The Blind Man of Seville (2 page)

‘The time, about four, four-thirty this morning. The cause, well,
vamos a ver,
the man was over seventy years old, he had been overweight, he was a heavy smoker of cigarettes which he preferred with the filter removed and,
as a restaurateur, someone who enjoyed a glass of wine or two. Even a young and fit man might have found it difficult to sustain these injuries, that physical and mental distress, without going into deep shock. He died of heart failure, I’m sure of it. The autopsy will confirm that … or not.’

The Médico Forense finished, flustered by the steadiness of Falcón’s look and annoyed by his own idiocy at the end. He left the frame, which was instantly reoccupied by Calderón and Ramírez.

‘Let’s get started,’ said Calderón.

‘Who called the emergency services?’ asked Falcón.

‘The
conserje,’
said Calderón. The concierge. ‘After the maid had …’

‘After the maid had let herself in, seen the body, ran out of the apartment, and taken the lift back down to the ground floor …?’

‘… and hammered hysterically on the door of the conserje’s flat,’ finished Calderón, irritated by Falcón cutting in. ‘It took him some minutes to get any sense out of her and then he called 091.’

‘Did the conserje come up here?’

‘Not until the first patrol car arrived and sealed off the crime scene.’

Was the door open?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the maid … now?’

‘Under sedation in the Hospital de la Virgen de la Macarena.’

‘Inspector Ramírez …’

‘Yes, Inspector Jefe …’

All exchanges between Falcón and Ramírez started like this. It was his way of reminding the Inspector Jefe that Falcón had moved down from Madrid and stolen the job that Ramírez had always assumed would be his.

‘Ask Sub-Inspector Pérez to go down to the hospital and as soon as the maid … Does she have a name?’

‘Dolores Oliva.’

‘As soon as she is sensible … he should ask her if she noticed anything strange … Well, you know the questions. And ask her how many times she turned the key in the lock to open the door and what
exactly
were her movements before she found the body.’

Ramírez repeated this back to him.

‘Have we found Sra Jiménez and the children yet?’ asked Falcón.

‘We think they’re in the Hotel Colón.’

‘On Calle Bailén?’ asked Falcón, the five-star hotel where all the toreros stayed, only fifty metres from his own … from his late father’s house — a coincidence without being one.

‘A car has been sent,’ said Calderón. ‘I’d like to complete the
levantamiento del cadaver
as soon as possible and get the body down to the Instituto Anatómico Forense before we bring Sra Jiménez up here.’

Falcón nodded. Calderón left them to it. The two Policía Científica, Felipe in his mid fifties and Jorge in his late twenties, moved in murmuring
buenos días.
Falcón stared at the TV plug lying on the floor and decided not to mention it. They photographed the room and, between them, began to put together a scenario, while Jorge took Jiménez’s fingerprints and Felipe dusted the TV/video cabinet and the two empty slipcases on top. They agreed on its normal position and the fact that Jiménez would usually have been watching it from a leather scoop chair whose swivel base when lifted revealed a circular mark on the parquet. The killer had incapacitated Jiménez, swivelled the leather chair, which was unsuitable for his purposes, and moved one of the high-backed guest chairs so that he could shift the body in one turning movement.
The killer had then secured the wrists to the arms of the chair, stripped the socks off the feet, stuffed them in Jiménez’s mouth and secured the ankles. He then manoeuvred the chair by pivoting it on its legs until he achieved the ideal position.

‘His shoes are under here,’ said Jorge, nodding to the footwell of the desk. ‘One pair of ox-blood loafers with tassels.’

Falcón pointed to a well-worn patch on the parquet in front of the leather scoop. ‘He liked to kick off his shoes and sit in front of the TV rubbing his feet on the wooden floor.’

‘While he watched dirty movies,’ said Felipe, dusting one of the slipcases. ‘This one’s called
Cara o Culo.’
Face or Arse I.

‘The position of the chair?’ asked Jorge. ‘Why move all this furniture around?’

