The Blind Man of Seville

by Robert Wilson

  ‘Home, I suppose.’

  ‘He didn’t go to the Edificio Presidente?’

  Silence. No answer, while Falcón looked into the structure of her face.

  ‘What does Basilio Lucena do for a living?’ he asked.

  ‘Something useless at the university. He’s a lecturer.’

  ‘What department?’

  ‘One of the sciences. Biology or chemistry — I can’t remember. We never talked about it. It doesn’t interest him. It’s a position and a salary, that’s all.’

  ‘Did you give him a key?’

  ‘To the apartment?’ she said, shaking her head at him. ‘Meet Basilio before you even …’

  ‘How do you know I haven’t?’

  Silence.

  ‘Have you been in touch with Basilio Lucena this morning?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I thought he should know what had happened.’

  ‘So that he could prepare himself?’

  ‘You might think, Inspector Jefe, if you saw Basilio Lucena on paper that he was an intelligent man. He is certainly educated and sophisticated. But his intelligence is very finely tuned to a narrow waveband and his sophistication admired by a small clique. He has been made lazy by the lack of challenge in his job. His house and car have been paid for by his parents. He has no dependants. His income allows him an irresponsible lifestyle. He isn’t somebody who’s ever had to think on his feet because most of the time he’s lying down. Is that the profile of a murderer?’

  Falcón’s mobile rang. Pérez made an elaborate report on the unidentified people picked up by the CCTV cameras. Two positive identifications, one negative, and the girl they assumed to be the prostitute had been referred to Vice. He told Pérez to follow up on the girl and asked Fernández to go through the apartments again over lunchtime.

  The moment with Consuelo Jiménez had passed. He pulled out into the traffic, did a U-turn and headed west to the river. He glanced at his hostage to see how her thoughts were progressing. He sensed a crisis point, began to have that feeling that this could all be over before his first meeting with Juez Calderón. That was how this work went in his experience. All over in twenty-four hours or they went into months of long, bleak slog.

  ‘Are you taking me back to the apartment?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re an intelligent woman, Doña Consuelo.’

  ‘Your opportunity to flatter me has long passed.’

  ‘You spend your life amongst people,’ he said. ‘You understand them. I think you understand the demands of my job.’

  ‘That you have to be so disgustingly suspicious.’

  ‘Do you know how many murders there are in Seville every year?’

  ‘In this city of joy?’ she said. ‘In this city of handclapping in the streets, of cervecitas y tapitas con los amigos. In this city de los guapos, de los guapísimos? In this godly city of the Holy Virgin?’

  ‘In the city of Seville.’

  ‘A couple of thousand,’ she said, tossing the number up into the air with her ringed fingers.

  ‘Fifteen,’ he said.

  ‘Back-stabbing is metaphorical murder.’

  ‘Drugs account for most of those murders. The remaining few come under the heading of “domestic” or “passionate”. In all of those murders — all of them, Doña Consuelo — the victim and the perpetrator knew each other and in most cases they were intimate.’

  ‘Then you have an exception, Inspector Jefe, because I did not kill my husband.’

  They went through the underpass by the old railway station at the Plaza de Armas and continued along the riverside on the Paseo Cristóbal Colón past the Maestranza bullring, the Opera and the Torre del Oro. The sun was bright on the water, the high plane trees in full leaf. It was no time to be confessing to murder and spending a lifetime of springs behind bars.

  ‘Denial is a very powerful human condition … ‘ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never denied anything.’

  ‘… because there are no doubts … ever.’

  ‘I’m either a liar or completely deluded,’ she said. ‘I can’t win, Inspector Jefe. But at least I always tell myself the truth.’

  ‘But do you tell it to me, Doña Consuelo?’ he said.

  ‘So far … but perhaps I’m changing my mind.’

  ‘I don’t know how you persuaded your husband’s old flames that you were a silly tart.’

  ‘I dressed like one,’ she said, tinkling her fingernails. ‘I can talk like one, too.’

  ‘You’re an accomplished actress.’

  ‘Everything counts against me.’

