Or the Bull Kills You

by Jason Webster

  ‘Are you watering them?’ Cámara said, opening up his ivory marihuana box to see how much was left.

  ‘Not much else to do,’ Hilario said with a sigh. ‘Pilar won’t touch them. Thinks she’ll go to hell if she does. She says she’s given up on me already, although I know she lights a candle for my soul every Sunday. So it’s up to me.’

  Cámara could hear his grandfather’s difficult breathing from the other end of the line. His housekeeper could do many things for him, but while age had brought some physical limitations, the old anarchist’s bloody-mindedness had resisted all assaults from either her or his increasing frailty.

  ‘They like a bit of sunshine at this time of year,’ Hilario continued. ‘Helps them get off the ground. I suppose you’re going to be busy what with all this lot. Still, you could drive up and back in a day. Bring what’s-her-name. Almudena.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  Cámara felt the pulse in his temple where he was holding his head.

  ‘Like that, is it?’ Hilario said. ‘Never mind. Get as much as you can while you can, that’s my advice. You only regret it when you reach my age. When I think of the amount of skirt I could have had and didn’t.’

  Cámara laughed silently to himself: the phrase had become something of a motto for his grandfather in recent years.

  ‘It was your grandmother, never took her eyes off me, that was my problem. Mujer con celos, los diablos tiene en el cuerpo – A jealous woman has devils in her.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Cámara said. ‘I’ll come up soon. Promise.’

  ‘I know you will,’ Hilario said. ‘Must be close to running out, I’d say.’

  Seven

  The only important muscle in bullfighting is the heart

  Agustín de Foxá

  Monday 13th March

  Torres was already in the office the following morning when Cámara walked in. First at the entrance, then in the hallway, Cámara had noticed one small group, then another, huddled over what looked like photocopies of some pictures, lifting their heads and giving him furtive glances. Torres had his head buried in what appeared to be the same material.

  ‘Something to brighten up your morning, chief,’ he said as Cámara threw his coat over some box files. Cámara sat down amid the debris and Torres leaned over to pass him four sheets of paper stapled together.

  The photocopies appeared to show what looked like a dummy of a magazine article, with bright colourful photographs and blocks of text. The first thing that Cámara noticed was a logo in the top corner. Entrevista was a well-known title, one of the batch that had emerged in Spain in the wake of Franco’s death offering a best-selling combination of sensationalist investigative journalism and photos of topless women. The bare breasts on its front cover might not have shocked now quite as much as then, but it had a more than respectable circulation, and was a staple of doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms across the land, along with the usual gossip magazines of the prensa rosa and a comic or two for the kids.

  In the centre of the front sheet, however, dominating his line of vision, was a shot of a person who only the day before he had seen in mourning.

  My tears for love of my life Jorge Blanco, Cámara read next to an image of Carmen Luna kneeling down, a bullfighter’s hat – a montera – on her head, and a blue and pink capote with Blanco’s name printed on it draped over her naked shoulder, leaving exposed one proud, rounded breast.

  Large red letters across the bottom encouraged would-be readers to read the full ‘story’ inside. Cámara turned the page. The next photo showed Carmen in a vaguely religious setting, a black veil pushed back off her face, approaching what appeared to be an icon of some sort – perhaps a statue of the Madonna, although it was out of focus. Her eyes were slightly downcast, a look of sadness etched into her face, while in her hands she held a candle, whose soft light cast down on to her exposed breasts. The caption read: Carmen has been praying night and day for Blanco’s soul since his untimely and brutal death.

  Cámara’s eyes passed down to the next shot. Here Carmen had her back to the camera and was holding out one of Blanco’s capotes to the side of her body, as if pretending to fight an imaginary bull. On her head once again was a bullfighter’s cap, while on her feet as she stood in the middle of a sunny, sandy practice bullring, was a pair of very red high heels. She was wearing nothing else. Cámara read the caption: Carmen has been an aficionada of bullfighting since she was a child.

  He looked up at Torres pleadingly.

  ‘Keep going,’ Torres said. ‘There’s more.’

