The Blind Man of Seville
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‘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.’
‘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.’
‘He was in the photographs in Jiménez’s study.’
‘Who was he in bed with?’
‘They weren’t those sort of …’
‘I’m joking, Inspector Jefe,’ said Lobo. ‘You probably saw a lot of other funcionarios in those photos.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Did you see me?’
‘No, Comisario.’
‘Because I’m not in them, Inspector Jefe,’ he said, walking quickly to his desk.
They sat down; Lobo clasped his hands as if about to crush small heads.
‘You weren’t here at the time of the 1992 Expo?’ he said.
‘I was in Zaragoza by then.’
‘A very different situation existed here at Expo ‘92 than at the Barcelona Olympics. There, I’m sure you will recall, the Catalans made a profit. Whilst here, the Andalucians made a staggering loss.’
‘There was talk of corruption.’
‘Talk!’ roared Lobo savagely. ‘Not just talk, Inspector Jefe. There was corruption. There was so much corruption that if you weren’t making millions it was an embarrassment. Such an embarrassment that those who hadn’t managed to stuff their pockets went out and hired Mercedes and BMWs to make it look as if they had.’
‘I didn’t realize.’
‘And it wasn’t just the locals. The Madrileños were down here in force, too. They could see a certain attitude was prevailing. A slackness. A lack of attention to detail that could be financially exploited.’
‘How is this relevant ten years later?’
‘Do you remember how many people were brought to book over that?’
‘I don’t recall, Comisario.’
‘None!’ said Lobo, whacking the desk with his clasped hands. ‘Not one.’
‘Hermanos Lorenzo,’ said Falcón. ‘Construction.’
‘What about them?’
‘Raúl Jiménez had a business relationship with them, which terminated in 1992.’
‘Now you’re beginning to understand. Raúl Jiménez was on the Expo de Sevilla Committee. He was on the board of directors responsible for the development of the site. Hermanos Lorenzo was not the only construction company he was connected to.’
‘I’m still not sure how this can be relevant to his murder nearly ten years later.’
‘Possibly it isn’t. I doubt there will be any connection. But you’ll be stirring up the shit pot, Inspector Jefe. Nasty things will come to the surface.’
‘And Comisario León?’
‘He doesn’t want any unpleasant surprises. You must tell me if you come across “sensitive” information and … no leaks, Inspector Jefe, or we’ll all be broken on the wheel.’
Another reason why Lobo’s men liked him was his unique ability to help them understand the seriousness of a situation. Falcón got up to leave, headed for the door knowing that there was something else, that Lobo always liked to spring things on his men as they were leaving. It made a more lasting impression.
‘You probably thought, with all your experience in Barcelona, Zaragoza and Madrid, that your application to a second division murder city like Seville would be well received.’
‘I don’t take anything for granted, Comisario. Politics plays its part in every appointment.’
‘I had to work very hard on your behalf.’
‘Why did you do that?’ he asked, Lobo unknown to him before he arrived.
‘For that very unfashionable reason that you were the best man for the job.’
‘Then I thank you for it.’
‘Comisario León was a great admirer of the tenacious talents of Inspector Ramírez.’
‘As am I, Comisario.’
‘They keep in touch, Inspector Jefe … informally.’
‘I understand.’
‘That’s good,’ said Lobo, suddenly cheerful. ‘I knew you would.’
7
Thursday, 12th April 2001, Edificio de los Juzgados, Seville
‘I think Eloisa Gómez let him in,’ said Ramírez as they crossed the river.
‘Baena and Serrano haven’t got anybody outside the Edificio Presidente,’ said Falcón. ‘And I prefer that scenario to the killer climbing up the lifting gear and hiding in the apartment for half a day, even though it was empty apart from a short visit from Sra Jiménez. Was the girl scared?’
‘Didn’t say a word to me after we finished the interrogation.’
‘Does she believe us?’
‘Who knows?’
The Edificio de los Juzgados was next to the Palacio de Justicia, just opposite the Jardines de Murillo. It was well past five o’clock when Falcón and Ramírez parked up at the back of the court building. Falcón, who hated to be late, wanted to break the comb that Ramírez was putting through his black, brilliantined hair into ten little pieces. His murderous glare had no effect on the Inspector, who considered that they were early and his coiffure a priority — there could be secretaries about.
The two men in their dark suits, white shirts and sunglasses went to the front of the dull grey building — the monochrome of justice in the garden city. They put their briefcases through the X-ray machine and showed their ID. The place was quiet; almost everything happened in the morning. They went upstairs to Juez Calderón’s office on the first floor. The building was dark, even grim, on the inside. Nothing pretty about justice even when it was good and true.
Ramírez asked about Lobo and Falcón told him that pressure was already coming down from Comisario León and mentioned the corruption angle. Ramírez looked bored.
