‘Shall we head back to the Jefatura?’
‘Yes. Let’s.’
They had come together by car this time: the murder squad vehicle had been free. Laura drove, and for a few minutes Cámara watched the city speeding by – tower blocks, jacaranda trees with intense purple-blue blossom, small white clouds bubbling out over the sea. May was a good month to be in Valencia, before the thick heat of high summer arrived.
His mind drifted back home, to Hilario. Despite the scare of the evening before, he appeared to be settling well here. The blood-thinning pills had done the trick. Or so Cámara assumed. Alicia wondered afterwards whether it was merely tiredness that had caused Hilario to collapse. He had been working hard all day, and it could get hot down in the tunnel. She should make sure he drank enough water, she said.
The car got caught in traffic as they reached the centre again. Laura beat the steering wheel with the palms of her hands.
‘Fuck.’
She was not the swearing kind. He looked at her: her eyes seemed small, the centre of her forehead tight.
She caught the question in his gaze.
‘It was as we thought,’ she said. ‘Shot five times in the back of the head. And she’d been molested. There were abrasions on her vagina.’
‘Semen?’ Cámara asked. There was an edge to his voice. Semen could give them a very good DNA reading, which could – if they were lucky – lead them almost straight to the killer.
‘No,’ Laura said. ‘Nothing.’
‘So . . .?’
‘So I don’t know. Rapists don’t use condoms – not the ones I’ve come across. He must have fingered her or molested her in some way. Whatever he did, it shows.’
‘All right,’ said Cámara. ‘Do we have a time of death?’
‘It’s looking around eleven in the morning.’
‘Tallies with Ruiz Costa’s story.’
‘The gunshot wounds,’ Laura said. ‘Quintero was very interested in them. By the looks of it, our man used a silencer.’
‘Quintero can tell that?’
‘Leaves different patterns of muzzle burns on the skin. It’s complicated by her hair being in the way. But he wants the científicos to have a look at the bullets as well.’
‘A silencer,’ Cámara repeated. ‘They don’t muffle a gunshot completely, but it would explain why no one else in the building heard anything.’
‘At least as far as we know. We need those reports.’
‘Castro and Lozano are on it,’ he said.
Castro. In contrast to Laura he thought of her by her surname – she was one of the team, one of the men.
‘Well, as long as they are on it, and not on top of each other . . .’ said Laura.
Cámara chuckled. Laura smiled.
‘I’m serious,’ she said, trying to look as though she were.
‘Anything else?’ Cámara asked.
‘Her fingers,’ Laura said, a more solemn expression returning to her face.
‘I didn’t notice anything.’
‘They’d been smashed, broken.’
‘What?’
‘Almost every single finger had been broken by something blunt and hard.’
Cámara sat back and stared out of the window. They were creeping along the street, but had been held up by a traffic light.
‘Before or after?’
‘Hard to say. Quintero said he thought it was either simultaneous with death or perhaps just after. The bruising was marginally lighter than if it had happened before she was killed.’
‘Her fingers?’ Cámara asked, perplexed.
The lights changed and they pulled away.
‘Quintero wondered if they had been stamped on. Said he found traces of what looked like black rubber on the skin. Perhaps from the heel of a shoe or boot. He was having it tested.’
‘You think it will fit?’
‘With the husband?’ Laura asked. ‘We’ll have to check his shoes and find out.’
‘You still think it’s him?’
‘You still think it isn’t?’
‘I don’t think anything. It’s too soon.’
They pulled out from behind a bus and sped through a tunnel and past more lights before turning in behind the Jefatura and squeezing into a tight parking spot. Laura switched off the ignition and turned to look at him. As she spoke she pulled out the fingers of her left hand one by one.
‘He’s her husband. One.
‘He called it in. Two.
‘No one can prove that he wasn’t at home at the time of the murder. Three.
‘There was sexual molestation. Four.
‘She was shot five times in the back of the head. Five times. Not once or twice. That’s five.’
‘You’re going to run out of fingers,’ Cámara said.
