Fatal Sunset

by Jason Webster

  ‘Oh,’ said Jimmy, his teeth glinting in the glow of the fire. ‘You’re privileged.’

  Estrella had a deck of tarot cards in her hands.

  ‘She doesn’t do this for everyone,’ said Jimmy.

  Estrella handed the deck to Cámara and asked him to cut.

  ‘Think of a question,’ she said.

  He split the deck in two and passed the cards back to Estrella. As the fire lit one side of her face, he thought back to his first impression of her among the olive trees, when she had appeared like a goddess of the Moon. At the time he’d felt he was almost hallucinating with fatigue, yet now he had a similar sensation.

  Estrella spread the cards out on the floor, illuminated by the flames. Cámara glanced down with incomprehension at the various figures and pictures staring back at him. All he could see was that Death wasn’t present and he gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘The High Priestess,’ said Estrella, pointing to a card showing a seated woman in flowing robes. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’

  Cámara shook his head.

  ‘Then there’s the Tower and the Wheel of Fortune,’ she continued. ‘And the Moon.’

  She paused, staring long and hard at the images.

  ‘It’s confused,’ she said at last. ‘There are several women here, at least two, perhaps three, and they’re all having a very powerful effect on your life.’

  She looked up at him, her eyes deep dark pools of ink.

  ‘Change is coming,’ she said. ‘Sacrifice and real change.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Carlos opened the iron gate of his block of flats and stepped into the marble-cool of the entrance hall. It was late and the concierge had already left. Ignoring the lift, Carlos walked the three flights of stairs to his front door, his coat over his arm and briefcase dangling from his hand. He was tired, but this routine of taking the stairs – avoiding lifts where he could – was all part of a regime to fight against the ill-health brought on by a desk job. Opportunities for exercise were far fewer since he had been assigned to the Centre, but small measures such as this might go some way to maintaining a certain level of fitness. Or at least stop him from descending too quickly into stiff, overweight immobility.

  Puffing slightly and with the blood pumping in his cheeks, he reached his floor and pulled out the key to open the door. As he did so his phone vibrated against his hip where he kept it in a holder on his belt. He waited until he was inside and with the door closed behind him before answering. It could only be work at this late hour and so far his day had not gone well. He just hoped this brought better news.

  He placed the briefcase on the floor, draped his coat on the hook, flipped open the stud of his belt-holder and lifted out his phone.

  ‘We’ve found her,’ said a flat voice.

  ‘Where is she?’ said Carlos. He walked into the kitchen, where the previous night’s bottle of whisky stood on the table. He quickly rinsed out the tumbler in the sink and poured himself a healthy shot.

  ‘In Madrid,’ said the voice.

  ‘She left Valencia?’ Carlos asked.

  ‘Caught the AVE. Must have been just before we put the tail on her. But we found her name on the passenger list.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  Carlos checked the time on his watch. It was almost one o’clock in the morning.

  ‘At an address on Calle Santo Domingo, near Opera. We’ve checked – it belongs to a journalist by the name of Lucía Valderrama. Not her main residence, however. She lives out of town.’

  ‘Some kind of meeting place,’ said Carlos. ‘A safe house. Do we have anything nearby?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How long has she been in Madrid?’

  ‘The last AVE got in at 2310.’

  ‘And how long have you known about her whereabouts?’

  ‘For the past forty minutes. She tried to make another phone call to her partner. That’s how we—’

  ‘Did she speak to him?’

  ‘No. There was no answer.’

  Carlos took a swig of whisky, feeling it burn his throat and send a rush up his spine.

  ‘So you’re telling me there’s a gap of well over an hour between her arriving and you locating her.’

  The voice at the other end didn’t answer.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Joder! I shit on …’ Carlos checked himself.

  ‘It’s the Valencia team’s fault, sir. They didn’t …’

  ‘Too late for that,’ said Carlos. ‘Concentrate. We need to know what she was doing during that time. This is crucial, do you understand? Where did she go? Did she meet anyone?’