Calderón was not in his office. Ramírez slumped in a chair and played with a gold ring he had on his middle finger which was set with three diamonds. The ring had always bothered Falcón, too feminine for the mahogany muscularity of Ramírez.
‘We’re going to have to make something of that time-wasting maricón, Lucena,’ said Ramírez brutally, ‘or we’re going to look like incompetents in our first meeting with the new boy.’
Falcón let his eyes ripple over the book-lined room. Ramírez stretched out.
‘You know, I think even if you fuck both women and men, that deep down you’re a maricón,’ he said.
‘Even if it was just a one-off?’ said Falcón.
‘It’s not something you can experiment with, Inspector Jefe. It’s in your genes. If you can even think about it … you’re a maricón.’
‘Let’s not get into this with Juez Calderón.’
The young judge arrived at a quarter to six, sat at his desk and got straight down to business. He was now in the role of the Juez de Instrucción, which meant that he had ultimate responsibility for the direction of the case and bringing the necessary evidence for a conviction successfully to court.
‘What have we got?’ he asked.
Ramírez yawned. Calderón lit a cigarette, chucked the pack at Ramírez, who took one. They smoked while Falcón wondered how these two men had got to know each other … until he remembered the football. Betis losing 4–0 on the day the killer shot his movie of Raúl and his sons. Where did that ease come from? He tried to remember if he’d ever had it. He must have done and lost it somewhere in his youth when his work had become too serious, or perhaps he’d become too serious about his work?
‘Who’s going to begin?’ asked Calderón.
‘Let’s start with the body,’ said Falcón, and gave a resumé of the autopsy.
‘How did he think the eyelids were removed?’ asked Calderón.
‘Initial incision by scalpel, and the cutting done by scissors. He thought it was a good job.’
‘And we think this was done to force him to watch something on the television?’
‘The severity of the self-inflicted wounds would suggest that the man was horrified by what had been done to him as well as what he was being forced to watch,’ said Falcón.
‘I’d go along with that,’ said Calderón, unconsciously fingering his eyelids. ‘Any thoughts on what the killer showed him?’
Ramírez shook his head. No room for that sort of conjecture in his hard cranium.
‘I think we only know our own worst nightmares, not those of others,’ said Falcón, trying not to be patronizing.
‘Yes, I hate rats,’ said Calderón cheerfully.
‘My wife can’t be in the same room as a spider,’ said Ramírez, ‘ … even if it’s on television.’
The two men laughed.
‘This is something a little stronger than a phobia,’ said Falcón, stuck in the schoolmaster role. ‘And conjecture isn’t going to help us right now, we need to concentrate more on motive.’
‘Motive,’ said Calderón, nodding the task into himself. ‘You’ve spoken to Sra Jiménez?’
‘She gave me her motive for killing her husband or having him killed,’ said Falcón. ‘Their marriage was not successful, she had a lover, and she and the children would inherit everything.’
‘The lover,’ said Calderón, ‘did you speak to him?’
‘We did, because he was recorded as entering the Edificio Presidente about half an hour before Raúl Jiménez was murdered. He’s also a lecturer in biochemistry at the university.’
‘Opportunity and expertise,’ said Calderón.
‘As well as access to chloroform and lab instruments,’ said Ramírez, so that Calderón had to check him for irony or stupidity.
‘So?’ asked Calderón, hands open, waiting for the obvious.
Falcón gave him the bad news that Lucena was on his way up to Marciano Ruíz’s apartment on the eighth floor.
‘I know that name,’ said Calderón. ‘Isn’t he a theatre director?’
‘And a well-known mariquita,’ finished Ramírez.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Calderón.
‘He was fucking them both,’ said Ramírez. ‘He said he was fucking her because she reminded him of his mother.’
‘What’s all this about?’
‘Lucena was trying to offend Inspector Ramírez,’ said Falcón.
‘But not you,’ said Calderón smoothly. ‘Are you going to arrest him?’
‘First of all, I don’t think these people are stupid enough to walk into the security cameras … ‘
‘Unless they’re being very intelligent and subtle about it,’ said Calderón. ‘For instance, we never see the lover in the Familia Jiménez movie, do we? We only see his address.’
‘You’re forgetting the prostitute, Eloisa Gómez,’ said Falcón. ‘If Lucena was the killer he would have been in the apartment, filming her having sex with Raúl Jiménez as we saw on the movie. The girl was taped leaving the building at three minutes past one and was back on the Alameda at one-thirty. Basilio Lucena was still in the Hotel Colón with Sra Jiménez. I’ve worked on the timings to see if it’s still possible, and it is, but highly improbable.’
‘Well, that was nearly exciting,’ said Calderón. ‘When did Lucena leave the building?’
‘No record,’ said Falcón. ‘He says he left in the morning with Marciano Ruíz.’
