Or the Bull Kills You

by Jason Webster

  Still, the realisation was there: he had a few days only, perhaps a week maximum, to sort this case out. After that he’d be shunted out somehow, in some manner that saw him fully screwed, yet with the image of the police force itself miraculously untarnished. The Bautista case gave them the excuse they needed. Pardo had already flagged it up, as though he’d seen this eventuality coming.

  Torres looked at him blankly when he walked into the office.

  ‘We’re to use the broom cupboard down the corridor as an incident room,’ he said. ‘Three policemen from the pool on shifts manning the phones. Apart from Ibarra and Sánchez, we’ve got Vargas and Montero full-time. Anyone else, we just have to ask.’

  Cámara grunted.

  ‘Pardo wants to see you.’

  He held up the hip flask and shook it consolingly in Cámara’s direction.

  ‘Got a refill.’

  ‘Later,’ Cámara said.

  A pile of the morning’s newspapers were heaped on Pardo’s desk, but the commissioner had turned his back on them and was staring out at the open sky.

  ‘Sit down, Cámara,’ he said without swivelling his chair round.

  ‘Must I?’ Cámara answered.

  ‘Look, just sit the fuck down, will you.’

  Cámara removed some of the papers stacked on the only other chair, looked in vain for a place to put them, then finally slid them into the wastepaper basket behind Pardo’s back. He sat and waited.

  ‘Judge Caballero,’ Pardo said at last, spinning his chair round towards Cámara, ‘is not very happy.’

  ‘He seemed all right yesterday.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Pardo said. ‘The fact is he’s not happy now.’

  Cámara cocked his head towards the newspapers lying on the desk between them.

  ‘It’s because he reads all that shit,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Pardo said. ‘Like everyone else in this city – except for you – he reads the morning papers. And like everyone else in this city, he’s going to think we’ve got a bit of a problem on our hands.’

  ‘It’s a police investigation. Who do they think I am? Sherlock fucking Holmes?’

  ‘Por el amor de Dios, Cámara. We’ve got two stiffs on our hands, one of whom just happens to be the most famous person in the country after King Juan Carlos, and we’ve released our only suspect.’

  ‘Caballero gave me specific instructions to release Aguado. Seemed a bit miffed I hadn’t done it sooner, to tell the truth,’ Cámara said.

  ‘Me suda la polla – I don’t give a sweaty cock what he said yesterday. Understand?’ Pardo brought his hand down on the desk and the newspapers gave a jolt; the top ones dislodged themselves from the rest and started to slide off and cascade on to the floor. Pardo thought for a moment about trying to stop them, but hesitated. Cámara watched as the stinging headlines flew in all directions, only to be smothered by the sports sections of the other newspapers falling on top of them.

  Cámara looked back at Pardo.

  ‘So what am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Look,’ Pardo said, ‘we’re just having one of those chats, ¿vale? Things aren’t going too well in the investigation, looks like it’s actually going backwards rather than forwards. So the big boss – that’s me – calls in his subordinate – that’s you – to have a talk about where things are going and how they might improve. You know how it works.’

  ‘Are you recording this conversation?’ Cámara asked, leaning in and looking for signs of a microphone somewhere.

  ‘¡Joder! Just reassure me, will you?’ Pardo raised his hands as though trying to reach Cámara’s neck and strangle him. ‘We’ve got the fucking Guardia Civil involved now. We’re going to look really bloody good if they catch the killer before we do, coming in late in the day as they did. Let me know you’ve got some leads, even one of those fucking hunches of yours, whatever. I need to know things are on track, that this isn’t actually a fucked-up investigation – despite the evidence to support that – and that you know what you’re doing. Got everything under control. That kind of thing.’

  ‘How about a proper team?’ Cámara said. ‘Ibarra and Sánchez are a couple of piss-heads not fit for directing traffic, and I haven’t even heard of the other two goons you’ve given me.’

  ‘Do you want me to take you off the case?’

  ‘And leave Torres on his own?’

  ‘Listen.’ Pardo paused, took a breath and lowered his voice. ‘We’ve got to start putting out some chickenfeed on this, something they can fill tomorrow’s papers with, because believe me this is not going to go away.’

  ‘I wish Flores could hear you,’ Cámara said under his breath.

