Or the Bull Kills You

by Jason Webster

  ‘Yes,’ said Cámara. ‘Came on quite suddenly.’

  ‘I prefer it like this,’ said the barman. ‘Don’t like the cold, me.’

  Cámara accepted the beer, but kept his eye on the door, expecting it to open at any moment. And with something of a surprise he realised he was feeling slightly nervous. Why had she said here, of all places? He laughed to himself. Where else would she have said?

  At that moment he heard the click of the door and spun round before the barman could say any more.

  ‘Hola,’ he said.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Oh,’ she said at last. ‘You’re already here.’

  He leaned down and felt Alicia’s face brushing against his as she gave him a kiss on either cheek. A brief sense of disappointment passed through him. What had he expected? Part of him had had some dream of a more passionate reunion than this, perhaps. But the feeling passed; a more professional side switched on: whatever her motives were for meeting him, reigniting a sexual spark didn’t appear to be one of them.

  He picked up his glass and they walked across to a table near the window. In the light from the street he tried to get a better look at her, but her hair, slightly longer now, was hanging over her face as she fumbled with her bag and squeezed into the tiny space between the table and the chair. He could tell that there was something changed in her, less centred, somehow.

  Finally she sat up straight, pushing her hair behind one ear and smiling at him.

  ‘It’s been a very long time,’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Too long,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I was…’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘What do you want to drink?’

  ‘Red wine,’ she said without a pause. ‘Shall we get a bottle?’

  A few moments later the barman placed a Rioja in front of them with a couple of plates of nuts.

  ‘We’ve run out of anything more elaborate,’ he said, pointing at the tapas. ‘Unless you want me to heat up some chorizo.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Alicia said. ‘This will do.’

  He went back behind the bar and started rattling his crates again, giving them a sense of privacy.

  ‘I knew we’d be virtually alone here,’ she said. ‘That’s why I chose it.’

  Something fluttered inside Cámara at her words.

  ‘How are things at the newspaper?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you know, busy,’ she said. ‘There was all the fallout from Roberto’s arrest to cover, stuff on Angel Moreno; people wanted to know who had actually killed Blanco, what kind of a person he was. All that stuff about him being kicked out of bullfighting school, his relationship with Marta Díaz. That kind of thing. They needed a Satan character, or something; a Judas. Roberto is more difficult, more complicated. But Moreno? I’m almost glad he died, because if you’d got him alive they’d be ripping him to pieces right now.’

  She checked herself.

  ‘All right, I don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘You were there, weren’t you?’

  Cámara shrugged.

  ‘It was bad, eh?’ she said. ‘Yeah, I can imagine so.’

  She lifted the bottle of wine and poured.

  ‘It’s good to see you again,’ she said, raising a glass. Cámara raised his and they clinked together.

  ‘You too,’ he said.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘they put me on to cover the court case as well, the whole prosecution thing. I don’t know anything about legal reporting, but because I knew Blanco they thought I was the right person to follow the story right to the end.’

  ‘I hear proceedings are going to start against Roberto soon,’ Cámara said. ‘I’m out of it now, as you know. But occasionally we hear things. I could give you a ring if I get wind of anything interesting, if you like.’

  She gave a half-smile.

  ‘You gave me the thread,’ he said. ‘The connection from Gallego to Flores to Roberto.’

  ‘I’m not sure if that makes me feel better,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t said anything to Javier, Blanco might still be alive today.’

  Cámara took a sip of his wine.

  ‘You think they’ll get a conviction?’ she asked.

  ‘I heard that Caballero was fairly confident,’ Cámara said. ‘But the judge who’s presiding over the court case is one of the tougher ones. He’s thrown out watertight cases before because of some spelling mistake or other.’

  Alicia laughed, and for a second there was a hint of a connection.

  ‘You don’t care, do you?’ she said.

  ‘About whether Roberto gets banged up?’ He put his glass back down on the table.

