the road. All those English girls in the sixties and seventies …”
‘In your dreams,’ said Jorge.
‘Yes, I’ve always had very exciting dreams,’ said Felipe.
The forensics laughed and Falcon looked down on them as they grovelled on the floor, rootling like pigs after acorns, with football and fucking fighting for supremacy in their brains. He found them faintly disgusting and turned to look at the photos on the wall. Jorge nodded his head at Falcon and mouthed to Felipe:
They laughed again. Falcon ignored them. His eye, just as it did when he looked at a painting, was drawn to the edges of the photographic display. He moved away from the central celebrity section and found a shot of Raul Jimenez with his arms around two men who were both taller and bigger than him. On the left was the Jefe Superior de la Policia de Sevilla, Comisario Firmin Leon and on the right was the Chief Prosecutor, Fiscal Jefe Juan Bellido. A physical pressure came down on Falcon’s shoulders and he shrugged his suit up his collar.
‘Aha! Here we go,’ said Felipe. ‘This is more like it. One pubic hair, Inspector Jefe. Black.’
The three men turned simultaneously to the window because they’d heard muted voices from behind the double-glazing and a mechanical sound like a lift. Beyond the rail of the balcony two men in blue overalls slowly appeared, one with long black hair tied in a ponytail and the other crew cut with a black eye. They were shouting to the team eighteen metres below who were operating the lifting gear.
‘Who are those idiots?’ asked Felipe.
Falcon went out on to the balcony, startling the two men standing on the platform, which had just been raised up a railed ladder from a truck in the street.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘We’re the removals company,’ they said, and turned their backs to show yellow stencils on their overalls which read Mudanzas Triana Transportes Nacionales e Internacionales.
2
Juez Esteban Calderon signed off the levantamiento del cadaver, which had uncovered another piece of baggable evidence. Underneath the body was a piece of cotton rag, a sniff indicated traces of chloroform.
‘A mistake,’ said Falcon.
‘Inspector Jefe?’ questioned Ramirez, at his elbow.
‘The first mistake in a planned operation.’
‘What about the hairs, Inspector Jefe?’
‘If those hairs belonged to the killer … shedding it was an accident. Leaving a chloroform-soaked rag was an error. He put Raul Jimenez out with the chloroform, didn’t want to put the rag in his pocket, threw it on the chair and then dumped Don Raul on top of it. Out of sight, out of mind.’
‘It’s not such an important clue …”
‘It’s an indication of the mind we’re working against. This is a careful mind but not a professional one. He might be slack in other areas, like where he got the chloroform. Maybe he bought it here in Seville from a medical or laboratory supplies shop or stole it from a hospital or a chemist. The killer has thought obsessively about what he wants to do to his victim but not all the details around it.’
‘Sra Jimenez has been located and informed. A car will drop the kids at her sister’s house in San Bernardo and bring her on alone.’
‘When will the Medico Forense do the autopsy?’ asked Falcon.
‘Do you want to be there?’ asked Calderon, weighing his mobile. ‘He said that he was going to do it immediately.’
‘Not particularly,’ said Falcon. ‘I just want the results. There’s a lot to do here. This film, for instance. I think we should all watch the
‘Fernandez is talking to the conserje, Inspector Jefe.’
‘Tell him to collect all the tapes from the security cameras, view them with the conserje and make a note of anybody he doesn’t recognize.’
Ramirez made for the door.
‘And another thing … find somebody to check all the hospitals, laboratories and medical supply shops for chloroform sold to odd people or missing bottles of the stuff. And surgical instruments, too.’
Falcon rolled the TV/video cabinet back to its normal position in the corner of the room. Calderon sat in the leather scoop chair. Falcon plugged the equipment back in. Ramirez stood by the dead man’s chair, which was wrapped in plastic, ready to be taken down to the Policia Cientifica laboratories. He murmured into his mobile. Calderon ejected the tape, inspected the reels, put it back in and hit the rewind button.
‘The removals men are still here, Inspector Jefe.’
‘There’s no one to talk to them now. Let them wait.’
Calderon hit ‘play’. They took seats around the room and watched in the sealed silence of the empty apartment. The footage opened with a shot of the Jimenez family coming out of the Edificio Presidente apartment building. Raul and Consuelo Jimenez were arm in arm. She was in an ankle-length fur coat and he was in a caramel overcoat. The boys were all dressed identically in green and burgundy. They walked straight towards the camera, which was across the street from them, and turned left into Calle Asuncion. The film cut to the same family group in different clothes on a sunny day coming out of the Corte Ingles department store on La Plaza del Duque de la