  ‘Fuck the Town Hall. Look, just tell me anything. Give me something I can tell them.’

  A buzz of crashing thoughts and images passed through Cámara’s mind: the dark empty hole between Ruiz Pastor’s legs; Flores’s shining, scowling face; the closed shutters at Almudena’s flat; the slight gap between Alicia’s front teeth; the Municipal with the neck brace…

  ‘We’ve got some leads,’ he said at last. ‘Tell them we’ve got some promising leads.’

  He felt ashamed to hear himself come out with such empty words, but he looked up and saw a smile playing at the corner of Pardo’s lips. It was enough: it was the kind of vacuous language Pardo himself used every day.

  Pardo put his fingertips together and leaned forward.

  ‘Then I suggest,’ he said softly, ‘that you go out there and follow them up.’

  Cámara put his head back round the door.

  ‘Did Sánchez find anything out from the taxi firms?’

  Torres picked up his notes and glanced over them.

  ‘Teletaxi. Said they picked up a large man from outside the Torres de Serrano at five thirty yesterday morning. Dropped him off at the embarcadero near Les Gavines at around ten to six. Not much traffic around at that time, I suppose.’ He glanced down again at the notebook. ‘No tip.’

  Cámara pursed his lips.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Torres said. ‘Huerta called. Blanco’s traje de luces has been found – at the rubbish tip. One of the dustmen picked it up. Huerta reckons it would have been dumped in one of the containers near the bullring.’

  ‘All right. If he finds anything on it he’ll let us know,’ Cámara said. ‘I want you to go back to the Albufera. Where the hell are Ibarra and Sánchez?’

  Torres looked up.

  ‘Probably outside having a smoke.’

  ‘Take them with you. Talk to the Guardia Civil again, see if they’ve got anything from the fishermen down there. This is our murderer as well. They’re early risers in the Albufera. Someone must have seen something. Bring them here, if you have to – the sight of this place will loosen them up if they don’t want to talk to you.’

  Torres took up a pen and started scribbling.

  ‘And get…the other two…’

  ‘Vargas and Montero,’ Torres said.

  ‘Yeah. Get them to check out Cano’s movements yesterday morning. Is he still in the city? I want to know what he’s been doing since Blanco’s funeral.’

  Eleven

  The bullfighter is still a mythical figure, and when he becomes an expression of human valour against brute force, people can become enflamed and the old passions reappear.

  Enrique Tierno Galván

  A zeta squad car dropped him in front of Albero’s hat shop, across the wide boulevard from the bullring. Cámara waited for the high-pitched pinging of the traffic lights to begin and then started to cross carefully, watching the white flashing countdown of the seconds left to get to the other side. Valencian drivers showed little mercy to any foolhardy enough to be caught in the middle of the road. Halfway over he caught sight of a small group of people huddled around a table with posters taped to the front. The Anti-Taurino League were at their stall again, handing out leaflets and buttonholing as many people as they could along this busy walkway. You didn’t
get a spot like this without some kind of permission, he thought, otherwise the Municipales would be all over them in seconds. Somehow, he felt sure, he could detect the hand of Flores. Get this lot to do some free electioneering for them in these last few days of the campaign.

  Cámara spotted Marta Díaz, with her tied-back dreadlocked hair, trying to catch the attention of a woman passing by with shopping bags and a pram.

  Cámara circled for a moment, watching, then dived in, arriving just as a gap appeared in front of them.

  ‘Hola.’ Marta gave him a smile which quickly turned into an exaggerated frown once she recognised him.

  Cámara glanced down at one of their flyers.

  ‘I’m surprised to see you here,’ he said. ‘No hostility towards you lot?’

  ‘You gonna be our saviour now?’ She gave him a teasing, testing grin.

  ‘A few nutters come and spit at us,’ she said. ‘Think we’re being disrespectful. But we try to remind them that we’re showing respect to all the animals that get killed in there.’ She cocked her head towards the massive brick walls of the bullring behind them.

  ‘Most people are just interested in hearing what we have to say,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve got a petition!’

  A man with short dark blond hair butted in from next to Marta, clutching a piece of paper which he thrust in Cámara’s face.

  ‘Sign it for us?’

