The line hissed.
‘I’ve just received a death threat.’
TWENTY-THREE
THE SMELL OF Hilario overwhelmed him as he stepped inside the flat – citrusy and smoky, a blend of the cologne his grandfather used to wear and the joints he rolled. It stopped Cámara in his tracks for a second, the presence – and absence – of the dead man.
After a pause, he managed to close the door behind him, trying to put a brake on his imagination as it ran away with images and scenes from the past, even variations on the present – a present where Hilario was still with him. Perhaps cooking dinner, talking of what had happened that day at the metro, plans for the future, invitations – always – for him to think in new and different ways. His grandfather had annoyed the shit out of him at times, but he never allowed you to sit still and fall into sleepy comfort; he had kept him engaged and challenged. Perhaps that was the greatest gift, the most important lesson, that he had passed on.
The urge to grab the tin of home-grown pulled at his insides, but he pushed it away. There were things to attend to first.
Alicia was asleep: he could hear faint snoring coming from their bedroom. The threat had come in an email – she had printed it out and left it on the table for him to read. It was short and grotesque. Alicia was accused of damaging the reputation of the country abroad through her article, which was condemned as a series of outrageous lies. She was guilty of treason and would be punished. If she stopped writing her lies her life might be saved, but if she continued, her throat would be slit and her body fed to the dogs.
There were threats and threats. An analysis could sometimes determine how dangerous they were by taking into consideration things like the length of the text, the use of specific words and their frequency, or the timing. After the initial surge of anger – and sometimes panic – had died down, Cámara’s preferred method was to forget about them. If they then started appearing in his dreams or popping up unexpectedly in his mind later on, he would give them another look and wonder about taking action.
With this one, however, that was going to be more difficult: he was too emotionally engaged.
Down the corridor the snoring had stopped: Alicia had fallen into a deeper sleep. He leaned against the wall; the jar on the shelf grinned at him.
Ten minutes later, as he took a last drag on the joint, heaviness finally seeped into him. He undressed and lay down next to Alicia’s motionless body. The sky was already lightening with the first rays of dawn. He did not hear the helicopters as their blades began chopping the air overhead.
Alicia was up and the television was blaring. He lifted himself out of bed and shuffled towards the living room.
‘How much cash have you got on you?’ Alicia asked as he walked in.
He patted his naked chest, as though searching for a wallet.
‘Right now, not very much.’
There was no smile on her face.
‘Perhaps fifty or sixty euros,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’
And then he understood: the messages from the ministry the night before; the expression on her face.
‘It’s happened.’
He grabbed a blanket from the back of the sofa, covered himself and sat next to her. The news showed aerial shots of thousands of people in the street gathered outside what looked like a bank building. The picture then cut to angry faces, people shouting and holding placards, an old woman beating the television camera with her stick. At the bottom of the screen, in large capital letters, flashed the word corralito. It was what everyone had been dreading for months.
‘They’ve closed the banks,’ Alicia said flatly. ‘Trying to stem a capital flight out of the country. They say billions have gone over the past few days so they have no choice. There’s a twenty-four-hour freeze on all non-commercial transactions, then as of tomorrow we can only take out two hundred euros per person per week from our accounts.’
‘They’ve gone bankrupt,’ Cámara said softly. Part of him had known, had seen this coming when the cryptic messages started coming through from Madrid the previous night. The Spanish had taken the word from the Argentinians, whose own financial meltdown years before had been termed the corralito. People had been mentioning it as a possibilty in Spain, but he never thought that it would actually happen. Now he realised that he should have gone to the cash machine there and then and taken out as much as he could, should have warned everyone he knew. But the death threat against Alicia had distracted him.
‘You’ll be lucky if you get paid,’ Alicia said. ‘They’ll have saved all their friends, let them get their fortunes out of the country, and now we’ve got to pay for their fuck-ups. There’ll be worse to come, I’m sure. It’s going to be like Argentina. Any money still in the banks will be worthless soon.’
It was only now that he became aware of the sound – perhaps that was what had woken him in the first place. It was just past eleven o’clock in the morning – he had barely slept at all. From the street came a clattering metallic din: it was why Alicia had the volume on the television turned up so high. Still clutching the blanket around him, he stepped over to the window and opened it. Immediately the sound from outside grew louder.
‘What the . . .?’
From almost every flat, every open window, women were leaning out and banging cooking pots as loudly as they could, creating a clashing, thundering racket. Down at street level, people dashed about, some with whistles in their mouths, others climbing into their cars to blow the horn. A general outpouring of rage was exploding into sound all over the city.
‘I should go,’ Cámara said. He dropped the blanket back on the sofa and walked over to the bedroom. Alicia glanced briefly at him before turning her attention back to the news.
‘Have you found your uniform?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he called back.
‘I don’t suppose anyone’s going to care about things like that on a day like this,’ she mumbled to herself.
By the time he was dressed, she was sitting at the computer. The printout of the death threat had gone, presumably thrown in the bin.
‘Be careful,’ Cámara said, leaning down to kiss her. ‘I’ll call.’
