‘How long till they make their move?’ Cámara asked.
‘No one can say.’
‘And Terreros …’
‘Terreros,’ said Carlos, ‘who would rather die than see this country break apart, is almost certainly, as we speak, arriving in Catalonia with a plan of some sort under his arm.’
‘A plan for … sabotage?’ said Cámara.
Terreros suddenly reached out and gripped him by the shoulder.
‘You understand now how serious things are?’ he said. ‘My suggestion – and it is only a suggestion. I’m not giving you orders here, nor am I in a position to – but my suggestion is that you get up to Catalonia quickly. Today. And you do whatever you have to do to find Terreros. And you can count on me. I’ll give you whatever you need.’
‘The Mossos d’Esquadra,’ said Cámara. ‘Why not use them? It’s their territory.’
‘Terreros is your suspect,’ said Carlos. ‘And right now the Mossos have got more things on their mind. They’re still hunting Segundo Pont’s murderers and worried about whose side they’ll be on when things get rough in Catalonia. Because believe me, that moment is coming.’
Carlos squeezed his shoulder harder.
‘It’s you, Cámara,’ he said. ‘It has to be you.’
Cámara closed his eyes and nodded.
‘All right,’ he said.
‘Good.’ Carlos let his arm drop. He looked ready to leave.
For the first time, Cámara became properly aware of where they were, just off the Plaza de Nápoles y Sicilia. He sniffed.
‘About here,’ he said in a low voice.
‘What’s that?’ asked Carlos.
Cámara swallowed.
‘It was about here, we reckon,’ he said. ‘Where little Fermín was attacked … and murdered.’
He nodded at a couple of large rubbish containers.
‘Possibly behind there.’
Carlos put his hands in his pockets and leaned in towards him.
‘If you don’t stop Terreros,’ he said, ‘Fermín’s death is going to look like a drop in a large and very bloody ocean.’
THIRTY-NINE
El Uno: Everything has gone to plan. Presently at Base 2.
El Dos: Understood. Is your position safe?
Uno: El Siete is with me. We eliminated the guard. Everything under control. What is your position?
Dos: As arranged. Everything is in place.
Uno: Good. The accomplice?
Dos: He’s ready.
Uno: There can’t be any mistakes. Not like last time.
Dos: There won’t be.
Uno: Follow the plan to the letter. No improvising. That’s an order.
Dos: Yes, sir. What about the detective, sir?
Uno: You don’t need to worry about him.
Dos: Understood.
Uno: And relax. Suggest you get some R&R while you still can. I need you sharp and rested on the day.
Dos: Yes, sir.
Uno: But with moderation. The declaration is imminent. Essential you act immediately BEFORE. Will communicate as intelligence comes in regarding timings.
Dos: Understood.
Uno: For the time being, as of now consider this the green light for the final phase.
Dos: Yes, sir.
Uno: You have my blessing.
FORTY
HE HAD NOT expected to be back so soon.
It was almost ten o’clock by the time he got to Barcelona. The taxi dropped him on a tree-lined street in the Baix Guinardó district, a few blocks up from the Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s strange and soaring landmark basilica. He paid, lifted his bags out from the boot of the car and stepped across to a pool of lamplight at the entrance to an uninspiring grey building with tiny windows. It felt like a prison.
Sotsinspector Ripoll kept him waiting at reception for over twenty minutes before finally appearing. The Mossos liaison officer was in full uniform, his cap pressed firmly over his head and shading his eyes from the harsh lighting above.
‘Cámara?’ he asked, looking down at the seated figure staring out through the glass doors back towards the street.
Cámara stood up.
‘Chief Inspector Cámara,’ he said, ‘of the Valencia Special Crimes Unit.’
Ripoll turned on his heel.
‘Follow me.’
