Blood Med

by Jason Webster

  On the whole, the place was neat and orderly, much like the impression he had formed of Laura herself. This was a woman who did things as they were meant to be done – a rare bird in the Policía Nacional, where pretty much everyone learned soon after leaving officer training that the only way actually to get things done was to bend the rules and skirt the many bureaucratic obstacles that were put in their way. Cámara had taken to it like a duck to water. Others went so far that they ended up acting in a more criminal manner than the people they were supposed to be catching. A very small minority carried on in the ‘legal’ fashion, doing everything by the letter. Laura was one of them. Being in her office felt like stumbling upon the lair of an endangered species.

  What he knew, though, was that finding her notes on the Amy case would be fairly straightforward. Developments would be on Webpol, for all to see. Yet her thoughts and conjectures would be typed and arranged chronologically and placed in a very logical filing system. Like that cabinet over there.

  He walked over to the grey rectangular tower at the side of the office and looked at the tickets on each drawer. They had beginning and end dates on them. The third one down only had a start date and was still being used. Would it be locked? From what he was learning about Laura it seemed more than likely, but he gave it a pull anyway. To his surprise it opened, catching at first but then running smoothly after an encouraging tug. He smiled to himself: perhaps Laura was less predictable than he thought.

  The last folder hanging in the drawer was marked ‘Amy Donahue/Alfredo Ruiz Costa’. Cámara pulled it out and sat in Laura’s chair to have a read.

  The first page was a report sent in from Madrid on a US citizen. The passport picture showed a young man with curly blonde hair and sideburns. After giving his passport and visa numbers, his name appeared underneath – Ryan Cox. It was Amy’s ex-boyfriend, who had been planning on coming to see her in Valencia.

  Cámara glanced through the text, written in police officialese. ‘Sought by the Valencia sexual violence squad . . .’ Blah blah. So Laura had not put in the request in the name of the murder squad, he noticed. ‘The individual was located at the Hostal Los Angeles in Madrid, where he had been resident since his arrival on . . .’ etc., etc. Cámara skimmed down, looking for the important bit.

  ‘The individual insisted’ – here it was – ‘that he had not left Madrid since his arrival from the USA seven days earlier except for a tourist excursion to the Escorial on the 5th. When questioned, he said that he had not travelled to any other cities in the national territory. Asked if he had any intention of going to Valencia, he said that he had considered going some days prior in order to visit a friend but had changed his mind and decided to stay in the capital. The manager of the Hostal Los Angeles was able to corroborate his story, testifying that the individual had stayed every night at the establishment, and that over the past few nights he had been returning with a Spanish girl. He assumed they were having relations . . . If further corroboration required . . .’

  The position seemed clear: Cox might have been about to come to Valencia, but had changed his mind when he managed to find a girl to sleep with him. Thoughts of Amy must have gone out of the window. He wondered if Cox knew that his old girlfriend was dead.

  The report from the Madrid police was two pages long. Clipped to the back of it was a short typed note dated the previous day and signed by Laura. Cámara glanced through it quickly, but could already tell what it would say: her suspicions were still with Alfredo Ruiz Costa, Amy’s husband. Her latest supposition was that Ruiz Costa found the emails from Cox and that this had sparked him into a jealous rage.

  In the meantime, as their seventy-two-hour limit to hold him had passed, she had recommended he be granted provisional freedom pending further investigations.

  Ruiz Costa had been allowed home the previous day, as Cámara had been burying Hilario.

  Cámara smiled to himself as he read the last paragraph: Laura was disappointed that Chief Inspector Max Cámara, her colleague on the investigation from the murder squad, did not appear to share her conviction that Ruiz Costa was the perpetrator, but she was confident, given her past experience with similar cases, that a breakthrough – either by way of more evidence or through a confession – would be forthcoming.

  Back at reception, Azcárraga was waking.

  ‘Been sneaking about?’ he asked as Cámara placed the key to Laura’s office back on its hook.

  ‘Secret.’

  Azcárraga got to his feet and shook himself down.

  ‘God, I needed that. Nothing happened, has it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Cámara smiled.

  ‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Don’t worry. Go and wash your face and get ready for the early-morning lot coming in. They’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’

  He would be heading off soon himself, he thought. He had not quite done his regulation hours, but he had forgotten to bring something along to eat, and the machines only offered dry, tasteless sandwiches and crisps. Spying in Laura’s office had made him hungry.

  He stepped into his own office to collect his things. Something about Torres’s notes seemed to call out to him and he sat down again, taking a last drink from the flask. The brandy would give him enough energy for the ride home.

  He took the small pad and started flicking through again. There was one section that he had meant to look at in more depth – the interviews with Oliva’s neighbours.

  Wading through the statements he could see that none of them had anything to add – they either had not been there or had seen and heard nothing. Lots of impressions about Oliva himself, however. None of them thought that he would be the suicidal type, despite all that he had been through in recent years.

  But there was something there. A switch seemed to click inside his head. Yes, where was it? He sorted through the papers again. Something had caught his eye but only now did he see its significance. Where was it? Was his mind dulled by working through the night, fuelled only by alcohol? Had he made it up, or dreamt it? If it was true, it was huge.

