The Blind Man of Seville

‘When will the Médico Forense do the autopsy?’ asked Falcón.

‘Do you want to be there?’ asked Calderón, weighing his mobile. ‘He said that he was going to do it immediately.’

‘Not particularly,’ said Falcón. ‘I just want the results. There’s a lot to do here. This film, for instance. I think we should all watch the La Familia Jiménez movie now before Sra Jiménez arrives. Is there anybody else from the squad here, Inspector?’

‘Fernández is talking to the conserje, Inspector Jefe.’

‘Tell him to collect all the tapes from the security cameras, view them with the conserje and make a note of anybody he doesn’t recognize.’

Ramírez made for the door.

‘And another thing … find somebody to check all the hospitals, laboratories and medical supply shops for chloroform sold to odd people or missing bottles of the stuff. And surgical instruments, too.’

Falcón rolled the TV/video cabinet back to its normal position in the corner of the room. Calderón sat in the leather scoop chair. Falcón plugged the equipment back in. Ramírez stood by the dead man’s chair, which was wrapped in plastic, ready to be taken down to the Policía Científica laboratories. He murmured into his mobile. Calderón ejected the tape, inspected the reels, put it back in and hit the rewind button.

‘The removals men are still here, Inspector Jefe.’

‘There’s no one to talk to them now. Let them wait.’

Calderón hit ‘play’. They took seats around the room and watched in the sealed silence of the empty apartment. The footage opened with a shot of the Jiménez family coming out of the Edificio Presidente apartment building. Raúl and Consuelo Jiménez were arm in arm. She was in an ankle-length fur coat and he was in a caramel overcoat. The boys were all dressed identically in green and burgundy. They walked straight towards the camera, which was across the street from them, and turned left into Calle Asunción. The film cut to the same family group in different clothes on a sunny day coming out of the Corte Inglés department store on La Plaza del Duque de la Victoria. They crossed the road into the square, which was full of stalls selling cheap jewellery and shawls, CDs, leather bags and wallets. The group disappeared into Marks & Spencer’s. The family group were shown again and again until two of the three men were stifling yawns amidst the shopping malls, the beach gatherings, the paseos in the Plaza de España and the Parque de María Luisa.

‘Is he just showing us he did his homework?’ asked Ramírez.

‘Impressively dull, isn’t it?’ said Falcón, not finding it so, finding himself oddly fascinated by the altering dynamics of the family group in the different locations. He was drawn to the idea of the family, especially this apparently happy one, and what it would be like to have one himself, which led him to think how it was that he had singularly failed in this capacity.

Only a change in the direction of the movie snapped him back. It was the first piece of footage where the family didn’t appear as a group. Raúl Jiménez and his boys were at the Betis football stadium on a day when, it was clear from the scarves, they were playing Sevilla — the local derby.

‘I remember that day,’ said Calderón.

‘We lost 4–0,’ said Ramírez.

‘You lost,’ said Calderón. ‘We won.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Ramírez.

‘Who do you support, Inspector Jefe?’ asked Calderón.

Falcón didn’t react. No interest. Ramírez glanced over his shoulder, uncomfortable with his presence.

The camera cut to the Edificio Presidente. Consuelo Jiménez on her own, getting into a taxi. Cut to her paying the taxi off in a tree-lined street, waiting some moments while the car pulled away before crossing the road and walking up several steps to a house.

‘Where’s that?’ asked Calderón.

‘He’ll tell us,’ said Falcón.

A series of cuts showed Consuelo Jiménez arriving at the same house on different days, in different clothes. Then the house number — 17. And the street name — Calle Río de la Plata.

‘That’s in El Porvenir,’ said Ramírez.

‘This is the future,’ said Calderón. ‘I think we have a lover here.’

Cut to night-time and the rear of a large E-Class Mercedes with a Seville number plate. The image held for some time.

