A Body in Barcelona: Max Cámara 5

by Jason Webster

  That’s right, isn’t it? This is the right thing to do? It’s about prevention.

  But Hilario was still silent.

  Alicia. He would do it for Alicia. He had put her through enough already. It was time he did something to protect her. Her, and everyone else.

  From inside his pocket, he pulled out Carlos’s crumpled card, straightened it and placed it on his knee.

  Then he picked up his phone.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘YOU LOOK ROUGH.’

  ‘I was just managing to drop off when Berto called me.’

  ‘And you came to say goodbye. I appreciate that.’

  The bus terminal was an ugly, charmless place with a perpetual stench of diesel fumes and oil from the slicks on the tarmac. Travellers were scattered around the place, with piles of suitcases or plastic tartan bags waiting for their ride. Most were Moroccans or Sub-Saharan Africans: buses were cheaper than trains and you could carry almost as much luggage as you wanted. It was hot in there, despite being only half-past eight in the morning. If there ever had been any air conditioning in the building it appeared not to be working.

  ‘I had to pop by and see if I could catch you,’ Cámara said.

  Daniel put an arm around Cámara’s shoulders and the two men embraced.

  ‘So that’s it? No more Valencia?’

  ‘For the time being,’ said Daniel. ‘Barcelona’s the main battlefield right now, and I don’t want to miss it. And besides, I am Catalan, so in a sense I’m going home.’

  Cámara nodded.

  ‘You got somewhere to stay up there?’

  ‘We’ll be fine.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Dídac was standing close by, keeping an eye on their bags, waiting for his father to finish.

  ‘We were going to try one of the car-sharing schemes,’ he said when it was his turn to talk. ‘It’s much the cheapest way of getting around the country these days.’

  ‘Didn’t work out?’ asked Cámara.

  ‘No one was leaving immediately. Or at least no one with space for all our stuff as well.’

  ‘Looks like you’re travelling fairly light to me,’ said Cámara.

  ‘Daniel told me to dump half of what I’d packed,’ Dídac said. He forced a smile. ‘I thought I’d done quite a good job, but …’

  Cámara squeezed his arm.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be an adventure.’

  ‘I know. I’ll just miss everyone here.’

  Cámara embraced him.

  ‘We’ll see each other again soon. And besides, you’ll meet a whole lot of interesting people in Barcelona. It’s a city full of surprises.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m excited about it.’

  Berto was with them, along with a handful of others from the collective who had come to see them off. After a few minutes an announcement came that the Barcelona bus was about to leave. They all went down to the bay, watched as the bags were hauled into the luggage space, and made their final farewells.

  Dídac got on first, and found a seat near the front. Daniel hovered on the steps.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said to the small group of friends. ‘Nice gesture. For a moment I thought we might manage to slip away unnoticed.’

  Berto laughed. Daniel took another step inside the bus.

  ‘Let us know how you get on,’ Cámara called out. The bus driver was anxious to get started.

  Daniel turned and grinned at him as the doors began to close.

  ‘You trying to keep tabs on me, Mister Policeman?’

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE INSTRUCTIONS HAD been to meet outside the cathedral in the Plaza de la Virgen. Carlos would be dressed as a tourist, with a camera hung around his neck, shorts, sandals and a yellow baseball cap on his head. Cámara was to walk past and Carlos would ask him directions on a map.

  On the phone, Cámara thought he was joking. Or perhaps it was the best that the CNI man could come up with at that time in the morning – although Cámara was certain that he was already awake when he called. Nonetheless, it seemed like something out of an old spy film, one of the black-and-white ones they showed in the mornings to fill up the schedules.

  He had slept on the sofa, telling himself that he did not want to wake Alicia by crawling into bed with her. But the truth was that he could hardly bear to be with himself after making the call. His mind wormed and writhed, wondering whether this was the right thing to do. And he had more or less decided – if ‘decided’ was the word, clammy as he was with the heat and exhausted with so much churning thought when the sun finally came up – to call the whole thing off, when Berto rang and told him about Daniel leaving for Barcelona.

  He had just made it, jumping on his motorbike and speeding to the bus station. And now that they had gone – and the others had left miserably, charged with maintaining the food bank without the help of the man who had set it up – there was less than half an hour before his meeting with Carlos. He was up and awake and a short distance away. The inertia of the moment pushed him along.

  He stared at his phone, wondering whether to call home. He had not seen Alicia; he should ring, see if she was all right, just say hello. There had been days recently when communications between them did not even get that far. Talking on the phone might help – a change of format, of medium that could break the pattern they had fallen into. And again he thought that perhaps they could talk about this, about what he was going – or not going – to do. She would know; he trusted her.

  But he could not trust his mobile or his landline – the chances that they were both being tapped were too high. Instead, he found a telephone box and dialled Alicia’s mobile number. She usually kept it in the living room overnight, plugged into the wall to charge the battery; he thought he had seen it there as he was stepping out the door.

