The Blind Man of Seville

by Robert Wilson

  ‘What?’ said Falcón, shrugging, knowing what she meant, not wanting to get into it.

  ‘People with perfect lives, who see them destroyed in a matter of … ‘

  ‘Never,’ he replied at the edge of vehemence.

  That word — ‘perfect’ — hardened him and he remembered her earlier words which had flayed his ‘perfect’ life alive: ‘I think that’s harder. To be dumped because she would rather be alone.’ He felt cruel and fought the urge to retaliate: ‘I think that’s hard … to be dumped for a male lover.’ He filed it in his mind under ‘Unworthy’ and replaced it with the thought that maybe Inés had ruined women for him.

  ‘Surely, Inspector Jefe …’ she said.

  ‘No, never,’ he said, ‘because I’ve never met anybody with a perfect life. A perfect past and a pristine future, yes. But the perfect past is always brilliantly edited and the pristine future a hopeless dream. The only perfect life is the one on paper, and even then there are those spaces between the words and lines and they’re rarely patches of nothing.’

  ‘Yes, we are careful,’ she said, ‘careful of what we show to others and of what we reveal to ourselves.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be so … intense,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a long day and there’s more to come. We’ve had some shocks.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m still such an idiot,’ she said. ‘I met Basilio in the lift of the Edificio Presidente. He was probably on his way down from the eighth floor. I didn’t think. But … but why would he … bother to seduce me?’

  ‘Forget him. He’s not important.’

  ‘Unless he’s given me something.’

  ‘Take a test,’ said Falcón, more brutal than he intended. ‘But start thinking too, Doña Consuelo, about who could possibly have a motive for killing your husband. I want names and addresses of all his friends. I want you to remember, for instance, who it was who told you how much you resembled the first wife. I want Raúl’s diary.’

  ‘He had a desk diary in the office which I kept up. He threw away his address book when he got his mobile phone. He only spoke to people on the phone anyway. He had no use for paper and he always lost pens and stole mine.’

  Falcón did not remember a mobile phone. He called the forensics and the Médico Forense. No mobile. The killer must have taken it.

  ‘Any other records?’

  ‘An old address book in the office computer.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Above the restaurant off the Plaza de Alfalfa.’

  He handed her his mobile and asked her to arrange for him to pick up a print-out in half an hour.

  He dropped her outside her sister’s house in San Bernardo just after 3 p.m. Ten minutes later he parked up by the east gate to the Jardines de Murillo and continued on foot, half running through the crowded streets of the Barrio de Santa Cruz, where tourists gathered for the Semana Santa processions. The sun was out from behind the clouds. It was hot and he was soon sweating. The air in the enclosed streets smelt strongly of Ducados, orange blossom, horseshit and the vestiges of incense from the processions. The cobbles were spattered and slippery with candle wax.

  He stripped off his mac and cut down the backstreets he knew from the few times he’d managed to attend the English classes he kept paying for at the British Institute on Calle Frederico Rubio. He came into the southeast corner of the Plaza de Alfalfa, which was packed with all the tribes of the world. Cameras nosed at him. He sidestroked through the crowd, trotted up Calle San Juan and was suddenly carried forward by a crush of people surging down Calle Boteros. He realized his mistake too late, saw the procession coming towards him, but couldn’t break free of the herd. They bore him onwards to the flower-decked float, which had just negotiated a difficult corner and was now beetling forward under the power of the twenty costaleros underneath. The Virgin, demure beneath her white lace canopy, was shimmering in the intense sunlight, while incense from the burners shifted this way and that in the thermals of the street, filling his head and chest so that air was difficult to come by. The drums from the band behind the float beat on, hammering out their portentous rhythm.

  The crowd shoved forwards. The paso bore down on their awestruck faces, the Virgin towering above them, her whole body shuddering from right to left under the straining costaleros. Earsplitting, discordant trumpets suddenly blasted out the passion. The sound in the confines of the narrow street reverberated inside Falcón’s chest and seemed to open it up. The crowd gasped at the glorious moment, at the weeping Virgin, at the height of ecstasy … and the blood drained rapidly from Falcón’s head.

