A Body in Barcelona: Max Cámara 5

by Jason Webster

  ‘Of course,’ said Cámara. ‘And I’m glad we have this opportunity to clear things up. But I must stress that time is important and we must act quickly.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘We’re here to arrest Colonel José Terreros, head of the Legionarios’ Welfare Fund,’ said Cámara.

  ‘Because?’ Vázquez asked.

  ‘In connection with the murder of a young boy in Valencia two and a half weeks ago.’

  Vázquez sat back in his chair, placing his fingertips together.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ he said at length. ‘I understand now. This is still, despite pretences, a largely military city, and a man like Terreros probably has many friends. The need for secrecy is understandable.’

  Torres glanced back at Padilla, still standing by the door.

  ‘You can trust Padilla,’ said Vázquez. ‘He’s my best.’

  He shifted in his seat, as though coming to a decision.

  ‘And you have my full cooperation, Chief Inspector,’ he said to Cámara. ‘Just tell me what you need.’

  The drive from the Jefatura to the Plaza de España took less than a minute. They parked near the cathedral and walked the remaining few metres towards the office of the Veteran Legionarios’ Welfare Association.

  Cámara and Torres were accompanied by Padilla and a second officer. Padilla led the way. As they crossed the square, his radio beeped.

  ‘Come in,’ he said into the receiver.

  ‘This is Unit Three,’ said a voice. ‘We’re at the subject’s flat.’

  Simultaneously, on the other side of the city, a unit of four other Policía Nacional officers was approaching Terreros’s home.

  ‘Progress?’ said Padilla.

  ‘There’s no one here. Flat is empty. No sign of subject. Neighbours haven’t seen him all day. No sightings of any kind.’

  ‘OK,’ said Padilla. ‘Understood. Proceed as normal. We’re approaching the office now.’

  They turned up the side street, passing through the open front door of the office building and up the narrow flight of stairs to the second floor. At the green door leading to Terreros’s office, Torres knocked on the glass and called out.

  ‘Open up! Police!’

  They waited for a few seconds, but there was no sound, nor any sign of movement. Then, on Cámara’s order, Padilla and the second officer broke the door down with a heavy metal ram. The wood around the lock splintered and they stepped inside.

  The first thing they noticed was the smell: there had been a fire in there recently. The smoke had cleared, presumably through the back window which was open, but black streaking scars up one of the walls confirmed what their sense of smell had told them. Torres stepped over to check.

  ‘The bin,’ he said, looking at the charred remains inside a small metal container. ‘Papers of some sort.’

  Padilla was standing by the computer on the desk, which was lying in pieces.

  ‘He’s ripped out the hard drive by the looks of things,’ he said. ‘Probably taken it with him. Or destroyed it.’

  Cámara scanned the room, clocking the desk, the shelves with military textbooks, the photo of Franco on the wall and the cross with the pained Christ figure. The extinguished fire, the computer, emptiness, said everything. They were too late. Terreros had fled.

  They heard footsteps behind them on the stairs. Cámara turned and saw what looked like a barman standing there with a tray of coffee in his hand.

  ‘Sorry,’ Paco said, and turned sharply to leave.

  ‘Wait, come back.’

  The second police officer grabbed the barman by the shoulder and pulled him into the office.

  ‘Who are you?’ Cámara asked.

  The barman’s eyes darted uncomfortably around the room.

  ‘Identify yourself,’ Padilla barked.

  ‘Francisco Díaz García,’ said the man. ‘I run the Bar Paco in the square.’

  The name was familiar. Cámara turned to look at him more closely.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Padilla said.

  ‘I’m doing my usual round,’ said Paco. ‘I – I usually bring the colonel his coffee around now.’

  ‘Every day?’

  Paco nodded.

  ‘Have you seen the colonel today?’ Cámara asked. He lowered his voice a little, to contrast it with Padilla.

  ‘Not in his office,’ said Paco. ‘I only come this once, around mid-morning.’

