The Blind Man of Seville

of all his Inspector Jefe.

‘As you said, it’s too elaborate. The method,’ said Ramirez.

‘For the motive to have been something as ordinary as business, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

It took a fraction of a second for a number of subliminal observations to coalesce in Falcon’s mind. Ramirez had been more agreeable today than ever before. He hadn’t undermined him at Mudanzas Triana. He’d dealt with the foreman, who was much more his type. He’d called him four times on a public holiday. He’d revealed that he’d been to see Eloisa Gomez and admitted that his impatience had sealed off possibly valuable information. He’d said that he, Javier Falcon, had been right.

‘You know the procedure,’ said Falcon. ‘We’re not allowed to do nothing. We had very little to offer Juez Calderon apart from Consuelo Jimenez and Eloisa Gomez. The former is a complex and sophisticated individual with opportunity and means, the latter had the opportunity but won’t talk to us. Our job is to develop leads and, when they don’t present themselves through the evidence, we either have to gradually and humanely sweat them out of people or dig for them … sometimes in barren places like cemeteries and address books.’

‘But you doubt that those sources will have any bearing on the case?’

‘There’s doubt, of course, but I’ll do it because it might throw up something that could indirectly develop a lead.’

‘Such as?’

‘What you talked about the other night. What was the guy’s name — Cinco Bellotas?’

‘Joaquin Lopez.’

‘The boys that Sra Jimenez fired … they saw the two men talking. We don’t know what that was about. It could have an implication, it could be totally innocent. We have to look at it.’

‘But you’re still thinking that this is the work of a disturbed mind?’

‘Undisturbed minds can become disturbed if their whole way of life is threatened.’

‘But all the filming, getting into the apartment, hiding there for twelve hours …’

‘We still don’t know that he did that. I’m more inclined to think that “he” formed a relationship with the girl, that “he” got the necessary information from Mudanzas Triana and put the two together to get into the apartment.’

‘But what about the horror show that he put Jimenez through?’

‘None of this is beyond imagination,’ said Falcon, doubting himself as he said it. ‘It’s not unimaginable, is it?’

‘It is to me.’

This was true, thought Falcon, and Marta Jimenez flashed through his mind with her vomity chin and padded eyebrow. Ramirez was uncomplicated. He would always be an Inspector because his imagination only ever allowed him to aspire to being the post above. His horizons were limited.

‘What do you think he showed him, Inspector?’

Ramirez braked for a traffic light, gripped the wheel, fixed his eyes on the car in front, waiting for him to move. He tried to jog his mind into unvisited lateral grooves.

‘The stuff of horror,’ said Falcon, ‘is not necessarily the truly terrible.’

‘Go on,’ said Ramirez, thinking him a strange beast, but glad to be relieved from creative duty.

‘Look at us now at the height of our civilization … I mean, we can laugh at cannibalism, for God’s sake. There’s nothing that can frighten us … we’ve seen it all, except …’

The lights changed, Ramirez stalled the car, horns honked.

‘Except what?’

‘That which we’ve decided we don’t know.’

‘Isn’t that unimaginable?’

‘I mean the things that we know about ourselves. The very private, deeply hidden stuff that we show no one and that we firmly deny ever happened because we would not be able to live with the knowledge.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ said Ramirez. ‘How can you know something without knowing it? It’s fucking ridiculous.’

‘When my father moved to Seville in the sixties he became friendly with the local priest who used to walk past his door on the way to the church at the end of Calle Bailen. My father didn’t go to church or believe in God, but they used the same cafe and, over years of argument, became friends. One time at three in the morning my father was working in his studio and he heard someone shouting in the street: ‘Eh! Cabron! You were sent to me, weren’t you, Francisco Cabron?’ It was the priest, who was not tranquil any more but angry and nearly mad. His cassock was torn apart, his hair was wild and he was drinking brandy from the bottle. My father let him in and he stormed around the patio raging against himself and his useless life. That morning he’d been giving communion and it had suddenly come to him.’

‘He lost his faith,’ said Ramirez. ‘They’re always doing that. They get it back.’

‘It was worse than that. He told my father that he’d never had any faith. His whole church career had started because of a lie. There’d been a girl who hadn’t returned his love. It seemed that he’d gone into the Church to spite her and all he’d ended up doing was spiting himself. For more than forty years the priest had known this … but without knowing it. He was a good priest, but it didn’t matter because there was one flaw in the edifice of his life, the tiny lie on which it was all based.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked Ramirez.