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young judge had been.

      ‘I think more or less what I said to Juez Calderón.’

      ‘No, no, I don’t think so,’ said Ramírez, tapping the steering wheel. ‘I know you, Inspector Jefe.’

      That turned Falcón in his seat. The idea that Ramírez had the first idea on how his mind worked was nearly laughable to him.

      ‘Tell me, Inspector,’ he said.

      ‘You were telling him things while you were thinking something else,’ replied Ramírez. ‘I mean, you know that going through that address book is going to be as big a waste of time as, say, interviewing those kids that Sra Jiménez fired.’

      ‘I don’t know that,’ said Falcón. ‘And you know that the basics have to be done. We have to be seen to be thorough.’

      ‘But you don’t think there’s a connection, do you?’

      ‘I’ve an open mind.’

      ‘This is the work of a psychopath and you know it, Inspector Jefe.’

      ‘If I was a psychopath and I enjoyed killing people, I wouldn’t choose an apartment on the sixth floor of the Edificio Presidente with all the complications it-entailed.’

      ‘He likes to show off.’

      ‘He’s studied these people. He’s got to know his target. He’s been specific,’ said Falcón. ‘He will have seen them visiting their new house. He will have seen the removals people coming to the apartment …’

      ‘We need to talk to them first thing tomorrow,’ said Ramírez. ‘Missing overalls, that sort of thing.’

      ‘It’s Viernes Santo tomorrow,’ said Falcón. Good Friday.

      Ramírez pulled into the car park at the back of the Jefatura.

      ‘Motive,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘Why are you taking the bitch out of the frame?’

      ‘The bitch?’

      ‘Those boys I spoke to, the ones who were glad to get away from Consuelo Jiménez, they didn’t have a good word to say about her personally, but professionally, they said she was brilliant.’

      ‘And that’s unusual in Seville?’ said Falcón.

      ‘It is for that kind of woman, the wife of a rich husband. Normally they don’t like to get their hands dirty and they’ll only talk to the Marqués y Marquesa de No Sé Que. But Sra Jiménez, apparently, did everything.’

      ‘Like?’

      ‘She washed salad, chopped vegetables, cooked revuel-tos, waited at table, went to the market, paid the wages and kept the books, and she did the talking and the greeting, too.’

      ‘So what’s your point?’

      ‘She loved that business. She made it her business. The new place they opened in La Macarena — that was her idea. She made all the drawings, supervised the building of the interiors, decorated it, found the right staff — everything. The only thing she didn’t touch was the menu, because she knows that people go there for the menu. Simple, classic Sevillano dishes done to perfection.’

      ‘You sound as if you’ve been there?’

      ‘Best salmorejo in Seville. Best pan de casa in Seville. Best jamón, best revueltos, best chuletillas … best everything. And reasonable, too. Not exclusive either, although they always keep a table for the toreros and other idiots.’

      Ramírez shouldered through the door at the back of the Jefatura, held it open for Falcón and followed him up the stairs.

      ‘Where are you taking me on this?’ asked Falcón.

      ‘How do you think she’d react, say, if her husband decided to sell the business?’ asked Ramírez, which stopped Falcón mid step. ‘I didn’t bring it up in front of Calderón, because I’ve only got those two boys’ word for it.’

      ‘Now I’m glad it was you who talked to them,’ said Falcón. ‘What did I just say about the basics?’

      ‘You still won’t get me to work through that address book,’ said Ramírez.

      ‘So these boys saw Raúl Jiménez talking to somebody?’

      ‘Have you heard of a restaurant chain called Cinco Bellotas run by a guy called Joaquín López? He’s young, dynamic and he’s got good backing. He’s one of the few people in Seville who could buy and run Raúl Jiménez’s restaurants tomorrow.’

      ‘Any connection between him and Sra Jiménez?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘That’s a very elaborate plan. Elaborate and gruesome,’ said Falcón, continuing up the stairs, toeing the outer door to his office. ‘Ask yourself this question, Inspector: Who could she possibly have found, and what kind of payment would it have taken, to persuade someone to do all that preliminary filming, get into an apartment like that and torture an old man to death?’

      ‘Depends how badly she wants it,’ said Ramírez. ‘There’s no innocence there, if you ask me.’

      The two men looked out of the window of Falcón’s office at the diminishing ranks of cars in the darkening evening.

      ‘And, look, the other thing,’ said Falcón, ‘whatever the killer showed Raúl Jiménez was for real. He didn’t want to see it, which was why the killer had to cut …’

      Ramírez nodded, sighed, his brainwork done for the day. He lit a cigarette without thinking or remembering that Falcón detested smoking in his office.

      ‘So what is your angle, Inspector Jefe?’

      Falcón found that his focus had shortened. He was no longer staring out over the emptying car park but was looking at his own reflection in the glass. He seemed hollow-eyed, vacant, unseeing, even sinister.

      The killer was forcing him to see,’ he said.

      ‘But what?’

      ‘We’ve all got something that we’re ashamed of, something that when we think of it we shudder with embarrassment or something worse than embarrassment.’

      Ramírez stiffened beside him, the man solidifying, his carapace suddenly there, impenetrable. Nobody tinkered inside Ramírez’s works. Falcón checked him in the glass, decided to make it easier for the Sevillano.

      ‘You know, like when you were a kid, making a fool of yourself with a girl, or perhaps being cowardly, failing to protect somebody who was your friend, or a moral weakness — not standing up for something you believed in because you could get beaten up. These sorts of things, but transferred to an adult life with adult implications.’

      Ramírez looked down at his tie, which was about as introspective as he’d ever been.

      ‘Do you mean the sort of things that Comisario Lobo warned you about?’

      This struck Falcón as brilliantly deflective. Corruption — the manageable stain. Machine wash, rinse and spin. Forgotten. It’s only money. All part of the game.

      ‘No,’ he said.

      Ramírez drifted towards the door, announced that he was packing it in for the day. Falcón dismissed him via the glass.

      He was suddenly exhausted. The massive day settled on his shoulders. He closed his eyes and instead of the thought of dinner, a glass of wine and sleep, he found his mind still turning, spiralling around the question:

      What could be so terrible?

       8

       Thursday,

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