The patter of firecrackers heralding the start of another mascletà cut them off. Cámara hung up and signalled that he wanted to hang on to the phone. The sergeant nodded. There were five policemen there, their ears pricking up.
‘I need all of you to come with me,’ Cámara shouted above the din.
They passed through the entrance and into the passageway of the bullring.
The sergeant took the matter in hand as soon as Cámara explained.
‘You two stand on the door and watch everyone coming in or out,’ he said, pointing to the two nearest to him. ‘You two get inside there now and start looking around.’
The four men immediately went to their places. Cámara and the sergeant walked into the arena. Down on the sand there was no sign now of the bullfight that had taken place only hours before. A small metal stage was being set up, spotlights shining and a PA system being wired in. The preparations for Mayoress Delgado’s victory party were already well underway. It was coming up to eleven o’clock. At midnight the Fallas celebrations would reach their climax and the first statues would be set alight.
‘What time is the rally set to take place here?’ Cámara asked.
‘They’re burning the statue in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento at one o’clock, as always, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘Then they’re coming round here. Reckon the first election results would be in by then.’
Meanwhile there were already dozens – perhaps even a hundred or more – party activists and technicians setting the thing up now. He needed more men – groups scouring the roofs, checking the windows of nearby buildings, scanning the faces of the people coming and going. It would be another ten or fifteen minutes at least before Torres could get his first teams in. He couldn’t pull in more ordinary policemen from the street; they could only do so much. Rely on them too heavily and they’d end up losing not only Roberto, but Blanco’s killer as well.
The sergeant accompanied him as he headed out of the arena and back towards the passageway. Streams of people were passing through: party activists – the men in suits and women in Burberry coats – smiling at the thought of victory they felt so certain was theirs. Cámara stood to one side to let them pass. A technician laying a coil of cable bumped into him as he came down the slope.
‘Perdona,’ Cámara said, allowing the young man to get through.
He looked up: something back down in the arena had caught his attention: a head of closely cropped black hair contrasting against the bright white of a shirt collar. The man’s face was turned the other way, but his height, the slope of his shoulders, the clothes, all fitted. Cámara took a step and joined the crowd heading towards the sand; the sergeant followed closely behind.
Roberto Ramírez was chatting to an older man to one side of the main arena. Cámara looked at the sergeant and gave a slight nod. Immediately the policeman pulled up his radio and, looking straight towards Roberto, started putting out a call to his colleagues. Cámara just had time to pull him by the shoulder and spin him round to face the other way before the sergeant informed them that they’d found their man, giving his description and current location.
But Roberto wasn’t keeping still. Patting his friend on the shoulder, he looked at his watch, made his goodbye and then started to cross towards the opposite side of the arena. Cámara waited a couple of moments and then made to follow, the sergeant still stuck to him. Keeping a close watch on where Roberto was heading, Cámara glanced about the rest of the bullring, looking, searching, but seeing nothing untoward. A woman with red hair approached Roberto, stopping him for a moment with a broad grin. He kissed her on the cheeks and then made to go, apologising that he couldn’t stop. Eventually he managed to pull away from the increasing numbers of people and started heading up a side exit.
Back in the passageway, the milling crowds kept Cámara relatively camouflaged, but less so the uniformed policeman beside him. It wasn’t so much that Roberto might realise he was being followed than that someone else might. Someone he felt sure was already close at hand. He glanced out at the street through the arches – still no sign of Torres’s men.
He looked back to find Roberto, but he had disappeared.
‘¿Qué cojones…?’
‘Up the stairs, sir,’ the sergeant nodded at the staircase leading to the upper floor. He was already reaching for his radio to inform his men, but Cámara grabbed his arm, then lifted a finger to his lips. The sergeant nodded.
Keeping close to the wall, they climbed the stairs. The upper floor had far fewer people on it: a technician was peering down through an archway to his colleagues in the arena, while a young woman was smoking a cigarette and watching the fiesta-goers below. Cámara glanced from side to side: there was no sign of Roberto, but moving away to his right, he caught sight of a shadow cast by one of the street lamps.
