A Death in Valencia (14 page)

Cámara wanted to look her in the face, but his eyes remained fixed on the circling wine.

‘I could probably have done things better. But that's the case with almost everything we do. What should I have done, though? Tell you I was pregnant?'

Cámara nodded.

‘And would that really have been fair on you? You were still confused about that other woman, admit it, Max. I was very close to falling in love with you. There. I've said it. But we'd only slept together once. I was busy working out how to get away from Javier and the suffocation of
El Diario
. I didn't know what you wanted, what you felt. You're a policeman, you're hardly classic father material.'

Cámara put the glass down on the table, but found that he still couldn't look up.

‘What was I supposed to say? Hey, look, we've only just met, and we had sex once and, oh, by the way, can you help me raise this child? And then what? Stay in Valencia? Have the child and move in together? Get married and live
felices como perdices
?' Happily ever after.

Ash was beginning to fall on to the table from her cigarette.

‘Yes, that might have been how things turned out, but I just couldn't see it. What I saw was me being stuck in Valencia, at a crap local newspaper, with a father to my child whose most outstanding characteristic was that he was never around.'

‘You could at least have told me.'

‘I did.'

‘Before the abortion.'

Cámara could feel a tightness in his shoulders, a fuzziness in his brain that he usually took as a warning sign that any thoughts at that moment were best left alone, unvoiced and ignored. But anger and indignation were getting the better of him.

He looked up. Alicia was staring at him incredulously.

‘What? So you could hold my hand? You're not listening to me. There was no way I could have told you before. Who would I have been telling? I barely knew you. I barely know you now.'

‘I was the fucking father.' Cámara's voice lowered as he spat the words out. ‘Doesn't that count for something?'

‘This isn't about the child, or the foetus, or whatever you want to call it,' Alicia said. ‘It's not some moral thing. It's about you not being able to control the situation.'

Cámara's eyes widened.

‘There was no solution here. No opportunity for Chief Inspector Cámara to come along and solve the problem. That's what pisses you off. Yes, it was yours as well, but it was growing inside me. I was the one who would give birth to it and raise it. Disappearing, giving up, only taking care of it at weekends–these weren't options for me like they were for you.'

‘I…'

Cámara tried, but couldn't speak.

‘What? You would have been a great dad? Maybe. But that's easy to say now. More difficult when there's an actual child that needs taking care of.'

She paused.

‘Look,' she said, ‘whatever pain it caused you, whatever angst you went through, believe me, it was worse for me.'

The fuzziness seemed to be intensifying inside him. Just say nothing, he told himself. Don't speak.

‘This isn't about whatever happened to you in the past, that big dark secret you never want to talk about. This isn't about Cámara the policeman, the murder detective desperately trying to undo the deaths that have scarred him so deeply. It was about you and me and a little group of cells that was about to cause a huge mess.'

 

He walked her to her old flat. There was no point mentioning the hotel room.

He stepped away as she unlocked the main door, making it clear he wasn't expecting to be invited up, but she moved towards him and kissed him softly on either cheek.

‘I've thought a lot about us this past year,' she said, gripping his arm affectionately.

‘So have I,' he said.

‘But it's within you. Whatever it is that holds us apart is in you.'

She moved back towards the door and stepped inside.

‘Come and find me,' she said, glancing back for a moment. ‘If ever you're ready to tell me about it, come and find me.'

Friday 10th July

He stepped into the first bar he found, dizzy and foggy-headed. He'd woken early, hunger lifting him out of his leaden, skunk-induced sleep, paid for the hotel room in cash, and crashed out into the bright sunlight outside, looking for somewhere to have breakfast. The bar was just around the corner in the next street.

Flores's puffy face wasn't the first thing he wanted to see on any day, but less so that morning. Nonetheless, there he was on the TV, in a beige summer suit with a lemon shirt and a pink, black and white striped tie, frowning at the journalist who had dared corner him to ask a question. Cámara ordered a
café con leche
and some toast with olive oil and salt and then glanced up at the screen screwed to the wall opposite, wondering if the world had turned upside down while he'd been asleep. But no, this wasn't Valencian Canal 9–they would never have the temerity to buttonhole one of their paymasters in this way; it was a national channel, one less pervious to the censoring tendencies of the local ruling party.

He sipped on his coffee, trying to ignore the man who had organised violent attacks against him during the Blanco case. Flores had been trying to slow Cámara's investigation down, using him as a tool in the campaign to get Mayoress Emilia Delgado re-elected. But since then, apart from a few fines for supposedly not paying his car tax, Flores had left Cámara alone. If Vicent was right, he wasn't as powerful as he once had been, not as close to Emilia. Perhaps someone else had replaced him in her bed.

He drained the coffee, ordered another one, took a bite of the toast, and glanced back up at the screen. Flores looked angry.

