A Body in Barcelona: Max Cámara 5

by Jason Webster

  FIFTY-TWO

  AFTER SQUEEZING THEIR way through the police barriers at the top of the road, they pushed north before cutting west, zigzagging through the parallel streets of the Eixample. Bartomeu was good, unafraid of mounting the pavement where necessary or whizzing down the narrow corridor between opposite-facing cars sitting at a standstill in traffic jams. Many drivers had got out of their vehicles and were staring up at the plume of dark grey smoke billowing from the Sagrada Familia into the sky. As they heard the motorbike’s siren and saw its flashing light, they skipped out of the way, making a path for Cámara and Bartomeu as they pushed on, trying to follow the helicopter’s commentary.

  ‘Ronda del Guinardó, past Alfons Dècim. Sighting. Unconfirmed. Black pickup, heading direction Travessera de Dalt.’

  Bartomeu turned left, then right before speeding the wrong way up a one-way street, an increased urgency communicating that they were getting close.

  At the top of the road, the traffic was totally blocked, cars at a standstill, their engines close to overboiling in the heat of the sun. The motorbike mounted the pavement again, scooting past pedestrians as Bartomeu tried to find a way through the line of vehicles. But they were so tightly squeezed that there was no way through.

  Overhead, the helicopter chopped the air and Cámara glanced up to see that it was almost directly above them. Then he looked across the road, and saw.

  ‘Travessera de Dalt,’ came the pilot’s voice. ‘Sighting at top of overpass. Vehicle caught in traffic. One police motorbike arriving on the scene.’

  The road ahead was a wide avenue, a flyover with apartment buildings and shops running along either side. Despite being one of the main thoroughfares in the city, it was also a residential district, and there, just at the end of the flyover, backed up against some metal bollards before a long drop down to the trunk road beneath, was a children’s playground, with swings and a climbing frame. A group of around a dozen kids were there, running and skipping, while a collection of parents and grandparents sat on the benches at the sides and watched, unaware of the drama that had taken place in the city centre and which was about to burst into their world.

  In front of the playground was a communal area with flower beds on either side, and more benches – a kind of mini square. And there, at the edge of it, pulling away from the gridlocked traffic and defiling the sacred pedestrian space with its presence, was the black pickup, positioning itself to face the playground now squarely in front of it, like a bull preparing to charge.

  A few angry voices were raised: the behaviour was disturbing. But the old man now approaching the pickup, waving his hand in furious indignation, could only imagine that the driver of the vehicle was trying, in some way, to escape the traffic jam. Not that he had anything more sinister in mind.

  Cámara watched from the side of the road, some twenty metres away, as the old man first approached the cabin of the truck and then backed off, his expression rapidly changing from red rage to white fear as the window was wound down.

  The driver waited until the glass had slipped completely inside the door before pulling out his Star machine gun. The old man almost fell over himself as he retreated to his bench, collapsing on to it in gaping silence as he obeyed the orders of the man with the gun.

  On the other side of the truck, not wanting to draw attention to himself, Cámara slipped off the motorbike – now stuck behind a wall of cars – and motioned for Bartomeu to radio in their position and call for backup. Then crouching low, he slunk along behind the vehicles at right angles, trying to get a little closer.

  In the middle of the square, the pickup’s engine was beginning to make a loud and powerful noise. Cámara glanced up: the driver was stretching down as though to reach something by his feet, and could not clearly be seen.

  Fear started to spread among the people in the square and the parents in the playground. What was this car doing? Why was it revving so aggressively at them?

  The old man on the bench was too stunned to speak. He slouched down, trying to point his finger, but no one could understand what he was trying to say.

  Cámara pushed through a tiny gap between two cars in the traffic jam, keeping his head low as he steadied himself to sprint across. He could still not see the driver’s head properly, but knew that he only had seconds to act. His hand reached for his pistol and after taking a deep breath, he pounced, head down, and ran as fast as he could, jumping over the flower bed and across the square to within three metres of the pickup.

  But when he looked up he saw Daniel, and the barrel of his weapon pointing directly at his face through the window of the vehicle.

