Fatal Sunset

by Jason Webster

  ‘Still,’ Cámara insisted. ‘Not many among you will be mourning his death.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ the mayor spat. ‘It’s a blow to this village.’

  Cámara was dubious.

  ‘Brought in much-needed income from outside,’ the mayor went on. ‘Villages like this are dying on their feet. Young people moving out, almost nothing keeping the local economy going. You can’t sustain a community like this on some small-scale almond and olive farming. Sunset is vital for us.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t want to see it closed.’

  ‘Closed?’ The mayor looked genuinely shocked. ‘Heaven forbid. It could mean the death of this village.’

  He stood up, leaning on his fists over the table.

  ‘Have you heard anything?’ he asked, a perturbed look on his brow. ‘Is it possible it might not reopen?’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The taxi pulled in at the top of the Plaza de la Reina and came to a stop. Commissioner Rita Hernández handed the driver a twenty-euro note, waited for the change, then opened the door and stepped out into the unforgiving midday sun. She quickly put on large, angular sunglasses to shield her eyes and began weaving her way through a small huddle of tourists towards the baroque south entrance of the cathedral. A man was standing by the gold-leaf-covered doors wearing thin grey trousers and a stained shirt. Hernández did her best to ignore him as she stepped past. Then, hesitating, she fished out a fifty-cent coin from her purse, thrust it into his grubby, thick-fingered hands and continued into the cool, musty shade of the church.

  It had not been a good morning at the Jefatura. The day before had shown so much promise, had seen the final implementation of a plan she had been dreaming of almost since she had arrived in Valencia. And she had fallen into the trap of imagining that the smoothness with which it was carried out was an indication of things to come. Yet now she was wondering whether it had been nothing but a false dawn, a far cry from the happy control that she had believed she was imposing on her domain.

  It began as soon as she arrived at the Jefatura: the guard at the gate did not return her wave for some inexplicable reason, and her space – the space meant for her Range Rover – was taken by another car, a Porsche Cayenne. Upon making a complaint, it was explained to her that a visiting commissioner from Madrid – and a personal friend of the Jefe Superior, her own boss – would be needing it for the duration of his visit, which was expected to last three days.

  She eventually found another place to park – down a side street five blocks away – but it took her almost twenty minutes and by the time she walked back to the Jefatura she was late – for the first time ever in her career. That in itself might have been enough to disturb her tranquillity, but her bad mood was intensified when, shortly after reaching her office, she learned that Chief Inspector Max Cámara was again causing problems. Not only had he failed to resign the day before, he had taken on the routine case she had insisted on for him and was now apparently missing – uncontactable and with no sign of any progress report on his investigation. She could at least add this to the long list of his misdemeanours which would provide ammunition for an eventual misconduct hearing, but her plan was to be rid of the man without having to resort to something so complicated and uncertain. It was as if there were a mercurial quality about him, slipping through her fingers the moment she thought she had finally caught him.

  Yet even this had not been the sum of her morning difficulties. If there was anything worse than the festering wound that was the Cámara problem, it was that she herself should fail in her duties as a loyal servant of the State. Which was exactly what she had done.

  The phone call came halfway through the morning as she returned to her office from the joint commissioners’ daily meeting. It was Madrid, from the Centre, and the man she only knew as Carlos. A mistake had been made, someone had been careless and as a result confidential information had fallen into the wrong hands.

  His voice was steady and businesslike. There was something calm and unruffled about him that she immediately admired. But there was no mistaking his seriousness, and the fact that she, Rita Hernández, had been the cause of this security breach.

  He did not name her personally, naturally. These people were too good for something so crude. Yet the implication was clear enough. She remembered the meetings in her office the morning before, first with Cámara then with Torres. And her mind’s eye fell directly on the papers from Madrid that had still been lying on her desk at the time. What a fool she had been! How could she have made such an elementary blunder? These men were police, they were trained to see, to observe. So of course they had caught sight of something they were meant to remain ignorant of. But which of the two had it been?

  ‘Was it Chief Inspector Cámara?’ she asked Carlos, trying to stifle the tremor of loathing in her voice.

  And he had paused before answering.

  ‘I am not at liberty to say.’

  And her remorse only deepened for having the temerity to ask in the first place.

  Carlos had not been unaware of her distress, she now realised. She needed forgiveness, a redemption of sorts, and so he had given her a name and suggested she go to the Cathedral. Her own priest, her normal confessor, would not do in these circumstances. And she had thanked him profusely for his understanding, repeated her apologies several times over and insisted that she was still, should he ever need her, at his service. Would always be.

  His final words had given her hope: ‘Keep me informed about Cámara.’

  Still, she needed this. Perhaps more than ever before.

  Dipping her fingers in the font, she crossed herself and genuflected in the direction of the altar. A nearby priest walking towards the Chapel of the Holy Grail pointed her to a confession box on the left side of the nave.

  She crossed under the wide Gothic arch and approached the wooden box. Black leather shoes jutted out from behind a velvet curtain. She knelt down on the cushion at the side and heard the priest turn towards her.

