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you, Inspector Jefe?’ she said. ‘Apparently she was also a little shorter than me.’
    ‘Who is she?’
    ‘Raúl’s first wife,’ she said. ‘Now you see, Inspector Jefe, once a Consuelo always a Consuelo.’
    ‘And what happened to her?’
    ‘She committed suicide in 1967. She was thirty-five years old.’
    ‘Any reason?’
    ‘Raúl said she was clinically depressed. It was her third attempt. She threw herself into the Guadalquivir — not off a bridge, just from the bank, which has always struck me as a strange thing to do,’ she said. ‘Not snuffing yourself out with sleeping pills, not savagely punishing yourself with slashed wrists, not diving into oblivion for all to see, but throwing yourself away.’
    ‘Like rubbish.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose that’s it,’ she said. ‘Raúl didn’t tell me any of that, by the way. It was an old friend of his from the Tangier days.’
    ‘I was brought up in Tangier,’ said Falcón, his brain unable to resist another non-coincidence. ‘What was your husband’s friend’s name?’
    ‘I don’t remember. It was ten years ago and there’vebeen far too many names since then, you know, working in the restaurant business.’
    ‘Did your husband have any children from that marriage?’
    ‘Yes. Two. A boy and a girl. They’re in their fifties now or close to it. The daughter, yes, that’s interesting. About a year after we got married a letter came here from a place called San Juan de Dios.’
    ‘That’s a mental institution on the outskirts of Madrid in Ciempozuelos.’
    ‘As any Madrileño would know,’ she said. ‘But when I asked Raúl about it he invented some ridiculous story until I confronted him with a direct debit to the same institution and he had to tell me that his daughter’s been an inmate there for more than thirty years.’
    ‘And the son?’
    ‘I never met him. Raúl wouldn’t be drawn on the subject. It was closed. A past chapter. They didn’t speak. I don’t even know where he lives, but I suppose I’ll have to find out now.’
    ‘Do you have a name?’
    ‘José Manuef Jiménez.’
    ‘And the mother’s maiden name?’
    ‘Bautista, yes, and she had a strange first name: Gumersinda.’
    ‘The children were both born in Tangier?’
    ‘They must have been.’
    ‘I’ll run it through the computer.’
    ‘Of course you will,’ she said.
    ‘Did he ever talk about his Tangier days … your husband?’
    ‘Now that was a very long time ago. We’re talking about the early forties and fifties. I think he left there shortly after independence in 1956. I don’t think he came straight here but I can’t be sure. All I do know was that by 1967,when his wife killed herself, he was living in a penthouse in one of those blocks of flats on the Plaza de Cuba. They were new then.’
    ‘And near the river.’
    ‘Yes, she must have looked at that river a lot,’ she said. ‘It can be quite mesmerizing, a river at night. Black, slow-moving waters don’t seem so dangerous.’
    ‘What do you know about your husband’s …?’
    ‘Call him Raúl, Inspector Jefe.’
    ‘Raúl’s personal and business relationships between, say, the death of his first wife and your meeting in the Feria in 1989?’
    ‘This is ancient history, Inspector Jefe. Do you think it’s relevant?’
    ‘No, I don’t, just background. I have to learn a life in a morning. I have to establish a victim in his context if I’m to have a chance at discovering motive. Most people are killed by people they know …’
    ‘Or thought they knew.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘The killer knew us, didn’t he? The happy Family Jiménez.’
    ‘He knew about you.’
    Out of nowhere her face crumpled and she started crying, burst into wracking sobs and collapsed forwards on to her knees. Falcón moved towards her, unsure how to act in these situations. She sensed it and held up her hand. He held out a box of tissues, hovering like a bad waiter. She slumped back into her chair, panting, her