A Death in Valencia

by Jason Webster

  ‘Second floor, sir,’ he said as Cámara walked through. ‘Door three.’

  It was cool and dark in the entrance hall. Pink marble panels covered the walls, while the floor was made of black-and-white checked tiles.

  ‘The, er, partner’s up there at the moment,’ the policeman said in a lower voice. ‘Señor Ballester.’

  ‘OK,’ Cámara said. ‘What time did he get here?’

  ‘About twenty minutes ago.’

  Ignoring the ornate iron lift, Cámara took the stairs. It was lighter here, the marble was a pale grey, and daylight streamed in through tall windows of frosted glass. The building felt solid, heavy, permanent. Not the kind of place you’d expect to collapse on your head at any second. It was curious, he remarked, how he seemed to have developed a sixth sense for this kind of thing all of a sudden.

  He was sweating by the time he reached the second floor, but was pleased to notice he was breathing normally. He’d always told himself he’d cut back–or stop altogether–the day he got out of breath. But he was fine. Sometimes he was even convinced smoking helped clear his lungs out.

  He rang the doorbell and waited. I’ll make this quick, he said to himself, thoughts of the Roures case lingering in his mind. That was the investigation he should be concentrating on. Fuck the orders.

  The door opened.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Cámara identified himself.

  ‘You guys start showing up when it’s too late, don’t you.’

  ‘Señor Ballester. I’d like to come in and have a look around.’

  Cesc Ballester was a slightly built man, perhaps in his mid-forties, with prematurely thinning dark blond hair, the remains of which he wore long and swept back. Thick sideburns came halfway down his cheeks, but did little to soften an angular face, with thin lips and a long sharp nose. His eyes, small and deep-set, were red. Cámara wondered if he’d been crying.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Cámara repeated when the man didn’t move.

  Eventually, Ballester stepped to one side and let him pass.

  There was something old-fashioned about the furniture and style of the flat. Cámara hadn’t exactly imagined what Sofía Bodí’s home would be like, but from her profession, her appearance on television, it was possible to make fairly accurate guesses about her political and social views. These didn’t fit with the conservative, musty sense he got from the place as soon as he walked in, however. A large gilt-framed mirror hung from a wall in the corridor, lace curtains veiled a window at the far end, while a large, heavy wooden desk, with spiral carvings on the legs, seemed to take up most of what looked like a study.

  ‘I imagine you’re here looking for clues yourself.’ Cámara turned to Ballester, who was shutting the door behind them.

  ‘That’s…’ He paused. ‘Yeah, sort of.’

  He brushed past Cámara and walked into the living room, which gave out on the street. A revolving fan suspended from the ceiling was circling above, but with the curtains drawn did little to cool the air.

  ‘I would’ve opened the windows,’ Ballester said under his breath. ‘But, I don’t know. You start wondering if someone might be watching you. It’s all a bit freaked out.’

  He sat down in a rocking chair, beckoning Cámara to take a seat. Cámara stayed on his feet.

  ‘Have you found any?’ he said. ‘Clues?’

  ‘Isn’t that supposed to be your job?’

  Ballester put his head in his hands.

  ‘Look, I’ve been through all this back at the Jefatura. Gave them a statement. I really don’t want to talk about it any more.’

  ‘Did Sofía give you the key?’

  ‘What?’ Ballester lifted his head and looked at Cámara through squinted eyes in the half-light.

  ‘To get in here.’

  ‘Well, of course she bloody did. What kind of a question…?’ He sighed. ‘She had a key to my place, I had one for here. Although I didn’t come round here much. Never liked it, really. She inherited it from her parents. Hardly changed a thing. We spent more time at my place. Especially recently.’

  ‘Was she carrying your key with her this morning?’

  Ballester shook his head at the banality of the question.

  ‘Yeah, she was coming back from my place to pick up some clothes here. I’ve already said.’

