The Blind Man of Seville (53 page)

Falcón held up the evidence sachet with the ring in it.

‘This was found in the waste-disposal unit of the sink in Salgado’s house. It’s a woman’s ring, which has been enlarged to fit a small man’s finger. The silver used to enlarge the ring is low grade, possibly of North African origin. This does not mean we are looking exclusively for a North African male. He is quite possibly naturalized Spanish and from some generations ago. Keep an open mind on this. I don’t want any racial harassment complaints. Inspector Ramírez will divide up the list and give you your assignments.’

Ramírez took the men into the outer office. Falcón opened the letter on his desk, which was an appointment to see Dr David Rato in the Jefatura at 9.30 a.m. He called Ramírez back in and asked who this doctor was.

‘He’s the police psychologist,’ said Ramírez.

‘He wants to see me.’

‘Probably just a routine assessment.’

‘I’ve never had one before.’

‘Officers in high-stress situations get given them,’ said Ramírez. ‘I had one after shooting a suspect dead three years ago.’

‘I haven’t shot anybody.’

Ramírez shrugged. Falcón reminded him about the
meeting with Juez Calderón at midday. Ramírez left, taking the rest of the group with him. Falcón called Lobo, whose secretary said he was out for the day. Sweat trickled from the high point of his forehead. He clamped a handkerchief to his head as if it was a wound. Damn this leaking, he thought. His palms moistened. He went to the bathroom, washed his hands and face, and took an Orfidal.

The psychologist’s office was in some unvisited part of the Jefatura on the second floor with a different view of the car park. He was called in immediately. They shook hands and sat down. The psychologist was in his early fifties and wore a charcoal-grey suit with a waistcoat. There was a single sheet of paper on the desk in front of him.

‘I don’t think I’ve been to a police psychologist before,’ said Falcón.

‘What about the two times in Barcelona?’ asked the doctor.

Panic swept through him. He’d walked straight into a memory blank. Twice in Barcelona?

‘You investigated a car bombing in which the twelve-year-old daughter of a politician was killed and there was a shooting in a lawyer’s office which left a mother of three dead.’

‘Sorry, of course, I meant since I’d been in Seville.’

The doctor gave him a physical examination, which included weighing him and taking his blood pressure. He resumed his seat behind the desk.

‘Why am I here?’ asked Falcón.

‘You’re handling a very difficult case with some gruesome details to the murders.’

‘I’ve seen worse,’ he lied.

‘Everybody in the Jefatura thinks it’s one of the worst cases ever.’

‘In Seville,’ said Falcón. ‘I was in Madrid before I came here.’

‘You’re five kilos under your normal weight.’

‘Cases like this use up a lot of nervous energy.’

‘In those two cases you looked after in Barcelona you weighed in at 79 kilos. Now you’re 74 kilos.’

‘I haven’t been eating regularly.’

‘You mean, since you separated from your wife?’

A small abyss opened up as Falcón realized how many factors might be taken into consideration.

‘My housekeeper cooks meals for me. I just haven’t found time to consume them, that’s all.’

‘Your blood pressure is high. At your age I would expect it to be above your normal 12/7 but you’re 14/8.5, which is borderline, and you look hollow-eyed. Are you sleeping well?’

‘I’m sleeping very well.’

‘Are you taking any medication?’

‘No,’ he said fluently.

‘Have you noticed anything different in your bodily functions?’ asked Rato. ‘Sweating. Diarrhoea. Loss of appetite.’

‘No.’

‘What about mental functions?’

‘No.’

‘Any cyclical thinking, memory loss, obsessive tendencies … like washing your hands again and again?’

‘No.’

‘Any joint pains? Shoulders, knees?’

‘No.’

‘Can you think why anybody inside or outside the Jefatura might have become concerned about your behaviour recently?’

More panic surged through him. The diarrhoea he’d just denied suddenly became a possibility.

‘No, I can’t,’ he said.