  6

  Thursday, 12th April 2001, Calle Boteros, Seville

  The paso veered away. The high Virgin’s pitiful eyes moved off, fell on others. The crush slackened. The final blast of the trumpets ricocheted off the balconies. The drums beat out to silence. The costaleros lowered the float from their shoulders. The crowd clapped at their feat of engineering. The procession of nazareños in their high-pointed hats put down their crosses, rested their candles. Falcón held on to the handle at the back of an old woman’s wheelchair, a hand on his knee. The old woman was waving at one of the nazareños, who’d lifted the flap of his hood. He smiled, revealing the normal human being beneath, nothing more sinister than a bespectacled accountant.

  Falcón loosened his tie, wiped cold sweat from his face. He pushed through the edge of the crowd, staggered through the files of nazareños. The people on the other side parted for him. He found some pavement and bent his head to his knees, felt the blood thump back up his cerebral cortex, refresh his brain.

  Haven’t eaten all day, he was thinking, but he knew that wasn’t it. He looked back at the paso, the Virgin staring off down the street, unconcerned with him now. Except, this was it … she had been. For that moment, for that fraction of a second, she’d got inside him, filled him out. It had been an experience he could nearly remember having had before, but he couldn’t quite get to the memory of it. It was too distant.

  He found the office above the Jiménez restaurant, picked up the print-out and drank a glass of water. He left the old city, avoiding all processions. He drove down to the river and crossed over to the Plaza de Cuba feeling empty and hungry. He stopped at a bar on República Argentina and bought a bocadillo de chorizo, which he ate too quickly so that it stuck in his chest, the crust as hard-edged as the pain of loss, which was odd because he hadn’t lost anyone since his father died two years ago.

  The Jefatura was on the intersection of Calle Blas Infante and Calle López de Gomara. He parked at the back of the building and made his way up the two short flights of stairs to his office, which had a view over the ordered ranks of cars. His office was spartan with not one personal item in it. There were two chairs, a metal desk and some grey filing cabinets. The light came from a neon strip above his head. He did not hold with distractions at work.

  There were thirty-eight messages for him and five were from his immediate superior Jefe de Brigada de Policía Judicial, Comisario Andrés Lobo, who was no doubt reacting to pressure from his boss Comisario Firmin León, whose relationship with Raúl Jiménez Falcón had noted from the photographs. He went straight to the interrogation rooms, where Ramírez was standing over Basilio Lucena, holding his fist as if he wanted to punch him. He called Ramírez out, briefed him on the interrogation strategy for the girl and told him to send Pérez down. He went in to see Lucena who looked up and went straight back to writing his statement.

  ‘What you said to Inspector Ramírez back there …’ Falcón started, the nastiness of that line still bothering him.

  ‘Any student will tell you that lecturers react very badly to morons.’

  ‘Was that all it was?’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re concerned, Inspector Jefe.’

  He was, too, and wondered if he was making a fool of himself.

  ‘I doubt my mother was ever as good in bed as Consuelo, if that’s what you were wondering,’ said Lucena.


  ‘You’re a confusing man, Sr Lucena.’

  ‘In a confused age,’ he said, waggling his pen at Falcón.

  ‘How long had you been seeing Sra Jiménez?’

  ‘A year or so,’ he said. ‘That was the first time I’d been back to the Edificio Presidente since we met … Such is my luck.’

  ‘And Marciano Ruíz?’

  ‘You’re as curious as the Inspector, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I’m easily bored, Don Javier. Marciano and I see each other when my ennui peaks.’

  Pérez came in, told Falcón which room the prostitute was in and took over.