  Cámara sighed and turned over the page to see yet another naked image of Carmen taking up the entire A4 sheet of paper, this time raising a couple of bright red and yellow banderillas in her hands as about to bring them down on the lens of the camera.

  ‘Pretty impressive camera work, don’t you think?’ Torres said. ‘Almost makes you feel what it’s like to be the bull.’ His face fell when he saw the expression on Cámara’s face.

  The last photo, in an act of uncharacteristic modesty, showed Carmen wearing a bullfighter’s traje de luces, the shiny adornments – the alamares – reflecting the studio lamps surrounding her like a thousand suns. The front of the suit had been left partially open as Carmen gazed up at an image of Blanco on the wall, almost in an act of devotion, the curve of her breasts and just one tasteful nipple visible this time. The caption read: ‘Jorge is like a god for me’.

  ‘That’s it, no more,’ Torres said, attempting to put Cámara out of his misery. ‘She certainly doesn’t mess about, does she.’

  ‘I take it this is a piss-take,’ Cámara said. ‘Someone’s made the whole thing up with some computer program.’

  Torres shook his head.

  ‘It’s real,’ he said.

  Cámara looked up in disbelief.

  ‘Sánchez brought them,’ Torres went on. ‘Says he’s got a mate who works at the magazine – marketing side, apparently. Sent him this in an email. They’re publishing it tomorrow. Special edition.’

  ‘And Sánchez made some printouts.’

  ‘First useful thing he’s done for weeks. The whole Jefatura will have seen it by lunchtime.’

  ‘I notice there was a scattering of text in there,’ Cámara said, casting an eye back over the photos. ‘Say anything interesting?’

  ‘She and Blanco were going to get married this summer. The engagement, you may remember – or not – was announced around Christmas time.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Not really. Just that Blanco was the best lover she’d ever had. No small claim, given her track record. Still, doesn’t necessarily rule him out as gay.’

  He leaned out to pick up the photocopies, flicked over a page and started reading: ‘“My Jorge was all man. I never loved anyone as handsome or as virile. He taught me what true love means. My life has been destroyed by this cruel, tragic event. I will never forget him. Once we were married we were going to try for children, the one thing that has been missing from my life. But now this dream lies in ruins.” Laying it on a bit thick, don’t you think.’

  ‘When would these have been laid out?’ Cámara asked. ‘This morning?’

  Torres nodded, his black beard brushing against the collar of his shirt. ‘Finish it off today, print all night, rush it out for dawn tomorrow.’

  ‘So the shoot would have been yesterday, almost certainly before the funeral. Could they really do the whole thing so fast?’

  ‘Makes you wonder, right?’ Torres said.

  ‘Where’s Aguado?’

  ‘Downstairs. Nothing doing. I was going to start on him again in a minute or two.’

  ‘Has he seen this?’

  ‘Chief!’

  ‘Forget it,’ Cámara said. He stood up and looked about the room. ‘Have you got those reports I asked for?’

  Torres leaned over and tapped a finger on the small pile of brown folders at the side of Cámara’s desk.

  ‘Oh, and
Ibarra came back with info about Aguado at El Cabanyal,’ Torres said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘He puts on exhibitions at a local art centre sometimes, but keeps pretty much to himself. A couple of mentions in the local press over the past five years, but he’s not exactly a big player in the city’s art scene.’

  ‘All right,’ Cámara said. ‘It’s still not clear how he makes a living. Anything else?’

  ‘One of his neighbours said he occasionally had a visitor. She only noticed because it was so rare. Says she never saw the face, but that it was definitely a man. Went round late in the morning the day Blanco was killed.’

  ‘That it?’ Cámara asked. Torres shrugged.

  ‘Right, I need to do some studying,’ Cámara said. No need to rush; Spain had some of the harshest laws in Europe regarding detainees’ rights: they could keep Aguado incommunicado, with only access to an appointed lawyer, for up to five days. ‘Forget about Aguado for a minute and put out a search for Junama Ruiz Pastor, Blanco’s apoderado. I want to speak to him and he’s doing a good job of making himself scarce.’