  ‘Angel, this is—’

  ‘Oh, I know you,’ Moreno said, cutting Marta off. ‘You’re the cop doing the Blanco thing. Saw you on the TV.’

  Cámara pulled a face.

  ‘Must be hard being a policeman during Fallas,’ Moreno continued with a chuckle. ‘All the noise from the firecrackers and stuff. Perfect time to shoot someone, right? BANG! Ha, ha!’

  He lifted his arm and pretended to shoot.

  ‘BANG!’ he repeated. ‘No one would even hear.’

  Cámara shrugged.

  ‘Come to check us out, then?’ Moreno smiled.

  Cámara picked up a second leaflet from the table between them and flicked through. Scattered throughout the text were photographs of dying, bleeding bulls. For a second he was taken aback by how gruesome the images were.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Marta asked him. ‘We’ve had these new ones printed out. Much better quality paper and stuff. I thought we could catch people’s attention more.’

  ‘My design, actually,’ Moreno said with a sneer directed at Marta. ‘My idea, not yours. Got it?’

  ‘All right.’ Marta rolled her eyes. ‘I was only saying…’

  ‘Yeah, well don’t. You know I don’t like it.’

  Marta fell silent.

  ‘Got to shock people, see?’ Moreno said, turning to Cámara. ‘Otherwise they don’t get it. So you gonna sign our petition, then? It’s only if people like us really get together that we can stop the bloodshed. Put our names down, get a new law passed banning bullfighting. We can do it, we really can, what with the election coming.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Cámara said.

  ‘We can come round to your house and pick it up there, if you prefer. Might not want people seeing you join us in public, that kind of thing.’

  ‘No, that’s all right,’ Cámara replied.

  ‘At least sign it while you’re still in charge of the case.’

  ‘Angel.’ Marta gave him a look. He leaned forward and gave her a wet kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Sorry, babe.’

  In an instant he had turned his attention on a group of English tourists who were confused by the pictures of bulls on their placards and the words they didn’t understand.

  ‘Take the leaflets with you if you want,’ Marta said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Cámara said, folding a couple and putting them into his jacket pocket.

  He looked around at the crowds pouring out of the Estación del Norte. A train had arrived, one of the local services bringing people from the outlying towns and villages to take part in the Fallas fiesta. Soon, in a matter of days, it would be almost impossible to move in the city.

  He turned back to Marta.

  ‘That little show you put on at the Bar Los Toros that night,’ Cámara said. ‘What was that all about?’

  Marta hesitated for a second.

  ‘The main demo was here, outside the bullring,’ she said. ‘But we wanted to take it into the lion’s den, I suppose.’

  ‘Did you all go?’

  ‘No, just a smaller group of us. Perhaps we got a bit carried away.’

  ‘What did you do afterwards?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘What, after you’d kicked us out?’ She smiled. ‘Well, we went home. What with Blanco’s death we just decided to pack it in for the night. Respect and stuff.’

  ‘They weren’t very pleased with you in the Bar Los Toros.’

  ‘They’re bloody murderers, those people. Sitting there, drinking expensive wines, with their plush cars. And they have a go at us!’

  ‘It was you who smashed the glasses off the table, remember.’

  ‘Well, as I say,’ Marta said, her chin rising defiantly, ‘you get a bit carried away sometimes, but we’re talking about criminals. They should be locked up. Someone’s got to take a stance.’

  ‘Are you a vegetarian?’ Cámara asked her.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Look, they’re not gonna do us for the damage in the bar, are they?’

  ‘Plenty of witnesses, passions running high,’ Cámara said. ‘The club will probably report you.’

  Marta’s face fell.

  ‘But then people have got a lot on their minds at the moment,’ he added. ‘Chances are it’s already been forgotten.’

  The red-painted, greasy walls gave off a dull shimmer from the late morning light as Cámara walked into the now familiar space. The bull’s head mounted on the wall behind the bar looked out with its heavy, black-eyed stare. Well, my friend, Cámara thought as he spied it, you were right: it looks as though I do have horns, I am cuckold.

  The barman made a solitary figure at one end, smoking a cigarette and flicking through the newspaper, not bothering to look up at the sound of the door and Cámara walking in.