  ‘Have you seen him anywhere else?’ said Cámara. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘He was around very early this morning,’ said Paco, suddenly concerned. ‘I saw him go past the bar, as I was opening up. Doesn’t usually come in till a bit later. Not that he’s a late starter, like some of them, but I’ve never seen him that early, I mean.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Some time after seven, I should think,’ said Paco. ‘Maybe a bit before.’

  ‘And what was he doing?’

  ‘Just walking past, that’s all. I assumed he was coming here. Might have something important to do.’

  ‘Something important?’

  Paco looked anxious.

  ‘Well, if he’s coming here that early, you just assume, don’t you.’

  Cámara glanced at Torres, a question in his eyes. Torres frowned.

  ‘OK,’ said Cámara. ‘You can go.’

  Paco turned to leave.

  ‘One other thing, though,’ Cámara called out. ‘Did you see anyone else coming to this office recently?’

  Paco shook his head.

  ‘No one?’

  ‘Just the colonel,’ said Paco. ‘I never saw anyone else come in here. Till today.’

  The four of them stood in silence for a second as they watched Paco walk down the stairs. Then Padilla’s radio beeped again.

  ‘Come in,’ he said quickly.

  ‘This is central,’ came a voice. ‘Possible sighting of subject.’

  ‘Where?’

  All four of them leaned in to the radio.

  ‘Tarajal.’

  ‘We’re on our way,’ said Padilla.

  ‘The border,’ he said, slipping the radio back on to his belt and heading towards the door. ‘Terreros is trying to get across to Morocco.’

  THIRTY

  WITHIN FIVE MINUTES they were at the border, the siren screeching as they sped along narrow streets and out on to the main avenue hugging the coastline south. It felt as though they had already left Spain and entered Morocco itself: the pavements were populated by young men with short-cropped black hair carrying enormous chequered bags laden with goods to sell on the other side. A beach of grey, uninviting sand was soon hidden behind a high blue wall with caged walkways for pedestrians passing between the two countries, boxing them in like rats.

  The radio crackled with almost inaudible updates from the border post: Terreros had been sighted but had disappeared. No one knew where he had gone. The Moroccan authorities had been informed and were requested to stop him if he made it across.

  They sped down to a small roundabout just short of the border: cars were backed up in the heat, and despite the best efforts of the officers on duty, it was impossible to drive any further.

  Before they came to a halt, Cámara had leapt out and was running along the middle of the road, finding narrow gaps in the logjam, straining with every muscle to get to the border itself in time.

  Some stopped to watch what was happening, others carried on with their own affairs. Police operations were not uncommon, but usually they were trying to prevent people from getting in, not from getting out of Spain.

  Padilla and Torres were at his side. Reaching the customs building, they could see that the border itself had been closed – no traffic or people were flowing through. An officer of the Guardia Civil approached them.

  ‘Sergeant Muñoz,’ he said, presenting himself with a salute. ‘I’m sorry, sir, we’ve lost him.’

  ‘What happened?’ Torres demanded.

  ‘The alert came through
just seconds after he presented his passport,’ Muñoz said. ‘He managed to get past, but in the confusion we lost him. It’s heavy traffic today – the Moroccans have a feast day tomorrow. But we talked to the other side – they insist that he did not pass their checkpoints. He hasn’t crossed the border.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Cámara asked.

  The sergeant shrugged.

  ‘We have their word,’ he said. ‘And we have no authority to go over and check.’

  ‘They go through your paperwork pretty thoroughly,’ Padilla said. ‘It’s not quick getting into Morocco. If they say he didn’t cross we can probably assume he’s still on our side.’

  ‘OK,’ said Torres, ‘but where the …?’

  ‘He must have slipped back in the flow heading our way,’ said Cámara. ‘We might have passed him as we were rushing in.’

  Silently, he cursed himself: he had been so intent on reaching the border, convinced that Terreros was there, that he had paid no attention to the cars and people coming the other way.

