'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?'