Cámara had been relieved when the Mossos d’Esquadra station on Carrer de la Marina had accepted his request for temporary assistance. It was large and had the resources he would need, but was distant enough from the central comissaria, where, thanks to the inquiry into the death of Ignacio Rovira and his questioning of the assumed innocence of the Mossos policemen responsible for his death, Cámara already had a reputation. Back in Valencia, it had seemed the sensible option. Not that sensible options were his forte, but he knew how much damage uncooperative colleagues could do to an investigation.
Now that he was in Barcelona, however, he was having his doubts.
Ripoll carried on walking without a word down a long corridor. At the bottom, he opened a door on the right, holding it open for Cámara to see in.
‘Your office,’ he said in a flat voice.
Cámara had seen prison cells with more space. A desk was pushed into a corner with a phone and an antediluvian computer so large and heavy it seemed the table might break under its weight. A chair was squeezed in underneath, hemmed in by a short cot bed running the length of the other wall. There was no window and no desk lamp: only a single fluorescent tube suspended from the ceiling.
‘The computer’s hooked up to the network,’ said Ripoll. ‘You’ll find everything you need there.’
Cámara raised a solitary eyebrow before speaking.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
So much for his sensible option: it was clear – from Ripoll’s body language to the shithole of a visitor’s office they had assigned him – that his reputation had spread here as well. Cámara the doubter, Cámara the traitor. He wondered for a moment if he had a single friend in Barcelona.
‘All of this could, of course, have waited until tomorrow,’ said Ripoll. ‘But your boss, Pardo, rang my boss and insisted. So this is all we’ve got. At this time of night.’
‘I see.’
Ripoll looked at him with a mixture of annoyance and amusement, as though he were some strange, unpleasant creature.
‘But you obviously decided it was important to come up and start things yourself.’
‘That’s right,’ said Cámara.
‘Straight away. Must be embarrassing losing a prisoner like that. I can only imagine.’
Cámara took a step into the room, placing his bags carefully on the small free patch of floor at the side of the bed.
‘I’ll need to speak with the head of your murder squad,’ he said.
‘You can,’ said Ripoll. ‘In the morning. No one’s around at the moment.’
Cámara took a step closer towards him.
‘I need to impress on you how dangerous the man I’m seeking is. I need and expect full cooperation. Is that clear, Sotsinspector?’
Ripoll shook his head.
‘You see, that’s the thing,’ he said. ‘What goes around comes around. And we know exactly who you are, Chief Inspector Cámara. So you can expect cooperation from the Mossos during your stay here. Just the same amount of cooperation that you yourself showed only a few weeks ago.’
He turned and walked back up the corridor.
‘Goodnight,’ he said. ‘You’ll find the bathroom on the other side of the incident room through the double doors on your left.’
His footsteps echoed for a few seconds in the empty police station, before silence fell.
Cámara rubbed his face, checked the office once more, then stepped out and pushed through into the incident room. It was empty apart from a group of four officers sitting at a group of tables near the entrance. They glanced up at him as he walked through, stopping their conversation, and watched as he paced across.
There, scattered on a couple of desks, was the newspaper front page that he had seen on the train heading up, the story that everyone had been talking about all day.
He opened the bathroom door and stepped inside. The cubicles were empty: he was alone. He turned on the tap and put his hands in the water, not wanting to look at himself in the mirror. Torres’s last words as he had left Valencia rang in his ears.
‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘You can do as much from here as in Barcelona. There’s no love lost for you there. You’ll only slow yourself down.’
And he had not listened, insisting that it was the right thing to do.
‘And now with this,’ Torres had tried one last time. ‘They’re thinking about other things. No one’s going to be interested in a detective from Valencia with a missing prisoner.’