  The girl was sitting at a table smoking while she stacked and unstacked two packs of Fortuna. Her hair was cropped unevenly on her head as if she’d done the job herself without a mirror. She stared at the dead TV screen straight ahead of her, blue eyeshadow, pink mouth. A blonde wig hung off the back of an unused chair. She wore a tartan miniskirt, a white blouse and black boots. She was tiny and still looked of school age, but the depravity she’d seen on her extended truant was worn into her dark brown eyes.

  Ramírez turned on the tape, introduced her as Eloisa Gómez and announced himself and Falcón.

  ‘Do you know why you’re here?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘Not yet. They said it was a few questions, but I know you guys. I’ve been here before … I know your games.’

  ‘We’re different to the usual guys,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘you are. Who are you?’

  Falcón shook his head a fraction at Ramírez.

  ‘You were with a client last night …’ said Falcón.

  ‘I was with lots of clients last night. It’s Semana Santa,’ she said. ‘It’s our busiest time of the year.’

  ‘Busier than the Feria?’ asked Ramírez, mildly surprised.

  ‘Without a doubt,’ she said, ‘especially the last few days when everybody comes from out of town.’

  ‘One of your clients was Raúl Jiménez. You went to see him last night in his apartment in the Edificio Presidente.’

  ‘I knew him as Rafael. Don Rafael.’

  ‘You’d met him before?’

  ‘He’s a regular.’

  ‘In his apartment?’

  ‘Last night was maybe the third or fourth time in his apartment. Normally it’s the back of his car.’

  ‘So how did it work this time?’ asked Ramírez.

  ‘He called the mobile. My group of girls bought three mobiles last year.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I didn’t take the call. I was with someone else … but it must have been midnight. The first time.’

  ‘The first time?’

  ‘He only wanted to speak to me, so he called again around twelve-fifteen. He asked me to come to his apartment. I told him I was making a lot of money on the plaza and he asked me how much I wanted. I told him one hundred thousand.’

  Ramírez roared with laughter.

  ‘That’s Semana Santa for you,’ he said. ‘The prices are ridiculous.’

  The girl laughed too, relaxed a notch.

  ‘Don’t tell me he paid that,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘We settled on fifty.’

  ‘Joder.’

  ‘How did you get there?’ asked Falcón, trying to settle it down again.

  ‘Taxi,’ she said, lighting up a Fortuna.

  ‘What time did it drop you off?’

  ‘Just after half past twelve.’

  ‘Anybody around?’

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘What about in the building?’

  ‘I didn’t even see the conserje, which I was glad about. There was no one in the lift or on the landing and he let me in before I rang the bell, as if he’d been watching me through the spy hole.’

  ‘You didn’t hear him unlock the door?’

  ‘He just opened it.’

  ‘Did he lock it once you were inside?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t like that, but he left the keys in the door so I didn’t protest.’

  ‘What did you notice about the apartment?’

  ‘It was almost empty. He told me he was moving. I asked him where and he didn’t answer. Other things on his mind.’

  ‘Talk us through it,’ said Ramírez.

  She grinned, shook her head as if men the world over were all the same.

  ‘I followed him up the corridor into his study. There was a TV on in the corner with an old movie playing. He took a video out of the desk and loaded it into the machine. He asked me to wear a thick blue skirt which came down to my knees and a blue jumper over my blouse. He told me to tie my hair in bunches. I was wearing a long black wig,’ she said. ‘He preferred brunettes.’

  ‘Did you see him take a pill?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t notice anything strange apart from the place being empty?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Anything that made you feel nervous?’

  She thought about it, wanting to help. She held up a finger. They leaned forward.

  ‘He wasn’t wearing any shoes,’ she said, ‘but that didn’t exactly make me panic.’

  They slumped back in their chairs.

  ‘Hey! It’s your fault. You’re making me see things where there’s nothing.’

  ‘Keep going,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘I asked him for my money. He gave me some five thousand notes which I counted. He picked up the remote and a porno movie started up on the TV. He took off his trousers. I mean he dropped his trousers and stepped out of them. And we got down to it.’

