night,' said Alicia Aguado.
'Something cropped up,' said Consuelo. 'Something very upsetting.'
'That's why we're here.'
'You told me to make sure I had a family member to look after me when I came home after my session on Tuesday evening,' said Consuelo. 'I asked my sister. She was there, but couldn't stay for long. We talked about the session. She could see that I was calm and so she left. Then yesterday afternoon she called me to check that I was still OK, and we chatted and she remembered something she'd meant to ask me about the night before. My new pool man.'
'Pool man?'
'He looks after the pool. He checks the pH levels, hoovers the bottom, skims the surface, cleans the…' said Consuelo, getting carried away on the detail.
'OK, Consuelo, I'm not going into the pool-cleaning business,' said Aguado.
'The point is, I don't have a new pool man,' said Consuelo. 'The same guy has been coming round every Thursday afternoon since I bought the house. I inherited him from the previous owners.'
'And what?'
Consuelo tried to swallow, but couldn't.
'My sister described him, and it was the same disgusting chulo from the Plaza del Pumarejo.'
'Very upsetting,' said Aguado. 'It unnerved you, I'm sure. So you called the police and stayed with your children. I can understand that.'
Silence. Consuelo was slumped to one side of the chair, as if she'd lost some stuffing.
'All right,' said Aguado. 'Tell me what you did, or did not do.'
'I didn't call the police.'
'Why not?'
'I was too embarrassed,' she said. 'I'd have to explain everything.'
'You could have just told them that an undesirable person was snooping around your home.'
'You probably don't know very much about the police,' said Consuelo. 'I was a murder suspect for a couple of weeks five years ago. What they put you through is not so different to what you're doing to me here. You start talking and they smell things. They know when people are hiding the shit in their lives. They see it every day. They'd ask a question like: 'Do you think it possible that you know this person?' and what would happen? Especially in my fragile mental state.'
'I know you might find this difficult to believe, but to me this is a positive development,' said Aguado.
'It makes me feel like a failure,' said Consuelo. 'I don't know whether this person could be a danger to my children, and just because of my own shame I'm prepared to put them at risk.'
'But at least now I know that he's real,' said Aguado.
Silence from Consuelo, who hadn't considered this alarming possibility.
'Our minds have ways of correcting imbalances,' said Aguado. 'So, for instance, a powerful chief executive who controls thousands of people's lives may redress the balance by dreaming of being at school and the teacher telling him what to do. This is a very benign form of balancing things out. More aggressive forms exist. It's not unusual to find successful businessmen who visit a dominatrix in order to be tied up, rendered powerless and punished. A New York psychologist told me he had clients who went to nurseries where they could wear nappies and sit in oversized playpens. The danger comes with the uncertainty between the fantastic, the real and the illusory. The mind becomes confused and cannot differentiate, and then a breakdown can ensue, with possible lasting damage.'
'What you mean is, I've had the fantasy and I may take the next step and seek out the reality.'
'But at least you weren't describing an illusion to me,' said Aguado. 'Before your sister confirmed his existence, I wasn't sure how advanced you were. I told you not to allow yourself to be distracted on your way here because, if he was real, then the reality you were seeking was very dangerous for you…personally. This man has no idea of the nature of your problems. He has sensed some vulnerability and is probably just a predator.'
'He knows my name and that my husband is dead,' said Consuelo. 'Those two details came out when he accosted me on Monday night.'
'Then you really should talk to the police about it,' said Aguado. 'If they think you're strange, refer them to me.'
'Then they'll know I'm a lunatic and take no notice,' said Consuelo. 'There's been a bomb in Seville, and a rich bitch is worried about a chulo in her garden.'
'Try talking to them,' said Aguado. 'This man might assault or rape you.'
Silence.
'What are you doing now, Consuelo?'
'I'm looking at you.'
'And you're thinking…?'
'That I trust you more than I've trusted anyone in my life.'
'Anyone? Even your parents?'
'I loved my parents, but they knew nothing about me,' said Consuelo.
'So who have you trusted in your life?'
'I trusted an art dealer in Madrid for a bit, until he moved down here,' said Consuelo.
'Who else?' asked Aguado. 'What about Raul?'
'No, he didn't love me,' said Consuelo, 'and he lived in a closed-off world, trapped by his own misery. He didn't talk to me about his problems and I didn't reveal my own.'
'Was there anything between you and the art dealer?'
'No, our attraction was nothing remotely sexual or romantic.'
'What was it then?'
'We recognized that we were complicated people, with secrets we couldn't talk about. But he did once tell me that he'd killed a man.'
'That's not an easy thing to do,' said Aguado, sensing that they might be closer to the heart of the tangled knot than Consuelo suspected.
'We were drinking brandy in a bar on the Gran Via. I was depressed. I'd just told him everything about my abortions. He traded this secret of his, but he said it was an accident when, in fact, it was much more shameful than that.'
'More shameful than appearing in a pornographic movie to pay for an abortion?'
'Of course it was. He'd killed somebody for-'
Consuelo stopped as if she'd been knifed in the throat. The next word wouldn't come out. She could only cough up a croak as if there was a blade across her windpipe. A powerful shudder of emotion rippled through her. Aguado released her wrist, grabbed her by the arm to steady her. A strange sound came from Consuelo as she slid to the floor. It was something like an orgasmic cry, and, in fact, it was a release, but not one of pleasure. It was a cry of acute pain.
Aguado had not expected to reach this point so quickly in the treatment, but then the mind was an unpredictable organ. It threw things up all the time, vomited horrors into the consciousness and, this was the strange thing, sometimes the conscious mind could hurdle these terrible revelations, side-step them, leap across the sudden chasm. Other times it was scythed to the ground. Consuelo had just experienced the equivalent of being hit by a half-ton bull from behind. She ended up in the foetal position on the Afghan rug, squeaking, as if something enormous was trying to get out.
27
Seville-Thursday, 8th June 2006, 09.28 hrs
The pressroom in the Andalucian Parliament building was filled to capacity, and there were more people outside in the corridors. The double doors had been left open. It was inconceivable to Falcon that something hadn't leaked. The heaving level of interest in a routine press conference could not be so vast.
The gravity of the revelations had brought Comisario Lobo to the conference and his glowering presence was a
