jacket of his journalistic hardness, 'but that's the easiest opening question I can think of.'

Falcón leaned over and turned off the dictaphone.

'You know with that machine on I can only tell you the facts of the case.'

'Well, that's a start,' said Guzmán, 'and then it will be up to me to extract the rest. That's how it goes where I come from.'

'You know the facts already,' said Falcón. 'They are the newsworthy event of a police officer's fall to his death. It's the why that contains the human story.'

'And what makes you think I'm looking for a human story and not, say, "a catalogue of corruption that reaches to the heart of regional government" story?'

'It's possible that you'll end up with that sort of story, but you have to start with the human story to get there. You have to understand the thoughts that led a respected officer, who'd never shown any suicidal tendency, to take such drastic action.'

'Do I?' said Guzmán. 'Normally we journalists, or rather journalists of my reputation, deal in facts. We report facts, we build on facts, we create a greater fact from the smaller facts we discover.'

'Then turn on your machine and I will give you the fully corroborated facts of the death of a fellow officer who was much admired by his squad and superiors.'

Guzmán laid down his notebook and pen on the desk and sat back assessing Falcón. He sensed that there were possibilities for him here if he could find the right words, and that the possibilities might not be only work related. He had arrived in Seville alone, admired and, he thought, respected by his fellow journalists, but alone. He could use a friend, and that was the possibility he saw on the other side of the desk.

'I've always worked alone,' he said, after a minute's thought. 'I've had to, because working with somebody and their unpredictability in threatening situations was too dangerous. I only ever wanted to be responsible for my own thoughts and actions and not the victim of others'. I've spent too long in the company of men of violence to be thoughtless.'

'In a human story such as this, there's always tragedy,' said Falcón. 'People feel hurt and betrayed, while others suffer loss and grief.'

'If you remember, Inspector Jefe, I worked on the story of the Guardia Civil death squads sent out by the government to remove ETA terrorist cells. I understand the tragedy of a betrayal of values on the large and the human scale. The repercussions were felt everywhere.'

'Conjecture is something that police officers have to indulge in to find a direction for their investigation, but it is not something that's allowable in court,' said Falcón.

'I told you about my belief in facts,' said Guzmán, 'but you didn't seem to like it so much then.'

'Information is a two-way street,' said Falcón, smiling for the first time.

'Agreed.'

'If you discover something inflammatory you will always tell me before it appears in your newspaper.'

'I'll tell you, but I won't change it.'

'The facts: I didn't know Montes until I went to see him last week. I was and still am investigating the death of Rafael Vega.'

'The suspicious suicide out at Santa Clara,' said Guzmán, picking up his notebook and pointing the pen at Falcón. 'Pablo Ortega's neighbour. Crisis in the Garden City – that's not a headline, by the way.'

'I came across a couple of names in an address book, one of whom was Eduardo Carvajal,' said Falcón.

'The paedophile ring leader who died in a car crash,' said Guzmán. 'I always remember things that stink. Is your inquiry going to crack open that cesspit as well?'

Falcón held up a hand, already nervous that he'd made some pact with the devil.

'I knew the name from a previous investigation so I went to see Montes and asked him about Carvajal. He was the investigating officer on the Carvajal paedophile ring.'

'Right. I get it. Very interesting,' said Guzmán, terrifying Falcón with the rapacity of his brain.

Falcón tried to slow his own brain down as he detailed his conversation with Montes about Carvajal procuring from the Russian mafia, the people-trafficking business and its influence on the sex industry. He told him about the two projects owned by Ivanov and Zelenov and managed by Vega Construcciones, and how he'd twice spoken to Montes about the Russians, once when Montes had been very drunk, to see if the names meant anything to him.

'I was due to talk to him this morning,' said Falcón, 'but I didn't make it in time.'

'Do you think he'd been corrupted?' asked Guzmán.

'I have no evidence for it, apart from his sense of timing and his suicide note, which, in my opinion, has some ugly subtext,' said Falcón, handing him the letter. 'For your eyes only.'

Guzmán read the letter, tilting his head from side to' side as if his factual brain wasn't inclined to agree with Falcón's more creative interpretation. He gave it back.

'What was the other name in Vega's address book that caught your attention?' asked Guzmán.

'The late Ramon Salgado,' said Falcón. 'It could be completely innocent because Salgado had supplied a painting for Vega's office building. But after Salgado's murder last year we found some very distressing child pornography on his computer.'

'There are some big gaps to fill here,' said Guzmán. 'What are your theories?'

Falcón stayed him with his hand again. There were complications, he said, and gave him the secret life of Rafael Vega.

'We're hoping that he has a record with the FBI and that they might be able to help us identify him,' said Falcón.

'So you think he might have had a past that's caught up with him?' said Guzmán. 'Which would be a separate theory to some kind of link to the Carvajal paedophile ring?'

'The situation has been complicated with each new development in Vega's secret life,' said Falcón. 'My original theory came when those names jumped out at me from his address book. After I'd talked to Montes the first time, and then found a connection between Vega and the Russians, I began to think that Vega had possibly replaced Carvajal as the procurer for the paedophile rings. But the major problem with that theory is that I have no proof of Vega's interest in paedophilia, only his connection to people who were, and the extremely advantageous nature of the deals he was giving the Russians.'

'What made the Vega suicide look suspicious to you?' asked Guzmán.

'The method, the cleanliness of the crime scene and, although there was a note, it was not what I would call a suicide note. First of all, it was in English. Secondly, it was only a partial sentence. And later we found that he had traced over the indentations of his own handwriting, as if he was trying to find out what he himself had written.'

'What were the words?'

"'… in the thin air you breathe from 9/11 until

'9/11?' said Guzmán.

'We're assuming that he'd taken up the American way of writing the date.'

'When you were talking me through his secret life you mentioned the American connection, which made you think that he was probably of Central or South American origin. Well, you know, most people forget this since the events of last year in New York, but there were two 9/11s. Where do you think I come from, Inspector Jefe?'

'You've got a Madrid accent.'

'I've lived in Madrid nearly all my life,' he said, 'so most people forget that I'm actually Chilean. The first 9/11, the one that nobody now will ever remember, was 11th September 1973. That was the day that they bombed the Moneda Palace, killed Salvador Allende and General Augusto Pinochet took power.'

Falcón held on to the arms of his chair, looked into Guzmán's eyes and knew, as his organs seemed to realign out of their planetary chaos, that he was right.

'I was fifteen years old,' said Guzmán, whose face for a moment looked like that of a drowning man with his life flashing before him. 'It was also the last day that I saw my parents. I heard later that they were last seen in the football stadium, if you know what that means.'

Falcón nodded. He'd read about the horrors of the Santiago football stadium.

'A week later I'd been taken out of Santiago and was living in Madrid with my aunt. I only found out later what happened in the football stadium,' he said. 'So people say 9/11 to me and I never think of the twin towers and New York City, I think of the day a bunch of US-sponsored, CIA-backed terrorists murdered democracy in my own country.'