  Their eyes connected. His soft, brown, tobacco. Hers frozen aquamarine. He smiled. He couldn’t help liking her. That strength. The inexorable mouth. He wondered what it would taste like and shot the thought straight out of his head. They crossed the Puente del Generalísimo and he changed the subject.

  ‘It’s never occurred to me before what a Francoist little corner of town this is. This bridge. This street is named after Carrero Blanco …’

  ‘Why do you think my husband was living in the Edificio Presidente?’

  ‘I thought most people were following the Paquirri fashion.’

  ‘Yes, well, my husband liked los toros, but he liked Franco even more.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘He was before my time.’

  ‘Mine, too.’

  ‘You should dye your hair, Inspector Jefe, I thought you were older.’

  They parked up. Falcón called Fernández on his mobile, told him to go to the Jiménez apartment. He and Sra Jiménez took the lift to the sixth floor, nodded past the policeman at the door. They paced the empty corridor towards the empty hook, that double walk still snagging in Falcón’s brain. They sat down in the study and waited in silence for Fernández to arrive.

  ‘Just run your pictures past Sra Jiménez, please,’ he said. ‘In order of appearance on the CCTV tapes.’

  Fernández counted them out, each one getting the negative from Consuelo Jiménez until the last one when her eyes widened and she blinked the double take.

  ‘Who is that in the picture, Doña Consuelo?’

  She looked up at him, entranced, beguiled as if it had been magic.

  ‘It’s Basilio,’ she said, her mouth not closing.

  5

  Thursday, 12th April 2001, Edificio Presidente, Los Remedies, Seville

  How to play this? Falcón resisted the temptation to run his fingers up the edge of the desk like a concert pianist in full flourish. He rested his chin on his thumb, tensed his jaw and brushed his cheekbone with a finger while the adrenalin flashed down his arteries. This was it, he thought. But how to make it come out? Separate or together? He felt inspired. He decided on the cockpit approach. Throw them in together, let them flap and cut, peck and stab.

  ‘Sra Jiménez and I are going to El Porvenir,’ he said to Fernández. ‘Contact Sub Inspector Pérez and help him find the prostitute. Tell him we’ve identified the unknowns from the CCTV tapes.’

  Sra Jiménez crossed her legs, lit a cigarette. Her foot wouldn’t keep still. Falcón went into the corridor to call Ramírez on his mobile. He wished he liked him more.

  Ramírez was bored. He’d taken on the fruitless task of interviewing the fired employees himself and, so far, after two had come up with nothing other than they were glad to get away from Sra Jiménez. Falcón watched her while Ramírez blew off steam. She was clicking the fingernails of her thumb and forefinger, playing things over in her mind. Falcón briefed Ramírez and gave him Basilio Lucena’s address, told him to get down there and be ready to maintain the pressure on the two protagonists.

  Falcón took Consuelo Jiménez back across the river to 17 Calle Río de la Plata. The traffic was heavier around lunchtime. The joggers were out in the park; girls with their hair tied in ponytails bobbed along beyond the railings, gay in the sunshine. These moments of police work were fascinating
to him — driving along while a suspect endured some massive internal struggle between denial and truth, between acting out the lie or embracing the relief of retribution and absolution. Where did the impulse come from that started the body chemistry into a decision of such magnitude?

  He turned right up Avenida de Portugal behind the high towers of the Plaza de España. The building which had been the centrepiece of the ‘29 Expo was so normal to him that he wouldn’t have noticed it except, on this day, with the red brick against the blue sky and the explosive greenery all around, it amazed him. It brought back a memory of his father throwing himself out of his seat as they watched Lawrence of Arabia on television to point out that David Lean was using the building as the British Embassy in Cairo.

  ‘You can talk if you like,’ he said.

  She started out aggressive and pulled back after the first syllable. She found a lipstick in her handbag and reshaped her mouth … nicely.

  ‘I’m as curious as you are,’ she said, which unnerved him.

  They parked down the street from the house. No Ramírez. Falcón took out the autopsy report and read it through, blinking in the detail. The instruments used, the technical know-how demonstrated, the chemicals and solutions evident on the victim’s clothes — all reaffirmed his suspicions.