  ‘I did my bit. He’s guilty. I know that. Everyone knows that. Even if he walks free at the end of this, everyone knows he was behind Blanco’s murder. And that he killed Ruiz Pastor himself. For Christ’s sake, Ruiz Pastor had Roberto’s DNA under his fingernails from scratching at him when he was being attacked.’

  ‘Roberto claims that’s just because they shook hands a few hours before at Blanco’s funeral.’

  Cámara gave her a look.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘if the judge buys that…’

  He waved his hand.

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ he said. ‘My job ends the moment I hand over a suspect to the investigating judge. If he, or one of his colleagues screws it up afterwards…It’s not that I don’t care. I just can’t afford to care too much.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I understand. Still no word on Marta Díaz?’

  Cámara shook his head.

  ‘There was a report of a sighting in France, a couple of weeks after Moreno died. But nothing came of it. Since then it’s gone cold.’

  He grabbed the bottle and refilled their glasses. The question of why Alicia had asked to meet up with him still hadn’t arisen. Just to have a chat about the case? She’d already appeared to brush aside his offer of information.

  ‘How have things been for the Ramírez family?’ he asked, trying to keep the conversation going. She’d get to it eventually, whatever it was.

  She gave a long sigh. ‘Not good,’ she said. ‘Not good at all.’

  ‘I bet the mother took it badly,’ Cámara said.

  ‘She hasn’t been seen since before Roberto’s arrest. Staying at the farm up in Albacete. Hasn’t left once, by all accounts. Just gone to ground.’

  ‘The others?’ Cámara said.

  ‘From what I can gather, Ramírez has effectively handed everything over to Paco. He’s broken; everyone says so. First losing Blanco, and now this.’

  ‘What about the drugs?’ Cámara said.

  ‘I’d say they’ve taken a knock from it. Bookings are down. They’d built their reputation on providing the best bulls, as you know. And the denials only carry so much weight.’

  They both knew that after Cámara had found the phials of dope in the Ramírez truck – later positively identified by Huerta as a variant of ketamine that left almost no traces in the bull, and was undetectable by the vets at the bullring – searches had been made of the Ramírez farm, but no other samples had been found. The family had denied all knowledge, claiming the drugs had been planted to stain their reputation.

  ‘People start looking back at previous bulls they’ve produced, trying to detect a trend there, to see if they really were doping them. They probably aren’t doing it any more, but it’s possibly too late for them. The doubt is there, and the crowds might react badly to seeing Ramírez bulls on the card now.’

  ‘You think they might close down?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘They’ll probably limp on for a year or two more,’ Alicia said. ‘But after that?’ She frowned.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, suddenly changing the tone. ‘How are you?’

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘Flores been giving you any more problems?’

  He grinned.

  ‘I get parking fines from streets I’ve never even driven down,’ he said. ‘Not every da
y, but occasionally. Then there’s a demand for some non-existent arrears on my council tax. That kind of thing.’ He laughed; it seemed even Maldonado had eased off recently after getting stung with his little gamble; rumour in the Jefatura was that he’d lost almost five thousand euros.

  ‘Nothing I can’t cope with. It’s good. Shows I really had him rattled.’

  ‘He doesn’t give up,’ she said.

  ‘Do any of us?’

  She seemed embarrassed for a moment and stared down at the table.

  ‘And your girlfriend?’ she asked. ‘Did that…?’

  ‘End?’ he said. ‘Yes, it ended. Ended a long time back. It just had to go through the motions of dying. You know how it is.’

  Almudena. Would he ever be able to think of her without images of that night coming to mind, of her pallid face, Moreno’s arm wrapped tight around her neck? To bring her up now seemed strange, almost as if it put the conversation out of kilter. He’d never talked about her with Alicia. It had been so brief there had barely been time.