  He turned to Padilla.

  ‘Get more men down here. Immediately. Description of Terreros. Arrest on sight.’

  Padilla was already barking orders into his radio. Torres started organising the men who were already there: they had to search everywhere – every truck, every car, every possible hideout within a hundred metres. And if that did not work, two hundred metres. Keep going, until they found him.

  Cámara turned and looked back towards Ceuta. The road leading to the border was now in chaos: closing the border had built up more traffic and policemen were scampering around the hot and frustrated crowds, checking for signs of their runaway colonel.

  He scanned the tops of the small border-post buildings. Could Terreros have scrambled up them? He doubted it: they were too high.

  As the search kicked into gear, and the sounds of more squad cars from the city centre were heard in the distance, he closed his eyes and tried to think: what would you do? What would he do? Terreros had almost been caught after passing the Spanish passport control, but crossing over to the Moroccan side would be dangerous: they were alerted and would certainly catch him now. But going back to Ceuta was also out of the question: every policeman in the city would be looking for him.

  Wherever he was, he would feel trapped, he would almost certainly panic in some way. Which would mean – Cámara hoped – making a mistake.

  Cámara started walking slowly through the crowd away from the border. To his left, rubbish and empty boxes lay scattered over a rocky, uninviting slope leading up to brightly painted houses. To his right, Moroccan men loitered, smoking and watching the events unfold like a drama before them. Many of the older ones wore large white skullcaps, while most wore cheap, Western-style clothes. Then there were others in brown or black djellabas, with pointed hoods, almost like monks.

  They all noticed him; some looked at him directly and unashamedly. He was their morning’s entertainment: what was going to happen now?

  But one of them averted his gaze from the Spanish detective, trying to slip behind the others, becoming visible by his attempts to go unnoticed. And his garb made it worse: he was wearing only a white vest with what looked to be modest shorts underneath.

  In less than a second Cámara had stepped over and grabbed him by the arm. The man turned and grinned up at him innocently: please, his expression said, no trouble.

  ‘He gave me a hundred euros,’ he said apologetically. And he threw up his hands: what else could I have done?

  ‘What were you wearing?’ asked Cámara.

  The man pointed at one of the others nearby.

  ‘A djellaba?’ said Cámara.

  The man nodded.

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Brown. It’s brown.’

  Cámara let go of the man’s arm.

  ‘Which way did he go?’

  The man shrugged: he thought he had said enough already. But Cámara’s hand soon clenched over his shoulder, gripping him tightly.

  ‘Which way did he go?’

  Some of the others fell back. If there was going to be a struggle they did not want to be near an enraged Spanish policeman.

  The man’s knees seemed to buckle under him. Then he raised his hand and pointed further up the road.

  ‘Back up there?’ Cámara asked. The man nodded. He let him go, guiding him gently to the ground and patting him on the arm in thanks. He would be all right.

  A squad car was moving closer, pushing its way through the traffic. Cámara leapt over, identified himself and ordered them to put out an alert: Terreros was now disguised as a Moroccan, wearing a brown djellaba, and was last seen heading back towards the city.

  Once the message was received, he started jogging along the side of the road, scanning for anyone suspect. But a djellaba was a great disguise: they covered you almost completely and were a common sight here. Only Terreros’s footwear might give him away, but with so many people milling around it was not always easy to spot what shoes they were wearing. He ran up to as many as he could, pulling their hoods back from behind to reveal their faces: one, two, three. But none of them was Terreros.

  He got to the end of the blue wall and the beach was once more in view. The search seemed hopeless. Terreros could have got anywhere by this point. And what if he had worked out some other way of leaving the enclave?

  As he stood at the edge of the road, a police officer came running up.

  ‘Sir!’ he called. ‘There’s a sighting.’

  ‘Where?’

  The officer pointed.

  ‘On the beach. Right by the border.’

