The Anarchist Detective (Max Cámara)

by Webster, Jason

  ‘All right, chief?’

  ‘Let’s give it a try.’

  They sat down at a wooden table covered in a white cloth. Before either of them could say anything a basket of bread, a bottle of house red and some olive oil and vinegar had been placed in front of them.

  ‘I’m wondering,’ Cámara said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You must be the only policeman in the entire force who calls one of his superiors “chief”.’

  ‘I only say it to you. And then it’s only because I’m such a deeply sarcastic bastard. Chief.’

  Cámara sniggered. Torres poured them both some wine.

  They were an unlikely couple. Other policemen formed friendships, but this was more an informal partnership where both knew full well that their best policing characteristics were complemented by the other. Torres more thorough, Cámara more instinctive. Each could take on features of the other when they were working together, as though unconsciously performing a balancing act, their moods and personalities almost capable of swapping over according to the needs of a case.

  Others in the police were aware of it, which was why they had been allowed to work together for so long before Cámara’s period of leave. It was rare, almost unheard of, for an inspector and a chief inspector to team up like this, but it was tolerated: the crimes they’d solved together were ample justification.

  Despite Torres’s good humour, Cámara could tell that something was bothering him.

  ‘I’ve been given a deadline,’ he said as they both pulled out their cigarettes. When they’d walked in, Cámara had been pleased to see it was one of the places that didn’t bother having an area set aside for non-smokers.

  ‘Come back now or leave for good?’ Torres said.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Well, they weren’t going to give you a holiday for the rest of your life. Not now with all the cuts. They’re talking about bringing our salaries down again. Ten per cent less. And that’s just this year.’

  ‘I thought they loved me so much it might go on for ever and ever.’

  ‘Covering the docking bills for your yacht as well, are they?’

  ‘I reckon it’s you. You miss me so much you forced Personnel to call me. They might have forgotten all about me, otherwise. And I could be happily getting on with, er . . .’

  ‘Yeah, right. Not so happily getting on with sweet bugger all. I know you – you’ll have been stewing all this time wondering whether to come back or not, trying to convince yourself there’s a life for you outside.’

  ‘So you admit it. It was you.’

  ‘If that makes you feel wanted and loved.’

  ‘This is the thanks I get for that medal I recommended you for.’

  ‘I had to show my gratitude somehow.’

  They ordered: paella for the first dish, then pork for Torres and anglerfish for Cámara.

  ‘So how is everyone?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘Pardo’s been moved up,’ Torres said. ‘Made him head of the whole Policía Judicial. Don’t see him so much these days.’

  As head of Homicidios, Pardo had been Cámara’s boss. He was foul-mouthed and ambitious, but loyal to his officers if he thought they could bring in results.

  ‘So if Pardo’s gone, who’s in charge?’

  There was only one name on Cámara’s mind, the one person in the Valencia Jefatura he couldn’t stand the sight of. One man who would have wanted Pardo’s job more than anyone else.

  He looked at Torres in horror. Torres nodded.

  ‘No, please tell me it’s not true.’

  ‘It’s all right for you. You’re off sailing in the Bahamas. It’s me you’ve got to feel sorry for.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Well, start believing it. He was in there like a shot.’

  Calculating and manipulative, Chief Inspector Maldonado had clashed with Cámara on many occasions in the past. Now he would be directly over him if Cámara chose to go back.

  ‘Should make your decision that much easier, I’d say.’

  ‘Here, pass me the wine.’

  ‘I mean, what would police work be if it were all chasing criminals instead of fighting the cunts behind your back?’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘He’s taken my work mobile away from me – it took me three years to get that. He gives me bad progress reports, interferes in everything. You know what he’s like. He’s pestering us all the time, thinks he has to be there, looking over our shoulders, otherwise we’ll start slacking. There’s even a suggestion he wants us all to wear uniforms for work. It’s ridiculous.’

  Torres stubbed out his cigarette and started eating some of the paella that had been placed in front of him.

  ‘No one’s happy. I’ve never known such fucked-up morale. Not anywhere in the police.’

  Come back, he was saying. Come back and give us a hand, help us sort him out. If there was anyone who could have taken Pardo’s job instead of Maldonado, it was Cámara. And now Cámara was being made to feel some of the blame: he’d abandoned them, gone off on a jolly, leaving them to cope with Maldonado and all his bullshit.

  ‘How long have you got?’ Torres asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Until you have to tell them what you’ve decided.’

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘And?’

  Cámara ate his yellow paella in silence. Part of him was wondering if there was any saffron in it at all.

  ‘If you don’t come back and do your bit I swear I’ll come and find you and bite your fucking head off. Don’t care where you sail to.’

  ‘Everything all right at home?’ Cámara said. ‘Wife? Your little boy.’

  Torres stopped chewing, sighed, rolled his eyes and put his fork down on his plate. On the face of it, life with his wife and son appeared normal, but Cámara had been vaguely aware that there were tensions from time to time. A few months ago, the last time they were working together, Torres had mumbled something about it. Or at least denied it in such a way as to confirm it.