  ‘She started a relationship with her business partner,’ he said. Just as I’d ended up in bed with someone else, he thought to himself. Why hadn’t he called Alicia himself over these past weeks? Sitting here with her now he realised how much he felt for her. They’d had fun, a lot of fun. There was no reason why they shouldn’t carry it on for a bit, see what happened. Did every relationship have to have ‘for ever’ stamped all over it, and if not be rejected? It was crazy. Yet he had to admit to himself that he’d just let things drift. It would get picked up, he’d thought to himself. A moment would come when it would feel like the right thing to do, to lift up the phone and give her a call. But the weeks had gone by and he’d done nothing. And yet still he couldn’t explain why.

  ‘Have you met someone else?’ Alicia asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, slightly taken aback. ‘No, I haven’t. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call. It’s just, I—’

  ‘I’m leaving,’ she said, breaking him off. ‘I’m leaving Valencia.’

  Their eyes met and locked for a moment, then broke away.

  ‘Oh,’ Cámara said. He reached for his wine glass and took a mouthful.

  ‘I’ve got a job on one of the nationals in Madrid,’ she said. ‘Bullfights, crime. More of the same, really.’

  ‘But better, hopefully,’ he said. ‘All this Blanco stuff, it must have caught someone’s eye.’

  ‘The truth is I’ve been trying to get out for a while,’ she said.

  ‘Your ex-husband,’ he said.

  ‘That, and…well, that, really. After the divorce I felt I should take off and try somewhere new. It’s not easy working with someone you’ve been so intimate with.’

  ‘And then there’s the benefit of getting out of this city,’ Cámara said with half a smile.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said with a laugh. ‘There’s that as well. It’s great, Valencia. Got a lot going for it.’

  ‘It’s just that sometimes you need something else,’ he said.

  ‘Something like that.’

  She poured some more wine into both their glasses. Cámara pulled out his cigarettes and offered her one.

  ‘I wish you luck,’ he said. ‘I hope it goes well for you there.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Who knows,’ he said. ‘I might suddenly get promoted and sent off to Madrid myself.’

  She smiled.

  ‘It was fun,’ he said. ‘I had a lot of fun.’

  That was all he said, nothing more. And he didn’t quite know what he expected her to say, perhaps just ‘Me too,’ or something to that effect. And that would be it: she’d go off to Madrid, and he’d go back to Homicidios, and they’d have some fond memories of each other. And perhaps in a few months’ time they might give each other a call, just to see how the other was getting on, perhaps even meet up for another drink like this if ever they could. But she didn’t react like that. Not the same resigned but joyful farewell. Her eyes betrayed a completely different emotion, one much stronger than he was expecting, but which he struggled to identify.

  ‘There’s something else I need to tell you,’ she said.

  He watched her closely: her bottom lip seemed to tremble.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if I should tell you this. It’s all over, all settled,’ she said. ‘But I thought it only fair.’

  Her head had dropped and she was staring at the table again.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Cámara asked as delicately as he could. There was a sudden fragility in her he felt he didn’t recognise.

  She paused.

  ‘I got pregnant,’ she said at last, looking up with reddening eyes.

  ‘That night…’ she said. ‘We didn’t…You said you were…’

  Cámara was motionless, as though unable to withstand the weight of his own body.

  ‘Don’t look like that,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  Her eyes were brimming with tears now.

  ‘I…Look,’ she said. ‘I just…I wasn’t sure what to do, whether to tell you. Of course I had an abortion. Just last week.’

  ‘You…’ Cámara started.

  ‘But you told me you were infertile, see? Said you couldn’t have kids.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘So I thought you should know.’

  Her eyes seemed to plead with him.

  ‘It’s better that way. Don’t you think?’

  Cámara walked in the afternoon shadows cast by the train station as he passed back up the Calle Castellón. The pavement seemed to move of its own accord beneath his feet, sensations from his body as though in suspension. He felt as if he were floating, a bubble of limited consciousness cut off from the world around it, travelling slowly, obscurely in a place he knew that he knew, but felt removed from. People walked past him, or struggled to squeeze by, other bubbles locked in their own worlds. Were they as unseeing as he? In some part of himself he felt sure he had not always been like this, that this was exceptional – not his ordinary way of being. He tried to cling on to the thought: it was the only thing to hold on to, to prevent him from simply drifting away, getting lost on some passing breeze.