She frowned.
‘The silencer,’ he said.
‘He didn’t want anyone to hear.’
‘What about her hands?’
‘So he was angry about something she did. Perhaps he hated this blogging of hers. Or was jealous, or something. I’m sure there’s a connection with his dead mother.’
She opened the car door and stepped out.
‘Where are you going?’ Cámara asked.
She looked towards the Jefatura, and the section of the building where the cells were housed.
‘I’m going,’ she said, ‘to find out.’
TEN
‘WAIT!’
He pulled Laura by the arm.
‘Let’s stop and think before you go charging in.’
‘I’m going to arrange a formal interview,’ she said. ‘Sort out legal representation and get him in for proper questioning.’
Her eyes were hard and tight like black pebbles, her breathing quick and shallow.
‘Fine,’ Cámara said. ‘But you’re angry. Calm down first. Let’s see what we’ve got before we start. If it’s about the bet . . .’
‘To hell with the bet.’
‘OK. But there’s no rush.’
‘We’ve had him inside for almost twenty-four hours already. If we don’t get something by the end of today there will be problems.’
They had a total of seventy-two hours before having to charge him or let him go, which gave them another two days. But Cámara knew as well as Laura that their superiors began to get nervous if a formal indictment was not on the horizon after forty-eight hours. He should have been more anxious himself, given Maldonado’s contest between him and Torres. Right now, though, he was more concerned about the head of the sexual violence squad screwing up their investigation.
He put his hand back on her arm, squeezing it gently at the elbow.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Come to our office. We’ll sort things out from there.’
Inside the murder squad rooms, Lozano and Castro were sitting next to each other at a single desk, writing up a report. Lozano looked up as Cámara and Laura entered the room.
‘It’s just coming,’ he said.
‘Where’s Albelda?’ Cámara asked.
Castro jerked her head in the direction of the next room.
‘Go and get him,’ said Cámara.
Lozano pulled himself away from Castro and slinked over to the connecting doorway between the two offices.
‘Castro . . .’
‘I’m just finishing now.’
‘Leave it. I want to hear it from you in person.’
She stopped typing.
‘Sort out an interview with Alfredo Ruiz Costa. He’s in the cells. Get him a lawyer. But quickly. Understood?’
Castro nodded, made a note on a piece of paper and picked up the phone.
Lozano came back with Albelda.
‘Morning.’
‘Right,’ said Cámara. ‘You all know Chief Inspector Laura Martín from the sexual violence squad. She’s on this as well.’
Albelda stepped forward, pulled out a chair and offered it to Laura. She sat down and nodded at him.
‘Thank you.’
‘OK,
’ said Cámara. ‘I want to hear everything we’ve got so far. Starting with you.’
He pointed at Albelda.
‘Right.’ Albelda crossed his arms and began speaking, rocking from foot to foot as he did so.
‘The first thing to mention is that Dr Olmedo Pérez has confirmed that Ruiz Costa visited him on the morning of the murder. According to the secretary he arrived shortly before ten-thirty.’
‘Right,’ said Cámara. ‘Just as Ruiz Costa told us. Did anyone see him arriving back at the flat?’
‘The short answer is no. There are no confirmed sightings of Ruiz Costa after he left Dr Olmedo’s around eleven-thirty. We still don’t know what time he got home.’
Castro was murmuring on the phone in the background. She finished talking, replaced the receiver and nodded at Cámara. The interview was set up. In her chair, Laura sat quietly, her eyes fixed on the floor, her hands in her lap, listening intently to what Albelda had to say. Lozano perched himself on the edge of Castro’s desk.
‘Fill us in,’ said Cámara.
‘There are eight flats in the building,’ Albelda continued. ‘Two attic flats at the top and the shops on the ground floor, making a total of twelve properties. Amy Donahue lived on the third floor. Of the attic flats, one is empty – the owners are looking for a new tenant. The other is occupied but the couple living there both work during the day and were out. The first they knew of anything was when we knocked on the door. That high up they probably wouldn’t have heard much anyway.’