  He closed his eyes, trying to keep calm. Passion – anger – was in danger of getting the better of him.

  ‘My God,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘What was that sir?’

  ‘Just find out what she did during that missing hour. That is your top priority, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And you still want her monitored here, correct?’

  ‘Of course I bloody do.’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s just that our staffing levels—’

  ‘Sort it out!’ Carlos bellowed.

  He switched off the phone and tossed it on to the kitchen table. Then he breathed in and out again, letting his shoulders drop.

  The whisky bottle stared up at him like a temptress. But he shook his head and walked away, a grim, self-congratulating smile on his lips at his powers of self-control.

  THIRTY-TWO

  They ate breakfast on the patio underneath a grapevine, with views over a garden that sloped down in terraces to the bottom of a gorge. On the far side, an oak-covered mountain rose to a jagged, diagonal edge, slicing the cool morning air like a rusty knife. A plate of peeled and sliced fruit stood next to a large coffee pot, with bread and a jar of honey. Cámara cut himself a piece and spread some of the sweet, thick paste over it. It had an aromatic taste, an echo of the many thousands of flowers from which it had been made.

  He had slept deeply on a thick rug by the fire. Jimmy had brought blankets and cushions from a cupboard and placed them out for him. Cámara could remember little else that had happened after that. When he woke, he found a shower room across the passageway and had washed himself clean in the healing water, pulling thorns out where they had lodged the night before. His own shirt and jacket were still all right to wear, but he had cast away his trousers and pulled on a pair of Jimmy’s instead. They were a little short in the leg, but good enough.

  Estrella was sitting silently beside him, drinking coffee, a breeze blowing through her hair, which had been loosened from the plait and hung about her shoulders.

  ‘Is that the way to the Molino?’ Cámara asked, making out what looked like a path heading up beyond the gorge.

  ‘You found the Molino, did you?’ said Estrella. ‘You did come a long way.’

  Jimmy came in as Cámara finished his piece of bread and stretched out for another, smothering it with the delicious honey.

  ‘Do you like it?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ said Cámara. ‘Have you got your own hives?’

  ‘They’re round the back. Don’t want them too close to the house. But you’ve got to be careful with that honey.’

  Cámara gave him a quizzical look.

  ‘I laced some of it with opium,’ explained Jimmy. ‘But I didn’t label which ones. Stupid of me.’

  Cámara stuck his tongue into his cheek.

  ‘Funny thing, opium,’ said Jimmy. ‘It’s like death. Makes you lose sense of time.’

  He bared his front teeth and showed them to Cámara: they looked brighter, shinier than the others.

  ‘See these?’ he said. ‘I ate some of the laced honey once and after a while I started to feel really sleepy. So I thought, I’ll just lie down here where I am, really slowly, and have a bit of a rest. When I woke up later, I’d smashed my front teeth out. You see, I’d thought I was lying down slo
wly to go to sleep, when actually I’d crashed to the floor face-first. Taught me a lesson, it did.’

  Cámara grinned at him, then took another bite of the bread. De muertos al río, he thought to himself. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  ‘I met Enrique over in the next valley yesterday,’ he said. ‘He’s got bees.’

  ‘Our honey’s much sweeter,’ said Jimmy simply. ‘Ours is made with love. Enrique doesn’t know what love is.’

  ‘You know him well?’

  ‘Bees are beautiful animals,’ continued Jimmy, ‘if you treat them right. You give them what they need and they pay you back over a thousand times. They have tremendous healing power, yet people think they’re only good for honey and nothing else. And they’re busy killing them with their pesticides and poisons they’re putting on the land.’

  ‘They cured me,’ said Estrella.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘I had a melanoma on my back a few months ago,’ she said. ‘The doctors cut it out, but it was already quite thick – they thought it had spread to the lymphatic system.’

  ‘But we got the bees to sting her right there,’ said Jimmy. ‘Kept them in the fridge then placed them where the cancer was and got them to sting her.’

