Macarena — that was
‘You sound as if you’ve been there?’
‘Best salmorejo in Seville. Best pan de casa in Seville. Best jamon, best revueltos, best chuletillas … best everything. And reasonable, too. Not exclusive either, although they always keep a table for the toreros and other idiots.’
Ramirez shouldered through the door at the back of the Jefatura, held it open for Falcon and followed him up the stairs.
‘Where are you taking me on this?’ asked Falcon.
‘How do you think she’d react, say, if her husband decided to sell the business?’ asked Ramirez, which stopped Falcon mid step. ‘I didn’t bring it up in front of Calderon, because I’ve only got those two boys’ word for it.’
‘Now I’m glad it was
‘You still won’t get me to work through that address book,’ said Ramirez.
‘So these boys saw Raul Jimenez talking to somebody?’
‘Have you heard of a restaurant chain called Cinco Bellotas run by a guy called Joaquin Lopez? He’s young, dynamic and he’s got good backing. He’s one of the few people in Seville who could buy and run Raul Jimenez’s restaurants tomorrow.’
‘Any connection between him and Sra Jimenez?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s a very elaborate plan. Elaborate
‘Depends how badly she wants it,’ said Ramirez. ‘There’s no innocence there, if you ask me.’
The two men looked out of the window of Falcon’s office at the diminishing ranks of cars in the darkening evening.
‘And, look, the other thing,’ said Falcon, ‘whatever the killer showed Raul Jimenez was for real. He didn’t want to see it, which was why the killer had to cut …’
Ramirez nodded, sighed, his brainwork done for the day. He lit a cigarette without thinking or remembering that Falcon detested smoking in his office.
‘So what
Falcon found that his focus had shortened. He was no longer staring out over the emptying car park but was looking at his own reflection in the glass. He seemed hollow-eyed, vacant, unseeing, even sinister.
The killer was forcing him to see,’ he said.
‘But what?’
‘We’ve all got something that we’re ashamed of, something that when we think of it we shudder with embarrassment or something worse than embarrassment.’
Ramirez stiffened beside him, the man solidifying, his carapace suddenly there, impenetrable. Nobody tinkered inside Ramirez’s works. Falcon checked him in the glass, decided to make it easier for the Sevillano.
‘You know, like when you were a kid, making a fool of yourself with a girl, or perhaps being cowardly, failing to protect somebody who was your friend, or a moral weakness — not standing up for something you believed in because you could get beaten up. These sorts of things, but transferred to an adult life with adult implications.’
Ramirez looked down at his tie, which was about as introspective as he’d ever been.
‘Do you mean the sort of things that Comisario Lobo warned you about?’
This struck Falcon as brilliantly deflective. Corruption — the manageable stain. Machine wash, rinse and spin. Forgotten. It’s only money. All part of the game.
‘No,’ he said.
Ramirez drifted towards the door, announced that he was packing it in for the day. Falcon dismissed him via the glass.
He was suddenly exhausted. The massive day settled on his shoulders. He closed his eyes and instead of the thought of dinner, a glass of wine and sleep, he found his mind still turning, spiralling around the question:
What could be so terrible?
8
Javier Falcon sat in the study of the large eighteenth-century house that had belonged to his father. The room was on the ground floor and looked out through an arched colonnade on to a central patio, in the middle of which was a fountain of a bronze boy up on one toe with one leg trailing and an urn over his shoulder. When the fountain spouted, water came out of the urn. Falcon only ran it in summer when the trickle of water could delude him into thinking he was cool.
He was alone in the house. The housekeeper, Encarnacion, who had been his father’s housekeeper, left at 7