  Torres swallowed, then reached out for the wine and filled both their glasses.

  ‘I’m looking for somewhere else,’ he said.

  Cámara leaned his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands.

  ‘Separation?’

  ‘Separation. Divorce. The whole thing. We’re just going through the process.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. How’s Iván? How’s he taking it?’

  ‘He’ll be all right. They’re pretty adaptable, kids. I mean, it’s tough. And he doesn’t really understand what’s going on. He’s only eight. But, well, we’ll have to help him through it, I suppose.’

  ‘Is there someone else?’

  Torres started nodding.

  ‘Oh, yes. There’s someone else. You know, I used to have my suspicions, sometimes. But I didn’t do anything about it. There were times when she was more distant, not really there. Then things changed and she’d be back, you know, more connected. I couldn’t say anything because I wasn’t around, getting caught up in work and the rest of it. So it didn’t bother me. I mean, it bothered me, thinking she might be with someone else, but I didn’t have time to let it bother me. Besides, I didn’t have any proof.’

  He took a long draught of wine.

  ‘But then one day, out of the blue, she hit me with it. I came back, took out a beer from the fridge, sat down, switched the telly on, you know, to relax a bit. And she comes in and starts telling me she wants a divorce, that it’s not working. Iván wasn’t there – he was at a friend’s house, I think. Which is probably why she chose that moment. So we have this long argument, throwing all our shit at each other, years of it. I was amazed – she remembered all kinds of stuff from before we were even married. Like why I hadn’t met up with her one evening and went out with some mates instead. I don’t know. I can barely remember it myself, but she was there, screaming at me that I never looked after her, or gave her what she needed. And other stuff,
all kinds of crap she’d been sitting on for years. And that was it, she couldn’t stand it any more; she wanted us to split. And I asked her, I said, is there anyone else? Because, of course, with all this I’m wondering about these doubts I’ve had in the past, about whether she was sleeping with someone else. And she wouldn’t say anything at first, said it was only about us, no one else. But I carried on asking her, wouldn’t let it go, until finally she admitted it, she said yes, there was. Another person. And I said, another person? Another man? And that’s when it came out. It’s not another man. She’s with a woman now. She likes women.’

  He rubbed his face with his hands and stared out into the distance.

  ‘In your imagination you’re always jealous of another man. The scenarios that play out in your head involve other men. It’s weird when your wife cheats on you with another woman. You’re jealous, but it’s not exactly the same. It’s almost as if you have to imagine the other woman as a man in order to feel properly jealous, in the way you expect to be.’

  The paella remained unfinished when the waiter brought the second course. Torres ignored the pork and lit another cigarette.

  ‘I’ve got to find somewhere new to live. We’re still together for the moment, although I’m on the sofa. It’s not easy finding somewhere I can afford, though, especially after the recent pay cut.

  ‘I’ve got to do it, though. It’s my son I have to think about. It’s better for him.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  THERE WAS TOO much of a risk of bumping into Maldonado if they went to the Jefatura, so instead they walked to Zapadores, and the crumbling former military barracks that acted as a secondary police headquarters for the city. With a bit of attention it could have been a grand old place, built in late-nineteenth-century palatial style, but netting had been put up around the upper floor to prevent pieces of masonry falling on people’s heads as they walked past, while no one had dared change the flag over the main entrance for years for fear of the balcony collapsing under their weight.

  The main square inside the compound – what would have been a parade ground in the past – was now the car pool, filled with weeds and zeta squad vehicles, while officers had to park their own cars up round the back, near the foreigners’ detention centre, in the ruins of some old outbuildings that had only partially been pulled down.

  Cámara and Torres sauntered through, keeping an eye open for anyone they might know, but the place was relatively quiet during the daytime. At night, when the Jefatura effectively closed down, this became the centre of the police’s city operations.

  ‘The científicos have got an office round the back. I know the woman who’ll be on duty,’ Torres said. ‘She’ll let us use her computer.’

  As it turned out, there was no one in the office. They sat down at a terminal and Torres logged on to Webpol, the police intranet, tapping in his ID number and code word before getting on to the main portal.

  ‘I want to check out this man first,’ Cámara said, scribbling down a name on a piece of paper and handing it to Torres. ‘Iranian.’

  There was a section for foreign nationals. Torres clicked on it, then searched under ‘Reza Amini’ and his country of origin. Within a few seconds his details, including his passport photo, had shown up.

  ‘Aquí está.’ Here he is.

  Cámara looked at the photo. Allowing for the usual distortion that official photos always produced in people, he was certain it was the man he’d seen at Pozoblanco – ‘Ahmed the Moroccan’.

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Torres checked the details on the man’s file.

  ‘Entered the country a month ago on a tourist visa.’

  ‘Arriving in time for the harvest?’

  ‘It’s his third visit in as many years. Always comes around this time of year. Flies in from Tehran to Madrid.’

  ‘Then makes it down to Albacete on the train.’

  ‘You’ve come across him, I assume. Well, probably. We could check the railway company records.’

  ‘No need. Criminal record?’

  ‘Nothing here.’

