educated, well dressed, he had a car and an apartment.’
‘She didn’t talk about what type of car and which apartment?’
‘He wasn’t stupid,’ she said. ‘Los otros were always stupid. In that respect he was different.’
‘So what had happened to Sergio to make him un forastero?’
‘She thought he might be a foreigner or have foreign blood in him. He looked Spanish. He dressed Spanish. He spoke Spanish. But he was different.’
‘North African?’
‘She didn’t say that and Eloisa never liked those people. She never went with them. She would not have been drawn to him if he had that look. She thought he had perhaps been away a long time or had a mixed education.’
They arrived at the Instituto. It was silent and empty. They viewed the body behind the glass. The eyes had somehow been filled out. Gloria Gomez put her hands up to the glass and pressed her forehead to it. Distress creaked out of her like suffering furniture.
‘Are either of your parents still alive?’ he asked the back of her head, whose hair was thinning already, her cheap coat split on the shoulder. She rolled her forehead from side to side on the glass.
‘Would Eloisa have had any reason to go to the San Fernando Cemetery?’
Gloria turned her back to her dead sister.
‘She went there whenever she could,’ said Gloria. ‘Her daughter is buried there.’
‘Her daughter?’
‘She had a little girl when she was fifteen. She died at three months.’
They drove back to the Jefatura in silence. Falcon made one last effort in the car park to see if Eloisa had mentioned anything about Sergio’s appearance.
‘She said he had beautiful hands,’ was all he could get out of her.
The phone was ringing as he came into his office. It was Dr Fernando Valera telling him that he’d solved his problem, that he’d found a clinical psychologist who he could guarantee was not interested in art. Falcon was in no mood to discuss it.
‘Her name is Alicia Aguado. She’ll see you in her house, Javier,’ said the doctor, giving him an address in Calle Vidrio. ‘Clinical psychology is a very rigorous training and she’s combined it with some … unusual techniques of her own. She’s very good. I know how difficult it is to initiate these things, but I want you to see this woman. You’re already desperate. It’s important.’
He hung up thinking how everybody was seeing his desperation, smelling it, Sergio, too. Ramirez came in and sat with his feet stretched out.
‘Did Sra Jimenez crack?’ asked Falcon.
Ramirez brushed something imaginary from his tie as if he was about to share a sexual confidence — no, a triumph.
‘I bet she wears expensive underwear,’ he said. ‘And thongs in summer.’
‘I see she’s won you over,’ said Falcon.
‘I’ve called Perez at the Mudanzas Triana warehouse and told him to pick up the packing case with the home- movie kit in it,’ said Ramirez. ‘She released it, no problem at all. But you might be interested in what she added as I was leaving.’
Falcon wound him on with his finger.
‘She said: “You take that case and only that case. If you look in any of the others you can be sure that none of it will be admissible as evidence.”’
Falcon asked him to repeat himself, which he did. He picked it up more clearly the second time — Ramirez was lying and badly, too. He doubted that Consuelo Jimenez would be so unsubtle.
‘What about dating the takes from the
‘She said she would look at it but she was very busy at the moment and that she wouldn’t be able to get down to it until after the Feria.’
‘Helpful.’
‘It’s difficult when you’re so bereft,’ said Ramirez.
20
Falcon sat at home, his fork hovering over his untouched lunch, thinking not about Ramirez but Comisario Leon, who had not reached his position without considerable political talent. If Leon was keeping in touch with his investigation via Ramirez and allowing this pressure to be applied to Consuelo Jimenez, who presumably knew nothing about MCA, what did that mean, given that the Comisario had been a director of the consultancy? Falcon put his fork down as a wave of paranoia shuddered through him like nausea. They were going to take him out at the first opportunity. While the details of MCA stayed dormant, Comisario Leon was happy for them to keep knocking at Consuelo Jimenez’s heavy door. If they leaked, he was finished.
They reconvened after lunch to watch some of Raul Jimenez’s old home movies. Perez, who’d brought them up from Mudanzas Triana, joined the session. He’d also reported that the warehouse had a single entrance and that all the long-term storage was in one area at the back of the building. Each client had a locked cage for Cases and furniture. All the packing cases were sealed with tape. The tape dated back to the time when the cases were