‘Why no record?’
‘The camera links in the garage had been cut,’ said Ramírez, which was news to Falcón. ‘According to the Policía Científica they were severed with pliers.’
‘So that was the way in?’ asked Calderón, trying to get through to more interesting information.
‘It was definitely the way out,’ said Falcón. ‘The problem, though, was not just to get into the building without being seen, but to get into the apartment as well. Raúl Jiménez was very security conscious. He always locked his door, which needed five turns of the key — and that was confirmed by the prostitute, who heard him while she was waiting for the lift.’
‘So how did the killer get in?’
Falcón gave him the theory of the lifting gear on the back of the Mudanzas Triana removals truck. Calderón played with that idea in his head.
‘So he gets into the apartment, which admittedly is empty, but he hides in it for twelve hours and he’s even brought his video camera with him to record Raúl Jiménez with a whore? That doesn’t sound …’
‘If that was the case, I don’t think that part of it was planned,’ said Falcón. ‘I think he did that in a moment of arrogance. He wanted to show us that he’d been there all the time. If he hadn’t filmed them we’d have known much less. We’d probably still be wasting our time with Basilio Lucena. So we can thank the killer for that small slip, along with the forgotten chloroform rag, because with each of these mistakes he’s telling us something about himself.’
‘That he’s an amateur,’ said Calderón.
‘But an amateur with nerve,’ said Falcón, ‘He’ll take risks and he likes to tease.’
‘Psychopathic?’
‘Driven and playful,’ replied Falcón. ‘With not a lot to lose.’
‘And some surgical expertise,’ said Ramírez.
Falcón gave him the second scenario — Eloisa Gómez letting in her lover or low-life friend to kill Raúl Jiménez.
‘Nothing was stolen,’ said Ramírez. ‘The place was practically empty, so the only reason for getting in there was to kill Raúl Jiménez.’
‘How did she stand up to the interrogation?’
‘She toughed it out,’ said Ramírez.
‘You’ll go back to her though, won’t you?’ said Calderón.
In the quiet that followed their nods Falcón gave Calderón a short report about his discussion with Lobo on the level of corruption in the building of Expo ‘92 and Raúl Jiménez’s involvement. He mentioned the warning he was given by the Comisario.
‘If there’s corruption associated with this murder I have to be free to talk about it,’ said Calderón, eyes alight, suddenly the crusading judge.
‘You are, of course,’ said Falcón. ‘But there are some sensitive issues here and important people, who, even if they’re clean, might not like the associations. You remember who was in those photographs from your side: Bellido and Spinola, to name two.’
‘It’s ten years old, anyway,’ said Calderón, idealism instantly doused.
‘That’s not so long to hold a grudge,’ said Falcón, and the two men looked at him as if he might be holding several simultaneously.
Falcón gave a report on his conversation with Consuelo Jiménez and handed over the print-out of the address book, mentioning that the killer had stolen Raúl Jiménez’s mobile. Calderón ran his finger down the list. Ramírez yawned and lit another cigarette.
‘So what you’re saying,’ said Calderón, ‘is that despite that terrible scenario the killer left in the apartment, despite all the interviews and statements so far … we actually have no definite leads?’
‘We still have Sra Consuelo Jiménez as the prime suspect. She is the only one with defined motive and she has the means to execute it. Eloisa Gómez is a possible accomplice to a murderer acting on his own.’
‘Or not,’ said Calderón. ‘The killer could still be paid for by Sra Jiménez and, if that’s the case, I’m sure she wouldn’t want to draw attention to herself by giving the killer his own key. She would have told him to find his own way in.’
‘And he’d use the prostitute or the lifting gear?’ asked Ramírez. ‘I know what I’d do.’
‘If he used the girl to get in why would he film her?’ asked Calderón. ‘That doesn’t make sense. It makes more sense the other way round — to show us how brilliant he is.’
‘There’s possibilities and improbabilities in both scenarios,’ said Falcón.
‘Do you both have Sra Jiménez down as a serious candidate for having her husband killed?’
Ramírez said yes, Falcón no.
‘Which way do you want to take the case, Inspector Jefe?’
Falcón cracked his knuckles one by one. Calderón winced. Falcón didn’t want to have to come clean just yet about what his instinct was telling him. He needed more time to think. There were enough extraordinary things about this case already without him suggesting that they take a look at what had happened to Raúl Jiménez in the late 1960s. But he was the leader and as such he had to have the ideas.
‘We should work on both scenarios and on Raúl Jiménez’s address list,’ he said. ‘I think we have to maintain a presence in and around the building to try to find a witness who will corroborate one theory of the killer’s entry and possibly give us a description. We need to interview the removals company. And we should keep the pressure up on both Consuelo Jiménez and Eloisa Gómez.’