  ‘When the results came back the doctors were amazed,’ said Estrella. ‘The cancer hadn’t spread at all. The bees cured me.’

  The talk of bee stings stirred a painful memory in Cámara’s body of the stings he had endured the previous day. Had they cured him of something as well? He had heard of bee stings being useful for arthritis, but never for curing cancer.

  ‘That’s a great story,’ he said. ‘More people should know about it.’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ Jimmy cried, turning to Estrella. ‘We should write a book.’

  Estrella raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  After drinking several cups of coffee, Jimmy took Cámara for a stroll around the garden while Estrella went indoors. A neat, stone-covered path led them down from one terrace to the next, olive trees growing at the sides, their roots curling into the bare rock in places where the soil thinned.

  ‘It must be hard work keeping this going with just the two of you now,’ Cámara said.

  ‘We get some help,’ Jimmy said, and he pointed to a small wooden structure where a donkey poked its head out of a barn door, flies buzzing around its face.

  ‘Boris there does a lot of the heavy stuff.’

  They walked down to the stable. Cámara patted the animal affectionately on the nose. Jimmy unbolted the bottom half of the door and let the donkey step out into the paddock. He opened a large box at the side, where a pile of discarded vegetables was kept. Strapped to the inside, glinting in the sunlight, was another pistol.

  ‘Breakfast for Boris,’ said Jimmy, pulling out a few scoops of the vegetables with a shovel.

  ‘These weapons you’ve got scattered about the place,’ Cámara said. ‘What’s that about?’

  He cast a glance over the mountains, wondering if last night’s assailants might still be there, or have returned to finish the job.

  ‘The way we live,’ Jimmy said. ‘It makes people nervous. They instinctively want to shut us down, or make us conform. Brings out the worst in many of them.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I don’t understand it either, but I’ve learned the hard way that it’s better to defend yourself properly. That way people tend to leave you alone. Most of the time.’

  ‘What about the Guardia Civil?’ asked Cámara. ‘Don’t they give you trouble?’

  ‘I’ve got the right paperwork. They leave us alone, mostly. We don’t bother anyone else, so they don’t bother us.’

  He closed the lid of the box. The donkey was munching merrily at the pile of slightly rotten carrots and potatoes.

  ‘But you never know what’s going to happen from day to day. Like you showing up last night.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Cámara, reaching into his jacket pocket. ‘There’s something you should probably know.’

  Jimmy’s eyes bulged at the police ID card held in front of him. Then he bent backwards and roared with laughter.

  ‘A policeman!’ he cried. ‘You really are a policeman. I don’t believe it.’

  Tears began to stream down his cheeks and into his beard.

  ‘A policeman sleeping in my house!’

  He put his hands on his hips.

  ‘Well, I think I’ve seen it all now.’

  Cámara shrugged.

  ‘I did try to tell you,’ he said.

  ‘So, Mr Policeman,’ beamed Jimmy. ‘You here to arrest me?’

  Estrella appeared less surprised when Jimmy told her about Cámara’s real identity, as though she had guessed, or actually believed him when he’d mentioned it.

  ‘The question is,’ she said, ‘are you a policeman in your heart?’

  ‘Course not,’ said Jimmy. ‘He’s like one of us. Almost.’

  ‘It’s certainly a beautiful set-up you have here,’ said Cámara. ‘I wouldn’t mind having a place like this for me and my …’ he paused. ‘For me and Alicia.’

  ‘Is that her name?’ said Estrella. ‘I saw her last night in the cards. You should bring her round some time.’

  ‘She’s a city woman,’ said Cámara. ‘But I think she might like this.’

  ‘So, Mr Policeman.’ Jimmy was curious. ‘What brings you out here into the sierra?’

  They sat down again on the patio in the shade of the grapevine. The sun had risen higher and the air was growing warmer. Cámara told them about José Luis, about Sunset, and about the things he had learned the previous day. The two of them listened with concentrated fascination.

  When he finished, he watched their expressions.

  ‘You must have known José Luis,’ he said. ‘What did you make of him?’

