‘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 with the chloroform, didn’t want to put the rag in his pocket, threw it on the chair and then dumped Don Raúl on top of it. Out of sight, out of mind.’
‘It’s not such an important clue …”
‘It’s an indication of the mind we’re working against. This is a careful mind but not a professional one. He might be slack in other areas, like where he got the chloroform. Maybe he bought it here in Seville from a medical or laboratory supplies shop or stole it from a hospital or a chemist. The killer has thought obsessively about what he wants to do to his victim but not all the details around it.’
‘Sra Jiménez has been located and informed. A car will drop the kids at her sister’s house in San Bernardo and bring her on alone.’
‘When will the Médico Forense do the autopsy?’ asked Falcón.
‘Do you want to be there?’ asked Calderón, weighing his mobile. ‘He said that he was going to do it immediately.’
‘Not particularly,’ said Falcón. ‘I just want the results. There’s a lot to do here. This film, for instance. I think we should all watch the La Familia Jiménez movie now before Sra Jiménez arrives. Is there anybody else from the squad here, Inspector?’
‘Fernández is talking to the conserje, Inspector Jefe.’
‘Tell him to collect all the tapes from the security cameras, view them with the conserje and make a note of anybody he doesn’t recognize.’
Ramírez made for the door.
‘And another thing … find somebody to check all the hospitals, laboratories and medical supply shops for chloroform sold to odd people or missing bottles of the stuff. And surgical instruments, too.’
Falcón rolled the TV/video cabinet back to its normal position in the corner of the room. Calderón sat in the leather scoop chair. Falcón plugged the equipment back in. Ramírez stood by the dead man’s chair, which was wrapped in plastic, ready to be taken down to the Policía Científica laboratories. He murmured into his mobile. Calderón ejected the tape, inspected the reels, put it back in and hit the rewind button.
‘The removals men are still here, Inspector Jefe.’
‘There’s no one to talk to them now. Let them wait.’
Calderón hit ‘play’. They took seats around the room and watched in the sealed silence of the empty apartment. The footage opened with a shot of the Jiménez family coming out of the Edificio Presidente apartment building. Raúl and Consuelo Jiménez were arm in arm. She was in an ankle-length fur coat and he was in a caramel overcoat. The boys were all dressed identically in green and burgundy. They walked straight towards the camera, which was across the street from them, and turned left into Calle Asunción. The film cut to the same family group in different clothes on a sunny day coming out of the Corte Inglés department store on La Plaza del Duque de la Victoria. They crossed the road into the square, which was full of stalls selling cheap jewellery and shawls, CDs, leather bags and wallets. The group disappeared into Marks & Spencer’s. The family group were shown again and again until two of the three men were stifling yawns amidst the shopping malls, the beach gatherings, the paseos in the Plaza de España and the Parque de María Luisa.
‘Is he just showing us he did his homework?’ asked Ramírez.
‘Impressively dull, isn’t it?’ said Falcón, not finding it so, finding himself oddly fascinated by the altering dynamics of the family group in the different locations. He was drawn to the idea of the family, especially this apparently happy one, and what it would be like to have one himself, which led him to think how it was that he had singularly failed in this capacity.
Only a change in the direction of the movie snapped him back. It was the first piece of footage where the family didn’t appear as a group. Raúl Jiménez and his boys were at the Betis football stadium on a day when, it was clear from the scarves, they were playing Sevilla — the local derby.
‘I remember that day,’ said Calderón.
‘We lost 4–0,’ said Ramírez.
‘You lost,’ said Calderón. ‘We won.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Ramírez.
‘Who do you support, Inspector Jefe?’ asked Calderón.
Falcón didn’t react. No interest. Ramírez glanced over his shoulder, uncomfortable with his presence.
The camera cut to the Edificio Presidente. Consuelo Jiménez on her own, getting into a taxi. Cut to her paying the taxi off in a tree-lined street, waiting some moments while the car pulled away before crossing the road and walking up several steps to a house.
‘Where’s that?’ asked Calderón.
‘He’ll tell us,’ said Falcón.
A series of cuts showed Consuelo Jiménez arriving at the same house on different days, in different clothes. Then the house number — 17. And the street name — Calle Río de la Plata.
‘That’s in El Porvenir,’ said Ramírez.
‘This is the future,’ said Calderón. ‘I think we have a lover here.’
Cut to night-time and the rear of a large E-Class Mercedes with a Seville number plate. The image held for some time.
‘He doesn’t move his plot on very well,’ said Calderón, reaching his boredom threshold quickly.
‘Suspense,’ said Falcón.
Finally Raúl Jiménez got out of the car, locked it, stepped out of the street lighting and into the dark. Cut to a fire burning in the night, figures standing around the leaping flames. Women in short skirts, some with their suspenders and stocking tops showing. One of them turned, bent over and put her bottom to the fire.
Raúl Jiménez appeared at the edge of the fire. An inaudible discussion ensued. He strode back to the Mercedes with one of the women following, stumbling in her high heels over the rough ground.
‘That’s the Alameda,’ said Ramírez.
‘Only the cheapest for Raúl Jiménez,’ said Falcón.
Jiménez pushed the girl into the back seat, holding her head down as if she were a police suspect. He looked up and around and followed her in. The frame held the rear door of the Mercedes, shadowy movements beyond the glass. No more than a minute passed and Jiménez got out of the car, straightened his fly and held out a note to the girl, who took it. Jiménez got back into the driver’s seat. The car pulled away. The girl spat a fat gob on to the dirt, cleared her throat and spat again.