They set off along the pavement that circled the park, past the old police headquarters and a handful of the few buildings of note. There was the usual growing hubbub as Albaceteños started heading out for the night’s entertainments, but no one noticed the two men in their forties strolling together as the car headlights streamed past them.
Yago loosened his tie. Cámara pulled out his packet of Ducados and offered him one. Yago didn’t smoke, never had. But he took one and they smoked in silence for a few minutes.
‘It’s about this murder,’ Yago said at last. ‘Mirella Faro, the young girl.’
‘What about it?’
Yago put his hands behind his back, pushing his head forwards a little, his eyes focused on the paving stones ahead of them.
‘We’re beginning to wonder if it really is drug related.’
‘You said something about needle marks on her arms.’
‘Yes, she was a taker. It showed up in the autopsy, and her family have confirmed that she had a problem. She may even have gone in for some opportunistic prostitution to help pay for the habit – traces of semen from at least two different men have been found on her body.’
‘Boyfriends? Clients? Suspects?’
‘Yes, that’s the point. Any or all of the above. The problem is, it’s proving difficult finding anyone here who knew her.’
‘Here?’
‘In Albacete. She was from Madrid, although she has family living in a town not far away.’
They stopped to allow a couple of women in tight Saturday-night skirts to get past them, then fell into step with each other as they continued.
‘Mirella lived with her mother,’ Yago said. ‘Olga Faro. Single parent. The father left and moved to Venezuela before Mirella was born. We’re checking, but it looks as though he’s still there. There’s been no contact between Olga and the father since they separated. Not even now that Mirella’s dead.’
From what Yago was saying, the police’s first theory still appeared to fit. A broken home, drug addiction, possible prostitution. Cámara was trying to work out what Yago’s doubts were – and why they needed to be expressed out here.
‘You think there’s a sexual motive? Some kind of sex killer?’
‘We’ve thought about that,’ Yago said. ‘She’s found naked, the semen, light traces of bleeding around the vagina . . . it’s a possibility. But apart from the marks around her neck from the strangulation, there was little sign of a struggle, no bruising on her thighs or groin, for example.’
‘And the prostitution theory. Are you sure about that?’
‘No, personally I’m not. Jiménez suggested it. But the semen could just be the result of some adolescent fumblings. Even the bleeding. It wasn’t that heavy. She was fifteen, for heaven’s sake. She was probably having her first sexual encounters. So there’s semen from more than one boy . . .’
He shrugged.
They fell silent, both policemen aware that they had fallen into the trap of speculating too much with too little information. It was one of the things they had taught them not to do at Avila, but every now and again it happened. Especially in cases such as this one, when something about the murder victim brought on an inevitable desire to wrap it up quickly, to catch the perpetrator and throw him into the darkest cell.
A neighbourhood bar on the other side of the road was in the process of closing up: they didn’t look after Saturday-night crowds. With a nod Yago suggested they go over and catch a last drink before the shutters came down.
‘There’s no one there,’ Yago said. ‘We can talk without being overheard. By policemen at least.’
The barman looked at them with a sneer as they walked in: it had been a long day and he wanted to go home.
‘We won’t be long.’
Cámara ordered a brandy; Yago a bottle of alcohol-free beer.
‘You said no one here knew her,’ Cámara repeated once they’d sat down.
‘This is the story as far as we know at the moment.’ Yago crossed his arms in front of him on the table.
‘Mirella had a drug problem. She also had problems at home – didn’t always get on well with her mother. So sometimes she used to come down here from Madrid to stay with this family of hers nearby.’
‘Where are they?’
‘In a place called Pozoblanco, about five kilometres north. Small village.’
‘But she used to come into the city.’
‘That’s right. The idea was that when things were bad at home she could come here and clean up, get a bit of space from Mum, before making her way back. Obviously it disrupted her schooling, but everyone seems to have thought it was worth it.’
‘How often had this happened, then? How many times had she come here like this?’
‘Three or four times.’
‘And she always made trips to the city when she was down here?’
‘That’s it.’
Yago took a swig of his beer.
‘I knew I did right calling you. Jiménez is good, but . . . You saw what sort he is.’
Cámara shrugged. He knew exactly what Yago meant.
‘So Mirella came here every time she stayed in Pozoblanco,’ Yago repeated.
‘On her own?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she tell her family? I’m assuming they’re – what? Aunts? Uncles?’
‘Grandparents. She always told them she had some Madrid friends in the city and that she was going to see them. Used a moped to get in and out.’
‘Has it been found?’
‘No. There’s been a search, but so far no trace.’
‘And these Madrid friends?’
‘No one has any idea. She never mentioned any names, just used to tell them she was off and that was it.’
‘And they were supposed to be helping this girl with her drug problem?’
Yago let out a sigh.
‘So the idea is she’s meant to be cleaning herself up, but meanwhile she’s riding into town every few days to get another hit.’
‘That’s about it.’
Cámara frowned.
‘The theory about it being drug related still looks plausible,’ he said.
The barman had turned off the lights in the kitchen and now came around the bar to start stacking chairs.