Javier Falcón walked to the door, turned and held his arms open to the forensics.

‘Maximum impact.’

‘A real showman,’ said Felipe, nodding. ‘This other slipcase has
La Familia Jiménez
written on it in red felt-tip and there’s a cassette in the machine with the same title, same handwriting.’

‘That doesn’t sound too horrific,’ said Falcón, and they all looked at Raúl Jiménez’s blood-streaked terror before going back to their work.

‘He
didn’t enjoy the show,’ said Felipe.

‘You shouldn’t watch if you can’t take it,’ said Jorge from under the desk.

‘I’ve never liked horror,’ said Falcón.

‘Me neither,’ said Jorge. ‘I can’t take all that … that …’

‘That what?’ asked Falcón, surprised to find himself interested.

‘I don’t know … the normality, the portentous normality.’

‘We all need a little fear to keep us going,’ said Falcón, looking down his red tie, the sweat tumbling out of his forehead again.

There was a thump from under the desk as Jorge’s head hit the underside.

‘Joder.’
Fuck. ‘You know what this is?’ said Jorge, backing out from under the desk. This is a chunk of Raúl Jiménez’s tongue.’

Silence from the three men.

‘Bag it,’ said Falcón.

‘We’re not going to find any prints,’ said Felipe. ‘These slipcases are clean, as is the video, TV, the cabinet and the remote. This guy was prepared for his work.’

‘Guy?’ asked Falcón. ‘We haven’t talked about that yet.’

Felipe fitted a pair of custom-made magnifying glasses to his face and began a minute inspection of the carpet.

Falcón was amazed at the two forensics. He was sure they’d never seen anything as gruesome as this in their careers, not down here, not in Seville. And yet, here they were … He took a perfect square of ironed handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed his brow. No, it wasn’t Felipe and Jorge’s problem. It was his. They behaved like this because this was how
he
normally behaved and had told them it was the only way to work in a murder investigation. Cold. Objective. Dispassionate. Detective work, he could hear himself in the lecture theatre back in the academy, is unemotional work.

So what was different about Raúl Jiménez? Why this sweat on a cool, clear April morning? He knew what they called him behind his back down at the Jefatura Superior de Policía on Calle Blas Infante.
El Lagarto.
The Lizard. He’d liked to think it was because of his physical stillness,
his passive features, his tendency to look intensely at people while he listened to them. Inés, his ex-wife, his recently divorced wife, had cleared up that misunderstanding for him. ‘You’re cold, Javier Falcón. You’re a cold fish. You have no heart.’ Then what is this thing thundering away in my chest? He jabbed himself in the lapel with his thumb, found himself with his jaw clenched and Felipe looking up with fish aquarium eyes from the carpet.

‘I have a hair, Inspector Jefe,’ he said. ‘Thirty centimetres.’

‘Colour?’

‘Black.’

Falcón went to the desk and checked the photograph of La Familia Jiménez. Consuelo Jiménez stood in a floor-length fur coat, her blonde hair piled high as confectionery while her three sons cheesed at the camera.

‘Bag it,’ he said, and called for the Médico Forense. In the photograph Raúl Jiménez stood next to his wife with his horse teeth grinning, his sagging cheeks looking like a grandfather and his wife, a daughter. Late marriage. Money. Connections. Falcón looked into Consuelo Jiménez’s brilliant smile.

‘Good carpet, this,’ said Felipe. ‘Silk. Thousand knots per centimetre. Good tight pile so that everything sits nicely on top.’

‘How much do you think Raúl Jiménez weighs?’ Falcón asked the Médico Forense.

‘Now I’d say somewhere between seventy-five and eighty kilos, but from the slack in his chest and waist I’d say he’s been up in the high nineties.’

‘Heart condition?’

‘His doctor will know if his wife doesn’t.’

‘Do you think a woman could lift him out of that low leather scoop and put him in that high-backed chair?’

‘A woman?’ asked the Médico Forense. ‘You think a woman did that to him?’