  Once he was on his own, Cámara flicked through the information files looking for the one he’d wanted to read first. Alicia Beneyto, he read, and immediately opened it up. The photo was the same as the one he’d seen by her newspaper column, the face a little younger, the eyes harder than he remembered them. From the top he read the basic information: date of birth – just a couple of years younger than himself; place of birth – Madrid; ID number; marital status – divorced; children – none.

  The rest of it was as he had expected: a degree in journalism from the Complutense University in Madrid; worked for a series of regional papers across Spain before settling in Valencia on the staff of El Diario. Her ex-husband, Cámara had correctly remembered, was the editor. They’d separated after the night editor found him having sex with one of the summer internees on top of the sports desk. The scandal had been bad enough for him to lose his wife, but not his job. That had been a year and a half ago. The official date for the divorce was the previous October.

  Cámara stood up and walked over to the filing cabinet, where he felt his hand down the back looking for the hip flask. His fingertips found nothing. Cursing, he tried the other side, but came away empty-handed. He glanced around the office for a second, his eyes assaulted by the piles of still-unsorted paperwork lying around like mini siege towers. But still no sign of the hip flask. Defeated, he slumped back in his chair and started reading through the other files.

  The next one that came to hand was the one on Carmen Luna. For a second Cámara hesitated to open it, wondering if Sánchez had placed one of his photocopies inside as a mugshot. He flicked the cover open and was pleased to see there was no image at all – clearly, none was thought necessary.

  Cámara read the story of Carmen’s life, information filleted out of the pages of gossip magazines over the years. She was actually fifty-one, although she sometimes claimed to be only forty-three. Born in Malaga, she used to be a singer of coplas, or traditional Spanish folk songs, and became famous at the age of seventeen when she won the Benidorm Song Competition. The ageing Franco had invited her for tea at the Pardo Palace. She quickly married her manager, Juan Casillas, although he had died a couple of years later of a heart attack, leaving her a mansion in Puerto Banús and enough money never to have to work again. Despite that she had carried on singing, and over the years had several high-profile love affairs with, among others, Pedro Llorens, the famous golf impresario, and Jesús Cabra, the lead singer of the punk rock band Los Hijos de Puta. An Arab banker and half a dozen minor celebrities had also been ‘romantically linked’ to her over time. She’d had her own popular TV show for the past three years, but had given it up on starting her relationship with Blanco, which had officially begun six months before. Carmen, Cámara read, had said she now wanted to devote her entire life to the young ‘god’ of the bullring, hoping that one day she would be mother to his children.

  No mention was made of how this unlikely couple were expecting to make children, particularly given her advanced years, but doubtless, Cámara reasoned, it had something to do with test tubes. Part of his imagination was already wondering if samples of Blanco’s sperm weren’t already in the deep freeze in some fertility clinic somewhere, waiting to be injected into Carmen’s womb. A dead man fathering children. He let out a sigh. Carmen was of the old-fashioned school, at least as far as public image was concerned. Marriage would almost certainly have had to come first. Still, the possibility niggled inside him as he put Carmen’s file down and reached for the next one.

  The files on the Ramírez family members didn’t tell him much he didn’t already know from Alicia. Ramírez himself was seventy-eight, while Paco, the elder son, was forty-nine, and Roberto, the second, was forty-five. Ramírez had married Aurora Palacios when he was twenty-five and she was eighteen, and they’d lived on the finca ever since, Ramírez inheriting it from his father, who had got it from the grandfather, the founder of the bull farm back in the late nineteenth century. Paco was due to inherit and continue the family business in turn, while Roberto, who had split from the family ten years before, was a successful banker in Madrid, with investments around the world concentrating on biochemicals. He was the major shareholder in the German firm Hauptmann und Fischer GmbH as well as having important stakes in the US firm Technochemical Inc. and the Italian logistics company Malatesta Servizi Logistici S.p.A. The news of his break with the family had been a big story at the time, given the high reputation of the Ramírez breeders, and particularly given Roberto’s well-publicised rejection of bullfighting as a cruel activity unworthy of a modern country like Spain. And it appeared that these weren’t empty words: he was a major backer of Mayoress Delgado’s campaign, with strong links to her right-hand man, Javier Flores. According to the information Torres had gathered, he’d been spending considerable time in Valencia in recent weeks for this reason, in between business trips to Hamburg, Vienna and New York. The last one had been cut short by Blanco’s death, and he’d immediately flown over to be present at the funeral.