  ‘Drop the gun, Max,’ Daniel said in a slow, shaky voice, raised to make himself heard over the noise of the engine and the helicopter above.

  ‘Drop it now, or I’ll shoot.’

  FIFTY-THREE

  ‘DANIEL …’ SAID CÁMARA, holding out his hand.

  ‘I’m serious, Max.’ Despite the quiver as he spoke, Daniel’s grip was steady, barely moving as he held his arm straight and stiff.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do, Max,’ Daniel continued. ‘No hero’s ending here. You drop the gun and tell your friends out there to do the same. Because I’ve jammed the accelerator and my foot is on the clutch. This truck is full of C4. Anyone shoots me and it’s going right in there.’

  He nodded at the playground and the groups of children now starting to huddle around the adults as concern mounted that something serious was happening.

  One mother was already heading for the exit, dragging her little girl behind her.

  ‘You’d better tell them to stop, Max,’ Daniel said. ‘Or I’ll shoot them dead before they take another step.’ And he flicked the machine gun ever so slightly, his finger pressing on the trigger.

  Without taking a step Cámara shouted out towards the playground.

  ‘Halt! Police!’ he screamed. ‘Stay where you are. Nobody move.’

  The mother stood still. Inside the playground the other parents pulled their children closer to them.

  ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ Cámara shouted. ‘Just don’t move. Stay where you are.’

  He checked that the message had got through, holding his free hand out with fingers splayed as though to push them back, before turning his attention back to the pickup. The parents and children froze in the playground. Daniel winked at him.

  ‘Nice work,’ he said. ‘Now drop your gun. I haven’t forgotten you’re holding it.’

  Reluctantly, Cámara let the pistol slide from his fingers and fall to the ground by his feet.

  ‘Hold both hands up near your head,’ Daniel said. ‘Good. You see, you’re right – everything’s going to be OK.’

  ‘Is this what they taught you, Daniel?’ Cámara said. ‘The guns, the weapons, the explosives – how to handle it all.’

  He cupped his hands behind his head.

  ‘Is this what being in the Legión was all about? Preparing you for a big moment like this?’

  Daniel said nothing, but kept the machine gun trained at Cámara’s head.

  ‘I found the file,’ Cámara said. ‘Yesterday. I should have realised sooner. But there it was – Private Daniel Alemany Llach of the IV Bandera “Cristo de Lepanto” of Ceuta.’

  ‘Very good, Max,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Five years’ good service,’ Cámara continued. ‘Commendations, even a medal. And serving under one of the best commanders the Legión has seen for years. Did Colonel Terreros himself ask you to join his secret little network?’

  ‘Network,’ Daniel grinned at him. ‘Secrets. Did it make your day, Max? More grist for the mill of your radical ideas? The military, the defenders of the nation, quietly and surreptitiously working behind the scenes to make sure that everything stays the same? I bet you came in your pants.’

  ‘The only one having a wet dream here,’ Cámara spat, ‘is you. Wet with the blood of the people you just killed in the Sagrada Familia. Is this your glor
y moment, Daniel? Action, violence, killing for – for what? For the sake of the Fatherland, the Patria? You pretend to be someone else for seventeen, eighteen years in order to do this? A sleeper, a mole in the ranks of the Reds. Did Terreros ask you to do that, Daniel? Or was it your own idea?’

  ‘Shut up, Max,’ Daniel shouted. ‘I’m done listening to this.’

  ‘You even slept with anarchists,’ Cámara bellowed back. ‘Made love to them. Had a child by one of them. How do you do that, Daniel? How do you father a child and bring him up to believe in the very ideas you hate, that you have sworn to fight? Hey? How do you—?’

  ‘By despising the very thing I helped give birth to,’ Daniel screamed. ‘I despised that kid.’

  ‘Dídac,’ said Cámara. ‘Say his name. Dídac. He’s your son.’

  The machine gun began to shake in Daniel’s hand.

  ‘He was no son of mine,’ he said, his voice lowering suddenly. ‘Until—’

  ‘Until what, Daniel? Found out you love him after all, have you? Your own child. You can’t hate that. That’s real life, not just ideas about how the world should be.’