  ‘So whoever’s kidnapped her will also have access to your place now,’ Cámara said.

  ‘Ostias!’ His eyes opened wide with fear. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think…?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t advise you to change the locks. Not yet. But you might want to be vigilant. There’s no obvious reason why anyone would want to get inside your flat. But you’re an employee of the clinic, and someone very close to Sofía. You may be in some kind of danger yourself.’

  Ballester’s attention was fully focused on him now.

  ‘I can arrange police protection for you if you like.’

  He might have been effectively demoted on this case, running around like Maldonado’s subordinate rather than the chief inspector he really was, but he could still give orders himself, if necessary.

  ‘I assume this was brought up at the Jefatura?’ he added.

  ‘No.’ Ballester frowned. ‘It doesn’t matter. No one’s coming after me. It was Sofía they wanted.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘These bastards who’ve been gunning for her all these months!’ he cried. ‘Who else is it going to be? It’s like a nervous tic with them. Anyone doing something they don’t approve of and they’ve got to lock them up or get rid of them. First they cook up some charges against her. And when they saw that wasn’t going to work, they pick her up off the street. I don’t care how much the Guardia Civil deny it. It’s them. She’s probably down in some cell of theirs right now, but they’ve just forgotten to mention it to anyone, know what I mean?’

  He covered his face with his hands again, shoulders heaving as the sobs took their hold.

  ‘God knows what they’re doing to her.’

  Cámara left the room and went to find the kitchen. He took a glass from the drying rack, filled it with cool water from a jug in the fridge and then walked back down the corridor. A box of tissues was sitting on a counter near the door; he picked it up and carried it with him into the living room, placing it down on the table next to Ballester with the water.

  ‘If it’s all right,’ he said, ‘I’m going to take a look around.’

  Ballester was too lost to notice.

  Pulling out some cotton gloves from his trouser pocket, Cámara headed back down the corridor and into the main bedroom at the far end. The curtains were closed here too, and the air was damp with summer humidity. He flicked on the light: the walls were painted fuchsia, while a simple double bed with a shiny carved pine headboard sat in the middle. It was made, with flowery sheets, but looked as though it hadn’t been slept in for some time. In fact, were it not for the heat of the day, he could almost sense a coldness about the place: a room for dying, not for living. He began to wonder if Sofía had spent very much time here at all. There was nothing in the fridge except the water jug and an unopened bottle of white wine.

  He walked over to the curtains and pulled back the corner of one of them to look through the window. The glass was grimy, and it gave on to a narrow light shaft at the centre of the building, connecting with the staircase and some of the other neighbouring flats. He turned the handle and opened it a little to let in some air, sticking his head out to let it cool down for a few seconds.

  Back inside he tried to take in more of the room, and the person who–officially at least–had lived here. He felt under the long, tube-like pillow and the mattress, kneeled down to look under the bed, opened the bedside drawers, flicked through the clothes hanging in the cupboard, but found nothing but the usual bedroom items. If anything it felt bare–there were no books by the bedside lamp, nothing potentially embarrassing hidden in some corner. Which was perhaps explained by Sofía taking most o
f her things to Ballester’s place. But no one had said anything about her moving in with him.

  He was aware of the similarity with Roures’s home, the same absence of life-giving clutter. There was even, now he thought of it, an echo of his own flat–before it had become a shapeless pile on the ground. Each one had something functional and loveless about it, a sense of merely passing through.

  Llena o vacía, la casa es solo mía. Either empty or full, my home is mine alone.

  He poked his head into the bathroom. A single blue toothbrush stood in a glass by the sink next to a soap dispenser. Two white towels were folded on a rack on the wall next to the shower. Under the sink, the cupboards contained toilet roll, shampoo, some perfume in a dusty bottle that looked as though it hadn’t been used in years, and a wicker basket of household drugs: paracetamol, cough mixture, and some indigestion tablets.

