Robert Wilson - The Blind Man of Seville

The Blind Man
of Seville

For Jane
and
Mick and Jos

Thursday, 12th April 2001, Edificio Presidente, Los Remedios, Seville

It had started the moment hed walked into that room and had seen that face.

The call had come at 8.15 a.m. just as he was preparing to leave home one dead body, suspected murder and the address.

Semana Santa. It was only right that there should be at least one murder in Holy Week; not that it would have any effect on the crowds of people following the daily convergence of quivering Holy Virgins on board their floats en route to the cathedral.

He eased his car out of the massive house that had belonged to his father on Calle Bailn. The tyres rattled on the cobbles of the empty, narrow streets. The city, reluctant to wake up at any time of year, was especially silent at this hour during Semana Santa. He entered the square in front of the Museo de Bellas Artes. The whitewashed houses, framed in ochre were silent behind the high palms, the two colossal rubber trees and the tall jacarandas, which had not yet flowered. He opened his window to the morning still fresh from last nights dew and drove down to the Guadalquivir River and the avenue of trees along the Paseo de Cristbal Coln. He thought he might be approaching contentment as he passed by the red doors of the Puerta del Prncipe in the baroque faade of the Plaza de Toros, La Maestranza, which was about to see the first bullfights in the week leading up to the Feria de Abril.

This was as close as he got to happiness these days and it held firm as he turned right after the Torre del Oro and, leaving the old part of the city behind, crossed the river, which was misty in the early-morning sunshine. At the Plaza de Cuba he veered away from his regular route to work and headed down Calle de Asuncin. Later he would try to recapture these moments because they were the last of what hed thought, until then, had been a quite satisfactory life.

The new and very young Juez de Guardia, the duty judge, whod been waiting for him in the pristine, white-marbled entrance hall of Ral Jimnezs large and expensive apartment on the sixth floor of the Edificio Presidente, did try to warn him. He remembered that.

Prepare yourself, Inspector Jefe, hed said.

For what? Falcn had asked.

In the embarrassed silence that followed, Inspector Jefe Javier Falcn had minutely scrutinized the surface detail of the Juez de Guardias suit, which he decided was either Italian or a leading Spanish designer, someone like Adolfo Dominguez, perhaps. Expensive for a young judge like Esteban Caldern, thirty-six years old and barely a year in the job.

Falcns apparent lack of interest decided Caldern that he didnt want to appear naive in front of the forty-five-year-old Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios de Sevilla, whod spent more than twenty years looking at murdered people in Barcelona, Zaragoza, Madrid and now Seville.

Youll see, he said, with a nervous shrug of his shoulder.

Shall I proceed then? asked Falcn, maintaining proper procedure with a judge hed never worked with before.

Caldern nodded and told him that the Polica Cientfica had just been let into the building and that he could go ahead with his initial observations of the scene.

Falcn walked down the corridor leading from the entrance hall to Ral Jimnezs study thinking about preparing himself without knowing how it was done. He stopped at the door to the living room, frowned. The room was empty. He turned to Caldern who had his back to him now, dictating something to the Secretaria del Juez while the Mdico Forense listened in. Falcn looked into the dining room and found that empty, too.

Were they moving out? he asked.

Claro, Inspector Jefe, said Caldern, the only furniture left in the apartment is a bed in one of the kids rooms and Sr Jimnezs complete study.

Does that mean Sra Jimenz is already in the new house with the children?

Were not sure.

My number two, Inspector Ramrez, should be here in a few minutes. Send him straight through to me.

Falcn proceeded to the end of the corridor, suddenly conscious of each footstep on the polished parquet flooring in the empty apartment. His eyes were fixed on a hook on the bare wall at the end of the corridor under which was a square lighter than its surrounds, where a picture or mirror had been hanging.

He eased his hands into a pair of surgical gloves, snapped the cuffs against his wrists and flexed his fingers. He turned into the study, looked up from his cloudy latex palms to find Ral Jimenzs terrible face staring at him.

And that was when it had started.

It wasnt a question of looking back at that moment and realizing later that it had been a turning point. The change was not subtle. A difference in body chemistry has a way of making itself immediately felt. Sweat came up inside his gloves and at a spot high on his forehead just out of the hairline. The taut pattering of his heart stopped him and he began to find oxygen in the air difficult to come by. He hyperventilated for some seconds, pinched at his throat to try to encourage a better intake. His body was telling him that there was something to fear while his brain was indicating otherwise.

His brain was making the usual dispassionate observations. Ral Jimenzs feet were bare, his ankles secured to the chair legs. Some furniture was out of place, at odds with the rest of the room. Indentations in the expensive rug, Persian, showed the normal position of the chair. The lead to the TV/video was stretched taut because the rolling cabinet was some metres from its normal position by the wall socket in the corner. A ball of cloth, which looked like socks tracked with saliva and blood, lay on the floor by the desk. Windows, double-glazed, were shut, curtains drawn back. A large soapstone ashtray sat on the desk, full of pinched stubs and whole, clean filters which had been broken off from the cigarettes whose pack lay alongside, brand name Celtas. Cheap cigarettes. The cheapest. Only the cheapest for Ral Jimenz, owner of four of the most popular restaurants in Seville, with two others in Sanlcar de Barrameda and Puerto Santa Mara down on the coast. Only the cheapest for Ral Jimenz in his ninety-million-pesetas apartment in Los Remedios, overlooking the Feria ground, with his celebrity photographs hanging on the wall behind his leather-inlaid desk. Ral with the torero El Cordobs. Ral with the TV presenter Ana Rosa Quintana. Ral, my God, Ral with a carving knife behind a jamn which had to be a top quality Pata Negra because he was flanked by Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith, who was looking completely appalled at the cloven hoof pointing at her right breast.

Still the sweat didnt stop but appeared elsewhere. Top lip, small of the back, trickling down to his waist from his armpit. He knew what he was doing. He was pretending, persuading himself that it was hot in the room, that the coffee hed just taken He hadnt had any coffee.

The face.

For a dead man it was a face with presence. Like El Grecos saints whose eyes never left you alone.

Were they following him?

Falcn moved to one side. Yes. Then the other. Absurd. The tricks of the mind. He pulled himself together, clenched a latex fist.

He stepped over the taut lead from the wall to the TV/video and went behind the dead mans chair. He looked up to the ceiling and let his eyes fall on to Ral Jimnezs wire-wool hair. The back of the head was matted thick, black and red, from where hed rammed his head repeatedly against the carved coat of arms on the chair back. The head was still secured to the chair with flex. Originally it must have been tight but Jimnez had gained some slack through his struggle. The flex had cut deeply into the flesh beneath his nose and had ridden up until it had bitten into the cartilaginous material of the septum and it had even sawn through that to reach the bone of the bridge. The nose was hanging off his face. The flex had also cut into the flesh over his cheekbones as hed thrown his head from side to side.