The Blind Man of Seville

‘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 Ramirez.

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 Ramirez.

‘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 Ramirez.

‘What about them?’

‘You were facing the windows.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He assumes you were facing the windows,’ said Falcon.

‘The curtains were drawn,’ she said, suspicious now.

‘So you had sex with him,’ said Ramirez. ‘How long did it last?’

‘Longer than I expected.’

‘Is that why you turned round?’ asked Ramirez.

The brown eyes hardened in her head. These were not the usual games.

‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘Inspector Ramirez,’ he said, dry as fino.

‘We’re from the Grupo de Homicidios,’ said Falcon.

‘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?’

Ramirez 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 Falcon’s neck. The girl was transfixed. The camera turned the corner and she saw herself kneeling in front of Raul Jimenez, 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. Ramirez returned the screen to black.

‘That is very weird,’ she said, pointing at the screen with her cigarette fingers.

‘Did you notice anything?’ asked Falcon.

‘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 Falcon, the words out unsupervised so that Ramirez 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.’