The Blind Man of Seville

off by thick bushes. Fernandez thought that Eloisa Gomez could easily have been killed and hidden on the Saturday morning. The cemetery gates opened at 8.30 a.m. on a Saturday, but few people turned up before 10.00 a.m.

After going through the reports Falcon worked on a series of questions, designed to break Consuelo Jimenez’s resolve if she was maintaining any.

The group arrived. Falcon updated them all on the slow progress and assigned the cemetery and industrial zone to the same three men. He asked Ramirez to leave and told Perez that he wasn’t convinced that he had the enthusiasm for the case. He reassigned him to another investigation. Perez left, furious.

Ramirez re-entered and stood by the window, playing with his ring finger, as if he was about to hit someone. He understood perfectly what had just happened. Falcon ordered him to take a forensic down to Eloisa Gomez’s room and give it a thorough inspection. Ramirez left the office without a word. Falcon called Consuelo Jimenez who, as always, agreed to see him immediately.

They met in the office just off the Plaza Alfalfa. Sra Jimenez, sensing that this was a man with ammunition, played some diffusing tactics. She left him for five minutes while she supervised the making of his coffee.

‘Not satisfied with Inspector Ramirez’s report on our … discussion?’ she asked, sitting back from the desk with her coffee, crossing her legs, her foot nodding.

‘Yes, as far as it went,’ said Falcon. ‘He’s a good cop and a suspicious man. He knows when someone is lying, not telling the truth or withholding. You satisfied his curiosity on two counts.’

‘We’re all liars, Inspector Jefe. We are hard-wired to lie. I love my children and generally they are very good kids, but … they lie. They have an instinct for it. You think of the number of times your mother walked into the room to ask who broke this glass or that cup and how many times she heard the words: “It fell over.” Human beings are built for deviousness.’

‘Do you think that in my job I am dealing with people who want to tell the truth?’ said Falcon. ‘Murder brings out a stronger inclination to deny than any other crime, apart from perhaps rape. So if we find someone in an investigation with a powerful motive and a consistent propensity for dissembling, we naturally come back to them, again and again, to try to discover what they’re hiding.’

‘And so you waste your time with me,’ she said.

‘You are not being open with us.’

‘I have one rule of conduct in life and that is that I never lie to myself.’

‘And all other forms of mendacity are permissible?’

‘Imagine going through a whole day just telling the truth,’ she said. ‘The damage you would do. Nothing would work. Political systems would collapse. The legal world would be a shambles. It would be utterly impossible to pull off a single piece of business. The reason for this is that they are all man-made systems for getting things done. Even in the worlds of Maths and Physics they still have to work with imperfect information in order to get to the ultimate truth. No, Inspector Jefe, you cannot have the truth without lying.’

‘And where did you get the chance to develop such philosophical thoughts?’

‘Not in Seville,’ she said. ‘Not even Basilio El Tonto could hold his own with me on that score, for all his stupid education.’

‘My father would have agreed with you there,’ he said. ‘He thought university was an opportunity for other idiots to impress upon their students their ridiculous system of ideas.’

‘I liked your father … enormously,’ she said. ‘I’ve even forgiven him his little deviousness in selling me his “original” copies.’

Falcon shifted in his seat. This woman knew how to knuckle down on the pressure points.

‘One of the qualities you display in running your restaurants is, I imagine, thrift,’ he said. ‘You’ve just extended it to the veracity department, that’s all … I hope.’

‘I’m neatly packaged, Inspector Jefe. I’ve learnt to present myself. You, and possibly half the Jefatura, now know things about me that only I knew. But I did know them. I’ve lived with them nearly every day. Naturally I’m distressed when they’re brought out into the open, as they were recently, but I’ve suppressed any instinct I might have had for denial. Once you start on that road, you’re on your way to oblivion. It is a road not easily back-tracked. My husband reached the only possible end of Calle Negation.’

‘Except that he didn’t kill himself, did he?’ said Falcon.

‘He became a victim. He began operating in a dangerous world. I’ve dipped my toe into that world and it was cold. My husband would have understood only one aspect of it, which is that its reptilian lifeblood is money. But what do you think the people who live in that world would see, when a man like Raul Jimenez comes to visit? I can tell you: they don’t see all the strengths that made him into a successful businessman. They see weaknesses. They see a blind man, stumbling about in an obscure world.’

‘You’re giving me a theory now.’

‘I had to listen to Inspector Ramirez while he gave me his theory yesterday. I was a model of patience,’ she said. ‘I was also flattered that the powers that be in the Jefatura should credit a woman with the skills to execute such an elaborate plan, but then again, Raul’s death gives me control of his business empire, so perhaps the credit was not so misplaced.’

‘An empire your husband was trying to sell.’

‘Yes, Inspector Ramirez made much of that,’ she said. ‘But killing the prostitute, Inspector Jefe. Putting the body in the cemetery, in the Jimenez mausoleum. None of this strikes me as the work of a professional contract killer.’

‘I’d be surprised if a woman such as yourself would have a choice of contract killers. I should have thought you’d have to go with anybody you could … persuade to do the work.’

‘I would never expose myself to another person to that extent. They would have a hold on me for the rest of my life,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘But believe me when I say this, Inspector Jefe, I know why you keep knocking on my door.’

‘It’s not because we’ve got no other doors to knock on,’ he lied. ‘It’s because we never leave here satisfied.