The Blind Man of Seville Read Free Page A

but from the slack in his chest and waist I’d say he’s been up in the high nineties.’
    ‘Heart condition?’
    ‘His doctor will know if his wife doesn’t.’
    ‘Do you think a woman could lift him out of that low leather scoop and put him in that high-backed chair?’
    ‘A woman?’ asked the Médico Forense. ‘You think a woman did that to him?’
    ‘That was not the question, Doctor.’
    The Médico Forense stiffened as Falcón made him feel stupid a second time.
    ‘I’ve seen trained nurses lift heavier men than that. Live men, of course, which is easier … but I don’t see why not.’
    Falcón turned away, dismissing him.
    ‘You should ask Jorge about trained nurses, Inspector Jefe,’ said Felipe, arse up in the air, practically sniffing the carpet.
    ‘Shut up,’ said Jorge, tired of this one.
    ‘I understand it’s all to do with the hips,’ said Felipe, ‘and the counterweight of the buttocks.’
    ‘That’s only theory. Inspector Jefe,’ said Jorge. ‘He’s never had the benefit of practical experience.’
    ‘How would you know?’ said Felipe, kneeling up, grabbing an imaginary rump and giving it some swift thrusts with his groin. ‘I had a youth, too.’
    ‘Not much of one in your day,’ said Jorge. ‘They were all tight as clams, weren’t they?’
    ‘Spanish girls were,’ said Felipe. ‘But I come from Alicante. Benidorm was just down the road. All those English girls in the sixties and seventies …”
    ‘In your dreams,’ said Jorge.
    ‘Yes, I’ve always had very exciting dreams,’ said Felipe.
    The forensics laughed and Falcón looked down on them as they grovelled on the floor, rootling like pigs after acorns, with football and fucking fighting for supremacy in their brains. He found them faintly disgusting and turned to look at the photos on the wall. Jorge nodded his head at Falcón and mouthed to Felipe: Mariquita. Poof.
    They laughed again. Falcón ignored them. His eye, just as it did when he looked at a painting, was drawn to theedges of the photographic display. He moved away from the central celebrity section and found a shot of Raúl Jiménez with his arms around two men who were both taller and bigger than him. On the left was the Jefe Superior de la Policía de Sevilla, Comisario Firmin León and on the right was the Chief Prosecutor, Fiscal Jefe Juan Bellido. A physical pressure came down on Falcón’s shoulders and he shrugged his suit up his collar.
    ‘Aha! Here we go,’ said Felipe. ‘This is more like it. One pubic hair, Inspector Jefe. Black.’
    The three men turned simultaneously to the window because they’d heard muted voices from behind the double-glazing and a mechanical sound like a lift. Beyond the rail of the balcony two men in blue overalls slowly appeared, one with long black hair tied in a ponytail and the other crew cut with a black eye. They were shouting to the team eighteen metres below who were operating the lifting gear.
    ‘Who are those idiots?’ asked Felipe.
    Falcón went out on to the balcony, startling the two men standing on the platform, which had just been raised up a railed ladder from a truck in the street.
    ‘Who the hell are you?’
    ‘We’re the removals company,’ they said, and turned their backs to show yellow stencils on their overalls which read Mudanzas Triana Transportes Nacionales e Internacionales.

2
    Thursday, 12th April 2001, Edificio Presidente, Los Remedios, Seville
    Juez Esteban Calderón signed off the levantamiento del cadáver, which had uncovered another piece of baggable evidence. Underneath the body was a piece of cotton rag, a sniff indicated traces of chloroform.
    ‘A mistake,’ said Falcón.
    ‘Inspector Jefe?’ questioned Ramírez, at his elbow.
    ‘The first mistake in a planned operation.’
    ‘What about the hairs, Inspector Jefe?’
    ‘If those hairs belonged to the killer … shedding it was an accident. Leaving a chloroform-soaked rag was an error. He put Raúl Jiménez out