  ‘What about the windows?’ asked Ramírez.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘You were facing the windows.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He assumes you were facing the windows,’ said Falcón.

  ‘The curtains were drawn,’ she said, suspicious now.

  ‘So you had sex with him,’ said Ramírez. ‘How long did it last?’

  ‘Longer than I expected.’

  ‘Is that why you turned round?’ asked Ramírez.

  The brown eyes hardened in her head. These were not the usual games.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said.

  ‘Inspector Ramírez,’ he said, dry as fino.

  ‘We’re from the Grupo de Homicidios,’ said Falcón.

  ‘Somebody killed him?’ she asked, her head switching between the two men, who nodded.

  ‘The person who killed him was in the apartment while you were there.’

  She wrenched the cigarette from her mouth, puffed hard.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Ramírez had prepared the tape earlier and clicked the remote so that the screen was instantly filled with the empty corridor, the bare hook, the light falling from the study doorway while the soundtrack blared the mixture of the two fake ecstasies. The hairs came up on Falcón’s neck. The girl was transfixed. The camera turned the corner and she saw herself kneeling in front of Raúl Jiménez, who was staring up at the screen while she confronted the curtains. As her head turned, the camera toppled back into the darkness.

  The girl knocked her chair back flat and paced the room. Ramírez returned the screen to black.

  ‘That is very weird,’ she said, pointing at the screen with her cigarette fingers.

  ‘Did you notice anything?’ asked Falcón.

  ‘I don’t know whether you’ve put things into my head, but I do remember something now,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘It was just a change of light, a shadow wobbling. In my business that’s what I’m frightened of … when the shadows move.’

  ‘When darkness has a life of its own,’ said Falcón, the words out unsupervised so that Ramírez and the girl checked him for oddness. ‘But you didn’t react … to these shadow moves?’

  ‘I thought it was something in my head and anyway I think he reached his moment about then and that distracted me.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘I cleaned up in his bathroom and left.�
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  ‘Did he lock the door behind you?’

  ‘Yes. The same as when he locked it the first time. Five or six turns. I heard him take the keys out, too. Then the lift came.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘I don’t think it was much after one o’clock. I was back in the Alameda with another client by half-past one.’

  ‘Fifty thousand,’ said Ramírez. ‘That’s a good hourly rate.’

  ‘It might take you a while before you could earn that amount,’ she said, and they both laughed.

  ‘What’s your mobile number?’ asked Falcón, and they both laughed again until they saw he was serious and Eloisa rattled it out for him.

  ‘So,’ said Ramírez, still good-humoured, ‘that seems to be everything … except I’m sure she’s left something out, aren’t you, Inspector Jefe?’

  Falcón didn’t react to Ramírez’s brutal game. The girl looked away from him and back to where she’d suddenly felt the threat.

  ‘I’ve told you everything that happened,’ she said.

  ‘Except the most important thing,’ said Ramírez. ‘You didn’t tell us when you let him into the apartment.’

  It took a few seconds for the implication of that mild statement to penetrate and then her face went as hard as a death mask.

  ‘I thought you were too good to be true,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not good,’ said Ramírez, ‘and nor are you. You know what the guy did — the one you let into the apartment? He tortured an old man to death. He put your Don Rafael through some of the worst suffering that we’ve ever come across in our police careers. No, it wasn’t just a shot to the head, not a knife in the heart, but slow, brutal … torture.’

  ‘I didn’t let anyone into that apartment.’

  ‘You said he left the keys in the door,’ said Falcón.

  ‘I didn’t let anyone into that apartment.’

  ‘You said you saw something,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘You made me think I saw something, but I didn’t.’

  ‘The light changed,’ said Ramírez.

  ‘The shadows moved,’ said Falcón.

  ‘I didn’t let anybody in,’ she said slowly. ‘It happened just as I told you.’