‘He doesn’t move his plot on very well,’ said Calderón, reaching his boredom threshold quickly.

‘Suspense,’ said Falcón.

Finally Raúl Jiménez got out of the car, locked it, stepped out of the street lighting and into the dark. Cut to a fire burning in the night, figures standing around the leaping flames. Women in short skirts, some with their suspenders and stocking tops showing. One of them turned, bent over and put her bottom to the fire.

Raúl Jiménez appeared at the edge of the fire. An inaudible discussion ensued. He strode back to the Mercedes with one of the women following, stumbling in her high heels over the rough ground.

‘That’s the Alameda,’ said Ramírez.

‘Only the cheapest for Raúl Jiménez,’ said Falcón.

Jiménez pushed the girl into the back seat, holding her head down as if she were a police suspect. He looked up and around and followed her in. The frame held the rear door of the Mercedes, shadowy movements beyond the glass. No more than a minute passed and Jiménez got out of the car, straightened his fly and held out a note to the girl, who took it. Jiménez got back into the driver’s seat. The car pulled away. The girl spat a fat gob on to the dirt, cleared her throat and spat again.

‘That was quick,’ said Ramírez, predictable.

More night-time footage followed. The pattern was the same, until an abrupt change of scene put the camera in a corridor with light falling into it from an open door at the end on the left. The camera moved down the corridor gradually revealing a lighter square on the wall at the end with a hook above it. The three men were suddenly transfixed, as they knew they were looking at the corridor outside the room where they were sitting. Ramírez’s hand twitched in that direction. The camera shook. The suspense tightened as the three lawmen’s heads surged with the horror of what they might be about to see. The camera reached the edge of light, its microphone picked up some groaning from the room, a shuddering, whimpering moan of someone who might be in terrible agony. Falcón wanted to swallow but his throat refused. He had no spit.

‘Joder,’ said Ramírez, to break the tension.

The camera panned and they were in the room. Falcón was so spooked that he half expected to see the three of them sitting there, watching the box. The camera focused first on the TV, which, at this remove, was running with waves and flickering but not so much that they couldn’t see the graphic performance of a woman masturbating and felating a man whose bare buttocks clenched and unclenched in time.

The camera pulled back to a wide shot, Falcón still blinking at the confusion of sound and expected image. Kneeling on the Persian carpet looking up at the TV screen was Raúl Jiménez, shirt-tails hanging over his backside, socks halfway up his calves and his trousers in a pile behind him. On all fours in front of him was a girl with long black hair, whose still head informed Falcón that she was staring at a fixed point, thinking herself elsewhere. She was making the appropriate encouraging noises. Then her head began to turn and the camera spun wildly out of the room.

Falcón was on his feet, thighs crashing into the edge of the desk.

‘He was there,’ he said. ‘He was … I mean, he was here all the time.’

Ramírez and Calderón jerked in their seats at Falcón’s outburst. Calderón ran his hand through his hair, visibly shaken. He checked the door from where the camera had just been looking into the room. Falcón’s mind bolted, didn’t know what it was looking at any more. Image or reality. He started, went on to his back foot, tried to shake his vision free of what was in his head. There was someone standing in the doorway. Falcón pinched his eyes shut, reopened them. He knew this person. Time decelerated. Calderón crossed the room with his hand out.

‘Señora Jiménez,’ he said. ‘Juez Esteban Calderón, I am sorry for your loss.’

He introduced Ramírez and Falcón, and Sra Jiménez, with mustered dignity, stepped into the room as if over a dead body. She shook hands with the men.

‘We weren’t expecting you so soon,’ said Calderón.

‘The traffic was light,’ she said. ‘Did I startle you, Inspector Jefe?’

Falcón adjusted his face, which must have had the remnants of that earlier wildness.

‘What was that you were watching?’ she asked, assuming control of the situation, used to it.

They looked at the screen. Snow and white noise.

‘We weren’t expecting you … ‘ started Calderón.