The Silent and the Damned. Robert Thomas Wilson

the bull.’

      ‘Ye-e-s,’ said Falcón nervously. ‘Quite often the spectacle is a travesty, even in the best arenas. There have been Ladies Only nights and other…’

      ‘Decadence?’ said Maddy, filling in.

      ‘Greek tragedy is quite rare these days,’ said Falcón, ‘whereas soap opera isn’t.’

      ‘So how are we supposed to keep ourselves noble in such a world?’

      ‘You have to concentrate on the big things,’ said Falcón. ‘Like Love. Compassion. Honour…that sort of stuff.’

      ‘It sounds almost medieval now,’ she said.

      Silence. He heard Ferrera leave the house. She walked in front of the study window.

      ‘You said something to me yesterday in English?’ he said, wanting to get rid of her now.

      ‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘Did it make you angry?’

      ‘Lighten up. You told me to lighten up.’

      ‘Yes, well, today’s a different day,’ she said. ‘I read your story on the internet last night.’

      ‘Is that why you’ve come over this morning?’

      ‘I’m not here to scavenge – whatever you might think of my photographs.’

      ‘I thought the stories of your subjects, the causes of their internal struggle, were not your concern.’

      ‘This isn’t about my work.’

      ‘Unfortunately this is about mine. I have to get on, Sra Krugman. So, if you’ll excuse me…’ he said.

      The front doorbell rang. He went to open it.

      ‘I locked myself out, Inspector Jefe,’ said Ferrera.

      Maddy Krugman sauntered out between them. Ferrera followed Falcón to the study where he sat back in the chair.

      ‘Tell me,’ he said, staring out of the window, wondering what Maddy Krugman was after.

      ‘Sra Vega was a manic depressive,’ said Ferrera.

      ‘We know she had trouble sleeping.’

      ‘There’s quite a range of drugs in his bedside table.’

      ‘That was locked, as I remember, and the keys are here.’

      ‘Lithium, for instance,’ said Ferrera. ‘He was probably handing the drugs out to her…or so he thought. I found a duplicate key in her wardrobe, along with a secret stash of eighteen sleeping pills. There’s plenty of evidence of obsessive-compulsive behaviour in there, too. I also found a lot of chocolate in the fridge and more ice cream in the freezer than a small child could possibly eat.’

      ‘What about her relationship with her husband?’

      ‘I doubt they were having sex, given her condition and the fact that he was handing out the drugs to her,’ said Ferrera. ‘He was probably getting his sex from elsewhere…but that didn’t stop her buying an extensive range of sexy underwear.’

      ‘What about the child?’

      ‘She had a picture of her and the child just after the birth on her bedside table. She looks fantastic – radiant, beautiful and proud. I think it’s a photograph she looked at a lot. It reminded her of the woman she used to be.’

      ‘Postnatal depression?’

      ‘Could be,’ said Ferrera. ‘She didn’t go out much. There’s stacks of mail-order catalogues under the bed.’

      ‘She let the child sleep over at a neighbour’s house quite often.’

      ‘Difficult to cope when your life runs away from you like that,’ said Ferrera, her eyes dropping to the lipstick-smeared coffee cup. ‘Was she that neighbour?’

      ‘No, another one,’ said Falcón, shaking his head.

      ‘She didn’t look the mothering type.’

      ‘So what do you think happened here?’ asked Falcón.

      ‘There’s enough despair in this house to lead you to believe that having decided to kill himself he would have had to kill her to put her out of her misery.’

      ‘Why did he dislocate her jaw?’

      ‘To knock her out?’

      ‘Doesn’t that seem too violent? She was probably groggy with sleep anyway.’

      ‘Perhaps he did it as a way of finding the violence in himself,’ said Ferrera.

      ‘Or perhaps she heard the death agonies of her husband and surprised the murderer, who then had to deal with her,’ said Falcón.

      ‘Where’s the pad Sr Vega wrote his note on?’

      ‘Good question. It hasn’t been found. But it’s possible that it was an old piece of paper he had in his dressing-gown pocket.’

      ‘Who bought the drain cleaner?’

      ‘Not the maid,’ said Falcón.

      ‘Do we know when it was bought?’

      ‘Not yet, but if it was from a supermarket it won’t be much help.’

      ‘It looks as if Sra Vega was on her own that night, indulging herself as usual,’ said Ferrera. ‘She spends a lot of time on her own and she’s well prepared for it.’

      ‘You’re always on your own with mental illness,’ said Falcón.

      ‘She has a box of her favourite videos and DVDs. All romantic stuff. There’s a DVD still in the machine. She gets the call from her neighbour so the child is taken care of. She has no responsibilities. When did her husband get home?’

      ‘I’m told it was normally quite late…around midnight.’

      ‘That would fit: put off coming home to the despair for as long as possible,’ said Ferrera. ‘Sra Vega probably didn’t like seeing him anyway. She heard the car…or maybe not through these windows. So she more likely heard him come into the house from the garage. She turned off the DVD and ran upstairs leaving her slippers. He eventually joined her in bed, or at least…’

      ‘How do you know he joined her? His pillow was undented in the crime scene shots.’

      ‘But the sheets and covers were pulled out…so he might have been about to join her…’

      ‘And then been distracted by something else.’

      ‘Do we know from the phone company if there were any more calls after the neighbour rang about the child?’

      ‘Not yet. You can work on that when we get back.’

      ‘The only other oddity I’ve come across is that in the crime scene photographs he’s got his watch on with the face on the outside of his wrist, but in the photos I’ve seen elsewhere in the house he always wore it with the face on the underside of his wrist.’

      ‘What do you conclude from that?’

      ‘It either worked its way round in his struggle with himself or an assailant,’ said Ferrera, ‘or the watch has come off and been put back on his wrist by somebody who doesn’t know how he wears it.’

      ‘Why would someone want to do that?’

      ‘Well…if it came off as a result of a struggle with an assailant whose ultimate aim was to make this look like a suicide it would be less indicative of another person’s presence if the watch was on his wrist rather than on the floor.’

      ‘What sort of a strap did his watch have?’

      ‘It seems to be a metal bracelet type, which can come off easily in a struggle or just as