Blood pulsed swiftly through him as he realised where Roberto was heading. There was no need for Blanco’s killer to wander in openly, or try to blend in with the others. There was another entrance. One that had worked well in the past.
He stayed as close to the inner wall as possible as he circled the passageway. There was no time to wait for Torres now. Trying to stay in the shadows, he moved slowly, crouching low. At least he needn’t worry about being heard – the fiesta would take care of drowning out his footsteps – but the street lamps could betray him just as they had Roberto.
Ahead of them, cast against the side of one of the arches, the shadow had stopped. Cámara halted, waving behind him for the sergeant to keep still. A barrage of firecrackers went off down in the street and Cámara took advantage of the sudden crescendo to take a couple more steps forward. From here he could just see Roberto, standing to the side of the passageway, pushing his hand through his hair. He was speaking, but the person he was talking to was just out of vision.
‘…about more money?’
Cámara could just make out Roberto’s words as the sound of explosions died down.
There was no reply, or at least none that Cámara could make out. Roberto waited for a moment.
‘Well?’ he said.
From behind, Cámara could sense the sergeant drawing closer. He turned and saw the policeman reaching down to unholster his pistol. Cámara held out a hand to stop him, but it was too late: their own shadows were being cast against a wall and the sharp, jerky movement had already been spotted.
Cámara froze. For a moment Roberto remained still, then turning he made to check behind him, as though being told to do so by the other person. The sergeant was already standing up straight, holding out the gun with both hands.
There was a cheer from down in the street as another traca of firecrackers was let off. Roberto took another step and came fully into view, a look of shock on his face as he saw the policeman pointing his weapon at him.
BANG BANG BANG went the blasts outside.
Roberto fell to the ground.
Blood was already soaking through his clothes and trickling along the floor by the time they reached him. Cámara felt for a pulse: he was still alive; a bullet appeared to have hit him in the shoulder. The sergeant was speaking into his radio, calling for an ambulance.
Cámara got up and sprinted down the passageway. When he reached the end, it was empty. He leaned over the edge of the balustrade. A movement caught his eye, an incongruity in the crush of people below. A young man had just reached the bottom of the drainpipe running along the side of the Enfermería building. Skipping the last couple of feet to land on the ground, he looked up.
Cámara watched as Angel Moreno grinned at him momentarily, and then darted into the crowds. He waited for a couple of seconds to see where he was heading: it was difficult to make him out from the mass of people but he could detect a pattern of someone pushing their way through, heading towards Marqués de Sotelo Avenue and the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, deep into the heart of the city.
Keeping an eye on Moreno for as long as he could through the archways, Cámara dashed back along the passageway. Th
e sergeant was still by Roberto’s side, pressing against his shoulder to stem the bleeding.
‘Backup’s on its way,’ he said as Cámara ran past.
Cámara threw himself down the steps. Plain-clothed officers were streaming in: Torres’s team had arrived.
Cámara ran past them and out into the crowds milling around the entrance to the bullring. He stopped, staring at the press of humanity standing between him and his prey.
‘Put out a call,’ Cámara said, turning round to face the officer nearest him. ‘We’re looking for a young man, athletic build, short blond hair.’
The policeman pulled out his radio.
‘He’s wearing light-coloured trousers and a dark tank top,’ Camara continued. ‘Last seen heading away from the bullring towards the Plaza del Ayuntamiento.’
The radio buzzed.
‘He’s armed and very, very dangerous,’ Cámara added.
He looked around. Two armed officers were standing nearby, controlling the gate.
‘You two,’ Cámara said. ‘Come with me.’
The men followed in Cámara’s wake as he started forcing his way through the crowds towards Marqués de Sotelo, and the last spot where he’d seen Moreno disappear into the throng.