  Back in the corridor he spotted a couple of framed photographs hanging on the wall. He saw the faces of a middle-aged man and a woman. From the style of their clothes, and the faded colour of the pictures, he had the impression they’d been taken perhaps thirty years before. Sofía’s parents, by the looks of it, the people for whom this had really been a home at one stage.

  The study was the last room he looked into. Dark green wooden shutters were lowered over a window giving out on to what he thought must be the side alley, but glimmers of sunlight shone through the joins, giving enough light at this brightest time of year for him to be able to sniff around without having to turn on the desk lamp; by now his eyes were accustomed to the gloom.

  Built-in wooden bookshelves lined the two side walls of the square, cube-like room, and the desk stood in the middle, facing the door, like in a doctor’s surgery. A black-and-gold pen stood in a stand, while the top of the desk was covered in dark red leather with gold trimming.

  Cámara inspected the books: general medical tomes, works on gynaecology, many of them quite grand, but dated, he thought, as though they’d been bought more with a view to being left on a bookshelf than ever opened and read. Perhaps they were books she’d used when she was studying, and never had to refer to again.

  Further across, nearer the window on the left-hand side, he noticed some smaller, leather-bound volumes. Leaning down, he noticed they were virtually identical, all with a year’s date embossed in gold lettering on the spine.

  He picked one up: 1987. Inside was a diary, written in neat, very small handwriting. Her mother’s? Her father’s? He flicked to the front page; there was Sofía’s name clearly written out. He picked out another one at random, and again the same handwriting and the same name at the front.

  From the living room he could hear the sound of Ballester blowing his nose. He must have stopped crying, and was doubtless wondering what Cámara was up to.

  Cámara glanced down at the bookshelves to get a better look. There were dozens of diaries. The oldest one dated from 1971, then the collection stretched all the way almost to the present: the previous year was clearly visible, but then the final half a dozen copies were for future years, the dates already printed on the spines, but obviously with nothing written in them yet.

  He double-checked, just in case there was more madness in this than at first appeared, just in case Sofía had written in them. But no, they were blank.

  What he wanted though, and what he couldn’t find, was this year’s diary. That, if she was as meticulous as her handwriting might suggest, could give some interesting clues.

  Back in the living room, Ballester was clearly stirring: Cámara could hear what sounded like springs creaking on a sofa.

  He sat down at the desk, placed his fingertips together and let his eyes wander around the room. It was possible that Sofía had carried it with her and jotted things down during the day, but something about the neatness of the others told him she had written it right where he was sitting now, like some kind of ritual part of her day.

  As if by instinct, his hand dropped down to the drawers in the desk. The first one contained envelopes and a stapler.

  Inside the second was the diary. He flicked through it quickly: the last entry was from two nights before, the last time she had come to the flat.

  Standing up, he placed it in his pocket. This would require time and a different space to be properly examined.

  Peering round the doorway, he saw that Ballester had drunk the water, and was lying with his back to him, curled up on the sofa, his shoes on the floor.

  The door gave a soft click as Cámara let himself out.

  Twelve

  The restaurant had half a dozen tables outside on the pavement, where two couples of partially clothed northern Europeans were grilling themselves in the sun. Glancing at them with incomprehension, he ducked his head under the canopy and dived into the air-conditioned refuge inside.

  He’d texted Torres earlier, and was pleased to see him already sitting there at their favourite table in the corner. It was a small place that did a decent lunch for seven euros–three courses with bread, wine and coffee. And best of all, you could smoke. Some kind of anti-smoking law had been passed a few years before, but it only applied to places with more than a hundred square metres of floor space. Anything smaller could opt out. So on paper the country could say it was conforming with the EU directive, while in practice everyone carried on as before. Or at least until they got caught and had to bring in a new law plugging the gap in the old one.