‘Stress acts on people in different ways, Inspector Jefe, but the fundamentals are the same. Mild forms of stress — overwork with a problem at home — can induce physical reactions to make you stop. A pain in the knee is not unusual. Extreme forms of stress release the same atavistic mechanism known as “fight or flight” — that burst of adrenalin which will give you the strength to strike out or run away. We are no longer in the wild, but our urban jungle can induce the same reaction. The combined pressure of a heavy workload with distressing details, the death of a parent and the divorce of a wife, can trigger a permanent adrenalin rush. Blood pressure goes up. Weight goes down as appetite is suppressed. The brain speeds up. Sleep becomes elusive. The body reacts as if the mind has encountered something to be feared. There’s sweating, anxiety, rising to panic, followed by memory loss, and obsessive circular thinking. Inspector Jefe, you have all the symptoms of a man under great stress. Tell me, when was the last time you took an afternoon off work?’

‘I’m taking one off this afternoon.’

‘When was the last time?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Since you arrived in Seville nearly three years ago you haven’t taken any time off apart from a single two-week holiday,’ said Dr Rato. ‘What was your work load before you took on this latest investigation?’

Blank. Panic splashed like ether against his chest.

‘I’ll tell you, Inspector Jefe,’ said Rato. ‘You investigated fifteen murders last year as against thirty-four in your last year in Madrid.’

‘What’s your point, Doctor?’

‘Do you think you’re hiding in your work?’

‘Hiding?’

‘There are attractive things even about the ugly work
you have to do. There’s routine. There’s structure. You have colleagues. And it is endless, if you want it to be. You could fill your year with paperwork alone, I imagine.’

‘True.’

‘Real life is messy. Relationships don’t work out. Friends come and go. And, at our age, people start dying. We have to face loss, change and disappointment, but within all this there’s the possibility of joy. However it is only achieved by making a connection. When was the last time you had sex?’

Another jolting question, that nearly had Falcón out of his seat and pacing the room.

‘That wasn’t supposed to be offensive,’ said the doctor.

‘No, of course, I just haven’t been asked that question since I was at university.’

‘No male friends have asked you that question?’

Male friends, thought Falcón. Female friends, even. It nearly squeezed a tear up to his eye, the thought that he had no friends. It seemed impossible that his life had slipped away from him like this without him noticing. When was the last time he’d had a friend? He hit the blank wall of his memory until he thought that Calderón could have been a friend.

‘When was the last time you had sex?’ asked the doctor again.

‘With my wife.’

‘When did you separate?’

Blank.

‘Last year,’ said Falcón, struggling.

‘Month?’

‘May.’

‘It was in July, which was probably why you didn’t take a holiday,’ said Dr Rato. ‘When was the last time you had sex before you separated?’

Falcón had to calculate using the ugliest of algebra. If
we separated in July and she hadn’t let me touch her for two months then that must equal May.

‘That
was May.’

‘A year without sex, Inspector Jefe,’ said the doctor. ‘How is your libido?’

Libido sounds good, he thought. Like a private beach. Let’s go down to the libido.

‘Inspector Jefe?’

‘It probably hasn’t been so good, as you might have guessed.’

That image of Consuelo Jiménez came to him, the one with her kneeling in the chair with her skirt rucked up. Was that libidinous? He crossed his legs.

The doctor terminated the meeting.

‘Is that it?’ said Falcón. ‘Don’t you have to tell me something?’

‘I write a report. It’s not up to me to tell you anything. That is in the hands of your superiors. I am not your employer.’

‘But what are you going to tell them?’

‘That is not a subject for discussion.’

‘Give me the general idea,’ said Falcón. ‘ “Stick him in the madhouse” or “Tell him to take a holiday”?’

‘This is not multiple choice.’

‘Are you going to recommend me for a full psychological assessment?’

‘This was an initial inquiry following some outside concerns.’

It’s Calderón, thought Falcón. That business outside his apartment with Inés.

‘Tell me what you’re going to say in your report.’

‘The meeting is over, Inspector Jefe.’

It was more by luck than judgement that Falcón came out of the bullpens of the Maestranza with Biensolo in
his
lote
for Pepe to fight that afternoon. He’d nearly hit a moped on his way from the Jefatura, and just missed shunting into the back of a horse-drawn carriage full of tourists. Seven bollards were now missing from the roadworks on Paseo de Cristóbal Colón. The bull selection process had shot past him. There had been some vague talk about the horn wound in No.484, which had reached him, and the other confidants had taken advantage of his distraction to give him the lote that none of them wanted. He called Pepe at the Hotel Colón and gave him the news.