  He read and reread the interview statements. There was one word, just one word that he had seen and which had the potential to change everything. Not only Torres’s case, but the Amy investigation as well.

  Finally, reading the second interview for the third time, he saw it: his eyes must have jumped over it before. But it was there: the neighbour on the first floor.

  And the word, that word, the word that had sounded in his head like the screaming whistle of a train.

  NINETEEN

  ‘WE’LL GO IN my car.’

  Torres was adamant.

  ‘All right.’

  They walked through the patio and out to the back street. The paintwork on Torres’s Seat Toledo had blistered over the years. Torres squeezed the car out of its tight parking space, barging against the vehicles at either end as he manoeuvred round, and they set off. Cámara wound down the window; there were hardly any electrics in the car, he noticed. Although there was a button for air conditioning. He hoped for Torres’s sake that it worked. They did not need it now, but within a month’s time it would be indispensable.

  He opened a new packet of cigarettes, peeling off the plastic around the top and ripping into the silver paper. The image of a man with an unfeasibly large and festering growth on his neck stared up at him from the packaging. The man also had a long, drooping moustache and looked like a refugee from a 1970s prog-rock band. If the authorities wanted to scare people away from smoking they could at least use ordinary people for the photos. Otherwise the exercise turned into a useless freak show. ‘Serves him right,’ too many people would think, ‘for being a hippy.’

  Cámara had already lit the cigarette before Torres asked him to stub it out.

  ‘I’ve got to keep this car in good nick,’ he said unapologetically. ‘Might need to sell it some day. If everything goes tits up.’

  Cámara did his best to
put out the burning end without damaging the rest of the cigarette, and placed it behind his ear for later.

  ‘I still don’t think this is a good idea,’ Torres said. ‘I mean, what good’s it going to do?’

  It was late in the afternoon. Cámara had gone home and slept shortly before dawn. When he awoke, around lunchtime, he sat up, examined his conclusions of the night before, and finding that they had survived the test of being slept on, decided to act. By the time he got to the Jefatura and located Torres the working day was almost finished.

  Cámara was surprised to see Torres in his uniform. He had forgotten about Maldonado’s new directive himself, but the fact that his colleagues were following it was unexpected.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ Torres had said before Cámara could say anything. ‘Some of us have responsibilities.’

  And this was how they always got you. They promised you regular pay, pensions and perks. And you built something around those promises – a home, a family, children, the rest. Happily you placed the noose around your own neck and stood over the trapdoor. And then one day they threatened to pull the release on you, and only then did you realise how stuck you were, that there was no way out but down. And paralysed by fear and your own stupidity, you did whatever they asked. All it took to bring you into line was to give a little twitch on the lever again.

  ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ Torres asked. ‘I assumed you would only come in at night.’

  ‘We need to go to the hospital,’ Cámara said, ‘and see Oliva.’

  And after a minor confrontation over their means of transport, they had finally left the Jefatura.

  ‘You shouldn’t stick around here anyway,’ Torres said. ‘Not dressed like that.’

  The car moved slowly through heavy evening traffic.

  ‘Take me through this again,’ Torres said. ‘Why are we going to the hospital?’

  Cámara hung his arm out of the open window and drummed his fingers against the outside of the car door, his fingers searching for something to fiddle with.

  ‘Because we have to find out once and for all what caused Oliva to fall. His own will, or the will of others.’

  ‘And you think the hospital will be able to help? We’ll get the DNA tests from the material underneath his nails in a few days. That should tell us something.’

  ‘The DNA testing could take weeks,’ Cámara said. ‘They’re backlogged as it is. And you’re not going to get this bumped up the queue if everyone thinks it’s just another suicide attempt. In the meantime the only person who can really help us might have kicked the bucket.’

  ‘You want to talk to Oliva himself? Good luck. He’s in a fucking coma.’

  ‘We need to go round, present ourselves to the doctors and impress on them the importance of doing all they can to get Oliva lucid enough for us to speak to him, even if it’s just for a few minutes. You being in uniform will help.’

  ‘Fuck off. What, you think they’re not doing everything for him as it is?’

  Cámara paused before answering.

  ‘We need to tell them this is now an attempted murder inquiry.’

  Torres snorted.

  ‘But it’s not an attempted murder inquiry.’

  ‘It is now.’

  The car inched forwards before they were stopped at another traffic light.

  ‘You seem to have forgotten,’ Torres said in a low voice, ‘that we’re not on this one together. This is my case. I’m looking into what appears to be an attempted suicide, and the only person who can decide to change it to a murder investigation is—’

  ‘Maldonado?’ Cámara could feel a knot forming at the centre of his forehead as he watched Torres slipping away. ‘Yes, officially perhaps,’ he said. It felt like talking to a child. ‘But the doctors don’t know that, do they.’

  Torres grunted as he shoved the Seat into first gear and they broke away from the traffic with a jerk. The car was not in the best of shape. If Torres ever did decide to sell it he would be lucky to get seven or eight hundred euros for it. Few people had money for anything but the basics these days. Houses, cars – the usual assets that people owned and which might, in an emergency, be sold to raise some cash – were losing value.