  ‘I …’ she began. ‘I was told to ask for Father Bartolomeo,’

  ‘You are speaking to him,’ came the warm, immediate reply.

  ‘I was sent by Carlos,’ she continued. ‘From the Centre. He said …’

  The priest’s robes ruffled as he shifted in his seat.

  ‘He said you were a member of the Brothers of Cáceres,’ she said.

  This time the priest paused before answering.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Rita,’ she said. ‘Rita Hernández. I’m a commissioner with the Policía Nacional.’

  She waited, longing for him to say something.

  ‘Welcome, Rita,’ said the priest. ‘I am listening. What would you like to tell me.’

  Hernández breathed out, the embryo of a tear pricking at the corner of her eye.

  ‘Padre,’ she said, ‘me arrepiento …’

  I have sinned.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The grocer’s shop was small. Cámara caught the typical smell as soon as he walked in: a mixture of bananas, bleach and spices. Two elderly women were huddled at the far end of the counter with well-used shopping trolleys parked by their ankles, ready to be filled. On the right, next to the soaps and perfumes, stood three teenage boys chatting loudly and giggling over a present they wanted to buy for a friend.

  Cámara took a step inside and let the door close behind him, the bell ringing for a second time as it did so. No one looked up. He stuck his toe into a hole in the dirty grey linoleum floor, wondering how many customers had tripped over it. The place felt cramped and unloved: a layer of dust had settled on the shelves of canned food along the left-hand wall, while paint was peeling off the ceiling in long patches and hanging down like limp stalactites.

  Behind the counter he saw the dark-haired woman he had caught sight of earlier. Next to her was a small, more intense woman with bleached hair, lips painted bright pink with an acute cupid’s bow, and eyebrows entirely plucked in favour of
pencilled alternatives which arched high up her brow. Both women were dutifully attending the elderly ladies at the counter, pausing to listen to their stories and gossip.

  Being immigrants, these women would have to work extra hard to capture and maintain their customers. There was no doubt in his mind that they were the wives of Dorin and Bogdan, the two Romanians. Not too long before it would have been difficult, even impossible, for an enterprise like this to succeed. Yet the influx of foreigners over the previous decade or so had changed the country, not least parts of the countryside where locals – particularly the young – were often moving out and the only people replacing them were immigrant workers. After some hesitation most had learned to accept them, remembering that not so long before in the past they, too, had been migrant workers, flocking to Germany and Switzerland in the fifties and sixties, and that even today hundreds of thousands of their own children had had to leave the country, seeking work in Berlin, London, or wherever they could.

  The first of the elderly women had finished and was inching past Cámara to leave. On the other side of the shop, the teenagers appeared to have given up on their quest and were heading out as well. There was only one elderly lady remaining at the counter, who was being attended to by the dark-haired Romanian. The other opened a door behind the counter leading through to what looked like a living room, where a television was flickering in a corner. Cámara tried to see if there was anyone there, perhaps the two husbands. But the door closed before he could see.

  He waited. There were some bread rolls on a shelf behind the counter. He might buy one along with some ham and cheese and make himself a quick lunch.

  The elderly lady wanted to chat; she was talking about her grandson, who was finishing his end-of-school exams; was worried about having to do retakes. The woman behind the counter listened patiently.

  The conversation stuttered towards an end. The woman placed her items in the shopping trolley. Cámara went to open the door for her. She passed through without giving him a second glance. Cámara turned back to the shop, facing the counter. But the door through to the living room closed before he even took a step, the remaining Romanian disappearing from view. For a moment he could hear muffled voices, then silence. He waited: would they be returning?

  After a pause, the door opened a fraction. He saw a single eye peep through, catch sight of him still standing there, then vanish.

  He pulled the door hard as he left, signalling his departure with the loud clanging of the bell.

  Across the square, near the fountain, he spotted a baker’s. He ambled over and joined a small but chaotic mob.

  ‘¿El último?’ he asked.

  A man wearing a flat cap signalled that he was indeed the last in the queue, such as it was. Cámara hovered until it was his turn, then ordered a couple of tomato-and-tuna pasties and a slice of onion and vegetable quiche. With a bottle of water tucked under his arm, he took them outside to the fountain, where he sat on the edge, unwrapping his lunch and eating hungrily.

  This was probably the busiest moment in the village day, he thought as he watched the comings and goings in the square. Just as in the city, the rush to get things done before lunchtime brought a surge in activity, yet here it was marked simply by the presence of an extra car or two driving past. A delivery lorry laden with bottles of soft drinks had just arrived, parking badly in front of Los Arcos bar. A man who now found his own car blocked in was arguing with the driver. The bar owner himself had got involved. The car owner was getting irate, his face reddening as he shouted abuse. The bar owner had to hold him back, preventing him from physically attacking the lorry driver, who eventually, after much fist-waving and shouting, moved the lorry and let the man drive away.

  It was odd, just a minor dispute, and yet to Cámara it captured something about the place: there was an underlying tension, a feeling that passions – and perhaps grudges – ran deep here. Everyone knew one another and had probably done so since childhood. Many of them would be related in some way. And while they did their best to get on and not ruffle any feathers too much, he could not help but feel that there was anger bubbling under the surface and that very little would be required for it quickly to boil over.