He went home. He was ready for nothing. His concentration fluttered like a blasted flag. His memory sieved disparate thoughts and images into his brain. He dragged himself up to his room and flung himself face up on the bed. His body shuddered with each sob that lifted his shoulders. The pressure was just too great. Tears ran down his face into the pillow. He gagged against the massive thing that wanted to come up through his throat. Then he slept. No sleeping pill. Pure exhaustion.

His mobile woke him. His eyes felt like hot stones, his lids thick as leather. Paco told him they were down at the restaurant and he was about to eat all his
chuletillas
for him. He showered like a gaping inmate. He dressed and it returned some of his equilibrium. He even felt mildly positive, as if his breakdown had repaired some small but vital mechanism.

During the Feria de Abril the area outside the Hotel Colón was always busy. The bellboys never stopped as cars and minibuses glided in and managers and promoters and team members got out. Fans always hovered around the cafés opposite. There were fewer today because there were no big names on the bill — Pepín Liria was the best known, followed by Vicente Bejarano and then the unknown Pepe Leal.

Falcón went up to Pepe’s room. One of his
banderilleros
was standing in the corridor outside, hands behind his back. He opened the door, as if on a mourning wife. He murmured something to Pepe and let Falcón in.

Pepe was sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. His shirt was undone and outside his trousers. He wore no jacket, tie, shoes or socks. His hair was a mess from where he’d been gripping his head. There was a slick of sweat on his forehead and in the middle of his chest. He was white. His fear was naked.

‘You shouldn’t see me like this,’ he said.

He took a sip from a glass of water on the floor and embraced Javier, then he ran for the bathroom and retched into the lavatory.

‘You’ve caught me on the way down,’ he said. ‘I’m nearly at the bottom of my fear. In a moment I’ll be blabbing and in half an hour I’ll be a different man.’

They embraced again. Falcón caught the sharp smell of his vomit.

‘Don’t worry about me, Javier,’ he said. ‘It’s good. Things are coming together. I can feel it. Today will be my day.
La Puerta del Príncipe
will be mine.’

He was gabbling. They embraced again and Falcón left.

Both the bar and restaurant were heaving with people. The noise was cacophonous. He squeezed into the
comedor
and kissed and embraced his way around the table. He sat down, wolfed the tuna and onions, dipped his bread in the juice of the roasted peppers, gnawed on the slim bones of the chuletillas and drank glasses of dark-red Marqués de Arienzo. He felt whole again, full and solid. His nerves were intact. There’d been some release in being found out. He didn’t care any more. Seeing Pepe so profoundly scared had marshalled him. He would embrace everything, including his fate.

At five o’clock they made their way through the warm streets to La Maestranza. The smell of cheap and expensive cigars mingled with cologne, hair oil and perfume. The sun was still high and there was the lightest of breezes. The conditions were near perfect. Now it was up to the bulls.

Their group was split up. Paco and Javier took their privileged debenture seats in the
Sombra
while the family took their complimentary seats in the
Sol y sombra.
Paco and Javier sat two rows up from the ring in the
barreras.
Paco handed his brother a cushion with the finca’s crest embroidered on it. They breathed in the atmosphere of
la España profunda.
The murmuring crowd, the Ducados and
puros,
the men with their hair combed back in brilliantined rails helping their silken wives up the steps to their seats. A line of young women in traditional mantillas of white lace sat beneath the president’s box. Boys with buckets of ice full of beer and coke patrolled the terraces. Cans were expertly hurled and caught by customers, who handed down change through the obliging crowd.

The toreros led their teams out, all in their trajes de luces, following three perfectly groomed, high-stepping, dappled-grey stallions who necked at their bridles. Pepe Leal had rebuilt himself and was resplendent in his royal blue and gold suit. He wore the serious expression of a man who’d come to do his work.

The stallions retreated, followed by the mules, who would drag the dead bull out of the plaza, nodding under their red pompoms. The three toreros practised slow, beautiful passes with their pink capes. The crowd’s anticipation tightened. The toreros moved behind the barriers leaving Pepe Leal, who was to face the first bull, out alone in the plaza with his cape.