‘How many people were in the building at the time of the killing?’ Laura asked, looking up.
‘Not counting the shops on the ground floor, and not including Amy and her assailant – or assailants – so far we think there were four. And three of them were in the same flat.’
‘Who are they?’ asked Cámara.
‘On the second floor, diagonally below Amy’s,’ Albelda said. ‘A woman called Ana Navarro has a psychotherapy business. She was there at the time with a client, a man called Enrique Solves Ferrer. And her secretary, Raquel Seguí, was at her desk in the entrance hall.’
‘And?’
‘And they didn’t hear or see anything. According to Raquel Seguí, people come and go quite a bit up and down that staircase. And not just because of their business – the place across the hallway from them is run by a chiropractor.’
‘Get your head sorted out in one place and your back in the other,’ Lozano grinned.
‘Who’s that?’ Cámara asked.
‘A Danish national called Stephan Hansen,’ said Albelda.
‘Where was he?’
‘He had an early appointment at ten which finished at eleven. Then he said he had nothing else on till lunchtime, so he went out to do some shopping.’
‘He left at eleven.’
‘Says it must have been sometime after.’
‘Did he see anything?’
‘No one on the stairs. Nothing unusual. The only thing he mentioned was seeing a couple of young men pressing one of the buttons on the intercom phone outside when he stepped into the street. Didn’t think anything of it but he thought he heard one of them say cartero when it was answered.’
‘Postman?’ Lozano said. ‘Was he sure?’
‘Not very,’ Albelda said. ‘He was already walking away. But he said the postman usually comes round later in the morning, which was why he noticed it.’
‘How good is his Spanish?’ Cámara asked.
‘Good enough. Speaks with an accent. Perhaps not quite fluent.’
‘But better than your Danish, eh?’ Lozano quipped.
‘Two men claiming to be a postman,’ Cámara said in a low voice, almost to himself. He looked over to Laura. ‘Might explain how someone got into the building.’
Laura shrugged.
‘He’s foreign. He’s not sure what he heard. Did he see Ruiz Costa?’ she asked Albelda. Albelda shook his head.
‘Did he know Amy and her husband?’
‘Said they used to say hello on the stairs,’ said Albelda. ‘But not much else. He’s worried about business. Says people might stop coming to see him now there’s been a murder in the flat above.’
‘So his place is right below Amy’s flat,’ Laura said.
‘That’s correct.’
‘God, if he’d been there! He would surely have heard something, silencer or no silencer.’
‘What’s that?’ Albelda asked.
‘Autopsy report,’ said Cámara. ‘Muzzle-burn patterns on the skull. We need to check with the científicos and see if the bullets confirm.’
The atmosphere in the room changed. There was something about the use of a silencer that made the killing worse for some reason. There was an intensity and a coolness about it that cut against the brutality of the actual shooting. A question mark hung over all of them. This was different. And strange.
‘All right,’ Cámara said. ‘Albelda, keep going. Who’s the fourth person in the building at the time?’
‘There’s an elderly man on the fourth floor. A widower. Lives on his own. He was at home all morning watching television, he says. Keeps it on all the time to keep him company since his wife died.’
‘When was that?’
‘About two years ago.’
‘Did he know Amy and her husband?’
‘He’s known Ruiz Costa since he was a boy. The flat belonged to his mother and father. They moved in almost thirty years ago, when he was about three or four. So they’ve been neighbours from the beginning.’
‘And?’
‘Well, the parents are both dead. The father was a doctor, which is presumably how he could have afforded such a nice place. The mother was a housewife. Ruiz Costa was their only child. The father wanted him to become a doctor as well, but according to the widower—’
‘What’s his name?’ Costa asked.
‘Juan Ramón Santiago,’ Albelda said. ‘According to him, Ruiz Costa never had it in him. Said he hasn’t got it up there.’ He tapped his forehead.
‘What?’ Laura said. ‘He’s saying he’s simple?’