  A car pulled up alongside. Ramírez nodded and parked up at the end of the street. He walked back down, through the gateway and rang the bell to number 17. Lucena opened it. There was a discussion. Ramírez showed his ID card. He was let in. Minutes passed. Falcón and Sra Jiménez got out of the car, rang the bell. Lucena came to the door, harassed. He walked straight into Falcón’s eyes and caught the blue flash of his lover’s. The fear was unmistakable, but of what Falcón wasn’t sure. They went in, the man definitely crowded out in his own living room with the pressure of three pairs of eyes on him. Falcón positioned himself next to the television set, which had a video camera connected to it. Ramírez stood by the door. Lucena sat down on the edge of an armchair. Sra Jiménez occupied the sofa opposite, looked at him out of the corner of her eye, crossed her legs and set her foot nodding.

  ‘We’ve already established from Sra Jiménez that you were with her last night,’ said Falcón. ‘Can you remember when you left?’

  ‘It was about two o’clock,’ he said, running his hand through his thin, brown hair.

  ‘Where did you go after leaving the Hotel Colón?’

  The foot stopped nodding.

  ‘I came back here.’

  ‘Did you leave your house again that night?’

  ‘No. I went to work this morning.’

  ‘How did you get to work?’

  He faltered, stumbled over the beginner’s question.

  ‘By bus.’

  Ramírez took over and tied him in knots about bus routes. Lucena clung to his lie until Falcón quietly put the print-out from the CCTV tapes into his hands.

  ‘Is that you, Sr Lucena?’ he asked.

  He jiggled his head in nervous affirmation.

  ‘What subject do you lecture in at the university?’

  ‘Biochemistry.’

  ‘So you’d probably be working from one of those buildings on Avenida de la Reina Mercedes?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Very close to Heliopolis, where Sra Jiménez is moving to?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘In your faculty would it be easy to get hold of such a chemical as chloroform?’

  ‘Very easy.’

  ‘And saline solution and scalpels and cutting scissors?’

  ‘Of course, there’s a laboratory.’

  ‘You see those figures in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture … what do they say?’

  ‘02.36. 12.04.01.’

  ‘Who were you going to see in the Edificio Presidente at that time?’

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes shut.

  ‘Can we talk about this in private?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re all interested parties here,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘Twenty-five minutes after you entered that building Raúl Jiménez was murdered,’ said Falcón, who saw now that Lucena, rather than considering him as a persecutor wanted him as a friend. It was the woman he feared.

  ‘I went to the eighth floor,’ said Lucena, throwing his hands up.

  An unexpected answer, which had Ramírez reaching for his notebook.

  ‘The eighth floor?’ said Sra Jiménez.

  ‘Orfilia Trinidad Muñoz Delgado,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘She must be ninety years old,’ said Sra Jiménez.

  ‘Seventy-four,’ said Ramírez. ‘And there’s Marciano Joaquín Ruíz Pizarro.’

  ‘Marciano Ruiz, he’s the theatre director,’ said Falcón.

  Lucena nodded up at him.

  ‘I know him,’ said Falcón. ‘He’s been to see my father, but he’s …’

  ‘Un maricón; said Sra Jiménez, deep-voiced, brutal.

  Ramírez, like some mugging comic actor, took a quick step back, stared down at Lucena. Falcón used his mobile to call Fernández, who told him that there’d been no reply from the Ruíz apartment when he’d called that afternoon.

  ‘He’s not in today,’ said Lucena. ‘He dropped me off at work and went to Huelva. He’s rehearsing Lorca’s Bodas de Sangre.’

  The air thermals changed in the room. Sra Jiménez charged out of her chair before there was any chance of intervention. Her hand swung back and made nasty contact with the corner of Lucena’s head. It wasn’t a slap, more of a thud. All those rings, thought Falcón.

  ‘Hijo de puta,’ she roared from the door.

  Blood trickled down the side of Lucena’s face. The front door slammed. Heels split the paving stones.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Ramírez, more relaxed now that the woman was out of the room. ‘Why were you fucking her if you’re a …’

  Lucena took a packet of tissues out, dabbed his forehead.

