The Blind Man of Seville (42 page)

20th September 1946

I have returned from Tarragona to find that P. has gone back to Spain with her mother, whose sister has died. The doctor does not know when they will be coming back. I feel both bereft and oddly free. Ahmed and his friend come round at night and my mood is celebratory. A night of total hedonism comes to pass.

23rd September 1946

I show Carlos the charcoal drawings of P. He is astounded. For the first time he says something about my work and the word is ‘Exceptional’. Later as we smoke a hookah together he says: ‘I see the thaw has started. I hope Ahmed and Mohammed have been a help.’ I look as if I don’t know what he is talking about. He says he will send others to my door. ‘I don’t want you to get bored.’ I say nothing.

30th October 1946

Still no word from P. and now her father has also left for Spain. The only possible address I have for them is Granada.

R. has sold a plot of land to an American who wants to build a hotel. One of the conditions of sale is that we do the construction. It is our first major building contract. I want to be involved in the design, but R. insists that I keep my art and work separate. ‘Everybody associated with me knows you as my security adviser
…
I can’t have you designing the reception as well.’

23

Friday, 20th April 2001, Falcón’s House, Calle Bailén, Seville

Clawing through oblivion was hard work. How could sleep be such toil? He surfaced, blathering like an old unvisited fool in a home for those close to the final terminus. His mobile was ringing, scintillating through the bones of his face. His mouth was as dry as bone meal. The phone ceased. He sank back into the felt grave of drugged sleep.

Was it hours later or just minutes? The mobile’s trilling madness seemed to be tunnelling through his sinuses. He burst out of sleep, flailing. He found the light, the phone, the button. He sucked cool water in over the clod of tongue in his mouth.

‘Inspector Jefe?’

‘Did you call earlier?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What is it?’

‘We’ve just had a report of another body.’

‘Another body?’ he said, his brain as thick as wadding.

‘A murder. The same as Raúl Jiménez.’

‘Where?’

‘In El Porvenir.’

‘Address?’

‘Calle de Colombia, number 25.’

‘I know that address,’ he said.

‘The house belongs to Ramón Salgado, Inspector Jefe.’

‘Is he the victim?’

‘We’re not sure yet. We’ve just sent a patrol car out to investigate. The body was spotted by the gardener from outside the house.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Just gone seven.’

‘Don’t call anyone else from the group. I’ll go on my own,’ he said. ‘But you’d better notify Juez Calderón.’

The name knifed through him as he hung up. He showered, head hung, arms weakened by the cruelty of Inés’s words from last night. He nearly sobbed at the thought of facing Calderón. He shaved, turning his face interrogatively in the mirror. It would not be mentioned. Of course it wouldn’t. How could something like that be laid out between two men? It was the end of his relationship with Calderón. ‘Things … that you could never even dream of.’

He put his head under cold water, took an Orfidal, dressed and got into his car. He checked his messages at the first traffic light. There was one timed at 2.45 that morning. He played it back. The message began with some music, which he recognized as Albinoni’s Adagio. Through it he could hear the muffled and desperate squeaking of someone trying to shout or plead through a gag. Furniture knocked against a wooden floor as the music soared, with the violins taking the exquisite pain of loss to new heights. Then a quiet voice:

‘You know what to do.’

A terrible gurgling and rattling sound, that could only have been made by a constricted throat, came through the music. The struggle continued through the adagio’s emotional peaks as the ricocheting furniture became frantic,
until there was a crash and an abrupt silence before the violins returned on an even higher note and the message ended.

Horns blared behind him and he took off down by the river to the next red light. He called the Jefatura and asked to be connected to the patrol car. They still didn’t have access to the house but there was confirmation of a body in the middle of the floor of a large room at the back of the house, which gave out on to the verandah and garden. The body was secured to a chair, which was on its side, and there was a lot of blood on the wooden floor. He told them to find the maid or check the neighbours for spare keys.

At the Parque de María Luisa he turned away from the river up Avenida de Eritaña, past a police station and the Guardia Civil, which were no more than a few hundred metres from Ramón Salgado’s house.

There were still no keys by the time he arrived at the house, which gave time for an ambulance to turn up, followed by Calderón and finally Felipe and Jorge from the Policía Científica.

