The Blind Man of Seville

‘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.’

‘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.’

They terminated the interview just before 16.30. Falcón sent Ramírez off with the girl to find a policewoman to supervise a pubic hair match with the Policía Científica. As they left he heard Ramírez talking to her as if she were an old friend and they were heading for a cervecita except the words were different.

‘No, I tell you, Eloisa, if I was you I’d drop the guy, drop him like a hot rock. If he can kill a guy like that he can kill you. He can kill you without feeling a damn thing. So you watch yourself. You get any suspicions, any doubts, you give me a call.’

Falcón went to his office and called Baena and Serrano to see if they’d found any witnesses outside the Edificio Presidente. None. Few people around. Shops closed. Most of the locals in the centre of town for the processions.

He hung up, cracked his knuckles one after the other, a habit that Inés had loathed but it was an unconscious act, something he did to steady his brain. It had made her writhe.

Falcón called Comisario Lobo, who told him to make an appearance in his office. On the way to the lift he saw Ramírez and told him to get the paperwork ready for the meeting with Juez Calderón. He went up to the top floor. Lobo’s secretary, one of those minimalist Sevillanas who reserved all her extravagance for after office hours, sent him in with a flick of an eyelash.

Lobo was facing the window, hands behind his back, doing knee bends while he took in the greenery of the Parque de los Príncipes across the street. He was short and stocky with large, hairy agricultural hands. He had a bull neck and grey, industrial hair. He’d always worn heavy black-framed glasses from a lost era until last year when his wife had persuaded him into contact lenses. It was an attempt at image improvement which had failed because his eyes were the colour of mud and the lack of frames had made his nose look more hooked, revealing more of his brutal face than most wanted to see. He had thin lips, which were only two shades darker than his cumin complexion. He looked more criminal than most of the people in the holding cells, but he was a good manager and a direct talker, who always supported his officers.

‘You know what this is about?’ he said, over his shoulder.

‘Raúl Jiménez.’

‘No, Inspector Jefe, it’s about Comisario León.’