‘That was not the question, Doctor.’

The Médico Forense stiffened as Falcón made him feel stupid a second time.

‘I’ve seen trained nurses lift heavier men than that. Live men, of course, which is easier … but I don’t see why not.’

Falcón turned away, dismissing him.

‘You should ask Jorge about trained nurses, Inspector Jefe,’ said Felipe, arse up in the air, practically sniffing the carpet.

‘Shut up,’ said Jorge, tired of this one.

‘I understand it’s all to do with the hips,’ said Felipe, ‘and the counterweight of the buttocks.’

‘That’s only theory. Inspector Jefe,’ said Jorge. ‘He’s never had the benefit of practical experience.’

‘How would you know?’ said Felipe, kneeling up, grabbing an imaginary rump and giving it some swift thrusts with his groin. ‘I had a youth, too.’

‘Not much of one in your day,’ said Jorge. ‘They were all tight as clams, weren’t they?’

‘Spanish
girls were,’ said Felipe. ‘But I come from Alicante. Benidorm was just down the road. All those English girls in the sixties and seventies …”

‘In your dreams,’ said Jorge.

‘Yes, I’ve always had very exciting dreams,’ said Felipe.

The forensics laughed and Falcón looked down on them as they grovelled on the floor, rootling like pigs after acorns, with football and fucking fighting for supremacy in their brains. He found them faintly disgusting and turned to look at the photos on the wall. Jorge nodded his head at Falcón and mouthed to Felipe:
Mariquita.
Poof.

They laughed again. Falcón ignored them. His eye, just as it did when he looked at a painting, was drawn to the
edges of the photographic display. He moved away from the central celebrity section and found a shot of Raúl Jiménez with his arms around two men who were both taller and bigger than him. On the left was the Jefe Superior de la Policía de Sevilla, Comisario Firmin León and on the right was the Chief Prosecutor, Fiscal Jefe Juan Bellido. A physical pressure came down on Falcón’s shoulders and he shrugged his suit up his collar.

‘Aha! Here we go,’ said Felipe. ‘This is more like it. One pubic hair, Inspector Jefe. Black.’

The three men turned simultaneously to the window because they’d heard muted voices from behind the double-glazing and a mechanical sound like a lift. Beyond the rail of the balcony two men in blue overalls slowly appeared, one with long black hair tied in a ponytail and the other crew cut with a black eye. They were shouting to the team eighteen metres below who were operating the lifting gear.

‘Who are those idiots?’ asked Felipe.

Falcón went out on to the balcony, startling the two men standing on the platform, which had just been raised up a railed ladder from a truck in the street.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘We’re the removals company,’ they said, and turned their backs to show yellow stencils on their overalls which read Mudanzas Triana Transportes Nacionales e Internacionales.

2

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

Juez Esteban Calderón signed off the levantamiento del cadáver, which had uncovered another piece of baggable evidence. Underneath the body was a piece of cotton rag, a sniff indicated traces of chloroform.

‘A mistake,’ said Falcón.

‘Inspector Jefe?’ questioned Ramírez, at his elbow.

‘The first mistake in a planned operation.’

‘What about the hairs, Inspector Jefe?’

‘If those hairs belonged to the killer … shedding it was an accident. Leaving a chloroform-soaked rag was an error. He put Raúl Jiménez out with the chloroform, didn’t want to put the rag in his pocket, threw it on the chair and then dumped Don Raúl on top of it. Out of sight, out of mind.’

‘It’s not such an important clue …”

‘It’s an indication of the mind we’re working against. This is a careful mind but not a professional one. He might be slack in other areas, like where he got the chloroform. Maybe he bought it here in Seville from a medical or laboratory supplies shop or stole it from a hospital or a chemist. The killer has thought obsessively about what he
wants to do to his victim but not all the details around it.’

‘Sra Jiménez has been located and informed. A car will drop the kids at her sister’s house in San Bernardo and bring her on alone.’

‘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.