‘I’m going to have a very busy day,’ she said.
The city appeared to be operating to a different, more frenetic and less predictable rhythm. He took an indirect route to the Jefatura, partly because some of the streets were filled with angry crowds blocking the way as they concentrated around bank entrances, as though hoping that by their sheer weight of numbers they might open them again and reclaim their money. But he was also curious to gauge the mood.
In some areas of the city a degree of normality appeared to be operating: schools and shops were open and people were going about their business, albeit with worried expressions. The helicopters never stopped circling overhead. As he turned a corner he saw smoke billowing from a building and a team of fire engines trying to fight it: the flames were coming from a Catalan-owned supermarket chain. Valencia had always had a complicated relationship with its more affluent neighbour to the north. It looked as though a backlash in the guise of ancient regional rivalries was already under way.
He parked the motorbike at the back of the Jefatura. Two policeman were standing outside the front entrance.
‘We need to see your ID,’ said one.
‘New rules,’ said the other. ‘It’s a high alert.’
Cámara flashed his card at them and was about to step inside, but paused.
‘I think I need something to eat first,’ he said.
‘Pepe’s has set up a credit system for police,’ the first guard said. ‘In case you haven’t got any cash on you. You can pay him back later. Half the riot squad’s in there now on their break.’
‘Thanks.’
Pepe’s was the nearest bar to the Jefatura. Cámara usually avoided it, if only because it was always full of other policemen, but today he decided to make an exception. Better to hang on to the little cash he h
ad on him – he did not know when he might be able to get any more.
A crowd of men in dark blue uniform, military-style caps and heavy tie-up leather boots was taking up much of the space inside. Cámara found a free stool at the bar and sat down. After a brief wait, Pepe came over. Cámara reached for his ID card but the bar owner stopped him.
‘It’s all right. I know who you are.’
Cámara looked surprised.
‘Some of the lads have mentioned you. And I’ve seen you walking past. What can I get you?’
Cámara ordered some snails in tomato sauce, tortilla, sardines and a café solo. Pepe jotted down the amount in a red book hanging from a string next to the till.
‘I’ll keep a record and just pay when you can,’ he said. ‘We’re all in this together.’
‘I’ll pay now,’ Cámara said. His hand was already reaching down into his pocket for the cash. Something about the look in Pepe’s eye, about the atmosphere in the bar, disturbed him. This was false generosity, he felt certain. More, much more, would be expected in return.
‘You sure?’
Cámara placed a twenty-euro note on the counter. And it was strange how this piece of paper that ordinarily had only a modest importance now seemed to glow with rare value. Pepe snatched it up greedily.
‘As you wish,’ he said.
Cámara glanced around at the other officers eating and drinking – all of them in the bar owner’s debt. Pepe, he noticed, was taking longer than was necessary to bring him his change.
He ate hungrily, mopping up the snail sauce with chunks of bread. There was mint and a hint of rosemary there, but Pepe was no master chef. He had been fooled into coming by the offer of a ‘free’ meal. Now all he wanted to do was to get out as soon as he could.
It took him a couple of minutes to work out why he felt so uncomfortable, but as his gaze was arrested by the television in the corner, he began to understand. Every officer there – and they were all police, by the looks of them – was watching it. A press conference was taking place and a man he had seen before – but never in this context – was talking in front of a bunch of microphones. At the bottom of the screen he read the banner: ‘Francisco Soler, leader of the LOP’.
He tapped the policeman nearest to him on the shoulder.
‘What’s the LOP?’ he asked.
‘The Legionaries of Order and Progress,’ came the reply. ‘Soler’s party.’
Cámara shivered.
Francisco Soler – they all knew him, but Cámara had only come across him as the head of a security firm, not the leader of a political formation. In his early sixties, Soler was a big man with a compact, hard-looking head. His hair was cut almost to his scalp, and his features were round and fatty. His bottom lip was loose and pulled slightly at the corner, while rimless rectangular glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. There was a problem with one of his eyes: the right one was almost veiled from view as he tipped his head to the side – his usual posture. Only when he lifted his face was it visible: a white ball sitting in a smaller socket. As he got carried away by the occasion, his eyebrows rose to make a point, and the strange eye came into view, swivelling and flicking upwards into his skull and then down again.
People in the street called him el tuerto – the one-eyed man.
And now he was talking on television, not trying to sell his services as head of a security firm, but making a political speech. Some of the words had already filtered into Cámara’s consciousness: ‘the unity of Spain’; ‘the challenges of immigration’; ‘a historic moment’; ‘a return to ancient values’.
The name of his party said it all: ‘order and progress’ had been the watchwords of the Franco regime.
Cámara ate quickly; he had seen enough.
‘Spain needs more men like Soler,’ Pepe said as he cleared away Cámara’s plate. ‘Good men, strong men. His time has come.’
A cheer went up from the members of the riot squad. Cámara looked back at the television. Francisco had an angry and determined expression on his face.