Journalist: ‘
You've ordered the removal of an exhibit at an art show that the Town Hall itself organised.
'

Flores: ‘
The piece in question was grossly indecent and insulting.
'

Journalist: ‘
And you've also banned an anti-Pope rally organised for this afternoon. Aren't you stifling a constitutional right to freedom of expression?
'

Flores: ‘
Freedom comes with responsibility. We have to maintain standards of common decency.
'

Journalist: ‘
But the demonstration?
'

Flores: ‘
It's illegal. The application for permission came in after the deadline.
'

Journalist: ‘
A deadline you only made public after the application had been made.
'

Flores: ‘
That's a lie!
'

Journalist: ‘
What do you say to allegations that public money spent on the Pope's visit has been siphoned off…
'

But Flores wanted no more. He pushed past the girl with the microphone and stepped into a waiting car to be whisked away. The image cut to a photograph, the anchorman explaining that this was the exhibit that the Town Hall had ordered be removed from the exhibition at the modern art gallery. Cámara stared up at a montage showing a naked, crucified Emilia, blood tricking down her torso, a group of praying Town Hall councillors circling beneath her. On one side a figure representing Flores himself was placing a fig leaf over Emilia's mouth, while below a man with Mezquita's face superimposed over his head was busy anointing her feet.

A TV commentator was speculating whether the image hadn't reached a wider audience by cack-handed attempts to censor it. Then they cut to a different Town Hall spokesman, one Cámara hadn't seen before, writing off the accusations against them as a smear campaign by the opposition parties. They would only be happy, the spokesman insisted, when Emilia was woken up in the middle of the night, put against a wall, shot and buried in an unmarked pit.

The parallel to the killings of the Civil War period was obvious, and the shock at hearing such brutal language quickly stifled Cámara's laughter. The wounds were still too open, too fresh, for talk like that.

As the images cut to show the recent demolition of more houses in El Cabanyal, he turned away from the screen, his belief in the corrosive effect of news media further strengthened. Inflaming, depressing or exciting, all it ever did was pull at lower emotions, making people twitch like puppets while rarely passing on truly useful information.

The phone in his pocket vibrated twice in succession as he finished his toast and drained the last of his coffee. The first text was from Maldonado, threatening to have him formally disciplined if he failed to report to him by ten o'clock that morning.

The second was more interesting: Captain Herrero, the
Guardia Civil
he'd met on the beach when they'd fished out Roures's body from the sea, was asking to meet him later that morning at a bar near the railway station.

Outside, it was as if two rival football teams were about to go head to head, with yellow-and-white flags for the Pope's fans, and red-and-white banners hanging from the windows of the more anti-clerical persuasion. From the flatter, darker, more Asiatic faces that had suddenly appeared in the city, it felt as though half the population of Latin America had been parachuted in to fill out the Vatican's numbers.

Cámara pushed his way through the crowds of excited teenagers and elderly ladies lining the sides of what was later to be the papal route through the city and crossed the old river bed in the direction of the Jefatura.

‘Don't tell me,' he said to Torres as he walked into their shared office. ‘Pardo wants my head on a plate.'

‘On a plate with a nice
salsa verde
and a side helping of
allioli
. Just to give it some flavour.'

‘He knows how to eat well, you've got to give him that.'

‘I'm sure he'll be flattered to hear it, chief,' Torres said. ‘Did you manage to find Roures's ex?'

But Cámara wasn't listening. Sitting down at Torres's desk, he started clicking his way through the web pages of
Sidenpol
, checking up information on Valconsa.

‘I thought you said you didn't know how to use that thing,' Torres said, glancing over his shoulder.

‘I lied.'

Torres started playing with his packet of Habanos cigarettes. It was time, he was trying to signal, for a smoke downstairs outside the emergency exit. But still Cámara wasn't paying him any attention, his concentration fixed on the screen.

‘I'll, er, go down on my own, then,' Torres said.

But he didn't get a chance to make it across the office floor. As though drawn by a scent, Pardo walked in at that moment and slammed the door shut behind him.

‘
Buenos días, jefe,
' Torres said. Pardo wasn't in the mood for pleasantries. Glancing about the office like an arsonist about to set fire to the place, he stepped over the piles of reports and box files and wandered over to Cámara's desk, where he slumped down in the chair and started spinning around.

‘Do you want to go through the whole your-job's-on-the-line routine,' Cámara asked, standing up, ‘or shall we go straight to the explanations?'

Pardo kept spinning, not saying anything.

‘You look like you need to let off some steam.'

Torres threw Cámara a look. Pardo placed his feet on the ground and stopped, keeping his back to both of them, staring out through the window at the monotone brick facades of the block of flats in front.

‘They really didn't give you the best view, here, did they?' he said at last. ‘I wonder why that was?'

He spun round in the chair to face them.

‘Take a seat,' he said.

Torres sat at his own desk; Cámara perched on the edge of a table.