  ‘Anything about a militia?’

  Torres scanned the screen.

  ‘Nothing. I can give you the more usual stuff – date of birth, names of parents, where he was born, that kind of thing.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Well, he’s thirty-four going on this.’

  ‘Have we got any idea when he’s going back?’

  ‘In previous years he’s flown back to Tehran in early November. So assuming he’s working on a pattern . . .’

  ‘He could be leaving any day soon.’

  Cámara stared into the eyes in the photo.

  ‘If only we could find out a bit more . . . What about the Iranian militia? Can we check on that?’

  ‘I’ll see.’

  A moment later Torres was reading to him from his screen.

  ‘The Iranian militia, or Basij, is a volunteer force set up during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. It is made up mostly of young men, hard-line supporters of the regime. It acts as a moral police force, imposing Islamic behaviour codes, as well as being used as a force for repression against the students’ movement and other anti-regime activists. It was a major part of the Iranian war effort in the Iran–Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, when militia members were employed in “human wave” attacks against the enemy.’

  ‘OK, we get it.’

  ‘Sounds like a fun bunch of people. Bet they throw great parties.’

  ‘So they’re official, government-linked.’

  ‘Official meat-heads by the sound of it. Violent, repressive.’

  ‘A bit like the Falange used to be here under Franco.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

  ‘A fanatic.’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘And he’s in Spain for the saffron harvest.’

  Cámara stood up and started pacing the room. Torres knew better than to interrupt him when he was in one of his moments.

  The door opened and a woman with streaked blonde hair walked in. She gave Cámara a quizzical look, then seeing Torres sitting at her desk smiled broadly.

  ‘Oh, visitors. How nice.’

  Torres stood up and kissed her on the cheeks.

  ‘¿Qué tal?’

  She glanced over towards Cámara.

  ‘Chief Inspector Max Cámara,’ Torres said. ‘This is Teresa Matute, from the Científica.’

  ‘Oh,’ Teresa said, kissing Cámara as well. ‘I’ve heard about you. Are you back, then?’

  Cámara looked away, lost in his thoughts. Torres gave a shrug.

  ‘Well, yes, sure. Anything to help. Can I do anything?’

  Cámara turned to her.

  ‘Know anything about ballistics?’

  ‘I used to be in that section,’ Teresa said. ‘My first job in the police. But I haven’t got any of the kit here. It’s all at the Jefatura.’

  ‘Could you tell me something about this?’

  Cámara fished into his pocket and pulled out the bullet he’d picked up from the inside of the car the day he and Alicia had gone to Pozoblanco.

  Teresa took the bullet and glanced up at him slightly nervously, as though it were some kind of test.

  ‘It’s, er, a nine-millimetre,’ she said, as though everyone would know. ‘Almost certainly fired from a semi-automatic.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘Well, there are lots of possibilities, but I suppose the most obvious would be an AK-47, because it’s such an easy weapon to get hold of.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything else?’

  She frowned.

  ‘Not really, not just by looking at it like this. I’d need the equipment.’

  ‘No matter. Listen, tell me, is an AK-47 very accurate?’

  ‘It depends.’ Teresa shrugged. ‘Over short range it’s quite good, if it’s set to single shot. It’s pretty inaccurate if you’re on automatic.’

  ‘Long distance?’

>   She wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Not really. It’s best for close combat.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t use it for a sniper weapon.’

  ‘What? An AK-47?’

  She laughed. Cámara’s expression didn’t change.

  ‘Well, no. No, of course not. Not if you actually wanted to hit anything.’

  ‘All right. Thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Cámara fell into silence again. Torres had already sat back down at her desk.

  ‘Well, er, I might just go and get some coffee,’ Teresa said. ‘You want some?’

  ‘Black, please,’ Torres said.

  Cámara said nothing.

  ‘Same for him.’

  The door closed behind her and Cámara went to sit down next to Torres. He had a glassy, distant look in his eyes, one that Torres was familiar with.

  ‘There’s something else I want to look at.’

  Torres knew something about the Mirella Faro case in Albacete. Cámara filled him in on the details he had.

  ‘I want to check murders with a similar MO,’ he said. ‘Can we do that?’

  Torres turned to the screen.

  ‘Time frame?’

  ‘How far back can we go?’

  ‘Your sister’s murder won’t be on there, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘All right, all right. Just see what you can get, will you?’

  Torres tapped on the keyboard, trying combinations of search words. A few moments later they were looking at a list of over a dozen killings.

  ‘The victims were all girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen,’ Torres said. ‘All with some sexual aspect to the attack. I’ve ruled out ones where the attacker was a member of the family.’

  ‘What about MO? Were they all strangled?’

  ‘No.’ Torres looked down the list. ‘Two were knifed, one suffocated, and for two others cause of death is unknown.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘One of them was badly mutilated, the other—’

  ‘That’s fine. Can you get rid of those ones. I just want to see the girls who were strangled.’

  Torres fiddled with the mouse, then clicked and the screen was refreshed. Cámara pulled out a notebook and pen, ready to jot down some notes.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s start from the first one we’ve got.’