  ‘Shut up!’ The gun waved in Daniel’s hand.

  ‘What have you done with him?’ Cámara said. ‘You almost strangled him, didn’t you? Where’s Dídac now? Where the hell is he?’

  But the expression on Daniel’s face cleared, as though he was becoming aware of something for the first time.

  ‘He’s fine,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘I trained him. He’s turned out well in the end.’

  ‘Trained him for what?’

  ‘To believe in something real. Not your phantoms and dreams.’

  The gun was steady once more.

  ‘You could never know,’ said Cámara. ‘You were never one of us.’

  And Daniel broke into laughter.

  ‘“Us”?’ he said. ‘“Us”? Neither were you, Mister Policeman. You were spying on us. Don’t play the sincerity card on me.’

  Cámara nodded.

  ‘Terreros told you, did he?’ he said. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder where he got that from, though? How he knew?’

  A black look entered Daniel’s feral expression. Cámara felt he was on the point of losing him.

  ‘You went too far,’ he said, clearly and loudly.

  Daniel nodded, his eyes focusing again on Cámara. An unspoken communication, an understanding, passed between them.

  ‘Sometimes people stand in your way,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Even ten-year-old boys?’

  The gun held steady, but from the corner of his vision, Cámara could see that some of the parents and children were getting restless. The stand-off had been going on for too long: they were getting impatient. And in the distance, several streets away, he thought he could hear sirens as more police moved in on their position. It would not take long before the pickup was surrounded. At which point, any semblance of control that he had over the situation would be lost.

  ‘Was that all that Fermín meant to you, Daniel?’ Cámara continued. ‘Segarra’s son? Just something in your way that you had to remove? You broke his neck like you almost did with Dídac. Perhaps it was Dídac’s neck you really wanted to break in the first place. You couldn’t handle your feelings for the son you were bringing up but were supposed to reject. Pushing all that emotion down, all that guilt. Was that your pressure valve? Violence? Killing?’

  Daniel did not reply.

  ‘It was Terreros’s policy,’ said Cámara. ‘Targeting children. Just like you’re doing now. What is it with him? That he could never have kids of his own? Is that where this hate against children comes from, Daniel? Is that why you came here, right here, for this? It’s no accident, is it? A playground. What better way to act out your colonel’s disturbed fantasies.’

  Daniel’s face began to redden, his lips tightening over gritted teeth. Behind him, on the other side of the road, away from his line of vision, police marksmen were starting to take up position between the stationary cars. Cámara’s eyes stayed focused on Daniel, but he was aware of them on the periphery of his vision.

  ‘But you’re not Terreros, are you?’ said Cámara. ‘You did father a child, with Isabel, still sitting in Picassent prison for forging those banknotes. It was you who grassed her those years ago, wasn’t it? Did you tell Dídac, Daniel? What have you done with him? Have you killed him too? Or has he turned out to be the true son of his father after all?’

  Daniel spotted the change. From being concentrated on Cámara and his words, he became aware once more of the world beyond the pickup and saw the parents and children starting to move away from the playground, the darting figures dressed in black behind the cars on either side of the road.

  Cámara felt it too, and the sense that everything, quite suddenly, was about to fall apart.

  ‘Where’s Terreros?’ he said quickly, shouting to make sure his words were heard. ‘Daniel, listen to me. Where’s Terreros?’

  They were at the cusp, the moment of change. Panic was bedding in around them and the policemen were about to make their move.

  Daniel glanced around, immediately read the situation, then turned once more to Cámara.

  ‘You’ll never find him,’ he said with a small shake of the head. ‘Don’t you get it? No one wants you to find him.’

  The breakout began. A group of seven children and parents started their escape from the playground. Daniel spotted them in an instant and, keeping his arm straight, swung the pistol round to shoot them through the windscreen. Cámara dropped to the ground, reaching down for his gun. At that very moment, a shot rang out. Cámara heard a groan from inside the cabin. He stood up: behind him, Bartomeu was holding his pistol with both hands and preparing to take a second shot; inside the truck Daniel was gripping at his side, blood pouring through his fingers and dripping on to the seat.