  ‘Can you just explain that to me?’ said Ramírez. ‘I mean, you’re one or the other, aren’t you?’

  ‘Do I have to put up with this imbecile?’ Lucena asked Falcón.

  ‘Unless you want to spend a long time down at the Jefatura, yes.’

  Lucena got to his feet, put his hands in his pockets, walked to the centre of the room and turned to Ramírez. His weakness had been replaced by an aristocratic, vindictive smoothness of the sort employed by fops who’ve been asked for the satisfaction of a duel.

  ‘I fucked her because she reminded me of my mother,’ he said.

  It was a calculated offence, which had its desired effect of shocking Ramírez, who Lucena could see was from a different class to his own. The Inspector was from a conservative, working-class Sevillano family and lived with his wife and two daughters in his parents’ house. His mother was still alive and living with them and when his father-in-law died, which would be any week now, his mother-in-law would join them. Ramírez balled his fist. Nobody talked like that about mothers to him.

  ‘We’re leaving now,’ said Falcón, gripping Ramírez by his swollen bicep.

  ‘I want to get … I want to get the phone number of the other maricón,’ said Ramírez, the words bottling in his throat. He wrenched his arm away from Falcón.

  Lucena went to the desk, slashed a pen across some paper and handed it to Falcón, who manoeuvred Ramírez out of the room.

  Outside the Calle Río de la Plata was moving as slowly as the river through Buenos Aires. Sra Jiménez was down at the end of the street, her rage bristling in the sunlight. Ramírez was no less angry. Falcón stood between them, no longer the detective, more the social worker.

  ‘Get Fernández on the mobile,’ he said to Ramírez. ‘See if they’ve found the girl yet.’

  Lucena’s door slammed shut. Falcón headed down the street to Consuelo Jiménez thinking: Was that the sophistication you were talking about that so entranced you? What are we now? Where are we? This society with no rules of engagement.

  She was
crying, but from anger this time. She gritted her teeth and stamped her feet in humiliation. Falcón drew alongside her, hands in pockets. He nodded as if agreeing with her but thinking: This is policework — one moment on the brink of cracking the case and packing up early for celebratory beers and the next back on the street wondering how you could have been so facile.

  ‘I’ll run you back to your sister’s house,’ he said.

  ‘What did I do to him?’ she asked. ‘What did I ever do to him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Falcón.

  ‘What a day,’ she said, looking up into the perfect sky, all serenity a long way off, beyond the stratosphere. ‘What a fucking day.’

  She stared into the mash of tissue in her hand like a haruspex who might find reason, clarity or a future. She threw it in the gutter. He took her arm and turned her towards the car. As he helped her in, Ramírez said they’d found the girl from the Alameda and were taking her down to the Jefatura on Blas Infante.

  ‘Tell Fernández to interview that last employee that Sra Jiménez fired. Pérez should leave the girl to sweat until we get there. I want all reports filed at four-thirty before we go to see Juez Calderón at five.’

  Falcón called Marciano Ruíz’s mobile and told him he would have to come back to Seville to make a statement tonight. There was a protest from Ruíz, which was followed by a threat from Falcón to arrest Lucena.

  ‘Are you calm?’ he asked Ramírez, who nodded over the roof of the car. ‘Take Sr Lucena down to the Jefatura and get a written statement out of him … and don’t be rough.’

  Falcón led Lucena out of his house and put him in the back of Ramírez’s car. They all left. Falcón hunched over the steering wheel, muttering in his head as the tyres hissed down Avenida de Borbolla. Everybody was mental today. Some cases did this. They grated too much. Normally the child cases. The kidnapping followed by the wait and the inevitable discovery of the abused body. This was the same … as if something terrible had been added to the excesses of the human experience and had subtracted something greater which could never be replaced. The daylight would always be a little dimmer, the air never quite as fresh.

  ‘Do you see a lot of this?’ asked Sra Jiménez. ‘Yes, I suppose you do, I suppose you see it all the time.’