This. It had made them all nervous. The oft-repeated official line was that the armed forces had accepted democracy in Spain. But every year or so signs that a hard authoritarian streak was still alive among the top brass managed to slip out: perhaps a favourable reference to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falangist party, or some hint at the ‘sacredness’ of the unity of the country. In the past these comments had usually come from officials low enough for the semblance of normality not to be disturbed – from an elderly colonel or a spokesman for a military organisation. The day before, however, the chief of the defence staff, speaking at a medal ceremony, had referred to Franco as a ‘great Spaniard’, quoting the former dictator at length and his views about ‘National Unity’ and ‘work’ being the best expression of ‘popular will’. Franco had made the comments as part of his justification for a totalitarian state.
It was the clearest hint yet that members of the armed forces were contemplating taking action in the face of Catalan – and increasingly Basque as well – moves to break away. A look of deep concern marked everyone’s faces: memories of the attempted military coup in 1981 were still alive. They had tried it before; they could try it again. And after the European Union had proved so spineless in Ukraine no one could pretend that Brussels – or anyone else these days – would step in to prevent such an outcome. From the Middle East to the former Soviet Bloc, the old ways were returning: no one wanted to get involved any more. Why should they bother if things blew up on the fringes of Europe?
Cámara tried to imagine the conversation among the officers inside the incident room. Were they already taking sides? Where would the Catalan police stand if the military did get involved?
He did not want to think about it. All he could do was find Terreros as quickly as possible. Before it was too late.
He finished in the bathroom and walked back past the police officers, not looking at them as he pushed through the double doors and into the corridor. The tiny office was on his right. He could go in, settle down, get the computer going and start searching for signs of Terreros. Or he could go out, get some fresh air, perhaps even find a bar for a drink somewhere. Not that this residential quarter of the city seemed the kind of place where that would be easy.
He made sure that the man on reception saw him before stepping out into the night air. He turned left and started meandering along the grid-pattern streets. The place looked deserted, but it would be good to stretch his legs at least.
Terreros. For some reason he knew that searching the Mossos records would lead him nowhere. At least not tonight. Something about the legionario colonel had been bothering him ever since Carlos had told him that morning about his escape. And it was not so much that he had somehow managed to get clean away from the Jefatura, but about the manner of his arrest in the first place.
Who the hell wrote a threatening letter by hand? And then tried to escape to Morocco? Yes, he had made a good show of it – not least buying the djellaba. But then trying to swim? And the smile on his face when Cámara had caught up with him. Cámara had assumed it was because at that moment Terreros thought he had managed to escape, had crossed the border to the other side. But now he began to wonder. It was almost as if … Really? Was he really entertaining this thought? Almost as if Terreros had wanted to be arrested in the first place. Had even orchestrated things to turn out this way.
What had Carlos said? That Terreros was under virtual house arrest in Ceuta. They could control him there. But now he was loose on the mainland. He was free, and far more dangerous. And Cámara himself had helped bring him here, performing his role in what began to feel like a much bigger play.
He stopped in his tracks. This entire time he had been pulled along by the nose, like a donkey being shunted around. What game, exactly, was being played here? And who was playing it?
For a moment he felt as though he were close to grasping the truth, as though a clarity hovered around him, just beyond his reach. But as quickly as the sensation came, it disappeared again.
He was alone, on a dark, unknown street, surrounded by the closed doors of shops and banks and blocks of flats. There was nothing there for him: nowhere for him to go.
He thought of Torres again. Perhaps he should have stayed in Valencia. He felt as though he had abandoned his colleague and friend. But Carlos had got between them, telling him to come to Barcelona, and Cámara had obeyed, his limbs twitching into life like a puppet on a string.
He could not stay, but neither could he bring Torres with him. Common sense said that he had to keep his connection with Carlos secret. And it had suggested a comissaria away from the central police hub. Now common sense dictated that he go back to his tiny office and start trawling for signs of Terreros in Catalonia, hunting for a lead of some kind.
But common sense – and the words of others – had got him nowhere. He had never been in control from the start.
He had made mistakes – he could see that clearly now. But it was not too late. He could still fix things. It was time he became who he was, to do things the Cámara way.