  Cámara spent slightly more time studying the next file, on Juanma Ruiz Pastor, staring closely at the photograph of the man with the trilby hat, cropped grey beard and habitual cigar in his mouth. At the time he had been certain it was the man he saw in the back of the taxi the night before. Hours later, and after an albeit fitful night’s sleep, he was less sure. He remembered Alicia’s comments about the frictions between him and Blanco. Something about money, she had said, although she hadn’t been more specific. Cámara had an urge to speak with the man, a feeling almost like a physical hunger. And the more elusive he was proving, the stronger it got.

  Ruiz Pastor (age – sixty-four; married, no kids) had been in the bullfighting world since he was a boy. He’d wanted to be a torero himself, but had soon found he had greater talents outside the ring. Becoming Cano’s apoderado had been his first big move, and his fortunes had risen alongside the flashy young matador’s. The two had been a kind of double act, Cano often making the headlines as much for his personal life as for his bullfighting, Ruiz Pastor acting as his spokesman to the press when scandal and impropriety came knocking at the door again.

  But then Blanco had appeared, and Ruiz Pastor moved in on him. He’d set out to become Blanco’s manager before he’d even told Cano he was leaving him. Cano had always blamed Ruiz Pastor, never Blanco, although there were those who claimed Blanco had been the one who went out aiming to hook Ruiz Pastor for himself.

  Cámara opened the file on Cano. It told the same story, and tallied with what he’d heard from Alicia. What was new, however, was that when the split occurred, Cano had made jokes about Blanco being a maricón. Later he’d denied the comments, but in some ways they accorded with the respective public images of the two men: Cano the womaniser always happy with the cameras on him, especially when snapped coming out of a bar or a flashy brothel; Blanco the more private man, an enigma in many w
ays as far as his life outside the bullring was concerned. The only woman who’d even been seen at his side was Carmen Luna, but even that very public relationship hadn’t been enough for the rumours about his homosexuality to go away.

  Cámara took a last glance through the Cano file: he was a couple of years older than Blanco, known for a more showy, more modern style of bullfighting. If Blanco’s focus in the ring had all been on the bull, Cano’s was on the audience.

  The two remaining files were on Marta Díaz and Angel Moreno, of the Anti-Bullfighting League. Moreno was twenty-seven and had formerly trained, as a teenager, at the Valencia bullfighting school. There was no official record of why he had left, but on the league’s website he explained that he’d rejected the world of los toros after seeing the horrific suffering of the animals at close hand. Since then he’d campaigned to have it banned, and had become a leading member of the organisation. In a handwritten note Torres added: Moreno’s former maestro at the school, Emilio Valdés, alleged that Moreno attacked him in the street some time after Moreno had left the school, and that it was a revenge attack because he’d actually been expelled for ‘activities not in keeping with the ethics of bullfighting’, whatever that means. Nothing ever came of it – lack of proof – so it was dropped. No police records of the incident, but one of the guys in Violent Crime remembers it.

  Cámara read on: Marta Díaz was twenty-five and had been involved in anti-bullfighting causes since she was a child. Her parents had been active among the earlier campaigners back in the seventies, but kept out of things now. Considered to be relatively eloquent and experienced, she’d been an unofficial spokeswoman for the league for the past three years. It wasn’t possible to date the start of her relationship with Moreno exactly, but it was thought they’d been together for at least two years.

  Cámara looked up as Torres opened the door.

  ‘Put out a call for Ruiz Pastor,’ Torres said. ‘No one seems to know where he is. His office haven’t got a clue, he’s not answering his mobile phone, while the Hotel Suiza are saying he checked out early this morning, around six o’clock.’