like the inside of a confused person’s head. Every surface was covered in bric-a-brac – souvenirs from around the world. Falcón saw holidays in which Vega obsessively filmed with the latest technology while his wife devastated the tourist shops. On the mid section of the sofa was a cordless phone, a box of chocolates with half a tray uneaten and three remotes for satellite, DVD and video. On the floor was a pair of pink fluffy slippers. The lights were off, as was the television.
Each of the stairs up to the bedrooms was made out of a slab of absolute black granite. He checked the glass-smooth surfaces as he moved slowly upwards. Nothing. The floor at the top of the stairs was made of black granite inlaid with diamonds of white marble. He was drawn to the door of the master bedroom. The double bed was occupied. A pillow lay over the face of the occupant whose arms lay outside the light duvet on the bed. There was a slim band of a wristwatch on an arm flung out as if reaching for help. A single visible foot had bright-red toenails. He went to the bedside and checked for a pulse while looking down on the two depressions in the pillow. Lucía Vega was dead, too.
There were three other rooms upstairs, all with bathrooms. One was empty, another had a double bed and the last belonged to Mario. The ceiling of the boy’s room was painted with a night sky. An old, one-armed teddy bear lay face up on the bed.
Falcón reported the second dead body to Juez Calderón. The Médico Forense was kneeling by Sr Vega’s side and working at prising his fingers apart.
‘There seems to be a note in Sr Vega’s right hand,’ said Calderón. ‘The body’s cooled down quickly in the air con and I want him to get it out without tearing it. Any first thoughts, Inspector Jefe?’
‘On the face of it, it looks like a suicide pact. He’s smothered his wife and then drunk some drain cleaner, although that’s a nasty, lingering way to kill yourself.’
‘Pact? What makes you think there was an agreement?’
‘I’m just saying that’s what it looks like,’ said Falcón. ‘The fact that the little boy was left out of it might indicate some collusion. A mother wouldn’t be able to bear the thought of the death of her own child.’
‘And a father could?’
‘It depends on the pressure. If there’s the possibility of financial or moral disgrace he might not want his male child to see that or live with the knowledge of it. He would see killing him as a favour. Men have killed their entire families because they think they have failed them and that it’s better nobody survives bearing their name and its shame.’
‘But you have your doubts?’ said Calderón.
‘Suicide, whether it’s a pact or not, is rarely a spontaneous thing and there are some spontaneous elements to this crime scene. First, the door was not securely locked. Consuelo Jiménez had called to say that Mario had fallen asleep so they were sure he wasn’t going to return, but they didn’t double lock the door.’
‘The door was shut, that was enough.’
‘If you’re about to do something unnatural you would put yourself behind locked doors to make absolutely certain there was no possibility of interruption. It’s a psychological necessity. Serious suicides normally take full precautions.’
‘What else?’
‘The way everything has just been left here: the phone, the chocolates, the slippers. There seems to be a lack of premeditation.’
‘Well, certainly on her part,’ said Calderón.
‘That is a point, of course,’ said Falcón.
‘Drain cleaner?’ said Calderón. ‘Why would you take drain cleaner?’
‘We may find there was something stronger than drain cleaner in the bottle,’ said Falcón. ‘The reason? Well, he could be meting out punishment to himself…you know, cleaning himself of all his sins. There’s also the advantage of it being noiseless and, depending on what else he’s taken, irrevocable, too.’
‘Well, that does sound premeditated, Inspector Jefe. So there are both spontaneous and planned elements to these deaths.’
‘All right…if they were lying on the bed together holding hands, dead, with a note pinned to his pyjamas then I’d be happy to treat it as suicide. As it stands, I would prefer to investigate the deaths as murder before deciding.’
‘Perhaps the note in his hand will…’ said Calderón. ‘But strange to get dressed for bed before you…or is that another psychological necessity? Getting ready for the biggest sleep of all.’
‘Let’s hope he was the sort who left his security cameras on and the recorders loaded with tapes,’ said Falcón, returning to the pragmatic. ‘We should have a look in his study.’
They crossed the entrance hall and went down a corridor by the stairs. Vega’s study was on the right with a view of the street. There was a leather chair tilted back behind a desk, with a framed poster of this year’s bullfights held during the Feria de Abril hanging on the wall.
The desk was a large, empty, light-coloured piece of wood with a laptop and a telephone. Three drawers on castors sat underneath. Behind the door were four black filing cabinets and at the end of the room the recording equipment for the security cameras. There were no LEDs and the plugs were out of the wall sockets. Each recorder had an unused tape inside.
‘This doesn’t look good,’ said Falcón.
The filing cabinets were all locked. He pulled at the mobile set of drawers under the desk. Locked. He went upstairs to the bedroom and found a walk-in closet, with his suits and shirts to the right and her dresses and a vast number of shoes (some worryingly similar) to the left. A tall set of drawers had a wallet, set of keys and some change on top.
One of the keys opened the drawers under the desk. There was nothing unusual in the top two, but as he pulled on the third drawer something at the back butted up against the ream of paper at the front. It was a handgun.
‘I haven’t seen many of these,’ said Falcón. ‘This is a Heckler & Koch 9 mm. You own one of these if you’re expecting trouble.’
‘If you had one of those,’ said Calderón, ‘would you drink a litre of drain cleaner or blow your brains out?’
‘Given the choice…’ said Falcón.
The lawyer appeared in the doorway, his dark brown eyes set hard in his head.
‘You have no right –’ he started.
‘This is a murder investigation, Sr Vázquez,’ said Falcón. ‘Sra Vega is upstairs on the bed, she’s been suffocated with a pillow. Any idea why your client should have one of these in his study?’
Vázquez blinked at the gun.
‘Seville is one of those curious cities where the wealthy and privileged people of Santa Clara are separated from the drug-ridden disadvantaged ones of the Polígono San Pablo by a small barrio, the paper factory and the Calle de Tesalónica. I imagine he had it for his own protection.’
‘Like the security cameras he didn’t bother to switch on?’ said Falcón.
Vázquez looked at the inert recorders. His mobile
