The Blind Man of Seville

despite all the interviews and statements so far … we actually have no definite leads?’

‘We still have Sra Consuelo Jimenez as the prime suspect. She is the only one with defined motive and she has the means to execute it. Eloisa Gomez is a possible accomplice to a murderer acting on his own.’

‘Or not,’ said Calderon. ‘The killer could still be paid for by Sra Jimenez 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 Ramirez. ‘I know what I’d do.’

‘If he used the girl to get in why would he film her?’ asked Calderon. ‘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 Falcon.

‘Do you both have Sra Jimenez down as a serious candidate for having her husband killed?’

Ramirez said yes, Falcon no.

‘Which way do you want to take the case, Inspector Jefe?’

Falcon cracked his knuckles one by one. Calderon winced. Falcon 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 Raul Jimenez 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 Raul Jimenez’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 Jimenez and Eloisa Gomez.’

There was no argument from Calderon.

They were driving back to the Jefatura on Blas Infante. Ramirez was at the wheel. As they crossed the river to the Plaza de Cuba, the advertisement for Cruzcampo beer triggered a sudden parched quality to the Inspector’s throat. He wouldn’t mind one, he thought, but not with Falcon. He wanted to drink with somebody more convivial than Falcon.

What do you think, Inspector Jefe?’ he asked, jerking Falcon out of his reflection on how awkward his first meeting with the young judge had been.

‘I think more or less what I said to Juez Calderon.’

‘No, no, I don’t think so,’ said Ramirez, tapping the steering wheel. ‘I know you, Inspector Jefe.’

That turned Falcon in his seat. The idea that Ramirez had the first idea on how his mind worked was nearly laughable to him.

‘Tell me, Inspector,’ he said.

‘You were telling him things while you were thinking something else,’ replied Ramirez. ‘I mean, you know that going through that address book is going to be as big a waste of time as, say, interviewing those kids that Sra Jimenez fired.’

‘I don’t know that,’ said Falcon. ‘And you know that the basics have to be done. We have to be seen to be thorough.’

‘But you don’t think there’s a connection, do you?’

‘I’ve an open mind.’

‘This is the work of a psychopath and you know it, Inspector Jefe.’

‘If I was a psychopath and I enjoyed killing people, I wouldn’t choose an apartment on the sixth floor of the Edificio Presidente with all the complications it-entailed.’

‘He likes to show off.’

‘He’s studied these people. He’s got to know his target. He’s been specific,’ said Falcon. ‘He will have seen them visiting their new house. He will have seen the removals people coming to the apartment …’

‘We need to talk to them first thing tomorrow,’ said Ramirez. ‘Missing overalls, that sort of thing.’

‘It’s Viernes Santo tomorrow,’ said Falcon. Good Friday.

Ramirez pulled into the car park at the back of the Jefatura.

‘Motive,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘Why are you taking the bitch out of the frame?’

‘The bitch?’

‘Those boys I spoke to, the ones who were glad to get away from Consuelo Jimenez, they didn’t have a good word to say about her personally, but professionally, they said she was brilliant.’

‘And that’s unusual in Seville?’ said Falcon.

‘It is for that kind of woman, the wife of a rich husband. Normally they don’t like to get their hands dirty and they’ll only talk to the Marques y Marquesa de No Se Que. But Sra Jimenez, apparently, did everything.’

‘Like?’

‘She washed salad, chopped vegetables, cooked revuel-tos, waited at table, went to the market, paid the wages and kept the books, and she did the talking and the greeting, too.’

‘So what’s your point?’

‘She loved that business. She made it her business. The new place they opened in La