  ‘They’ll get us in the end,’ Torres liked to say. ‘You mark my words. We’ll have to step outside between courses to spark up. As if we didn’t have it bad enough at work. You won’t be able to walk on the pavements for all the smokers blocking the way. Then people’ll start getting run over, ’cause they’re having to walk in the street where the cars are. And they call it progress.’

  ‘Bad day?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘Ah, nothing,’ he said with a sneer.

  From his expression, Cámara recognised the symptoms: trouble at home. Torres’s wife, Marga, was a quiet, intense woman who had a tendency to blow up every so often–usually now, shortly before the August break, when the speed, heat and noise could break many people in the city. What he’d sometimes suspected, but had never been able to confirm, however, was that on occasion Marga sought solace during these nervous interludes in someone else’s bed.

  Despite the food being good and being able to smoke, they didn’t have Mahou beer on tap, so Cámara ordered a bottle. Torres opted for some red wine, which came chilled in a half-litre flask, condensation thick on the outside of the glass.

  ‘Bring me some lemonade as well,’ he called to the waiter. ‘Might as well mix it into a tinto de verano. This stuff’s undrinkable otherwise.’

  They both ordered paella for the first course. Usually, as he grew accustomed to the intense heat of early summer, his appetite would wane for a few weeks, as though his body were slowing down to adapt. But today he felt hungry, perhaps, he reflected, because he had nowhere to go, no home to embrace him at the end of the day. So a feast-or-famine instinct had awakened in him, making him intent on gorging while food was available.

  This being a working lunch, the paella came heaped on plates rather than served in the paella pan. Cámara looked down at the dark yellow mixture of rice, chicken, rabbit and green beans and was pleased to see there were plenty of specks of brown socarraet in there as well–the crispy, gooey bits from the bottom of the paella dish where the rice was more toasted, and the flavours more concentrated. It was one of the things about paella they only really got right in Valencia, and they knew him well enough in the restaurant now for him not to have to ask for it.

  And despite the fact that they weren’t eating it straight from the pan, he still used the more traditional spoon to feed himself. Paella just wasn’t paella with a fork.

  The first mouthful was delicious: enough oil as a vehicle for the myriad tastes, but the rice was still a little chalky and not overdone. Paella, he often thought, was best regarded as a combination of pan-fryin
g and boiling: both were needed to create this unique dish.

  ‘There’s a kind of rating system for rice dishes,’ Torres said. ‘All part of the mystery of paella.’

  ‘You’re not going to get mystical on me, are you?’

  ‘Paella’s not just food for a Valencian; it’s a way of life.’

  Torres took a swig of his fizzy red drink and pursed his lips.

  ‘You know all this already. Or at least you should do. Been here long enough.’

  ‘All right.’ Cámara held up his hands. ‘No disrespect. So what’s this rating system, then?’

  ‘Bò, rebò and mèl.’ Torres flicked out his fingers as he listed the words. ‘It’s like giving marks to the paella depending on how good it is.’

  Cámara chuckled.

  ‘Serious stuff.’ Torres stared at him. ‘A family can spend the whole mealtime arguing over what grade to give it.’

  ‘All right, so what do they mean?’

  Torres gave him a look.

  ‘Bò, as you should know by now, is Valencian for “good”. Rebò means “very good”.’

  ‘And mèl?’

  ‘Mèl means “honey”.’

  ‘That’s the top mark?’

  Torres frowned.

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Well, is it or isn’t it?’

  ‘There’s another one above that. But it’s hardly ever used. Perhaps never. It belongs to the perfect, archetypal paella, like some kind of Platonic ideal. One that’s been made over an open fire, using only wood from an orange tree.’

  ‘And using Valencian water.’

  ‘Of course. It’s impossible to make paella with water from anywhere else. Doesn’t come out the same.’

  ‘And this top mark is?’

  ‘De categoría,’ Torres said, his Valencian accent thickening slightly, all open vowels like a yowling cat.

  ‘You think Plato had paella in mind when he was coming up with his theory of Forms?’