  Cámara jumped over the wall, down on to the sand, the officer close behind. He looked back towards Morocco: at the border itself, a high wall pushed out into the sea to stop people from swimming across. Further obstacles were placed in the way, while a line of small buoys stretching out to sea marked where one country’s waters met the other’s.

  And there, on the sand, was a small pile of brown cloth, and discarded next to it, a walking stick and the biggest revolver that Cámara had ever seen, glinting in the sunlight. To the left, out in the sea already, Terreros’s head was bobbing up above the waves: he had finally panicked and was trying to swim to Morocco.

  In an instant Cámara was sprinting down the sand. He could see a rubber dinghy being launched from the far side of the border: if Terreros could make it past the wall and over to the buoys, he would be picked up by the Moroccans, having crossed into their territory. And then the process of getting him back to Spain would be lengthy and complicated. Perhaps even impossible, if Terreros had the right friends over there. He must have decided in the end that it was better to make it to Morocco after all, to try his luck.

  But not if Cámara could get to him first.

  He sprinted, slipping off his jacket, his gun belt and anything else that he could as he sped along the beach. Terreros was an able swimmer and was getting close to the end of the dividing wall. A group of Spanish policemen had emerged from inside the border-control post, but were simply waving their arms and shouting, others trying to launch their own dinghy. No one was thinking about diving into the water itself.

  With a skip, Cámara pulled off each shoe and threw himself headlong into the waves, quickly breaking into a crawl as Terreros drew further away. From Morocco, the police boat was moving in fast, while the first buoy – where Spanish jurisdiction ended – was only metres away from Terreros.

  Cámara buried his head in the water and powered forwards. After a few seconds, he looked up: Terreros was tiring, and the waves breaking against the wall were proving tricky, lifting him up and almost pushing him backwards. There was just a chance that Cámara could reach him in time. He kicked his legs harder, willing himself on.

  But Terreros was not giving up. Pushing off from the bottom of the wall, he flung himself forwards, trying to time the waves in order to get momentum away and out towards the first buoy. And the Moroccan police dinghy floating just beyond.
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  Cámara forced himself to swim faster than he had ever done in his life and he edged closer and closer. But just as he was about to reach out and grab hold of him, Terreros made a final effort and took hold of the buoy, hurling himself around it and over to the Moroccan side. There he stopped, treading water. Only a few metres away, Cámara halted and looked up: the Moroccan dinghy was already swooping down.

  Terreros said nothing, but looked at him with an expression of smug triumph: he was safe.

  Cámara watched as the Moroccan policemen approached. But four or five metres behind Terreros, they stopped, not moving in to pick him up. Terreros barely noticed, enjoying his moment, taking in the face of the man who had almost managed to catch him. And his expression broke into a broad grin.

  Cámara looked up at the Moroccan officer in the boat behind, wondering why he was not moving in on Terreros. The man was wearing sunglasses, but at that moment he took them off and looked Cámara in the eye. Then very gently, almost imperceptibly, he gave a nod.

  After a quick order, the engine accelerated, the boat turned in a tight corner, and the Moroccan police were speeding back to their own side. Terreros heard them, and turned to watch in horror as his supposed rescuers abandoned him.

  Cámara swam over and caught hold of the buoy. Then grabbing Terreros by the wrist, he hauled him back to the Spanish side.

  ‘Colonel Terreros,’ he said. ‘There are a few questions I’d like to ask you.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  HE WANTED TO celebrate.

  ‘We’ll go to La Sucursal,’ he said, putting his bags down as he walked in through the door. ‘I can call. It’s midweek – I’m sure we can get a table.’

  Alicia did not answer.

  ‘Do you fancy that?’ he said. ‘We’ll make a night of it. We deserve it.’

  She got up and walked to the sink to pour herself a glass of water.

  ‘No?’ he said. ‘Something else? We could head out of town if you want.’

  She drank in silence.

  ‘Somewhere near the beach? I don’t know, what do you fancy?’

  She put the glass down and shrugged.