Again the crushing weight of people. The policemen started blowing on their whistles, but in the party atmosphere no one paid them any notice, imagining they were simply adding to the festival spirit. Only when they came face to face with people and shoved them to one side did anyone realise what was really happening.
Painfully, so painfully slowly, the three of them inched their way through. Occasionally a small gap would appear and a few precious feet could be gained in a second or less, only for the multitude to close in on them once more. And all the while Moreno was getting further away. The children were the worst: too small to be pushed past, too slow in understanding that they had to make way. Cámara listened out for the crackle of the policemen’s radios, news coming through that someone further up had caught sight of their man. But they obstinately refused to give any signs of life.
‘Are those things switched on?’ he shouted at them. They could barely hear him as they made their way through into the giggling, screaming horde in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento.
And then…something, a movement, a head bobbing up against the backdrop of people. Was that him? Cámara darted to the side, suddenly changing direction as he caught a quicker movement dashing along the road in front of the Town Hall. Willing himself on he broke through only to see a young man holding out his arms and wrapping them around his girlfriend. Not Moreno. Not their man.
The great Ayuntamiento falla statue towered over him as the crowd continued to surge around them. Above the din he heard bells chiming and looked up at the clock on the tower of the Town Hall: half past eleven. Within half an hour the first big statues would be being set alight to the sound of massive explosions. What had Moreno said to him that day? Perfect for shooting someone – no one would hear the gunfire.
BANG.
He grabbed one of the policemen accompanying him and nodded down at his radio. The man shook his head. No news.
‘Call up and find out if the medical team have reached the bullring,’ he said.
He waited as the officer put the call in, his eyes rapidly glancing around him, looking for anything, any unusual movement, a commotion of some sort, anything at all. Perhaps even a pair of eyes looking back at him. Would he be doing that? Moreno? The normal thing would be to get away as far as possible. But he hadn’t done anything normal since the beginning. He’d even had the nerve to show up that very night at the Bar Los Toros. Fresh from murdering Blanco. Right under Cámara’s nose. How could he have not seen it before? How else would the anti-toro demonstration have wound up for the day immediately afterwards ‘out of respect for Blanco’ when the rest of the world still didn’t know he was dead? Why hadn’t he spotted it sooner? Just as he had done now, that night Moreno had managed to climb out of the bullring over the iron spikes and down the drainpipe, dumped Blanco’s traje de luces and slipped back into the crowd, back among his fellow demonstrators. Had anyone in the march that night even noticed he had been gone for a while? Perhaps Marta Díaz. They’d have to find her later.
Right now he needed to find Moreno; he was armed and ruthless. One shot had already been fired from his gun that night. How many more people was he prepared to take down with him?
He turned to the policeman, who was finishing his conversation on the radio.
‘Anything?’
‘The medics are there, sir,’ the policeman said.
Cámara nodded.
Roberto Ramírez, providing the dope for the very bullfights he purported to have nothing to do with. All his anti-toro talk, giving money to Mayoress Delgado’s campaign. Discovery of his visit to the Ramírez farm had cast a different light on that. At first he’d assumed that Blanco’s mother had confused him with Paco: now he realised there had been no confusion at all. Was it all a complete lie? Had he ever really been against bullfighting? Perhaps it had started that way: the younger son breaking away from the family tradition to form his own life. But later, as he got older? Perhaps it was useful for the Ramírez family to have one of their own in the enemy camp. Tomorrow, perhaps, once he was sorted, they could talk it through with him. Tomorrow the police would check his phone records, his bank statements, his movements back here in Spain, his DNA. Tomorrow they would get him. He’d known Blanco was about to go public. Flores had told him after he got it from Gallego. ‘Our financiers.’ Would there be evidence there of a call made to Moreno? Perhaps, if he hadn’t been careful enough. What would it have been? A code word? A green light from New York? Or just a simple order? Do it. Go ahead and do it. Kill Blanco. Kill my half-brother. Moreno wanted money, and Roberto wanted Blanco dead, just as Paco did. But he had even more at stake – his true involvement in the world of bullfighting when he professed to hate it, drugs from one of his own companies being used to dull the famously aggressive and bravo Ramírez bulls: information he couldn’t allow to get out, not for himself, not for the family. Blanco would have to die. Hadn’t they all said how stubborn he was? Once he got an idea into his head there was no letting go.
