'I'll get back to the Médico Forense,' said the judge and left the room.

Falcón went to the window, took out his mobile and thumbed up Alicia Aguado's number from the address book. She was the clinical psychologist he'd been seeing for more than a year. His thumb stroked the call button and a flash of anger helped him to resist pressing it. This could wait until their regular weekly appointment the following evening. They'd covered his ex-wife Inés a million times over and she would just chastise him again for not moving on.

Javier and Inés had settled their differences. It had been a part of the rebuilding process after the Francisco Falcón scandal had broken fifteen months ago.

Francisco was the world-famous artist whom Javier had always believed to be his father, but who had been revealed as a fraud, a murderer and not his real father after all. Inés had forgiven Javier even before they'd arranged to meet some months after the media frenzy. It had been his coldness, captured by her terrible rhyming mantra, Tú no tienes corazón, Javier Falcón. 'You have no heart, Javier Falcón', that had finished their short marriage. Given his family history it was now clear to her why he should have been deficient in this fundamental human way. Over the last few months of his therapy thoughts of her had subsided, but whenever her name came up there was an unmistakable leap in his stomach. Her terrible accusation still mangled his mind and, in forgiving him she'd become, in his unstable state, someone to whom he had to prove himself.

And now this. Still, Inés had been seeing the judge for nearly a year and a half. They were the new golden couple not just of the Seville legal system, but of Seville society as well. Their marriage was an inevitability, which didn't made the news any easier to bear.

Vázquez appeared on his shoulder in the reflection of the glass. Falcón switched back into professional mode.

'How surprised are you to find your client dead under these strange circumstances, Sr Vázquez?' he asked.