Or the Bull Kills You

by Jason Webster

  And so had begun a new phase in their relationship. No longer was Hilario his surrogate parent, now they quickly became smoking buddies. At first it was easy to get hold of – riding a wave of anti-authoritarianism in the early 1980s, the Socialist government of Felipe González made possession legal. Things tightened up later on, though, and it became necessary to find other sources, which was when Hilario redesigned a portion of their patio – a private corner where the neighbours couldn’t see what they were up to – into a mini marihuana jungle. After a couple of years of failures – during which he learned to separate the male from the female plants, and not to harvest them too soon, before the THC had been formed in the leaves – they had managed to produce a nice little amount, enough to keep them going all year at least until the next plants were ready.

  Hilario had stopped smoking so much in recent years: a chest infection had given him a bit of a shock, and now he limited himself to an occasional puff on one of Cámara’s porros when he called round, the two of them pulling up their chairs on to the balcony over their street, looking out towards the ochre-coloured fields that surrounded the city and letting the world turn quietly around them.

  Never once did Hilario realise, though, that for Cámara smoking was never about turning his nose up at the system. It was – and had always been – purely about survival.

  There was only one family photo in the flat. They’d burnt the rest. Hilario had insisted: it was important to keep moving forwards, never to get stuck. The remaining specimen had been placed in a simple metal frame and left in the corner of the room. But for Pilar it would have been lost, or smothered in dust, yet it managed to survive, resting at the end of a shelf next to a handful of books – translations of Steinbeck and an old book on sex education. For years Cámara hadn’t looked at it at all, obeying his grandfather’s command to forget the past. But over recent years he had found himself taking it down on more than one occasion – perhaps every time he came up here now. He wondered who these people were, who they would have been had they survived. Cámara himself stood at one side, pressed against his mother’s legs and holding on to his father’s hand. His father had been younger, then, much younger than Cámara was now. That was another family tradition Cámara had broken: both Hilario and then his son had had children early on: it was difficult to have an active sex life back then and not end up with a crop of kids, despite the Anarchists’ long-held support for birth control. Growing up in a different, more liberal world, Cámara had decided, like most of his contemporaries, to wait. Waiting for what, though? If he’d known earlier what he’d now discovered he could have avoided years of passion-quelling fuss over condoms and diaphragms.

  At the other side of the photo the figure of his sister drew his attention, as it always did: she looked so happy, so cheerful, her long chestnut hair falling over her shoulders and young breasts. Had it been those fresh new curves that had caught her killer’s eye in the first place? Cámara looked away and concentrated on his food.

  ‘Heading back to Valencia later?’

  Cámara put his fork down and leaned over to put his hand on Hilario’s arm.

  ‘Just a flying visit. I needed to come up anyway.’

  ‘This Blanco business, is it?’ Hilario said, not expecting an answer. ‘He was the best; I’m sure they’ve told you that.’

  ‘Several times.’

  ‘Course,’ Hilario said, watching Cámara closely, ‘I should never have taken you that time, when you were a kid. If I hadn’t you’d probably know all about Blanco already, be an aficionado. Perhaps even a bullfighter yourself. But it put you off bullfighting for life, that did. Instead you’ve been landed with working out who murdered him. And we’re not talking about a bull, neither. If I believed in a God – and I don’t, let’s make that clear – but if I did I’d say that right now he’s having a bloody good laugh.’

  They both smiled.

  ‘Sure you can’t stay for a quick smoke? You know I don’t like doing it on my own these days. It’s a lovely crop this year. I get the giggles just walking into the drying room from the smell of it.’

  It had long been a mystery to Cámara how the severe Pilar, whose word was final on most things in the household, had ever managed to let this one crime of theirs pass without comment or reproach. For a while he suspected she simply didn’t know what it was and had decided it was nothing but a harmless hobby of his grandfather’s. Until one day, when he’d asked, Hilario explained that he’d caught their black-robed saint short-changing him on the grocery money.