‘There’s something else,’ Yago said.
Cámara pulled out his cigarettes again, but Yago refused another one.
‘It’s to do with this branch of Mirella’s family in Pozoblanco. The grandfather is a man called Francisco Faro Oscuro. He’s the mayor of the place. There are only a couple of hundred inhabitants, but he’s been in power for years, and runs the place like a Maoist collective.’
Cámara spluttered into his brandy.
‘What?’
‘You heard me right,’ Yago said, raising his eyebrows. ‘He’s hard left. Father was a communist – and mayor as well, in his time. And now Paco runs the show. That’s what everyone calls Faro Oscuro in the village, by the way. None of your fancy titles. Just Paco.’
‘Now you mention it, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve seen something about this on television.’
‘You may have done. The guy’s a maverick, has his own party after he split from the United Left – set up the Workers’ Agrarian Freedom Party. He’s been on TV a couple of times. I think there was even some documentary made about him. Anyway, for all his talk of collective power, he rules Pozoblanco like his own fiefdom. Of course he makes sure he gives enough away so that everyone keeps voting for him. Rents are really cheap, for example. Fifteen euros a month. But all property belongs to the village. Which in effect means it belongs to him.’
‘And this is Mirella’s grandfather.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What does the village live off? That’s saffron-growing land, I assume.’
‘Exactly. And that’s what I need to talk to you about.’
Yago turned and glanced round at the barman, who had gone back behind the
bar and was folding up a pile of cloths.
‘That’s why we had to come out here,’ he continued. ‘Look, there’s a scam going on. It may actually be very big, perhaps even international.’
‘With the saffron?’
‘You know it can sell for anything up to three thousand euros a kilo, right?’
‘I knew it was expensive. But that’s as much as some drugs. High-grade Moroccan kif, for example.’
‘Saffron is highly valued and the freight costs are minimal.’
‘And it’s legal.’
‘Right, well, there’s a question. There have been suspicions of something odd going on for a while. The amount of La Mancha saffron actually grown and the amount sold on the international markets don’t tally. This kind of thing is happening all the time – the majority of Italian olive oil actually comes from Jaén, just down the road. They ship it off and it gets relabelled, and that’s it.’
‘And something similar’s happening here with the saffron.’
Yago nodded.
‘The saffron season’s starting now. But you just go out there and try and find some. Yes, there are some fields here and about, but not enough to grow all the stuff that gets sold around the world as Spanish saffron. All the unemployment, people leaving the countryside and coming into the city, or leaving for good, looking for work.’
He gave Cámara a look.
‘So what’s going on?’ Cámara asked.
‘I think there’s a mafia element. We spoke to Faro Oscuro – Paco – about it a few months ago. Interviewed him myself. He’s a tough old thing, wasn’t having any of it. Just kept going on about collective farming and the benefit to the community and the environment.’
‘And you think there’s a connection with Mirella’s murder.’
Yago pursed his lips.
‘I think it’s a line we need to explore. The problem is there’s an institutional reluctance to look into the saffron scam. Relabelling foreign imports as La Mancha saffron isn’t illegal. But vast amounts of money are being made from it. And just with drugs, people get greedy. I reckon customs people are in on it. And I’m certain a number of officers at the Jefatura as well, helping to cover things up, taking kickbacks. Even running the whole thing. That’s why we couldn’t talk there. Understand?’
Cámara nodded. He was also beginning to understand something else. This wasn’t just a chance for his old mate to pick his brains, or bounce some ideas off him. Yago wanted more.
‘I don’t know who I can trust, honestly,’ Yago said. ‘It’s a sad state of affairs for a head of the Policía Judicial to be in, but there you are. But I think we need to look into this. Mirella’s death may be a settling of scores, as we said.’
‘But not necessarily one to do with the drug world,’ Cámara butted in.
‘Exactly. Is there an angle here to do with Pozoblanco, and a saffron mafia there?’
‘I get it,’ Cámara said. He looked Yago in the eye.
‘Tell me what you want me to do.’
Yago let out a deep breath.
‘Good for you, Max. I knew I could count on you. Look, I know you’re on leave, and all that. But really, you could do me a favour here. And it would be good to have some support from someone of your calibre, if you get me.’
‘You want me to sniff around? Take a look at Pozoblanco?’
‘Yeah,’ Yago said. ‘That’s exactly what I want. If we go in now, officially, everyone’s just going to clam up. Especially if they’ve got people inside the Jefatura as well.’
‘I take it someone went up there after Mirella was found.’
‘That was just routine. Got a couple of statements – one from the grandmother, another from the mother, who’s come down from Madrid – and that was it. No problems. No, what I want you to do is find out anything you can about the saffron business. You could – I don’t know – pose as a journalist, or something. I can get you an accreditation if you like.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Just go in, check it out. It’s the harvest period, as I said, so you’ve got a good excuse. I need a pair of eyes there, Max. Someone I can trust. Find out what you can and then come back to me. Something’s happening up there. I just don’t know what it is.’
They finished their drinks and headed towards the door.
