The Silent and the Damned by Robert Wilson Read Free Book Online

forensics said he was probably bankrolling al-Qaeda,' said Falcón. 'As a joke.'
    'Except… aren't we being led to believe that anything is possible these days?'
    'Did Sr Vega seem unstable to you in any way?'
    'Rafael seemed to be
completely
stable,' said Consuelo. 'Lucia was the unstable one. She was a depressive, with occasional bouts of manic compulsive behaviour. Have you seen her wardrobe?
    'A lot of shoes.'
    'Many of them were the same design and colour, as were her dresses. If she liked something she'd buy three straight off. She was on medication.'
    'So, if he was in crisis, given his nature, he would be unlikely to turn to anyone outside the family and he wouldn't have been able to talk to his wife.'
    'The restaurant business has taught me not to judge people's lives from the outside. Couples, even crazy ones, have ways of communicating, some of which are not attractive, but they work.'
    'What about their domestic situation? You saw that, too.'
    'I did, but a third party always changes the dynamics. People start behaving.'
    'Is that a general or specific observation?'
    'I meant it specifically but it can be applied generally,' she said. 'And that felt like the second time you've tried to insinuate that I might have been having an affair with Sr Vega.'
    'Did it?' said Falcón. 'Well, I didn't mean to be specific. I was just thinking that under those stressful circumstances
a
lover might have been a possibility, and that would have changed mental and marital landscapes.'
    'Not Rafael,' she said, shaking her head. 'He's not the type.'
    'Who is the type?'
    She tapped a cigarette on the box, lit it and blew smoke at the glass.
    'Your Inspector Ramírez is the type,' she said. 'Where is he, by the way?'
    'He's taken his daughter to have some medical tests.'
    'Not serious, I hope.'
    'They don't know,' said Falcón. 'But you're right about Ramírez, he was always a player… combing his hair for the secretaries in the Edificio de los Juzgados.'
    'Maybe the work he did gave him an eye for the vulnerable,' she said. 'That's another definition of the type.'
    'But not, apparently, Rafael Vega. The Butcher.'
    'You said it. That's a pastime that really doesn't go with lovemaking: "Do you want to see my latest cuts?"'
    'What did you make of all that?'
    'I used him. His beef always tasted better. Almost all the steaks served in my restaurants are cut by him.'
    'And psychologically…?'
    'It ran in the family. I don't think it's any more than that. If his father had been a carpenter…'
    'Of course, some spare-time cabinet making. But butchery…?'
    'It gave Lucia the creeps, but then… she had her sensitivities.'
    'She was squeamish, as well?'
    'Squeamish, nervous, depressed, unable to sleep. She used to take two sleeping pills a night. One to knock her out and then another when she woke up at three or four in the morning.'
    'Bulletproof windows,' said Falcón.
    'She needed total silence to sleep. The house was hermetically sealed. Once you were inside there was no sense of the outside world. No wonder she was a little crazy. Sometimes when she opened the door I expected a rush of air as if the pressures were different inside.'
    'In a world of glibness and fun she doesn't sound like much fun,' said Falcón.
    'There you go again, Javier. That's number three,' she said. 'Anyway, she was glib. She used the material and the trivial to hold her life together. She found relationships complicated. Even Mario could be too much for her at times, which was why she was so happy for him to come over here. But that's not to say he wasn't the focus of her life.'
    'So how did Sr Vega fit into his family?'
    'I don't think they were expecting a child. I didn't see them much at that time, but I seem to remember it was a shock,' she said. 'Anyway, a marriage changes after a child. Perhaps you'll find that out for yourself one day, Javier.'
    'You pretend not to understand what I'm doing but you know I have to do this. I have to look for the