his vision free of what was in his head. There was someone standing in the doorway. Falcon pinched his eyes shut, reopened them. He knew this person. Time decelerated. Calderon crossed the room with his hand out.
‘Senora Jimenez,’ he said. ‘Juez Esteban Calderon, I am sorry for your loss.’
He introduced Ramirez and Falcon, and Sra Jimenez, with mustered dignity, stepped into the room as if over a dead body. She shook hands with the men.
‘We weren’t expecting you so soon,’ said Calderon.
‘The traffic was light,’ she said. ‘Did I startle you, Inspector Jefe?’
Falcon adjusted his face, which must have had the remnants of that earlier wildness.
‘What was that you were watching?’ she asked, assuming control of the situation, used to it.
They looked at the screen. Snow and white noise.
‘We weren’t expecting you … ‘ started Calderon.
‘But what was it, Senor Juez? This is my apartment. I should like to know what you were looking at on
With Calderon taking the pressure, Falcon watched at leisure and, although he was sure he didn’t know her, he at least knew the type. This was the sort of woman who would have turned up at his father’s house, when the great man was still alive, looking to buy one of his late works. Not the special stuff, which had made him famous. That was long gone to American collectors and museums around the world. This type was looking to buy the more affordable Seville work — the details of buildings: a door, a church dome, a window, a balcony. She would have been one of those tasteful women, with or without tiresome wealthy husband in tow, who wanted to have their slice of the old man.
‘We were watching a video, which had been left in the apartment,’ said Calderon.
‘Not one of my husband’s … ‘ she said, hesitating perfectly to let them know that ‘dirty’ or ‘blue’ was unnecessary. ‘We had few secrets … and I did happen to see the last few seconds of what you were watching.’
‘It was a video, Dona Consuelo,’ said Falcon, ‘which had been left here by your husband’s murderer. We are the three officers of the law who will be running the investigation into your husband’s death and I thought it important that we saw the film as soon as possible. Had we known that you would be so prompt …’
‘Do I know you, Inspector Jefe?’ she asked. ‘Have we met?’
She turned to face him full on, her dark fur-collared coat open, a black dress underneath. Not someone to be inappropriately dressed for any occasion. She gave him the full force of her attractiveness. Her blonde hair was not quite so structured as in the desk photograph but the eyes were bigger, bluer and icier in reality. Her lips, which controlled and manipulated her dominating voice, were edged with a dark line just in case you might be foolish enough to think that her soft, pliable mouth could be disobeyed.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
‘Falcon … ‘ she said, feeling the rings on her fingers as she looked him up and down. ‘No, it’s too ridiculous.’
‘What is, may I ask, Dona Consuelo?’
‘That the artist, Francisco Falcon, should have a son who is the Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios de Sevilla.’
She knows, he thought … God knows how.
‘So … this film,’ she said, turning on Ramirez, sweeping her coat back and fitting her fists into her waist.
Calderon’s eyes flashed across her breasts before they locked on to Falcon over her left shoulder. Falcon shook his head slowly.
‘I don’t think this is something you should see, Dona Consuelo,’ said the young judge.
‘Why? Is it violent? I don’t like violence,’ she said, without unfixing Ramirez from her gaze.
‘Not physically,’ said Falcon. ‘I think you might find it uncomfortably intrusive.’
The reels of the video squeaked. It was still playing. Sra Jimenez picked up the remote from the corner of the desk and rewound the tape. She pressed ‘play’. None of the men intervened. Falcon shifted to catch her face. Her eyes narrowed, she pursed her lips and gnawed at the inside of her cheek. Her eyes opened as the silent film played. Her face slackened, her body recoiled from the screen as she began to realize what she was watching, as she saw her children and herself become the study of her husband’s killer. When they reached the end of her first taxi ride, to what everybody now knew was 17 Calle Rio de la Plata, she stopped the tape, threw the remote at the desk and walked swiftly from the room. The men tossed silence between them until they heard Sra Jimenez retching, groaning and spitting in her halogen-lit, white marble bathroom.
‘You should have stopped her,’ said Calderon, pushing his hand through his hair again, trying to shift some of the responsibility. The two policemen said nothing. The judge looked at his complicated watch and announced his departure. They agreed to meet after lunch, five o’clock in the Edificio de los Juzgados, to present their initial findings.
‘Did you see that photograph on the end there by the window?’ asked Falcon.
‘The one of Leon and Bellido?’ said Calderon. ‘Yes, I did, and if you look a bit closer you’ll see there’s one of the Magistrado Juez Decano de Sevilla in there, too. Old hawk eyes, Spinola, himself.’
‘There’s going to be some pressure on this case,’ said Ramirez.
Calderon chucked his mobile from one hand to the other, slipped it in his pocket and left.
3