  ‘She had nothing on me after that. She was either out on her own, a lonely widow, or stay here and shut up. She chose to stay, not surprisingly. At which point I decided to try my hand at becoming a drug baron. I have to water them myself, of course. She won’t go near them – thinks she might catch something if she did. But I know she’ll never say anything to anyone.’

  Cámara finished his lunch in silence, his mind wandering over details of the case, circling and probing Margarita de la Fuente’s theory about there being more than one murderer. Instinctively he’d known all along – had done so since the morning they’d found Ruiz Pastor’s body at the barraca. Now Margarita’s comments seemed to confirm a previously unworded suspicion. From now on he’d work on that assumption, but would keep it to himself at least for the next day or so. Nothing would make things worse with Pardo than to tell him they might be looking at two killers rather than one. The obvious question to ask, though, was whether they were linked. Had someone held a grudge against Ruiz Pastor and then decided that this was the perfect time to murder him while making it appear that Blanco’s killer was responsible? Or were the two actually working together? If so, why kill Ruiz Pastor as well and go to the trouble of making the two murders appear to have been committed by the same person?

  Hilario got up from the table and wandered off down the corridor then returned a few moments later with half a dozen semi-transparent plastic bags filled with dry green leaves.

  ‘Here,’ he said, placing them on the table next to Cámara’s empty plate. ‘You going to the cemetery?’

  Cámara shook his head. ‘Not this time.’ He could never make it for the first of November, the day when traditionally people tended the graves of their dead, and so he would pop over whenever he could, on the odd times when he jumped in the Seat and drove up to his home town. The flowers where his sister lay at least were changed once, sometimes twice a year. Those of his parents less often.

  He picked up the plastic bags and got up to leave. Hilario walked with him to the door. It was a short visit, but it was worth popping round, just to see how the old man was doing, Cámara told himself. Sometimes they didn’t need to talk too much: just being in the same space was enough.

  ‘It’s got to you,’ Hilario said as Cámara opened the door and stepped out back into the stairwell.

  ‘What has?’ Cámara looked down at the marihuana he was clutching in his hand. The light was poor where they stood, but he caught a glimpse of his knuckles gleaming white where he gripped hard. He wondered for a moment about telling him about being infertile. This particular Cámara line, at least, would soon be dying out.

  ‘This Blanco business,’ Hilario said. ‘I can tell. Something about this is bothering you. Are you getting enough?’

  Cámara sighed. As ever, his grandfather’s solution to most problems was a full and active sex life.

  ‘That Almudena’ll be giving you problems again, I’ll bet. Es una rosa pero pincha como un cardo – She’s as sweet as a rose but as prickly as a thistle.’

  Cámara turned and went to switch on the stair light before heading back down into the street.

  ‘You’ll come through it,’ Hilario called after him. ‘You always did.’

  Sixteen

  He’s got more balls than a blind bullfighter

  Traditional

  The road out of Albacete headed south for a mile or two before arriving at a junction. Cámara reached the roundabout and
stared for a moment at the large blue-and-white sign pointing the way east back down to Valencia. Ahead of him an old trunk road passed through a dusty industrial estate before breaking out into the open countryside and the hills of the Sierra Alcaraz in the far distance, smothered that afternoon by a heavy haze. He checked his watch: if he drove fast he could be back in the Jefatura by half past five, leaving plenty of time to go over Huerta’s notes. Some thought was struggling at the back of his mind: a worry or concern he had managed to forget about for a while, yet an echo of it remained. What had that been about?

  The lights of the car behind flashed in his rear-view mirror and he heard a horn blast: he was holding everyone up. He pushed a CD of Camarón de la Isla into the stereo, slammed the car into gear and pressed down on the accelerator, carrying on straight and ignoring the slip road heading down to the Valencia motorway. There was a place up in those hills he needed to see.