  Cámara had been mildly surprised to see it open. It wasn’t beyond a place like this to close for a week in mourning after what had happened, but the bullfights had restarted after a day’s suspension in Blanco’s honour, and the aficionados would want a drink at their usual place before and after the spectacle.

  Cámara went up to the bar and looked over expectantly in the barman’s direction, but his host’s head remained buried in the pages of the sports section, just waiting long enough to show that he was servant to no man. Eventually, after drawing hard on the end of his cigarette and then stubbing it out thoroughly, taking as long as he could – all rituals one expected in an established bar, where mild rudeness to customers was the prerogative of the staff – he stood up straight and as nonchalantly as possible sauntered over in Cámara’s direction, not as though Cámara mattered to him at all, but in a manner which suggested he had other business to attend to at that end of the bar, and that if he took Cámara’s order while he were at it he would be doing him a favour. When finally he glanced at his customer’s face and recognised him, however, his body language changed instantly.

  ‘Hombre, Chief Inspector,’ he said. And without waiting to hear Cámara’s order, he immediately reached for a glass and started pouring Cámara a complimentary Mahou.

  ‘There,’ he said, bringing it down on to the chrome top in front of them with a clink. Some of the foam on top spilled over the edge and started sliding down the side of the glass.

  ‘Not going to have one with me?’ Cámara asked. The barman raised an eyebrow, frowned, then poured himself half a caña.

  ‘The boss hasn’t been here since you-know-when. Depression, he says. Can’t face coming in. Don’t think he’ll grudge me quenching my thirst a bit on the job.’

&n
bsp; ‘I was a little surprised to see you open,’ Cámara said, raising his glass now that the barman was joining him and taking his first cold gulp. The Mahou was on tap here, Cámara’s favourite.

  ‘Things have been a bit rough, as you can imagine,’ the barman said. He put his glass down, walked back to the end of the bar, picked up his cigarettes and lighter and then strolled back to Cámara’s end. He nudged a cigarette out with his finger and offered it to Cámara. Fortuna: he preferred something stronger, but it was becoming more and more difficult to call himself a non-smoker, so he reached forwards and took it.

  ‘We kind of feel tainted by it all, you know? The boss feels guilty, somehow, as if he was responsible – inviting Blanco over here for the award ceremony and all that. Seems to think that if he hadn’t, Blanco would still be here today. I told him, it’s nothing to do with you. I told him. Whoever it was would have gone for him anyway. But he says no, Blanco would have probably left straight after the fight if he hadn’t been coming round here. Instead he stuck around in the bullring and…well, I don’t need to tell you.’

  Cámara nodded and inhaled deeply.

  ‘I mean, I know there are people who are pleased to see the back of him. To tell the truth, we all thought he’d get it in the ring one day. But from a bull, of course. The way he used to stand there, bulls running past him centimetres away. No one fought like that. He was a hero to ordinary folk – putting his balls on the line like that. Why he was injured so often? ’Cause he fought like you’re supposed to. Life and death, like the old ones used to. Nowadays the rest of them are just happy getting the cheque at the end of each fight. Not Blanco. He wasn’t doing it for the money. Strange that – haven’t honestly been able to say that about any bullfighter, for, ooh, I don’t know how long. Not since I was a kid, probably. Antonio Ordóñez’s time. But that’s why people respected him, see? You can tell, you can just tell when they’re doing it for real. We’ve had nothing but fake bullfighting all these years, and then along comes Blanco and whoosh, it’s like a breath of fresh air. And for lots of people it’s the first time they’re seeing the real thing, and they’re just blown away by it, never seen anything like it. And some people come along saying it’s just morbo – people just going to see him ’cause they’re hoping to see him gored and all that. But that’s bollocks. People went to see Blanco fight ’cause he was the greatest bullfighter around. Probably the greatest there’s ever been. I know there are people think it’s blasphemy saying something like that, but I reckon it’s true. I saw the greats back in the sixties, I saw Ordóñez and Dominguín. And they were special, believe me. And Blanco was up there with them, I swear. People loved him, they respected him. And they can’t take that away from him. Ever. No matter what they do to him, no matter how they humiliate him. Alive or dead. That was Blanco all over. Once you’ve got people’s respect, that’s the most important thing. Money, women, the cars, all that bollocks, you can forget that. It’s the respect that lasts, what’ll make him immortal.’