  At the side, the children and parents took their cue and managed to run quickly to the line of cars, where hands lifted them up and away to safety. On the other side of the pickup, a second group was now making good their escape.

  Daniel was hurt. Cámara took another step towards him, reaching out to hold on to the door. Daniel looked up at him, his eyes bloodshot and swimming in their sockets. Then his foot left the clutch and the pickup sped off. It crashed through the barriers of the playground, smashing its way past the swings, before careering headlong into the solid iron bollards on the far side.

  Daniel’s body flew headlong through the windscreen, curving over the bonnet in a jerking motion, before disappearing from view as it fell heavily and definitively on to the road far below.

  Cámara hurled himself to the ground, waiting for the promised explosion but there was nothing but silence.

  Then the screaming began.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  ‘HERE, TAKE A look at this, Cámara.’

  Pardo slipped over a sheet of paper from the other side of the desk.

  ‘It’s the official line. It’s the only story about what happened that people are going to hear from us.’

  Cámara glanced briefly, uninterested, at the typed words, then looked back at the commissioner.

  ‘The official line?’ he said. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  Pardo’s office had changed since he had last been there: a couple of new plants, the dust-dirty curtains replaced by fresher, whiter ones that gave the room a cleaner, less depressing air. Money, it seemed, was beginning to trickle slowly back into the police force from somewhere, but reaching no further than the top executive levels. Perhaps, now that the Catalan situation appeared tied up, the purse strings were being loosened, prizes being handed out in a self-congratulatory bonanza.

  ‘You have done an extraordinary job,’ Pardo said. ‘And the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía is extremely proud of you. I’ve had more than one phone call from Madrid praising my best man.’

  Cámara shuffled uncomfortably in his seat.

  ‘That’s you, in case I need to spell it out.’
>
  There was a pause, as though Pardo was expecting him to say ‘thank you’ or something, but Cámara remained silent.

  ‘Right, well,’ continued Pardo, ‘everyone’s very happy with what you did up in Barcelona. Not least of all, me. But the situation is still very complicated. Very fucking complicated. As you’re doubtless aware, in the wake of everything that’s happened – and the panic – Madrid has suspended Catalan autonomy and effectively taken over. And they’ve got backing from Brussels as well, talking about Catalonia not being ready for independence. And for the first time in years a lot of Catalans agree. Fucking shit scared – no one wants to see anything like the ETA campaign again. We didn’t put that lot away just to see another bunch of murderers spring up. Especially now – no jobs, new king, hard Left on the rise, new corruption scandals popping up like toadstools every week. The country’s seriously fucked up. Which is why …’ He nodded at the piece of paper in front of Cámara. Cámara leaned over, picked it up, and then let it fall to the ground.

  ‘If I have to read another memo I’m going to lose the will to live,’ he said. ‘Just tell me what it says.’

  Pardo grinned at him.

  ‘You’re tired and a hero,’ he said. ‘So just this once, I’ll indulge you. But don’t turn this into a habit.’

  Cámara shrugged.

  ‘OK, listen,’ said Pardo. ‘It all falls on Daniel. He was a radical and dangerous anarchist. We’ve got plenty on him already from the past. And you can testify to his political beliefs. But he was the one who murdered Fermín. We know this to be true.’

  Cámara nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He as much as admitted it to me.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Pardo. ‘So he murdered Fermín for political reasons – the son of Segarra, one of the richest and most high-profile capitalists in the country. Was he going off the rails? Was he taking the class war to new levels? Maybe. But that’s what he did. We don’t have to explain the thinking of a madman. But that was just the beginning. Then he went up to Barcelona and planned and launched a major terrorist attack on the Sagrada Familia – a symbol not only of the Church but also the single biggest tourist attraction in the whole of Spain. Gets more visitors than the Alhambra. So it’s two in one. Hitting the Church – because he’s an anarchist – and also the capitalist economy – again, because he’s an anarchist.’