The Blind Man of Seville

normal flow of everyday life. He knows how things really work. He has an automatic comprehension of what runs between the lines.’

This sounds very enigmatic, Inspector Jefe.’

‘Not on the margins of society, where people have detached themselves from normality. Where, for instance, every day they sell their bodies for sex, or shoot somebody because they haven’t got the money. It’s not so different at the other end of the scale. Those people with power, who know how to get more and how to maintain their position. None of these people see things as normal people do, who have jobs and children and houses to occupy their minds.’

‘And you think an artist, such as you described our killer back in the cemetery, would have this same unusual perspective?’ said Calderon.

‘It fits the profile,’ said Falcon. ‘You mentioned “foreigner”, too. Eloisa Gomez told her sister that although Sergio appeared to be Spanish there was something of the foreigner about him. He had foreign blood in him, or he’d been away from his Spanish roots.’

‘How should this alter our approach?’

‘I think pointing up a mistake is too obvious. He’d find it laughable. Forasteros know when they’re being manipulated.’

‘Maybe we should show him that we understand him.’

‘But as an artist,’ said Falcon. ‘We mustn’t be prosaic. We have to intrigue him as he does us. We’re still no closer to understanding that last sight lesson. “Why do they have to die, those that love to love?”’

‘Wasn’t he just telling us that he’d killed her because she’d seen him — the gift of perfect sight?’

‘But “those that love to love”? He’s presenting her as an emblem and he’s chosen a prostitute for his purpose. He’s trying to alter the way we see things and we have to do the same. We have to try to make him see something as if for the first time.’

‘So, all we need now is a resident genius,’ said Calderon. ‘Apparently this building is full of them, if you believe what you’re told.’

‘We borrow genius from the classics,’ said Falcon. ‘He’s a poet and an artist … that’s his language.’

“‘Los buenos pintores imitan la naturaleza, pero los malos la vomitan.” Good painters imitate nature, bad ones spew it up. Cervantes.’

‘That might do the trick of annoying him as well,’ said Falcon.

‘But what are we trying to do with this strategy?’ asked Calderon. ‘What do we want from him?’

‘We’re trying to draw him in, start a dialogue, open him up. We want him to start leaking information to us.’

Falcon, losing his nerve at the last moment, thumbed the Cervantes line into the mobile and sent it as a text message. The two men sat back in their seats feeling stupid. Their investigative world reduced to the absurdity of sending lines of Cervantes into the ether.

Now they had to fall back on their own resources, but with no point of contact apart from a recognition of each other’s intelligence. Falcon wasn’t going to talk about football and Calderon wasn’t going to make him.

‘I saw a movie last night on video,’ said Calderon. ‘Todo sobre mi Madre — ‘All about my Mother’. Did you see it? It’s a Pedro Almodovar film.’

‘Not yet,’ said Falcon, and an odd thing happened. His memory cracked open and for a second he was back in Tangier, splashing through the shallows and then up in the air, squealing.

‘You know what struck me about that movie?’ said Calderon. ‘In the first minutes of the film the director creates this incredibly intimate relationship between the son and the mother. And then the boy is killed soon after. And … I’ve never had an experience like it; when he dies it’s like being the mother. You don’t think you’ll ever recover from that terrible loss. That’s genius, to my mind. To change a world in a few metres of celluloid.’

Falcon wanted to say something. He wanted to respond to this because, for once, there was something in this small talk. But it was too big. He couldn’t get it out. Only tears welled in his eyes, which he pinched away. Calderon, unconscious of Falcon’s struggle, shook his head in amazement.

‘We’ve got something here,’ said Calderon, picking up the mobile.

He read the small screen. A frown formed which transformed itself to pain.

‘Do you speak French?’ he asked, handing Falcon the mobile. ‘I mean, it’s simple, but … very strange.’

‘Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-etre hier, je ne sais pas.’

Falcon felt ill, nauseous enough to vomit.

‘I understand it,’ said Calderon. ‘But what does it mean?’

“‘Today mother died. Or was it yesterday, I don’t know,”’ said Falcon. ‘And there’s more: “Don’t contact me again, cabron, I will tell the story.”’

‘He’s turned it back on us,’ said Calderon. ‘But what does it mean?’

‘He couldn’t resist it,’ said Falcon. ‘He had to show us that he could go one better.’

‘But how?’

‘I think he’s probably had a French education,’ said Falcon.

‘That’s a line of literature?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t be sure. But if I had to guess I’d say that it comes from L’Etranger by Albert Camus.’