A neighbour found the spare set of keys at 7.20 a.m. and Falcón and Calderón entered the house, both wearing latex gloves. They went in to the large room at the back of the house with books lining the far wall. In the middle was a desk, which consisted of a sheet of three-centimetre-thick glass supported by two squares of black wood. There was an iMac, which was switched on with the ‘desktop’ showing. On the back wall behind the desk were four high-quality reproductions of the Falcón nudes. Between the desk and this wall Ramón Salgado was lying on his side attached to a high, ladder-backed, armless chair. One wrist was trapped underneath him, the other was secured so that the hand ported down the back leg of the chair. One bare ankle was tied to the front leg of
the chair and the other was high up in the air with a length of cord looped around the big toe. The cord ran up to a light fitting in the ceiling that consisted of four spotlights attached to a metal strip. Concealed in the metal strip was a small pulley. The cord ran through that and back down to Salgado’s neck, which looked as if it might be broken. The cord was pulled tight so that Salgado’s head, lolling on his neck, did not make contact with the ground. On closer inspection of the pulley they found it had been jammed by a knot in the cord.

‘As soon as the chair went over,’ said Falcón, ‘he was a dead man.’

Calderón stepped around the blood on the floor.

‘What the hell was happening in here before that?’ he asked.

The Médico Forense, the same as for Raúl Jiménez, appeared at the door.

This was the first time Falcón had seen someone he knew murdered. He couldn’t get it out of his head, the last occasion he’d seen Salgado, drinking manzanilla in the Bar Albariza. Now, to see him inanimate, his blood all over the floor, the gross indignity of the manner of his death, he winced with guilt at his dislike of the man. He moved further toward the book-lined wall to be able to look into Salgado’s face. He could see that the cheeks were blood-streaked and stuffed full, gagged by his socks. The collar of his shirt was soaked, heavy with blood. The eyes stared up at Falcón and he flinched. In the coagulating blood on the floor he saw what he’d dreaded: a small flap with fine hairs.

Photographs were taken and Felipe and Jorge began taking samples of blood from every spatter mark on the floor until a path had been cleared for the Médico Forense to kneel by the body. He muttered his comments into his dictaphone — a physical description of Salgado, a catalogue
of the injuries sustained and the probable cause of death.

‘… loss of blood due to head injuries caused by the flailing of the victim’s head against the sharp edges and corners of the chair back … eyelids removed … evidence of asphyxiation … possible broken neck … time of death: within the last eight hours …’

Falcón handed Calderón his mobile and played him the message that had been left at 2.45 a.m. Calderón listened and passed it on to the Médico Forense.

‘ “You know what to do”?’ Calderón repeated Sergio’s instruction to Salgado, mystified.

‘This pulley isn’t something installed by the killer,’ said Falcón. ‘It was already there. Somehow Sergio knew that Salgado had a predilection for auto-strangulation. He was telling him how he could end it all by taking his sexual proclivity beyond the limit.’

‘Auto-strangulation?’ asked Calderón.

‘To be on the brink of asphyxiation during a sexual experience intensifies the moment,’ explained Falcón. ‘Unfortunately the practice has its dangers.’

Things … that you could never even dream of,
thought Falcón.

A patrolman came to the door. A policeman from the station down the road wanted to speak to Falcón about a break-in he’d investigated in Salgado’s house two weeks ago. Falcón joined the policeman in the hall and asked where the entry point had been.

‘That was the strange thing, Inspector Jefe, there was no evidence of a break-in and Sr Salgado said that nothing had been stolen. He just knew that somebody had been in his house. He was convinced that they’d spent the weekend here.’

‘Why?’

‘He couldn’t tell me.’

‘Does the maid come in at the weekends?’

‘No, never. And the gardener only comes at weekends during the summer to water the plants. Sr Salgado liked his privacy when he was at home.’

‘He’s away a lot?’

‘That’s what he told me.’

‘Did you check the house?’

‘Of course. He followed me around.’

‘Any weak points?’

‘Not on the ground floor, but there’s a room at the top of the house with its own roof terrace and the lock on that door was almost useless.’

‘What about access?’