‘Catalonia and the Basque Country must for ever remain part of Spain,’ he said. ‘The calls for independence stop here. I call on the armed forces to carry out their constitutional duty and defend the territorial integrity of the country. The soul of Spain is at stake. The separatists should be stopped at once.’
‘That’s what we need,’ said Pepe. ‘Stop them in their tracks. They’re only using the crisis to their own advantage. But we’ll show them. Fucking Catalans.’
The riot policeman standing nearby turned his head.
‘Don’t worry, Pepe. We’ve got it covered.’
Cámara walked out. He was still in the street, halfway back to the Jefatura, when his phone buzzed. It was a message from Laura.
The results from the científicos have come in. Need to talk ASAP.
TWENTY-FOUR
‘IF THEY’D WAITED a day longer to do these we might never have got the results.’
Laura asked him up to her office to talk things through.
‘Everyone’s trying to act like normal, but the place is close to paralysis. This morning I saw policemen supposed to be on patrol driving the squad car to the supermarket to stock up on food. How’s that for helping to keep people calm? There’ll be nothing left on the shelves by the end of the afternoon.’
Cámara sat in a chair next to her desk and looked around, trying to pretend it was the first time that he had been in there. The smell of air freshener was almost overpowering.
‘Nice place.’
‘Yes, I feel rather guilty up here on my own. Things can get pretty cramped down in the murder squad offices, right?’
Cámara smiled.
‘Sometimes. It’s not all bad, though.’
Laura tapped a pen on the surface of the desk.
‘The uniform business?’
‘I notice you’re not wearing one.’
‘I don’t have to answer to Maldonado.’
Cámara lowered his gaze. The subtext was clear: Laura had as low an opinion of the head of the murder squad as Cámara did. But that on its own was not enough for there to be a connection between them. He still did not know how much he could trust her.
‘I got your note,’ she said. ‘I understand you’ve been working nights.’
‘It seemed appropriate. At least for a while.’
‘The, um, the death in the family. Yes, I heard. I’m very sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I don’t know why they force people to return to work so soon. You should be given more time off.’
‘I prefer it this way.’
She paused.
‘Yes. Takes your mind off things.’
‘I’m a detective. This is what I do.’
She looked at him with a question in her eyes. The dynamic of the conversation was shifting and curious. They were in her office, which gave her a certain authority. And for a brief moment it was as if she were Cámara’s superior. Yet at the same time, as she tried to control the conversation, Cámara slipped through her fingers like a live, silvery fish.
She needed him. Her attempts to find Amy Donahue’s killer had so far come to nothing.
‘The American ex-boyfriend,’ she began. ‘I don’t know if you heard.’
Cámara shrugged.
‘He was in Madrid the whole time. Never came to Valencia in the end. I got a report sent over. They interviewed him. Alibis. He wasn’t here. It wasn’t him.’
‘And Ruiz Costa?’
She pursed her lips.
‘He’s free. The tests came back on the rubber marks on Amy’s hands. It doesn’t match any of Ruiz Costa’s shoes. There’s not enough on him. Yet.’
‘You still think . . .?’
‘We can’t rule it out. So he used another pair of shoes, one we haven’t found yet.’
‘What about the bullets? Did those results come through as well?’
She paused before answering.
‘Yes, but they’re inconclusive about a silencer being used.’
‘Even in as noisy a city as this, I can’t imagine five gunshots going off without someone noticing.’
‘True. In which case perhaps it was Ruiz Costa who used a silencer.’
He let it go. Statistically, as she had pointed out before, she was right. Besides, she needed to keep face.
There was a box of sweets on the desk. She leanted over, picked it up and offered one to Cámara.
‘A present,’ she said. ‘From a battered wife. We helped sort her husband out for her.’
Cámara grinned and took a sweet.
‘Thanks. At times like these you never know when you’re going to get your next meal.’
‘It’s not looking good,’ she said. ‘Like everyone else, I keep asking myself if there’s going to be a proper revolt of some kind in this country. And maybe this will spark it off – first the King falling ill, now closing the banks. But at the same time I think that if it hasn’t happened yet it’s because it’s not going to happen.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘The King? No, they made a statement this morning. But no pictures, which probably means he’s still unconscious. God knows it would be all over the news, covering up the financial mess, if they could just get him to open up one eye at least.’
Cámara sucked noisily on his sweet. It tasted pink, like roses.
‘I think we’re going to be quite busy for a while,’ he said.
‘Yes. I just don’t know whose side some police officers are on.’
The ambiguity lay between them like a mist. Cámara was silent, happily shrouded. He knew where his own loyalties were. Laura’s, however, were still uncertain to him, although he was beginning to have his suspicions.
‘But we should get on.’
He was starting to recognise the expression on her face: she was a compartmentaliser. First one thing, then the next; one file, then another. Her brain functioned like her office layout: neat, ordered and with precious little spill-over.
‘It was, of course, unorthodox to get a handwritten note like that under my door, but I appreciate your discretion. With hindsight it may seem that I put my neck out over this case. What happened in the interrogation room with Ruiz Costa has done the rounds. I can tell by the way people look at me in the corridors, even ones I’ve never met.’
Blood Med Page 16