  If he wanted to, Torres could turn the car around, or simply tell Cámara to get out. For a few blocks Cámara waited for it to happen, for a sudden swerve on the wheel as Torres rebelled against his presence.

  ‘What’s the urgency, anyway?’ Torres asked as they approached a roundabout. Would he carry on straight towards the hospital or use the junction to do a U-turn? There were four cars ahead of them in the queue waiting to pull out.

  ‘There was something in your notes,’ Cámara said. The first car set off and they moved forwards. Only three cars ahead of them now before the roundabout.

  ‘When the American girl, Amy, was murdered, one of the neighbours overheard some men around eleven o’clock ringing the front doorbell.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They called out that they were postmen.’

  The second car pulled out into the flow of traffic. There were only two cars ahead of them now.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So they almost certainly weren’t postmen. The witness said that wasn’t the normal time for deliveries to be made. That the cartero always came later in the morning.’

  ‘Could have been one of the other delivery companies. One of the private ones.’

  The traffic lurched forward again. There was now only one vehicle between Torres’s car and the roundabout.

  ‘Unlikely. They weren’t dressed in any uniform.’

  ‘All right. So what the fuck has this got to do with Oliva?’

  They were now at the interchange themselves. Torres turned from Cámara to look left, waiting for a gap in the traffic so that he could pull out. The road to the hospital lay ahead; the Jefatura in the other direction.

  ‘In your notes,’ Cámara said, ‘one of Oliva’s neighbours said the same.’

  ‘What?’

  Torres was not listening properly, focused more on the traffic flowing heavily from the side.

  ‘One of your witnesses – a man called Hernández – mentioned the same word. Cartero. Said he heard it from the intercom. Someone trying to get in from the street.’

  A gap emerged in the traffic.

  ‘It was just before eleven o’clock,’ said Cámara. ‘Only minutes before Oliva went flying from his balcony window.’

  Torres pressed on the accelerator and the car shot out.

  TWENTY

  TORRES’S CAR ROLLED gently along the avenue as he drew over to the slow lane and eased his foot off the accelerator. Impatient drivers blew their horns as they pulled out from behind and raced past. Driving at anything short of full throttle, particularly at this time of day, was regarded as a quasi-criminal act.

  ‘We’ve got two almost simultaneous incidents,’ Cámara said.

  Torres nodded.

  ‘At the first we’ve got unidentified men not in uniform trying to get inside the building of Amy’s flat by claiming to be postmen, just moments before she’s murdered. And in the second . . .’

  ‘And in the second,’ Torres said, ‘we’ve got a witness hearing the same word being used on the intercom with the street outside Oliva’s block of flats. Seconds before Oliva takes a dive out the window.’

  He paused and the car rolled on. The traffic lights ahead of them were on green, but had changed to red by the time they reached them. Torres braked and they came to a halt.

  ‘Coincidence,’ he said at last. ‘How many times a day does that happen? I have people coming round all the time ringing the bell. People with leaflets, delivery men, the gas men. And nine times out of ten, just like everyone else, I simply buzz the door and let them in.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Cámara said. ‘We all do, everyone does. But the point is that your witness didn’t hear someone claim to be delivering a package or bottles of butano. He said cartero. The same word used at Amy’
s place.’

  ‘What if it was the postman?’

  ‘Have you checked? What time does he normally come round to Oliva’s?’

  The traffic light changed and they set off again. Torres was silent.

  ‘This has to be looked into,’ said Cámara.

  ‘It’s the slimmest of slim leads. Don’t tell me, you’ve got a feeling about it.’

  A gentle mocking of each other was a part of their relationship, and they both enjoyed it: it was something they shared, something that told them – and others – that their partnership was different. But it was always in jest, never meant. This time, however, the tone was changing. Was it the uniform? Could the simple act of putting on his official police costume have effected such a change in Torres?

  ‘The only person who can tell us one way or another is Oliva,’ Cámara said. ‘Which is why we need to talk to his doctors.’

  ‘And you think they’re going to pull him out of a coma like magic just because you turn up and snap your fingers?’

  The car turned into the final straight before the hospital turn-off. Cámara said nothing.

  Intensive care was far enough away from the emergency ward for him. He had not expected to be back here so soon, but he could trick his mind enough to convince himself that this had nothing to do with the events of three nights before.

  Nothing at all.

  Intensive care was supposed have some degree of control over people coming and going, but it looked as though a steady traffic of non-medical personnel was passing in and out of the swing doors at the end of the unit. In front of the entrance there was a small waiting area, with hard chairs for the anxious to sit on during their lengthy vigils.

  Cámara could see half a dozen people scattered around, some dozing, others pacing up and down, a couple chatting nervously.

  ‘That’s Oliva’s ex-wife, Sonia Busquets,’ Torres said. Cámara saw a woman approaching forty with oily skin and dark bleached hair tied back in a ponytail. Her eyebrows were finely tweezered, but she had not put on any make-up that morning. She had probably been there all day.