‘Once you were up on the garage roof almost anybody could have made it up there,’ said the policeman. ‘I told him to change the lock, put a bolt on the door … They never do …’

Falcón went up to the top of the house. The policeman confirmed that the door and lock were the same. The key had come out of the lock and was lying on the floor. The door rattled in its frame.

In Salgado’s study the medical examination was over and Felipe and Jorge were back on the floor taking blood samples. Falcón called Ramírez, filled him in, and told him to bring Fernández, Serrano and Baena down to El Porvenir. There was a lot of work to do just interviewing the neighbours before they left for work.

‘There’s an icon on the computer desktop,’ said Calderón. ‘It’s called
Familia Salgado
and there’s a card under the keyboard with “Sight Lesson No.3” written on it.’

It was after midday by the time Calderón signed off the levantamiento del cadáver. It had taken Felipe and Jorge hours to take samples of each individual blood spatter in case one of them belonged to the killer. Salgado was removed, the crime scene cleaners disinfected the room. The chair was bubblewrapped and taken down to
the police laboratory. It was 12.45 by the time Falcón, Ramírez and Calderón could sit in front of the iMac and watch
Familia Salgado.

The film started with repeated takes of Salgado coming out of his house with his briefcase and getting into a taxi. These were followed by repeated takes of Salgado getting out of the taxi on the Plaza Nueva and walking down Calle Zaragoza to his gallery. There followed a succession of cuts — Salgado in a café, Salgado in a restaurant, Salgado outside the Bar La Company, Salgado window shopping, Salgado in the Corte Inglés.

‘Yes, so … what’s his point?’ asked Ramírez.

‘The man spends a lot of time on his own,’ said Calderón.

The next scene showed Salgado arriving at the door to a house. It was a classic Sevillana door of varnished wood with ornate brass studs. He arrived again and again at this house, which had a very distinctive terracotta façade, with the doorframe and friezes picked out in a creamy yellow colour.

‘Do we know where this house is?’ asked Calderón.

‘Yes, we do,’ said Falcón. ‘It’s my house … my late father’s house. Salgado was my father’s agent.’

‘If your father is dead,’ said Calderón, stopping the film, ‘why was Salgado …?’

‘He was always trying to get access to my father’s old studio. He had his reasons, which he never told me.’

‘Were you ever in when he called?’ asked Ramírez.

‘Sometimes. I never answered the door. I didn’t like Ramón Salgado. He bored me and I avoided him whenever possible.’

Calderón restarted the movie. Salgado appeared at the intersection of a street. Above his head was a sign to the Hotel París and Falcón knew that he was standing on Calle Bailén looking in the direction of the house. Salgado
set off. The camera followed him as he weaved through people bustling in the streets. Salgado was following somebody else. It was only as they came up to Marqués de Paradas that they could see that he was pursuing Falcón himself. They watched him go into the Café San Bernardo, which had an entrance on Calle Julio César. Salgado took the entrance on Marqués de Paradas and a ‘chance’ meeting ensued. The camera even came into the café, sat down and watched them talking at the bar. The barman set down a café solo for Falcón and a larger cup and saucer for Salgado. He returned with a steel jug of hot milk. Falcón recoiled as it was poured into Salgado’s cup.

‘What was all that about?’ asked Ramírez. ‘Did he say something to you?’

‘He’s always asking the same thing. “Can I just have a look in your father’s …”’

‘But why did you step back as if …?’

‘That’s nothing, I just don’t like milk. It’s an allergy or something.’

‘Now we’re at the cemetery,’ said Calderón.

‘This is the Jiménez funeral,’ said Ramírez. ‘That’s me by the cypress filming the mourners.’

The film showed Falcón and Salgado in conversation and then it stopped abruptly. Calderón sat back.

‘Sergio seems to think that you are Salgado’s only family, Inspector Jefe,’ said Calderón.

‘Salgado had a sister,’ said Falcón. ‘He’d just installed her in a home in Madrid.’

‘Was there anything different about that last meeting after the funeral?’ asked Calderón.

‘He offered me information on Raúl Jiménez in exchange for access to the studio. He also said he didn’t want anything from the studio but just to spend some time in there. I’d always thought he wanted to put on a
final Francisco Falcón show, but he insisted that that was not the case. He made it sound as if it was something nostalgic’