  He looked up at the mayor’s balcony on the first floor of the Town Hall. The curtains were drawn, yet he felt certain someone had been watching him from up there.

  He finished his pasties and drank the last of his water. It had already turned two o’clock and most of the shops had closed their shutters, people heading home for lunch. After the brief spike in activity, the square became quiet, deserted but for the odd person or two rushing off to get their midday meal. Cámara scrunched the wrappings into a tight ball and tossed them into a nearby litter bin, rinsed his mouth with water, and set off to have a wander. Nothing would be happening for the next hour or so, but he wanted to make certain of the first stage of his plan.

  He took a street that meandered away from the far end of the square, heading up a slope that became steeper and narrower as he went along. He passed the simple sandstone facade of the church. It had large doors decorated with goldleaf. To the side, written in faded paint, were the names of local Francoist soldiers who had died during the Civil War of the 1930s. Elsewhere in the country such one-sided commemorations of the Civil War dead were being erased, or replaced with something more inclusive. Yet nothing like this had taken place in this village.

  Cámara continued. The street was a cul-de-sac, with small, mostly whitewashed houses on either side. It could have been a pretty place, he thought, and perhaps indeed had been at some time in the past, yet every so often a newer, much uglier building had replaced a more traditional structure, leaving unsightly scars.

  A narrow stone stairway led up the hill at the end of the street. He climbed to a tiny walled square next to a large building that might once have been a castle. From here he looked out over two valleys that converged where the village sat on an outcrop of rock. For a moment he allowed himself to be lost in the sweeping carpets of pine and holm oaks, the orange and grey streaks of rock on sheer cliff faces, the gushing waters of the river far below, where strips of land had been carved out of the valley floor for olive and almond groves. The air was clear and unhurried, the vistas spectacular. To his left, almost hidden by a curve in the valley, he could just make out Sunset. Further up the valley he imagined must be where the Molino was, with Jimmy and Estrella’s farm over the other side, in the next valley.

  A road took him down the hill on the other side of the square, curving round until it swept back in towards the village. On a parallel street to the first he found a mirador with mulberry trees providing ample shade over a bench. Interestingly the bench did not face the valley, but the street, and in particular the shuttered facade of a building that Cámara eyed with curiosity. He sat down on the bench and stared across at it. In blue letters that were almost invisible under the heavy coating of dust, was the word ‘Fontaneros’. What the remainder said was irrelevant. Cámara knew instantly that he had found what he was looking for.

  Now all he had to do was sit and observe.

  THIRTY-NINE

  ‘Of course, if you can prove any of this, show documentary evidence, then we’ll publish – no question. But as things stand it’s just a theory. And a pretty crazy one at that.’

  Alicia stared into her glass of wine, watching it swirl up the sides as she turned it slowly between her fingers. Then she lifted it to her lips and took another sip, enjoying the heavy, oaky taste lingering in her mouth as she looked her former colleague in the eye.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re right.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘But it’s not just a crazy theory. They’ve used Cabrera for this kind of thing in the past. There’ll be a paper trail somewhere. And I think I know where I can find it.’

  She watched as Quico Romero chewed on his last piece of chicken, swallowed and reached for his own glass. His beard had greyed in the three years since she last
saw him, the few white hairs that had been sprouting at the sides now covering most of his chin, save for a small, dark V-shape beneath his lower lip. The tip of his nose had darkened in colour as well, moving from a simple scarlet to something more violet, with indentations on its bulbous surface, like a lunar landscape viewed through a purple haze of late sunset. She wondered about the glass of wine now in his hand, the urgency with which he had ordered a second bottle, and the amount he had already drunk that morning before they had met. His breath had given him away in the instant they had kissed each other on the cheeks.

  Now he grinned at her in the professional, cynical, flashing way that he had. El Diablo, some at the office had called him, in an only partially endearing kind of way. An editor at a national newspaper had to be hard with his employees, had to push them to their limits. It was tough working in print media these days. Others had fallen by the wayside. Only a miracle and a dedication to bloody good reporting was keeping his publication going. Or so he claimed. Yet he stepped over the mark frequently; the drinking didn’t help. The story about Marga was almost legendary, about the woman who had been fired for not showing up for work years back on some busy news day. When, later, she told Quico her absence had been due to her father’s sudden death, he had brushed aside her excuse as lame and unacceptable. In his eyes loyalty to the paper outweighed even personal family grief.

  Sitting across the lunch table now, Alicia wondered how much longer he could keep going. The booze, the stress, the anger, the long hours: he was looking so much older so very quickly.

  He finished his wine with a gulp and reached for the bottle to pour them both some more. Alicia pulled her glass away. He shrugged and helped himself.

  ‘You get me the story, Alicia,’ he said. ‘Get it properly – paperwork, sworn affidavits, the works. And I promise you now we’ll put you on the front page. And not just a one-off – probably for several days. This story – if it’s true, and I’m not doubting your word, but until you can prove it I have to treat it as only a theory – this story will run and run. It will be picked up by everyone. And it will be my honour – and your honour – to break it.’