He picked up his phone to make a call, but the phone itself seemed to be one step ahead of him. It vibrated in his hand, indicating that he had a new message.
He looked at the screen: it was from Dídac.
FORTY-ONE
‘COME ON. LET’S go for a drink.’
They crossed the Ramblas, away from the Barri Gòtic and towards the Raval area, down dark narrow side streets. On a wall, painted with red spray-paint, was scrawled the word ‘mártir’.
‘That’s where Segundo Pont was shot dead,’ said Daniel simply as they stepped past. Dídac glanced anxiously at the spot, a sense of dread swirling in his belly. Were those blood spots he could see on the ground? Was there some ghost, some spirit of the awful event, still lingering here? It was as if he could feel it, and the hairs pricked up on the back of his neck.
‘Do – does anyone know who did it?’ he asked. ‘Do you know? Does Ximo know? Was Ximo involved?’
He had barely seen Sònia’s father over the past days, but for an instant it was as if he could see him here, gun in hand, driven by intense political rage. Segundo Pont was a stooge, he had overheard him say once at the flat. Catalonia was better off without him.
Daniel carried on walking, not looking across. Dídac understood: no more questions. But he was certain that his father knew.
After another couple of blocks they turned right into a tight alleyway before sidling up to a bar. A couple of large wine barrels had been placed by the door on the pavement and were being used as tables by smokers. Daniel pushed past and made his way to the front, Dídac following close behind.
‘What do you want? Lemonade?’ asked Daniel.
‘No,’ said Dídac. ‘I’ll have a beer.’
Daniel sniggered, then turned to the barman and ordered two tercios of lager. The bottles were handed over and he passed one to his son.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Now you’re no longer a virgin you’re going to start drinking like a man.’
‘I wasn’t a virgin,’ said Dídac.
‘OK. Whatever you say.’ But Daniel did not believe him.
&n
bsp; They walked over to a corner of the bar near the door, standing by a high table recently vacated by a young couple.
‘Have you been here before?’ Dídac asked. Daniel shrugged.
‘These places are all the same,’ he said. ‘You get a drink, you stand around, then you go. Perhaps somewhere else. Perhaps not.’
Dídac watched as Daniel lifted the beer bottle to drink, holding it near the top between his forefinger and middle finger with delicate, practised ease. And nonchalantly, not wanting to give himself away, he gently slipped his own hand up from the base of his bottle to the neck, trying to arrange his fingers in the same manner. It was difficult: the fresh cool glass sweated in the evening heat.
Daniel stood silently, watching the people in the bar, but he looked fidgety. It’s my fault, Dídac thought to himself. I should think of something to say, start a conversation. But nothing came to mind. Sònia? Daniel would mock him. Their preparations? Perhaps. Daniel only really engaged with him when they were working on their new plans. Whatever those plans might be. He still had no idea. There had been a change in Daniel – he seemed harder, tenser even, but the past weeks and days had been among the best he had ever spent with him, learning, training, getting ready for the big action that was doubtless about to come. It was the only time he had felt – fleetingly – that he existed for his father in any real sense. Coming to Barcelona had been the best thing in his life.
He tightened his fingers around the bottleneck, squeezing as hard as he could. Then he checked how Daniel held it. Yes, that was right. Time to give it a go. He still had not drunk anything and the beer would be getting warm soon.
He lifted it to his mouth; the wet bottle squirmed rebelliously between his fingers, but just in time he managed to wedge it against his lips. As he lifted it, the stream of fizzy liquid began to pour into his mouth. He had done it; it was not so difficult after all.
But in congratulating himself on his skilful handling of the bottle, he forgot to swallow. A trickle caught in the back of his throat. He coughed uncontrollably: the beer flew out of his mouth and splattered over Daniel’s face; the bottle slipped out of Dídac’s fingers and smashed over the hard tiled floor.
A Body in Barcelona: Max Cámara 5 Page 21