  The steady, high-pitched beep of a phone ringing came down the line. Four, five, six times. Then, after a moment, a different tone and an automated message: the other person was not answering. Strange, he thought, that it did not go through to voicemail. Was she up? Perhaps she was in the shower. Or still asleep. She was doing a lot of that lately.

  He stepped out of the phone box and back into the blinding sunlight. In the distance he could make out the Miguelete bell tower of the cathedral. In another five or ten minutes Carlos would be there, waiting for him.

  He put on his helmet, fired up the bike, and fed into the traffic.

  In the end it was simple, felt almost natural: Carlos had clearly done it several times before, quickly acting out the role of someone needing help finding his way around the city, Cámara obliging him and walking away from the cathedral with him in order to show him which way to go. After passing down a side street, they found a discreet café with tables at the back where no one would be able to see them.

  Carlos ordered water; Cámara a strong black coffee.

  ‘You understand,’ Carlos said once they felt they were able to talk, ‘there are no contracts, no formal agreements. You are not – repeat not – an employee of the El Centro. If you get into trouble, if there are any difficulties, you’re entirely on your own. And you have three priorities …’ He flicked out a finger with each one. ‘Look after yourself, look after yourself, and finally, look after yourself.’

  Cámara said nothing. If he had been thinking about looking after himself he would never have agreed to this meeting in the first place. But he was here, it was happening. And he was doing it for Fermín. For Fermín and for Alicia.

  He drank the coffee while it was still hot: it burnt his throat. He had no idea how long this was going to take.

  ‘Another thing,’ Carlos said. ‘This relationship may last for some time, or it may end – quite suddenly and with little or no warning. Just like the police, the centre is subject to the whims and vicissitudes of our elected leaders. One group can leave and another comes in. At which point everything changes. So have no expectations.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Cám
ara sharply.

  ‘Good. Right now,’ Carlos continued, ‘you’re a mess of tension and contradiction. That’s fine, it’s normal. I’ve seen it many times before. All the questions about whether or not you want to do this, about whether it’s the right thing. Trust me, you’ve made the right decision. Soon enough you’ll see that. And believe it or not, people like you are the best asset the centre has – you’re not doing this for ideological reasons, nor for money. You’re doing it because it’s right, because there are people out there – radicals, extremists, nutcases many of them – who are intent on pushing things to the limit. We belong to the balanced middle, you and I. I know you don’t think of yourself as a run-of-the-mill kind of man, but we’re more similar than you realise. That’s why you’re here.’

  ‘You said you could help with the Fermín case.’

  ‘I can and I will,’ said Carlos. ‘Right here, tucked inside the map we’ve just been looking at, is an envelope with all the papers you’re going to need to break this case.’

  The map was on the seat next to him; he lifted a corner of it to reveal a Manila envelope.

  ‘What’s in it?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘You’ll find out when I give it to you. But first …’ He raised a hand, as though to stop Cámara from reaching out for the papers, but Cámara had not moved a muscle. ‘First I need something from you. Information.’

  To begin with, he wanted the names of all the people Cámara had associated with at the collective.

  ‘Not the people who eat there, not the immigrants. Just those helping out. It’s not the food bank per se. I’m all in favour of that, just as you are. Charity is what makes us human, lifts us above the level of apes. But you know as well as I do that there are other activities planned or already being carried out – more radical activities, perhaps even violent or disruptive ones, not just food handouts.’

  ‘We know each other by our first names.’

  ‘Of course you do. And they are …?’

  First names only, he told himself. It was true, if he did know the surnames of some of them. But Carlos did not know that. If he did, why was he asking for names to begin with? Or was it a test?

  He listed half a dozen: Berto, Daniel, some of the others. For some reason he did not name Dídac – he was just a kid. Better not to get him involved in any of this.

  Carlos listened, not writing any of it down. Cámara wondered for a moment whether he was wearing a wire, recording the conversation, until he realised that he was using a memory trick to remember everything that Cámara was passing on. His lips seemed to move slightly as he ran it all though his mind, perhaps inventing mnemonics on the spot. Was that something else they taught spies?

  ‘And you don’t know the surnames of any of them,’ Carlos said when Cámara finished.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you could find them out. You’re a policeman.’

  Something in him shivered: it was the second time that morning he had been reminded of the fact, as though the whole world could read his inner thoughts, his doubts.

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Do it,’ said Carlos. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  There was a pause as the implication of what he had said sank in.

  ‘This is not the only meeting we’ll be having,’ Carlos explained. He glanced down at the map and the hidden envelope.

  ‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty there. But you’ll be wanting more, needing more, believe me. Once you’ve seen the quality of what I can offer you. Not just for the Fermín case, but for others in the future. And there’ll be more. We’re living in a curious time – everything that’s been hidden is coming out into the open. The corruption, the dirty deals, the scandals that have been secret for so long. What you hear about now is just the tip of the iceberg, and you, as one of the most effective policemen in the city – maybe in the country as a whole – will be leading some of the investigations. Of that I have no doubt. Especially as you’re now head of the Special Crimes Unit. There may only be two of you right now, but my bet is you’ll be growing fairly soon. You’ll have so much on you won’t know where to start.’

