The Blind Man of Seville. Robert Thomas Wilson

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      Silence.

      ‘Have you been in touch with Basilio Lucena this morning?’ he asked.

      She nodded.

      ‘What did you tell him?’

      ‘I thought he should know what had happened.’

      ‘So that he could prepare himself?’

      ‘You might think, Inspector Jefe, if you saw Basilio Lucena on paper that he was an intelligent man. He is certainly educated and sophisticated. But his intelligence is very finely tuned to a narrow waveband and his sophistication admired by a small clique. He has been made lazy by the lack of challenge in his job. His house and car have been paid for by his parents. He has no dependants. His income allows him an irresponsible lifestyle. He isn’t somebody who’s ever had to think on his feet because most of the time he’s lying down. Is that the profile of a murderer?’

      Falcón’s mobile rang. Pérez made an elaborate report on the unidentified people picked up by the CCTV cameras. Two positive identifications, one negative, and the girl they assumed to be the prostitute had been referred to Vice. He told Pérez to follow up on the girl and asked Fernández to go through the apartments again over lunchtime.

      The moment with Consuelo Jiménez had passed. He pulled out into the traffic, did a U-turn and headed west to the river. He glanced at his hostage to see how her thoughts were progressing. He sensed a crisis point, began to have that feeling that this could all be over before his first meeting with Juez Calderón. That was how this work went in his experience. All over in twenty-four hours or they went into months of long, bleak slog.

      ‘Are you taking me back to the apartment?’ she asked.

      ‘You’re an intelligent woman, Doña Consuelo.’

      ‘Your opportunity to flatter me has long passed.’

      ‘You spend your life amongst people,’ he said. ‘You understand them. I think you understand the demands of my job.’

      ‘That you have to be so disgustingly suspicious.’

      ‘Do you know how many murders there are in Seville every year?’

      ‘In this city of joy?’ she said. ‘In this city of handclapping in the streets, of cervecitas y tapitas con los amigos. In this city de los guapos, de los guapísimos? In this godly city of the Holy Virgin?’

      ‘In the city of Seville.’

      ‘A couple of thousand,’ she said, tossing the number up into the air with her ringed fingers.

      ‘Fifteen,’ he said.

      ‘Back-stabbing is metaphorical murder.’

      ‘Drugs account for most of those murders. The remaining few come under the heading of “domestic” or “passionate”. In all of those murders — all of them, Doña Consuelo — the victim and the perpetrator knew each other and in most cases they were intimate.’

      ‘Then you have an exception, Inspector Jefe, because I did not kill my husband.’

      They went through the underpass by the old railway station at the Plaza de Armas and continued along the riverside on the Paseo Cristóbal Colón past the Maestranza bullring, the Opera and the Torre del Oro. The sun was bright on the water, the high plane trees in full leaf. It was no time to be confessing to murder and spending a lifetime of springs behind bars.

      ‘Denial is a very powerful human condition … ‘ he said.

      ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never denied anything.’

      ‘… because there are no doubts … ever.’

      ‘I’m either a liar or completely deluded,’ she said. ‘I can’t win, Inspector Jefe. But at least I always tell myself the truth.’

      ‘But do you tell it to me, Doña Consuelo?’ he said.

      ‘So far … but perhaps I’m changing my mind.’

      ‘I don’t know how you persuaded your husband’s old flames that you were a silly tart.’

      ‘I dressed like one,’ she said, tinkling her fingernails. ‘I can talk like one, too.’

      ‘You’re an accomplished actress.’

      ‘Everything counts against me.’

      Their eyes connected. His soft, brown, tobacco. Hers frozen aquamarine. He smiled. He couldn’t help liking her. That strength. The inexorable mouth. He wondered what it would taste like and shot the thought straight out of his head. They crossed the Puente del Generalísimo and he changed the subject.

      ‘It’s never occurred to me before what a Francoist little corner of town this is. This bridge. This street is named after Carrero Blanco …’

      ‘Why do you think my husband was living in the Edificio Presidente?’

      ‘I thought most people were following the Paquirri fashion.’

      ‘Yes, well, my husband liked los toros, but he liked Franco even more.’

      ‘And you?’

      ‘He was before my time.’

      ‘Mine, too.’

      ‘You should dye your hair, Inspector Jefe, I thought you were older.’

      They parked up. Falcón called Fernández on his mobile, told him to go to the Jiménez apartment. He and Sra Jiménez took the lift to the sixth floor, nodded past the policeman at the door. They paced the empty corridor towards the empty hook, that double walk still snagging in Falcón’s brain. They sat down in the study and waited in silence for Fernández to arrive.

      ‘Just run your pictures past Sra Jiménez, please,’ he said. ‘In order of appearance on the CCTV tapes.’

      Fernández counted them out, each one getting the negative from Consuelo Jiménez until the last one when her eyes widened and she blinked the double take.

      ‘Who is that in the picture, Doña Consuelo?’

      She looked up at him, entranced, beguiled as if it had been magic.

      ‘It’s Basilio,’ she said, her mouth not closing.

       5

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

      How to play this? Falcón resisted the temptation to run his fingers up the edge of the desk like a concert pianist in full flourish. He rested his chin on his thumb, tensed his jaw and brushed his cheekbone with a finger while the adrenalin flashed down his arteries. This was it, he СКАЧАТЬ