the killer was here later that day because he was seen at the funeral.’
‘Maybe he didn’t know where the Jimenez mausoleum was,’ said Falcon, ‘but he was filming too, so he had a double reason for being here.’
‘The grass clippings,’ said Calderon.
‘If he killed her here, he buried her under the grass clippings, probably assuming that nobody would be taking away gardening detritus on a weekend. If he killed her elsewhere and got the body over the wall, he’d have had to bring her here in a car and he probably didn’t want to leave his car parked outside the cemetery walls for too long.’
‘This flash of inspiration you were talking about has given him a lot of trouble,’ said Calderon.
‘It’s important to him thematically, and he wants to show us his talent,’ said Falcon.
Calderon went back to the Edificio de los Juzgados in a taxi. Falcon and Ramirez had the cemetery emptied and closed off for the rest of the day. Lobo came up with another twelve men and by six o’clock they’d moved through the whole cemetery. A black stocking had been found hanging from the handle of the broken sword of the bronze statue of the torero, Francisco Rivera. A large quantity of dead flowers, grass clippings and leaves were found in a skip close to a rusted metal gate in the wall at the rear of the cemetery. The wall backed on to a factory. A narrow, overgrown passage ran down its entire length. Leaning up against the wall between the factory and the cemetery were some old metal doors and a ladder of the sort used in the cemetery to climb up the high ossuary blocks. The grass in the passage had been trodden down. The passage was only visible to the security guards patrolling the industrial zone if they actually went down it on foot. The skip butted up against the wall. It would have been possible for the killer to have lifted the very small Eloisa Gomez up and over the wall and to have heaved her into the skip.
‘That’s the second time he’s done this to us,’ said Falcon.
‘Confused us about the killing scenario?’ said Ramirez.
‘Yes, it’s one of his talents … to slow the whole process down,’ said Falcon.
‘We’re always having to do double the work,’ said Ramirez.
‘It’s something my father used to say about genius … they make everything around them look so slow.’
By 6.30 p.m. Falcon and Ramirez were in the Alameda but found none of Eloisa’s group in the square. They went to her room in Calle Joaquin Costa. Falcon knocked on the door of the fat girl, who kept the key to Eloisa’s room. She came to the door in a blue towelling dressing gown and pink furry slippers. Her eyes were puffy with sleep but she was instantly alert when she saw the two policemen. Falcon asked for the key and told her to start thinking about the last time she’d seen her friend and to get the other girls to do the same. She didn’t have to ask what had happened and handed him the key.
The door opened on the stupid panda. The two men looked around at the pitiful accumulation of a small, hard life. Ramirez nosed amongst the cheap bric-a-brac on the dressing table.
‘What are we doing here?’ he asked.
‘Just looking.’
‘Do you think he’s been here?’
‘Too risky,’ said Falcon. ‘We need the address and telephone number of her sister. The panda’s for her niece.’
Ramirez looked from the panda to his boss and had a vision of Falcon as lost and pathetic, diminished and unconnected.
‘I won one of those for my daughter at the Feria last year,’ said Ramirez, nodding at the silent guest. ‘She loves it.’
‘Strange how cuddly toys bring out that instinct,’ said Falcon.
Ramirez backed away from any potential intimacy.
‘Not such perfect sight,’ said Ramirez, looking down on a pair of contact lenses on the bedside table.
‘She knew him before,’ said Falcon, ‘I’m sure of it. Think of all that filming he did to make
‘She probably gave the best blow job in town,’ said Ramirez crudely.
‘There’s got to be a reason for it.’
‘She looked very young,’ said Ramirez. ‘Maybe he liked that.’
‘His son said he fell for his first wife when she was thirteen.’
‘Whatever, Inspector Jefe,’ said Ramirez. ‘This is all conjecture.’
‘What else have we got to structure our ideas?’ said Falcon. ‘We don’t need any more clues with the trail he’s leaving.’
‘We’ve still got a prime suspect, according to Juez Calderon,’ said Ramirez.
‘I haven’t forgotten her, Inspector.’
‘If she’s hired someone and unleashed a madman she might be persuaded that she’s not so safe herself,’ said Ramirez. ‘I still think we should sweat her.’
The girls from Eloisa’s group filed past the door on their way to the fat girl’s room. Ramirez found Eloisa’s address book. They went down the hall to where the girls slouched in the smoke-filled room.
Falcon talked them through what had happened. The only noise was from the click and rasp of cheap lighters and the drawing in of smoke. He asked if there was anybody that Eloisa was seeing outside the business and there was some derisive laughter. He pressed them to think about it and they all said they didn’t have to. There was