  He found the village easily. In these underpopulated parts of the country it was difficult to get lost, with so few roads and a small town dotted only every ten or fifteen miles. The rest was a wash of green and yellow, stunted oak trees dotted over the hillsides, with an occasional flash of brilliant black as a small group of bulls came briefly into view only to disappear again as the gritty, unpainted road curved away. Cámara slowed to a virtual standstill as he cruised through the one street looking for signs of life. The houses were mostly old and small, the contours of their stone exteriors softened by centuries of annual whitewashing. A bar stood at the side, its presence signalled by a Coca-Cola sign in incongruous red hanging over its front door. But the iron gateway was firmly closed: the owner wasn’t expecting any customers at that time of day.

  He knew that the farm was another couple of miles beyond the village. Not spying anyone in the street, he slowly pressed on the accelerator and began to pick up speed. There was a risk that he might catch people during their siesta if he arrived now, but he wasn’t prepared to hang around until a more sociable hour.

  A small house was set back slightly from the road on the outskirts of the village. As he drew nearer he caught sight of a figure in black pouring a bucket of water out over the flagstones by the front door. He braked and brought the car to a stop. He remembered the old woman clearly: the black hair tied back in a bun; a small, frail frame; delicate, yet bony hands. He got out of the car and crossed the empty road. Hearing the sound of his footsteps, she slowly lifted her head to look, but the eyes that stared back at Cámara spoke of someone elsewhere, a spirit already moving in a different space.

  ‘Señora?’ Cámara asked. She didn’t reply.

  ‘Are you the mother of Jorge Blanco?’ He tried again. At the sound of her son’s name something seemed to stir inside the old woman. She placed the bucket by the side of the door and turned to head inside. Cámara followed.

  A fire was burning in the stone hearth, the scent of wood smoke filling the air. Cámara stood by a dark wooden table as he watched the old woman head into an old-fashioned kitchen, with a marble sink and tiny gas stove. Did she remember wearing anything other than black, he wondered? Blanco’s father had died before their son had been born. Doubtless he would have seen his mother dressed in mourning all his life.

  She emerged again carrying an unlabelled bottle of wine and a glass tumbler. Not asking if he wanted any, she poured a full measure and handed it to him. Cámara took it and sat in the armchair she pointed to near the chimney.

  ‘Le acompaño en su dolor,’ he said, repeating the usual phrase of condolence. She waved his words away as though flicking away a troublesome fly.

  ‘It’s all dirt,’ she said. ‘Todo sucio.’ And she sat down opposite him, her hands wrapping over one another. Signs of forgetfulness, perhaps despair, were captured in Cámara’s mind as his eyes flickered over the room: rotting fruit in a bowl on the table; firewood that had fallen from its shelf near the fire and was now perilously close to the flames; a purse spilling its contents over the floor where it had fallen and been left. He looked again into her eyes, but they appeared to be covered in a grey film.

  ‘I’m investigating the death of your son, señora,’ he said, reaching into his jacket to look for his badge.

  She gave the golden shiny metal the minimum of attention as he showed it to her. In the silence Cámara took a sip of the sharp, vinegary wine and swallowed hard, then looked for a safe corner of the hearth and placed the tumbler down.

  ‘There’s some cheese, if you want.’

  Getting to her feet, she disappeared into the kitchen. Cámara took advantage of her absence to put the firewood back on its shelf, and leaned over to pick up the purse and its contents, placing them on the table. The purse flicked open as he did so, revealing the woman’s dated, old-fashioned blue-and-white ID card. Her name caught his attention for a second: Josefina Blanco Sol.

  She was standing in front of him again, a plate of moulding cheese in her trembling hand. Cámara took it from her and they returned to the fire.

  ‘Did you meet Jorge’s friend?’ she asked, her face brightening up for a second before seeming to cloud over again, her eyes turning to the flames.