‘No, not quite that. He didn’t want to say. Said he had always thought of him as a nice kid, never really got into trouble or anything. But that he wasn’t quite properly balanced. Said the mother’s death threw him. Never thought he’d properly recovered. They were very close. Closer than the boy was with his father.’
‘And what about Amy?’ Cámara asked.
‘Very sweet girl, according to Juan Ramón. Always smiling, very cheerful. Spoke excellent Spanish . . .’ He tailed off.
‘And?’ Cámara prodded.
‘Look,’ Albelda said. ‘It’s just neighbours’ gossip.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He wondered what she was doing with Ruiz Costa. Said she was pretty and bubbly, and Ruiz Costa has always been a bit, well, strange. A bit mopey, not too intelligent. He said he didn’t think it was the best match in the world.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No, that was it.’
Cámara felt he could read the thoughts in Laura’s mind: a disappointed father, frowning from beyond the grave, resigned to the fact that his son was not up to his own high standards; an imbalanced young man in a close relationship with his mother, recently deceased; a beautiful, foreign wife who, perhaps, could not fill the role that the mother once had . . .
‘Outside in the street,’ Cámara said. ‘What did you get from there?’
‘You’ve got the dry-cleaner’s on one side and the clothes shop on the other,’ Albelda said. ‘People coming and going all day long, as you’d expect. No one in either place was aware of anything happening until police showed up and started cordoning off the area.’
‘OK, what about across the road?’
‘There’s a gym, mostly used by men working out, lifting weights, that kind of thing. No one there saw anything. It’s run by a guy called Julio Pont Serra. He says he was out, but someone from the gym was talking to the caretaker f
rom the building next to theirs at the time. A man in his sixties called Antonio Pascual Fuertes.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Yes. He confirms it. Bit of a handyman, it seems. There’s a leaking pipe at the back of the gym, and so he offered to fix it. Bit of money on the side. He was busy with it for an hour or more in the middle of the morning. So again, he wasn’t around to see anything.’
Cámara sat back in his chair.
‘What about the bookshop on the corner? Fulcanelli’s.’
‘Been closed for three months,’ Albelda said. ‘They used to sell healing crystals and tarot cards and that kind of thing. Seeing the future. Went out of business.’
‘What, they didn’t see it coming?’ said Lozano. Castro sniggered. The others were silent.
‘So what have you got?’ said Cámara after a pause.
Lozano lifted himself off the edge of the desk.
‘No gun,’ he said. ‘Or silencer. We found his car – a white 2005 Seat León. The científicos have gone through it thoroughly, but nothing there either. No blood spattering, no weapon of any kind. Just boxes of medicines – the ones he was selling. And corporate gifts for doctors – calendars, notebooks, pens, that kind of thing.’
Laura sighed with frustration.
‘But we did get hold of Amy’s laptop,’ Lozano said.
Cámara nodded for him to continue.
‘It wasn’t switched off,’ Castro said from the back. ‘And we thought it might be useful. We could check her email and stuff.’
‘OK, good,’ said Cámara. ‘And have you?’
‘No,’ said Lozano. ‘It’s password protected. We can get the tech team to see if they can crack it, though. I was going to call through to them now.’
‘Do it.’
Cámara turned to Laura.
‘Any questions?’ he said.
The phone on Castro’s desk rang. She picked it up, spoke a few words, nodded, and then put it down again.
‘It’s all set up,’ she said. ‘Ruiz Castro and a lawyer are in the interview room.’
Laura stood up.
‘I’ve got enough,’ she said.
ELEVEN
THE ROOM WAS rectangular, bare and hot.
Ruiz Costa sat at the centre, behind a table, still in the same clothes he had been wearing the day before, although his tie and belt had been removed and his hands were washed clean of blood. Next to him sat a man with long hair wearing a light grey suit with white trainers on his feet. Something in Cámara sank – not for his sake, nor for that of Ruiz Costa, but for the workings of the system. A young woman had been killed and her husband was close to being formally accused of her murder, yet all they could come up with was a young legal aid solicitor dealing with what was almost certanly his first case.
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