Except that killing Blanco hadn’t been enough. Blanco must have talked, or let something out. Enough for Ruiz Pastor to suspect that the Ramírez family were in some way responsible for his death. And so with an eye for a pay day, he’d tried to blackmail them. What had he done? He’d talked to Roberto at the funeral. Alicia had mentioned it. Perhaps he thought he was dealing with an intermediary, someone who could negotiate with the family. But he’d ended up talking to the person who was behind Blanco’s murder in the first place. And so he’d brought death upon himself, agreeing to a meeting in the Albufera. What had he expected? A handover of money and a promise to keep his mouth shut. He’d certainly been silenced. Roberto had seen to that, trying to make it look as though Blanco’s killer had committed the same murder. Except that he hadn’t. The very act of trying to copy Moreno’s M.O. had made that clear. Eventually, at least. Those scratches still disfiguring Roberto’s neck and lower face: Ruiz Pastor was a big man; he would have put up a fight.
And now…BANG. Moreno had come after him. He should never have stolen Moreno’s ideas: the estoque, the banderillas, the mutilation. He may have been just a hired killer in Roberto’s mind, a useful tool, a young man set to destroy the bullfighting world. But Moreno didn’t like that. He was an artist proud of his work, and would brook no imitators. Not even Marta with her anti-bullfighting leaflets. And once he held a grudge against you…Moreno’s former maestro at the bullfighting school had discovered that.
Cámara turned to the two policemen.
‘Stay in this area and keep looking,’ he said. ‘I’m going to scout around.’
He walked slowly up the elongated square towards the top end where it joined with Calle San Vicente, finding gaps in the crowd and squeezing himself through as best he could,
neither rushing nor forcing his way past.
By now his eyes seemed to do the looking for him while other parts of him, other senses, scoured his environment. And still he walked forwards. Eventually, when he reached the top of the square, he stopped. Keep going? Which way? Left down to the market? Or straight on towards the cathedral? The crowd seemed to make the decision for him and in an instant he was being swept along as a surge of people caught him up and he was carried along for a few yards, suddenly and unwittingly part of a large group enjoying its own mini fiesta within the fiesta.
Before long he was approaching the Abbey of San Martín. A group of fallera beauty queens was standing on the steps absorbing the admiring stares from the crowd. One of them, one of the older ones, caught his eye. There was something about her that reminded him of Alicia. Something about her nose, perhaps. He couldn’t say exactly. But he found himself gazing at her for a few moments. Alicia. Where had she been today?
A movement to his left. Something different, a different rhythm, a different kind of motion. And he knew at once that Moreno had seen him. His head spun to look across the street. A figure, barely visible, was darting down an alleyway on the other side. Short blond hair, a black top. With a start he launched himself after him, crashing into the crowd.
‘Police!’ he shouted. ‘Police!’
The beginnings of a pathway were opened up for him. Crossing the street he managed to break his way through to the top of the alleyway and looked down. The figure had disappeared. He pressed on, squeezing along a tiny gap between the people and the buildings down one side and into the Plaza Redonda. A group of teenagers was splashing water from the marble fountain at the centre, laughing. Cámara lifted his foot on to an iron bollard near the edge of the square and stood up to get a better look.
There it was again. The same figure, the same, different movement, like a flash, passing through one of the arches around the square and out into the Carmen district on the other side. And its labyrinth of alleys.
Cámara jumped off the bollard. Moreno was playing with him, flirting with him, almost like a matador with a bull. And still Cámara kept charging. He had no means with which to call for backup. There was just him and Moreno. And what felt like the whole world standing in between them.
Or the Bull Kills You Page 30