  ‘He had a friend,’ she said. ‘A special friend, he always told me he was. He called me when…when…He couldn’t make it to the funeral. He said…’

  Whatever it was he had said, she seemed to have trouble remembering it now. Cámara thought of Aguado. Had she met him?

  ‘Señora Blanco,’ Cámara said. She lifted her eyes again at the sound of her name. ‘Do you remember the last time you saw your son?’

  ‘You were there,’ she said. ‘I remember you now. You spoke to his…’

  ‘I was at the funeral,’ Cámara said as she tailed off again. ‘I was there. But I mean when he was alive, the last time you saw him alive. Could you tell me about that?’

  The greying eyes began to drift again, her chin drooping as she seemed to fall into some dark reverie. He watched her for a few moments, trying to gauge whether he’d pushed her too quickly. Perhaps he was wasting his time anyway. If there were any clues about Blanco’s death in his personal life he doubted his mother would be able to cast any light on them. Although she did seem to know about Aguado.

  His eyes started to wander around the room again. If he had needed a clearer example of age being more about a state of mind, then it was here. The woman had just lost her only son, it was true, but she must have been twenty, perhaps thirty years younger than Hilario. The same age his grandfather had been when he lost his own son, or there about. Yet there was no comparison. How badly had Hilario been affected by all that back then? He had hardly asked himself, so wrapped up in his own grief had he been. He must have hidden it well, though.

  A tiny spark of colour seemed to flash from a corner of the room and he looked up at an image of smiling people. Another framed family photo, another reminder of a happier moment. He squinted his eyes to see better: the younger figure was clearly Blanco, his hair longer, his hips clad in tight jeans that flared down below the knee. And his arms were wrapped around a woman wearing a brightly coloured floral dress, a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on top of her flowing auburn hair, a more reserved smile on her face as she looked with suspicion at the camera. A holiday snap, perhaps. There was an air of summer about the image, of tanned skin and late nights near the beach. But who was the woman? Cámara stared in the gloom, then looked back at the broken figure now seated in front of him. Blanco’s mother had raised her face again and was looking him in the eye. It was her, the same woman in the photo. In a different time and a different world, but it was the same person.

  ‘It was two weeks before they killed him,’ she said. Cámara swallowed. A sharpness seemed to have returned to her all of a sudden. ‘He came up here to see me. There was…’ Drifting again.

  ‘Jorge came here?’ Cámara said, trying to jog her along.

  ‘Afterwards,’ she said after another pause. ‘Perhaps before as well. I can’t remember too well. Things just get so…He c
ame after he’d been up to the farm. Dirty, it’s all so dirty.’ She put her hands over her eyes, perhaps to hide, perhaps to see more clearly what she was struggling to recall.

  ‘He went to the farm,’ Cámara repeated. ‘To talk to someone?’

  ‘Francisco was there,’ she said. ‘He told me that. Roberto as well.’

  ‘Did he say what they’d talked about?’ Cámara persevered.

  For a moment she seemed to fade again, then returned, like a radio capturing and losing a signal.

  ‘Jorge was always so clean. Always insisted on being clean. Clean bullfighting. Honest bullfighting. There was no other way with him.’

  ‘How did he seem when you spoke to him? After he’d been up at the farm.’

  ‘He never showed it. Oh, he never showed it,’ she said quickly, as though animated all of a sudden by their conversation. ‘But I knew. I could tell. His mother. I always knew what was going on with him. He said there was nothing wrong, but he was angry. Angrier than I’d ever seen…’

  She tailed off again.

  ‘Do you know what he was angry about?’ Cámara tried, leaning in towards her across the open space of the hearth in front of them.

  ‘Not like his father,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘I’ve never understood him the same way.’

  ‘Señora Blanco,’ Cámara called. He wanted to reach out and hold her hand, as if to hang on to her, to keep her from slipping into the other world that was pulling at her.

  ‘Dirty,’ she said at last, her eyes lost in the last flames now flickering from the untended fire. ‘Todo sucio.’