The Blind Man of Seville

‘That business with Ines and the Juez de Instruccion decided it. She thought I was stalking her, but I was only coming across her in the street as I would in my own mind.’

‘You’ve told me all this before.’

‘Have I?’ he said. ‘Yes, to a madman a few days becomes eons. I keep reliving my life until I hit a memory blank, which I hammer at until I’m weak and then I go back and relive the same stretch again, until I hit the same closed door. It’s exhausting, and it makes the time between the real experiences of everyday life seem like ancient history. Did I tell you that I went to Tangier?’

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Why did you decide to go there?’

‘I was given compassionate leave.’

He told her about the death of Pepe Leal.

‘What did you hope to find in Tangier … forty years later?’

‘Answers. Life doesn’t move at the same pace in the Third World. I thought I’d be able to find people who could remember things I’d forgotten and that would jog my memory.’

‘But why Tangier? You lost your job because of Ines. Why not resolve that? What was the impetus?’

‘I was drawn there. I made no conscious decisions. I went where fate led me. I put myself in others’ hands … and I ended up in front of my old house in the Medina.’

‘No conscious decisions?’

‘None.’

‘Remind me how this madness of yours manifested itself in the first place?’

‘I felt the change when I saw the first victim’s face.’

‘And what was the first thing that happened, outside of your investigation, that made you think that the change was not, for instance, shock at a gruesome sight?’

A long silence.

‘I went into the centre to pick up the victim’s address book and I got caught up in a Semana Santa procession. For some reason, seeing the Virgin … I nearly fainted. It was a very affecting experience.’

‘Are you religious?’

‘Not at all.’

‘And after that?’

‘I saw the shot of my father in one of the victim’s photographs and I learned he was having an affair before my mother died.’

‘But in your life?’

‘Finding the journals with his letter … that started up something. I mean, it stirred up … some sort of darkness. I behaved very strangely that night. I thought there might be something evil in me. I’d never seen that side of my nature. I’ve always been relentlessly good. Determined to be good.’

‘Because you’re afraid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of what?’

‘There was something else that night,’ said Falcon. ‘I was trying to find the prostitute who’d been with the victim on the night he died. She’d gone missing. The killer made contact with me for the first time. He asked me: “Are we close?” and then he said: “Closer than you think,” as if he knew something about me, which I now know he does.’

‘What did you think he knew about you?’

‘I thought he meant that he was physically close to me, that he was following me. But later I thought that perhaps he meant that we weren’t dissimilar people,’ said Falcon, stumbling over the words. ‘And I knew he’d killed the girl and I felt guilty about that.’

‘Guilty?’

‘We suspected a link between the killer and the girl and we didn’t follow it up. We should have tried harder. We failed …’

‘You didn’t fail,’ said Alicia. ‘She wouldn’t tell you. She was protecting him for her own reasons.’

‘I still felt guilty.’

‘But guilty about what?’

Long silence.

‘I ran into another procession that night. One of the Silent orders. One of the accusatory orders. And you know … she was so beautiful … the Virgin. Ridiculous that a mannequin in robes could be so … moving,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear everything she stood for and I had to get past her. I had to get away from her.’

‘And this was bound up with your sense of guilt about the girl?’

‘Yes. My failure.’

‘You know who the Virgin is?’