  He drank his water: beads of sweat were beginning to form on his brow.

  ‘But all that is for the future. Not today. Right now we’re interested in finding Fermín’s killer. But before I hand you this –’ he nodded in the direction of the map – ‘I need one more piece of information from you.’

  Cámara listened.

  ‘The Segundo Pont assassination,’ Carlos said. ‘You’re aware as much as I am that it has changed things, changed them very much for the worse. It’s the reason why you’re here, am I right? But what I need to know is what the talk has been among your friends about what has happened. Any comments, any reaction of any kind?’

  Cámara paused. He had just seen Daniel and Dídac off on the bus to Barcelona, heading north as a direct result of what had happened. The battlefield was going to be up there, Daniel had said. Cámara had thought better than to ask what exactly he intended to do when he arrived. Not least because he knew this meeting was coming shortly afterwards. And what he did not know he could not betray. There was an intense decisiveness about Daniel – there always had been although he seemed even more driven recently. But his setting up of the food bank showed that caring for others was his main concern. His call for carrying out escraches outside bankers’ homes had come as a surprise, but was harmless in the end – nothing had come of it as far as he knew. Nonetheless, he and Dídac had gone, were at that very moment riding up to Catalonia. It was a reaction to the Segundo Pont murder for certain. But would they be getting involved in anything serious? He could not see it. They might join a few demonstrations, hand out some leaflets – nothing that Carlos needed to know about.

  ‘No,’ Cámara said. ‘Everyone’s in a state of shock, as we all are, I think.’

  ‘No joy, no anger, no emotion of any kind?’ Carlos asked.

  ‘Fear,’ Cámara said. ‘I think it’s more fear. And concern. Everything feels very uncertain.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ Carlos said, almost under his breath.

  He picked up the map and moved it closer to Cámara.

  ‘We’ll leave it for today,’ he said. ‘Future contacts will be along these lines. Either I call you or you call me and we arrange to meet. Do not discuss anything sensitive over the phone.’

  Cámara nodded.

  Carlos lifted the map, letting the envelope fall discreetly out and on to the seat near Cámara’s hand.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave now. Don’t get up for another five minutes or so.’

  He stood up.

  ‘In the meantime, you can start reading that. I think you’ll find it interesting.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE ENTIRE CITY was Spanish – technically. But Ceuta was divided. East of the Foso de San Felipe moat, which effectively divided the isthmus from the mainland, was the European quarter: wealthier, better maintained, with the main shops and offices and where trees lined the streets. Most people dressed in Western-style clothes, and it felt like the Spanish mainland, almost like a town on the Costa del Sol, except for the lack of tourists. West of the Foso was a different story. The buildings were cheaper – mostly squat blocks of flats built as quickly as possible some thirty or forty years before. Here, most people dressed in ‘Moroccan’ clothes – the majority of women wore scarves over their hair; the older men wored jellabas and taqiyya skullcaps. Whereas the centre of Ceuta was Christian and relatively affluent, these residential neighbourhoods, closer to the border with Morocco, were Muslim and poor. The grandiose, patriotic names they had been given – the Barrio Juan Carlos I or El Príncipe – did nothing to take away from the fact that they were a forgotten corner of the country, one that few Spaniards themselves were aware of, or wanted to be reminded of.

  Outside, in the streets, with friends and neighbours, she was Selma. She was fifty-two and lived on her own in a flat on the top floor on the Ca
lle Aymat González. Five years earlier her husband had died in an accident at the port; he was a dock worker and during the unloading of a tanker one afternoon, had slipped and fallen between the ship and the quay. His death, they told her, was instantaneous. It was routine in such circumstances to hold an autopsy – all part of the programme to make dock work safer. But it was then that traces of alcohol were discovered in her husband’s blood. A small amount – Hicham must have drunk a glass of wine over lunch, perhaps, nothing more. But it was enough for the port authorities to clear themselves of all responsibility, and deny Selma the pension that she should have been entitled to.

  She had no children to support her, and most of her family lived on the other side, in Morocco. She had no work or chance of working, part of the problem of living in the poorer area of the city; the latest figures talked of 50 per cent unemployment. She reckoned it was much higher.

  After her forty days of mourning had ended, the comments and suggestions began – she should look for another husband, someone who could look after her. Perhaps a widower, someone her own age even. They would start asking around. There was a matchmaker nearby who could help.

  But she had refused. Politely, but firmly. She did not want another husband. At least not for the time being. She had loved Hicham very deeply, she said. It would take a while for her to recover from his sudden death. And it would not be fair to any new husband for her to still be mourning in her heart.

  She had sold a lot of her furniture and moved out of the flat, finding somewhere smaller a bit closer to the centre. Some said she was mad; others kept silent, wondering at the unusual behaviour of a newly widowed woman no longer in full bloom. If only she had children, something to anchor her, but the doctors had been adamant – there was no chance of her conceiving – and she had borne the tragedy with resilience. This latest blow had destabilised her, however. She started losing her friends; members of her family no longer called her, or they pretended not to notice her if they saw her in the street.