‘But whatever it is, we need to find out how it ties in with Mirella’s murder.’
EIGHT
THE COMPUTER WAS still switched on, but Hilario was asleep, slumped in an armchair by the window which looked out on to the street. Normally he would have woken at the sound of his grandson walking through the door, but he was in a deep slumber, his breathing slow and heavy.
Cámara lifted his head carefully and placed a cushion between his cheek and the chair, wiping away a dribble of foamy saliva that had fallen from his mouth. Moving the mouse to turn off the screen saver, he looked at what Hilario had been doing on the computer before he’d nodded off. A medical website gave details of the recovery processes after a stroke. Hilario had scrolled down until it reached a paragraph talking about the need for sleep in such circumstances, giving the brain time to heal itself after suffering the damage caused by the blood clot . . .
He could tell from the smell in the flat what Pilar had prepared to eat: chicken with a thick, garlicky sauce with rosemary and white wine. It was a difficult dish to do badly, and even Pilar’s version of it was edible, although she did manage to stuff it with small, chipped pieces of chicken bone which you spent most of the meal prising away from your gums.
As he put it on the hob to heat up, Cámara opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer, pouring himself a large glass. Finishing it in one, he opened another before taking out a knife and fork from the drawer and drawing up a stool at the little kitchen table.
He smoked a cigarette as the chicken began to sizzle, watching the smoke lacing itself into messy, unfinished designs above his head. Always the desire to find patterns there, he thought, to give shape, when all there was was smoke, doing what it did, moving according to its own whims, not ours.
He wondered whether he was perhaps one of the last people who would be allowed to smoke, cook and eat in the same space. One day even this, in his own home, would probably come to an end – another prohibition, another law. Time to enjoy the old freedoms while they were still around.
Hilario walked in as he started eating.
‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘Well, you did.’
‘How are you?’
‘You know I hate that question.’
‘And I try to remember not to ask you. But you don’t have strokes every day, thank God. Saw you’ve been looking stuff up on the Internet.’
‘Snooping around like a policeman, eh? I should have guessed.’
‘So sleep is good for you, is it?’
‘Sleep is good,’ Hilario echoed flatly. ‘Makes sense. You become a child again, it says. Or at least in some ways. Your brain is having to make new connections, like you do when you’re young. I think that’s why children sleep more – it’s part of the process.’
‘You were lucky it wasn’t more serious. I mean, with you it’s just a physical thing, right? A partial loss of coordination on the right side. You’re not . . . ?’
‘I’m not a vegetable, no. I would have thought that was pretty obvious. Even to a policeman.’
‘But there’s nothing else,’ Cámara said. ‘No memory loss or anything.’
‘Franco’s still dead, isn’t he?’
‘Er, yes, of course. He died almost forty years ago.’
‘Good. Well, I’m fine, then. Wouldn’t want to wake up from a stroke and discover it had all been a dream, and that he was still in power. Now that would be a nightmare. Probably give myself a stroke again just to get away from it all.’
‘A self-induced stroke,’ Cámara said. ‘I wonder if that’s possible?’
‘Well, in my case all I need to do is stop taking the
pills. Those blood-thinning ones. Probably be gone in a couple of days’ time. What, you thinking about new ways to kill people?’
Cámara curled up his nose as he chewed on the chicken.
‘Oh, yes, I forgot. It’s your job to catch the killers.’
Hilario sat down heavily in the chair opposite.
‘Still, it might make for a nice little mystery,’ he said. ‘A doctor who can induce a stroke in people so no one ever knows it’s him killing them. You should write a book. No, screw that, I should write a book. You just fill me in on the police details and all that nonsense. I’ll mention you in the acknowledgements.’
‘You never told me your father was executed.’
Cámara put his fork down and drained the last of his beer, watching Hilario’s reaction from the corner of his eye.
For a moment his grandfather barely reacted at all. His expression hardened a little, as though his eyes had turned to stone. Cámara had seen that in him only two, perhaps three, times before. The last time when he told him he was joining the police.
When finally he moved, Hilario’s reaction was to glance quickly at the calendar on the wall, before resting his eyes on Cámara.
‘Eduardo García been here, has he?’ he said.
Cámara nodded.
They looked at each other for a moment in a curious engagement, threatening and affectionate.
‘You didn’t need to know,’ Hilario said.
‘What?’
‘That’s why I didn’t tell you. Because it wasn’t important for you to know. Perhaps it is now, perhaps that’s why you’ve already heard something about it. This might be it . . .’ His voice began to tail away.
‘I suppose I always thought there would be a time when we’d talk about this. It was never something I could just start on my own, though. As though I needed a sign . . .’
‘He’s buried in the cemetery,’ Cámara said. ‘Maximiliano, my great-grandfather.’
‘Yes, he was your great-grandfather. And a true anarchist. He helped many people, saved many lives . . .’
Cámara held his hand out in time to stop Hilario from falling forwards on to the table. His eyes were heavy and half-closing.
‘I’m not feeling . . .’
The Anarchist Detective (Max Cámara) Page 6
