José Manuel Jiménez let him into the hall. He was shorter than Falcón but more powerfully built. He held his head as if ducking under a beam or carrying a load on his shoulders. As he spoke his eyes darted about under cover of some heavy, dark eyebrows, which his wife was not keeping under control. The effect, rather than being furtive, was deferential. He took Falcón’s coat and led him down a parquet-floored corridor, away from the kitchen and voices of family, to his study. He walked leaning forwards, as if dragging a sled.
The study had several overlaid Moroccan rugs that covered the parquet floor up to an English-style walnut desk. Lining the walls to the window were the bound books of a lawyer’s workplace. Coffee was offered and accepted. In the minutes he was left alone, Falcón inspected the family photographs sitting on top of a glass-fronted cupboard. He recognized Gumersinda with her two young children. There were none of Raúl. There were none of the daughter beyond twelve years old. The other photographs were of José Manuel Jiménez’s family through the ages culminating in two graduation photographs of a boy and a girl.
Jiménez came back with the coffee. They manoeuvred around each other as Falcón found his way back to his seat and Jiménez got behind his desk. He clasped his hands; his biceps and shoulders swelled under his green tweed jacket.
‘Amongst some old shots of your father’s I came across one of my own father,’ said Falcón, going for the tangential approach.
‘My father was a restaurateur, I’m sure he had lots of photographs of his customers.’
So he knew that much about his father.
‘This was not amongst the celebrity photographs …’
‘Is your father a celebrity?’
It was a chink he had not wanted opened, but maybe, as Consuelo Jiménez had shown, revealing something of oneself could lead to surprising revelations from others.
‘My father was the painter Francisco Falcón, but that was not why —’
‘Then I’m not surprised he wasn’t on my father’s wall,’ Jiménez cut in. ‘My father had the cultural awareness of a peasant, which was what he was.’
‘I noticed he smoked Celtas with the filters broken off.’
‘He used to smoke Celtas cortas, which were unfiltered but better than the dry dung he told us he had to smoke after the Civil War.’
‘Where was he a peasant?’
‘His parents had land near Almería, which they worked. They were killed in the Civil War and lost it all. After their deaths my father drifted. That’s all I know. It’s probably why money was always important to him.’
‘Didn’t your mother …?’
‘I doubt she knew. If she did, she didn’t tell us. I really don’t think she knew anything about his life before she met him and my father wasn’t going tell her parents until he’d got her.’
‘They met in Tangier?’
‘Yes, her family moved there in the early forties. Her father was a lawyer. He was there, like everybody else, to make money after the Civil War had left Spain in ruins. She was just a girl, eight years old maybe. My father appeared on the scene a bit later … some time in 1945, I think. He fell for her the moment he first saw her.’
‘She was still young wasn’t she? Thirteen years old?’
‘And my father was twenty-two. It was a curious relationship, which her parents were not happy about. They made her wait until she was seventeen before they let her get married.’
‘Was it just the age difference?’
‘She was their only child,’ said Jiménez. ‘And I doubt they were impressed by his lack of family background. They must have seen what base metal he was. He was flashy, too.’
‘He was rich by then?’
‘He made a lot of money over there and he enjoyed spending it.’
‘How did he make his money?’
‘Smuggling, probably. Whatever it was, I’m sure it wasn’t legal. Later he got into currency dealing. He even had his own bank at one stage — not that it meant anything. He got into property and construction, too.’
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Falcón. ‘You were barely ten by the time you left and I doubt he told you very much.’
‘I pieced it all together, Inspector Jefe. That’s the way my mind works. It was my way of making sense of what happened.’
Silence came into the room like news of a death. Falcón was willing him to continue, but Jiménez had his lips drawn tight over his teeth, steeling himself.
‘You were born in 1950,’ said Falcón, nudging him on.
‘Nine months to the day after they were married.’
‘And your sister?’
‘Two years later. There were some complications in her birth. I know they nearly lost her and it left my mother very weak. They wanted to have lots of children, but my mother wasn’t capable after that. It affected my sister, too.’
‘How?’
‘She was a very sweet-natured girl. She was always caring for things … animals, especially stray cats, of which there were plenty in Tangier. There wasn’t anything you could … she was just … ‘ he faltered, his hands kneaded the air, forcing the words out. ‘She was just simple, that’s all. Not stupid … just uncomplicated. Not like other children.’
‘Did your mother ever recover her strength?’
‘Yes, yes, she did, she recovered her strength completely, She …’ Jiménez trailed off, stared up at the ceiling. ‘She even became pregnant again. It was a very difficult time. My father had to leave Tangier, but my mother could not be moved.’
‘When was this?’
‘The end of 1958. He took my sister and I stayed.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘He rented a house in a village up in the hills above Algeciras.’
‘Was he on the run?’
‘Not from the authorities.’
‘A bad business deal?’
‘I never found that out,’ he said.
‘And your mother?’
‘She had the baby. A boy. My father mysteriously appeared on the night of the birth. He’d come over secretly. He was worried that something would go wrong, like the last time, and she wouldn’t survive the birth. He was …’
Jiménez frowned, as if he’d come up against something beyond his comprehension. He blinked against the interfering tears.
‘This is very difficult ground, Inspector Jefe,’ he said. ‘I thought that when my father died I would be pleased. It would be a relief and a release from … It would signify the end of all these unfinished thoughts.’
‘Unfinished thoughts, Sr Jiménez?’
‘Thoughts that have no ending. Thoughts that are interminable because they have no resolution. Thoughts that leave you forever hanging in the balance.’
Although these words were recognizable as language, their meaning was obscure and yet Falcón, without knowing why, understood something of the man’s torment. Hints prodded his own mind — his father’s death, the things left unsaid, the studio uninvestigated.
‘It may just be our natural state,’