  He clenched his hands, as though trying to retrieve physical sensation as an experience he could recognise, that could tell him when, where and who he was.

  There had been the beginnings of a child: a promise, a potential. Now it was gone, but for a moment, a few weeks perhaps, it had existed. And it was him, and part of him. Almudena had been wrong. The doctor had been wrong. So convinced had he been that he’d never got round to doing the test. What point had there been? Just to learn what he thought he already knew? Almudena was fine, wasn’t that what she’d said? So it had to be his fault. And then when the relationship ended there was even less reason to have it confirmed.

  And he’d thought that deep down he didn’t really care. Things had gone wrong with Almudena. What were the chances they wouldn’t do so with anyone else sooner or later? Was that the best way to bring a kid into the world? Certainly his own family and childhood were useless as a training ground for parenthood. Besides, he was forty-two: a bit old, perhaps, to be thinking about starting a family. Not that there was any biological clock for him as there had been for Almudena, but he didn’t want to be an old dad, complaining that he couldn’t play football with his son because of a bad back. Not that he liked football anyway, but that was the kind of thing dads were expected to do, wasn’t it? What could he teach any future children, anyway? Old proverbs? How to cultivate marihuana? (He’d have to learn himself from Hilario first.) How to catch murderers? He wasn’t even sure he was any good at that.

  And so he’d given up on the idea. Let others have kids. He wasn’t cut out for them in the first place. You had to live with what you got. And all he had was a masclet hanging between his legs: all bang and no power.

  But they’d all been wrong. He was as potent and fertile as any man, any of the other males now streaming past him as they burst out of the train station and dodg
ed the traffic to get across the road. He felt as though some primitive side to him, some cave-inhabiting being that existed within him somewhere, was picking up an essential missing portion of itself and putting it back in place. And a sense of wholeness – one that he had been unaware of before all this had happened – returned to him. He could have children. Whether he chose to or not was another matter, and at some level Alicia’s abortion stung him – that had been part of him that had been snuffed out as well. He understood it; it had been necessary, even if it did hurt. But the point was that the potential for him to have children had been returned to him. That mattered; it gave the future a different hue.

  For the first time in what felt like the entire day he was aware of himself breathing again, warm air rushing in and out of his lungs. He blinked, trying to engage with his surroundings. He was standing still, facing away from the road. In front of him a circular colonnaded brick building rose up into the blue, cloudless sky: a heavy, solid presence that seemed to bellow its existence at him. He rubbed his face with his hands and then opened his eyes again. People were tutting and moaning as they pushed past his motionless form in the middle of the pavement: this wasn’t a place for lingering: either you moved or got out of the way. But he continued to stare up at the bullring regardless, smiling to himself that he should find himself here once again.

  He turned and started walking away.

  Also by Jason Webster

  Duende: A Journey in Search of Flamenco

  Andalus: Unlocking the Secrets of Moorish Spain

  Guerra: Living in the Shadows of the Spanish Civil War

  Sacred Sierra: A Year on a Spanish Mountain

  Acknowledgements

  Particular thanks go to Jesús Herrero of the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía and Judge Víctor Gómez for giving me invaluable insights into the complex workings of the Spanish police and judicial systems. I have tried to reflect what I learned from them as accurately as possible.

  My understanding of bullfighting benefited enormously from conversations and contact with Lorena Pardo, Jesús Morcillo, the bull-rearer Antonio López, the matador Alvaro Amores, the retired bullfighter Rafael Ataide ‘Rafaelillo’, Pascual Esteller, Enrique Aguilar, and other members of the Asociación de la Prensa Taurina de Castellón. Special thanks, however, go to Montse Arribas, who opened so many doors for me.