  ‘Are we suspects now, Mr Policeman?’ grinned Jimmy.

  Cámara shrugged.

  ‘José Luis was all right,’ said Jimmy. ‘But not mountain people.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Cámara. ‘Enrique said the same thing.’

  ‘The mountain has its own power,’ said Jimmy. ‘It tends to accept those it wants to stay, and find ways to get rid of those who don’t really belong.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cámara.

  ‘But if I were a policeman – which clearly I’m not.’ He laughed. ‘If I were you, I’d be taking a close look at Dorin and Bogdan. If they’re trying to kill you, it must be for a reason.’

  ‘They sound like Romanian names,’ said Cámara.

  ‘Moved to the village seven or eight years ago,’ Jimmy said. ‘Bogdan’s the big stupid one; Dorin is bigger and stupider. They’ve got a grocery shop, which their wives run. Dorin and Bogdan themselves are plumbers.’

  Estrella snorted.

  ‘Well, they’re drug dealers. But they’ve got a business as plumbers. But it’s never open. Everyone knows what they’re really up to.’

  ‘Why doesn’t the Guardia Civil shut them down?’

  Jimmy shrugged.

  ‘Not my concern,’ he said.

  Cámara’s mind was churning. Why would a couple of Romanian drug dealers be going to such lengths to get rid of him?

  ‘You don’t happen to know what kind of car they drive, do you?’ he asked.

  ‘Changes pretty often,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘No,’ said Estrella. ‘We saw them last week, don’t you remember? They’ve got a big black car. Dark glass in the windows.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ said Jimmy. ‘Looked like one of those expensive German cars. Mercedes, maybe. Or a BMW.’

  ‘With tinted glass?’

  ‘Yes,’ insisted Estrella.

  Cámara nodded: the same car that had tried to run him off the road.

  ‘And you know about these two because …?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Jimmy, ‘I’m assuming you’re not going to put us in jail, after everything
we’ve done for you.’

  ‘Not unless you murdered José Luis.’

  Jimmy hesitated for a second.

  ‘Dorin and Bogdan wanted to get me involved in their business,’ he said at length. ‘Few years back. They know about my home-grown. Thought I could plant some more out here, provide them with marihuana to sell. But I wasn’t interested. This is all for our personal use; I don’t want to turn it into a business. Besides, it’s natural, what we do. Whereas they’re into these modern chemical drugs, made in a lab or something. Reckon the government’s behind it all, anyway, making money while keeping young people stupid: bread and circuses, just like the Romans. I don’t want anything to do with that. I just stick to what Mother Nature gives us.’

  ‘So you said no,’ Cámara said. He ignored the comment about a government conspiracy.

  ‘I said no. They didn’t like it, tried to set fire to the house once, drove round and took some shots at us. But then they saw us firing back …’ He glanced at Estrella, who nodded. Clearly she could handle a gun herself.

  ‘And with much bigger guns,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jimmy. ‘Much more powerful than their little handguns. Well, they didn’t bother us after that. Not until last night, anyway.’

  ‘But you think they may have something to do with José Luis’s death,’ Cámara said.

  ‘You think there’s something suspicious going on?’

  ‘I can’t prove anything at the moment.’

  ‘Dorin and Bogdan are the drug suppliers for Sunset,’ said Jimmy. ‘It’s common knowledge. I say follow the money. They were trying to put a bullet into you last night, so I reckon something serious is going on.’

  Cámara raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘You still think José Luis’s death was just an accident?’ said Jimmy.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Torres sat at his new desk staring at the computer screen. He spent a lot of time staring at computer screens these days. More and more. And less and less time out on the street. Which was where he wanted to be. Yes, a great deal of crime-fighting could be achieved using the Internet and diving into the darker corners of the digital world, yet the pay-off for the policeman was never as high. The adrenalin rush of tracking and chasing a criminal and then the release of actually catching him and taking him down could never be matched by tapping away at a keyboard. Success sometimes came, but it lacked something real, something tangible.