The Silent and the Damned. Robert Thomas Wilson

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СКАЧАТЬ at the last minute. The kid or something. She didn’t like these dinners of ours. She was a traditionalist. You only go to dinner at someone else’s house if they’re family. She found it awkward. She had no conversation, except about Mario and I’ve never had children, so…’

      ‘She was neurotic,’ said Marty.

      ‘How did Sr Vega and his wife get along?’

      ‘He was very loyal to her,’ said Maddy.

      ‘Does that mean love no longer came into it?’

      ‘Love?’ she said.

      Marty stared at her, nodding, his nose sawing through the chill air, as if willing her to conclude what she’d embarked on.

      ‘Don’t you think loyalty is a part of love, Inspector Jefe?’

      ‘I do,’ said Falcón. ‘But you seem to have separated loyalty from the whole, as if that was all that remained.’

      ‘Don’t you think that’s the nature of a marriage…or of love, Inspector Jefe?’ she said, ‘That time degrades it, wears away at passion and ardour, the thrill of sex…’

      ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Marty in English.

      ‘…the intensity of interest you have in what the other says or thinks, the wild hilarity of the smallest jokes, the deep, unquestioning admiration of physical beauty, intelligence, moral certitude…’

      ‘Yes,’ said Falcón, his insides starting to bind up, as they did sometimes in therapy sessions with his psychologist, Alicia Aguado. ‘That’s true…’

      He sat back, let his intestines have some room, wrote some gibberish down in his notebook, wanted to get out of there.

      ‘So, are you saying, Sra Krugman, that the Vegas’ marriage, in your opinion, was strong…?’

      ‘I only observed that he was loyal to her. She was an unwell and, at times, an unhappy woman, but she was the mother of his child and that had considerable weight with him.’

      The ground seemed to firm up under Falcón’s chair as the business at hand reasserted itself.

      ‘Sr Vega liked to control things,’ said Falcón.

      ‘He had firm ideas about how things should be done and he had a very disciplined mind,’ said Marty. ‘I never saw further into his corporation than was necessary for me to do my work. He didn’t attempt to involve me in anything outside my own project. He would even ask me to leave his office if he was going to talk about other jobs on the phone. He was very concerned about hierarchy, the way things were reported to him, who did what and the chain of command. I don’t have any direct experience of this, but his style seemed military to me, which is no bad thing on a construction site. People can get killed very easily.’

      ‘In life, too,’ said Maddy.

      ‘What?’ said Marty.

      ‘He liked to control things in life, too. The gardener, his family, his meat,’ she said, chopping her hand down on to her knee.

      ‘It’s odd then that he’d come over here for dinner,’ said Falcón. ‘If he was going to put himself in the hands of others, I’d have thought he’d prefer a restaurant.’

      ‘He understood it as an American thing,’ said Marty.

      ‘He liked it,’ said Maddy, shrugging her shoulders so that her loose breasts shifted under the silk. Her legs slipped to one side and she rubbed them together, as if taming an itch.

      I bet he did, thought Falcón.

      ‘A controlling man might kill himself if his carefully constructed world was about to fall apart due to financial ruin or a shaming scandal. It could also collapse because of an emotional involvement that went wrong. News of the first two scenarios, if they existed, will break soon enough. Do you know anything about the third possibility?’

      ‘Do you think he was the type to have affairs?’ Marty asked his wife.

      ‘Affairs?’ said Maddy, almost to herself.

      ‘He would have left a note,’ said Marty. ‘Did he?’

      ‘Not a conventional one,’ said Falcón, and gave them the text.

      ‘That seems almost a little too poetic for someone like Rafael,’ said Maddy.

      ‘What about the 9/11 reference?’ said Falcón. ‘You must have talked about that with him.’

      Maddy rolled her eyes.

      ‘Sure,’ said Marty. ‘We talked about it endlessly, but as an item of current affairs. I really don’t understand its significance in this context.’

      ‘Why kill your wife?’ asked Maddy, which relieved Falcón, who didn’t want Marty’s theories on 9/11 at this stage of his inquiry. ‘I mean, if you’re suffering like that, kill yourself by all means, but don’t leave your kid with no parents.’

      ‘Maybe he thought Lucía would not be able to survive without him,’ said Marty.

      ‘That would be true,’ she said.

      ‘Do you always allow this much conjecture into your investigations, Inspector Jefe?’ asked Marty.

      ‘No,’ said Falcón, ‘but the situation in the Vegas’ house was sufficiently enigmatic that I have to keep an open mind until I get a full forensic report and the pathology of the bodies. Also the closest person to Sr Vega, his wife, is dead, too. I have to rely on people who knew him peripherally – socially or in business.’

      ‘Lucía’s parents should be able to help you,’ said Marty. ‘They were around there almost every Sunday for lunch.’

      ‘Did you ever meet them?’

      ‘I met them once,’ said Maddy. ‘They weren’t…er…very sophisticated people. I think he used to be a farmer.’

      ‘How long have you been married?’ asked Falcón.

      ‘Twelve years,’ she said.

      ‘How did you meet?’ he said, a question he’d found himself asking every couple he’d met over the last year.

      ‘It was in New York,’ said Marty. ‘Maddy was showing a collection of her photographs at a gallery which was owned by a friend of mine. She introduced us.’

      ‘And I never went back to my apartment,’ said Maddy.

      ‘Are you still a photographer?’

      ‘She’s taken it up again since we left the States,’ said Marty, steamrollering over Maddy’s negative.

      ‘What do you photograph?’

      ‘People,’ she said.

      ‘Portraits?’

      ‘Never.’

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