‘Right, here's the deal,' he said calmly. ‘You're both–that's right, both–facing disciplinary hearings. I don't need to explain why in your case,' he said to Cámara. ‘But you,' he nodded in Torres's direction, ‘for covering for him.'

Torres froze, his face turning a pale, waxy colour.

‘That's right, Cámara. It's not just about putting your own neck on the line any more. You want to run around making your own rules, it's the people around you that's going to feel the consequences as well this time.'

Pardo started rolling his tongue around in his mouth as he chose his words.

‘Half the Interior Ministry's poring over every piece of paper we produce on this case. Meanwhile Madrid's itching to send over a special investigations unit 'cause they reckon we're out of our depth on this one. Want to turn it into a nationwide thing. Can't believe there are rotten apples only in the
Guardia Civil
here. Must be everywhere, they reckon.'

Cámara shuffled on his perch; Torres sat motionless.

‘So while you two are playing Cowboys and Indians, not only are you making the investigation look a fucking mess, you're giving them the excuse they need to come down here and take over the entire fucking show.'

Cámara made to speak, but Pardo held up his hand.

‘Wait your turn,' he barked. The anger was rising in his chest, despite his efforts to dampen it down, and he was beginning to breathe heavily.

‘Now I know,' he said through tightened lips, ‘that you're a good policeman.' He turned to Torres. ‘You're both good. So this is what we're going to do: you're going to tell me in very simple language what the fuck it is you've been doing for the past couple of days while the rest of us have been running around like headless chickens trying to find Sofía Bodí before the fucking Pope flies into town.'

He nodded at Cámara to speak. Cámara gave a cough.

‘I'd really prefer it,' Pardo butted in before he could start, ‘if you sat down on a proper fucking chair.'

Cámara grabbed a spare seat from the other side of the office, hauled it over in front of Pardo and sat down.

‘There, that's better,' Pardo said. ‘See?'

‘There's a link,' Cámara said, pressing his fingertips together.

‘A link,' Pardo echoed.

‘Between Bodí and Roures.'

For the next few minutes Cámara outlined what he'd learned: about Sofía's diaries; about the entries for each day with the names of the women she'd carried out abortions on; about the mark next to a recent entry when she'd gone for lunch at La Mar, and how that mark had referred to an abortion carried out back in 1977 on Roures's ex-wife, Lucía Bautista. Pardo sat in silence, listening, his eyes cast down towards the floor.

‘There were no other marks in the diary like it,' Cámara said. ‘We're looking at something exceptional, something tying her in with our murdered paella chef just weeks before she herself goes missing.'

‘Anything in the diary to suggest she knew who might be about to kidnap her?' Pardo asked.

‘Nothing from what I read. The entries were getting shorter over time. She wasn't sleeping. She was probably close to breaking down, physically and mentally.'

Pardo signalled for him to stop, thinking the information through in silence for a moment.

‘You've talked to this Bautista woman?'

‘Inspector Torres carried out an initial interview,' Cámara said. ‘I spoke to her again yesterday.'

‘And?'

‘Claims she's had no contact with Sofía Bodí. Said she'd only heard of her from the news stories. But she confirmed the abortion back in seventy-seven.'

Pardo rested his cheek against his knuckles, his eyes unfocused.

‘All right,' he said, getting up from his chair. ‘It's good enough for me. Too much coincidence–don't like it. You've got my permission to keep at this. But you've got to work quickly. Keep a proper record of everything–I mean everything. I'm going to keep a lid on this for the next few hours, but once you find something we're going to have to go official, which means no spelling mistakes and no missing commas. Right?'

He looked over at Torres.

‘No more wasting time covering for this arsehole, got it? I need you both working flat out. And I need a result by this afternoon. There's enough to start with, but we're going to need more to convince the top floor.'

Cámara was familiar with this particular version of Pardo–no longer a
comisario
but one of the boys, pretending to get his hands dirty while making common cause against the ‘bosses' upstairs.

‘What about Maldonado?' Torres asked. ‘Do we need to—'

‘Fuck Maldonado,' Pardo snapped. ‘He can look after himself.'

He moved towards the door. Cámara took a step after him.

‘One thing, chief,' he said in a low voice.

Pardo opened the door and turned to him.

‘This is only ever between you and me. Don't ever do that to Torres again.'

Pardo's eyes widened in disbelief.

‘What the fuck?' he spluttered. ‘You threatening me?'

‘
Pecado de mucho bulto no puede estar siempre oculto
,' Cámara said in a low voice. You can't hide a big sin for ever.

Pardo's expression of disbelief shifted from one born of rage to one sustained by fear. He held Cámara's gaze for a moment and then stepped out into the corridor, slamming the door behind him.

Cámara moved back to his desk and sat down in the chair Pardo had just vacated.

‘Chief,' Torres said. Cámara kept his head down.

‘Have you got some dirt on Pardo?'

Cámara shrugged as he flicked through some forms lying on his desk.

‘Looks like I do now.'