The Blind Man of Seville

‘We’ve covered everything except the Expo ‘92 Building Committee,’ he said. ‘Can I see the files on that?’

‘What files?’ she said.

‘Your husband’s records.’

‘Not here,’ she said, calling in the secretary, ‘and not in the apartment.’

The secretary was asked the same question and gave a well-rehearsed answer, looking at her audience as if she was going to get a pay rise. Sra Jimenez started to rush him, invoked her children. Falcon sat in his chair as she gathered her things and stood by the door, drumming her handbag with her fingernails.

‘This has been very useful,’ he said, and meant it, because her calculated visit to him last night and her selective co-operation this morning had shown him the first possibility that her determination had developed, via ambition, into ruthlessness.

He went home for lunch. Encarnacion had left him a large pot of fabada Asturiana. Beans, chorizo, morcilla. He wasn’t hungry but he hoped that the heavy dish and the two glasses of wine would put him to sleep. He lay down with his mind full of doubt that he was running his investigation properly. His stomach made old plumbing noises. His legs twitched. More agitated stasis. He begged for sleep but it didn’t come. He called Ramon Salgado and, when he got through, remembered that he’d gone to San Sebastian to bring his sister down to Madrid.

His hands were moist on the steering wheel as he drove to the office, his guts roiled with the fat from the fabada, his tongue was gloved in suede. His mind would not settle on one thought and take it through to its conclusion. Desperation, like rancid fat, slipped into the stew and turned the whole mix. He pulled over on Republica de Argentina and called his doctor, who couldn’t see him until morning. He had a whole night to get through and was appalled by the notion and yet he saw how ridiculous it was, too. He remembered how he’d been five days ago, how wonderful it had been to be stable. Tears pricked his eyeballs. He pressed his forehead to the steering wheel. What was going on?

He got out of the car, wiped his eyes and shook himself. He went into the nearest bar and ordered something he never drank — brandy. That’s what they always had in the movies. The great nerve settler. The barman sent names past his head — Soberano, Fundador. He asked for anything and a cafe solo to disguise his breath.

The brandy tore his lungs apart and he had to catch his breath. He fingered the coffee cup and was spooked by the thought that the hand resting on the stainless steel bar was not his own. He shook it, flexed it, touched his face. The barman checked him as he wiped a row of glasses.

‘Another?’ he asked.

Falcon nodded, unable to believe what he was doing. The amber liquid trickled into the glass. He longed for the barman’s steadiness, just to be able to hold a bottle over a glass rim without it spinning out of control. He shot the second brandy, scalded his mouth on the coffee, slapped a note on the bar and left.

In the car park of the Jefatura he calmed himself down, slowed his thoughts by vicing his head in his hands. The light in his office was on. Ramirez had his back to the window and was reading a file and commenting to somebody sitting by the desk.

People frowned at him as he went up the stairs. He veered into the toilet and checked himself in the mirror. His hair was up like a rough sea, his face flushed and his eyes pink. His shirt collar was outside the lapel of his jacket and his tie loose from his neck. The shell was cracking up. He patted his face with cold water, had a sudden urge from his guts and locked himself in a stall. Food poisoning. Maybe this was all food poisoning, he thought desperately. Encarnacion’s fabada gone off.

The main door to the toilets opened. He heard Ramirez.

‘… for all I know, he’s fucking her as well.’

‘The Inspector Jefe?’ said Perez, incredulous.

‘He’s probably desperate after his divorce.’

Then silence as they realized one of the stalls was occupied.

They left. Falcon washed his hands, reasserted the authority in his dress, combed his hair.

The two men were in his office. On the desk was the report from the Policia Cientifica.

‘Anything in this?’ he asked.

‘Nothing to help us,’ said Ramirez.

‘What did Joaquin Lopez have to say?’

‘He was very interesting, especially about the wife,’ said Ramirez, unable to disguise his antipathy for Sra Jimenez. ‘It seems that Sr Lopez was much further on in his negotiations than I thought. All the discussions had taken place and the money was agreed. The lawyers were already drawing up the contract.’

‘And then he met Consuelo Jimenez … ‘ said Falcon.

‘Exactly … he met the wife,’ said Ramirez. ‘And she didn’t know about the deal.’

‘I should think Raul Jimenez thought it was his business to sell,’ said Falcon.

‘He did. And it was. But both he and Joaquin Lopez had underestimated her influence. They had a lunch so that they could meet. Sr Lopez was impressed by the way the restaurants were run. The decor, all the stuff that the wife does.’

‘I hope he didn’t offer her a job.’

‘He was thinking about it. The point of the lunch was to see if she liked the idea of continuing to run the restaurants or if suddenly not being the wife of the owner was going to make a difference.’

‘And the lunch was a disaster?’

‘She completely froze him out. Joaquin Lopez said that everything had happened before the lunch. The whole thing had been decided. Raul Jimenez was like a whipped dog next to the wife. Sr Lopez didn’t even have to make