Or the Bull Kills You (16 page)

‘Is it just that kind of thing?'

‘You sound jealous.'

‘Just asking,' Cámara said.

‘I'm not in love with him any more. Not for years. A long time before all that business with the girl. I'm not kidding myself, though. I know he'd jump back into bed with me again if he could. But I closed all that off long ago. No return.'

‘Did you see him this morning?'

She smiled at him, pushing a stray hair behind her ear.

‘Is it the man I just kissed asking, or Chief Inspector Cámara?'

Cámara didn't answer.

‘No,' she said at last. ‘The last time I saw him was the day Blanco died. He came to my desk just after Blanco called me. You know, saying he had something to tell me, about doing an interview.'

‘Did you mention it to Javier?'

She sighed.

‘Yes, Chief Inspector, I did. I thought he should reserve some space for the next day's edition. I knew it was going to be a big story. Any interview with Blanco was a big story because he never gave any.'

She swallowed a large mouthful of wine, then uncorked the bottle again and filled their glasses.

‘In the end they used all that space to cover his death. And more; I think they cut some pages that night from the international section to make it all fit in.'

The woman came round from behind the bar and placed a basket of bread on the table in front of them, cutlery clattering on the oilcloth top as she dropped them from underneath her arm.

‘Don't worry,' Alicia said as she sorted them out, pushing a knife and fork in Cámara's direction. But the woman wasn't apologising.

‘There,' she said, banging a plate of potato omelette down and turning to walk back to the bar. ‘The rest is coming.'

The tortilla had already been cut up into squares and Cámara picked up his fork and started. Alicia was already grabbing at the bread.

‘
Bon profit
,' she said.

‘All that bloodshed has given me an appetite,' Cámara said.

The tortilla was perfect, made with onion as well as potato, and still just a little moist where the egg had yet to cook all the way through. Cámara's eyes rolled with pleasure.

‘Riquísimo.'

‘I told you,' Alicia said.

He reached over and took a sip of wine.

‘Thank you for bringing me here. I had no idea it existed.'

‘Blanco brought me here the first time,' she said. ‘Must have been over ten years ago. When he was still a
novillero
. I'd seen him fight a couple of times before, but the evening we came here was special. The way he'd fought that afternoon told me – this kid has got something. And I wrote about it that night. The review was picked up by everyone. No one had spotted him before. But here was I, this female bullfight correspondent saying we had a new genius of the bullfight on our hands. Many laughed – they thought I didn't have a clue. But Blanco always remembered that article – it's why he was more open with me than with any other journalist. He trusted me because he knew I could see what he had. Long before everyone else joined in and started to realise. That article put us both on the map.'

‘You sound as if you were half in love with him,' Cámara said.

‘I was, but not in any way you'd understand. I was in love with the bullfighter, the person out there in the ring. Not with the man himself. There was never anything like that between us. Not even a spark. But when he was in front of a bull, I could have followed him for ever. There was something so strong, so determined about him that I admired. Almost bull-like himself, in some ways. Stubborn. Once he'd put his mind to something…'

Cámara stretched his leg over under the table and pressed it against hers. She stopped talking.

The air was cool on their faces as they stepped out into the street a few minutes later. A brief play-scuffle over who should pay had given them further excuse to press their bodies against each other. Alicia tried to push him out of the way as she insisted that as a regular she should pick up the bill, but Cámara put his arm around her and held her tight against him, preventing her from reaching her purse as he whipped out a handful of notes with his free hand and placed them on the counter of the bar. The woman with the lank hair had finally smiled at them as she handed over the change.

‘Great place,' Cámara said, filling his lungs. ‘We should come again.'

They took a few steps away from the entrance and found themselves in the shadow of the doorway of an abandoned building.

‘Oh,' Alicia said, pulling up towards him. ‘I'm sure we shall.'

Desire pulsed heavily under his skin as he slipped a hand into the small of her back and lifted her closer to press his mouth against hers. He felt her teeth nibbling at his lips, her fingers pressing into the flesh of his shoulders as she allowed herself to be enveloped in his embrace.

‘I want you,' she whispered as their lips parted for a second. He wrapped his arms tighter around her waist.

With his eyes closed, at first he thought the flash had come from the headlights of a car trying to wend its way up the narrow, uneven street. When it burst again, however, he looked and turned instinctively towards the clicking noise coming from just a few yards away.

‘¿
Qué cojones
? What the fuck?'

He pulled himself away from Alicia's embrace as the photographer took one more snap of them and began to back away.

‘Hey!' Cámara shouted.

‘What's going on?' Alicia was still lost in the kiss, hardly aware that their moment of passion was being recorded.

‘Son of a bitch.'

Cámara took a few steps in the direction of the footsteps now running away down the alley. It was dark and he hadn't been able to see who it was. Should he run after him? By the time he asked himself the question it was already too late. The photographer appeared briefly in the fluorescent lights of the avenue at the end of the street, then disappeared as he turned away from view.

Alicia was standing behind him, her hand slipping across to grab his arm.

‘Was that guy taking photos of us?' she asked incredulously.

Cámara breathed heavily, his blood racing.

There was no sign of the photographer when they reached the avenue: just a new set of whores working the later shift. They stood silently for a moment under the light of one of the lamps, Cámara wondering to himself what happened now. Before he could answer, he heard a car pull up behind and turned: Alicia had hailed a passing taxi.

He leaned over and opened the door for her to get in. She kissed him on the cheek and then stepped inside.

‘Tomorrow,' she said. ‘Not tonight. Not now, after this. I want it to be—'

‘It's OK,' he said.

‘Come to my place,' she said. ‘I'll fix us something.'

‘I'll call you.'

She closed the taxi door and wound down the window, smiling at him as the taxi indicated to pull away.

‘I didn't know you were such a celebrity,' she said.

Thursday 16th March

The slapping of domino pieces on the hard tabletops created a pattering sound inside the bar that seemed to echo the splashing of heavy raindrops on the pavement outside. Cámara shook the water from his coat, causing a small puddle to form for a moment around his feet before being absorbed by the dirty sawdust that was quickly forming into earth-like clods on the floor. He ordered a
carajillo
and turned to look around, double-checking that he had arrived first as the coffee machine gave a high-pitched scream before the barman smacked it with his hand and it shuddered back into life. Just the usual groups of old men, waiting their turn to clap their little black-and-white rectangles down with all the bravado they could muster. The roads had been clear and he had got there early: Margarita should be arriving in the next five or ten minutes.

It had been the first place that had come to mind when she asked where they should meet. Only after he'd put the phone down did it seem an odd choice. He hadn't been back to Albacete for three or four months now. And when he did come he usually went straight to the flat, not bothering to waste any time in the centre of town. So it must have been years since he'd last seen this place, perhaps even a decade or more since he'd been inside. It had been a regular haunt of theirs when he was younger, Hilario joining in some of the domino games, Cámara wandering around the tables, receiving the occasional consolatory pat on the head from some, a cold shoulder from others. Those were the ones Hilario never spoke to – or even about. Cámara had tried a couple of times to get his grandfather to explain, but the old man had always clammed up. Forbidden territory.

He'd left his car in an underground car park. His Seat Ibiza was nearing the end of its natural life, and an hour-and-a-half journey like this was about the most it could manage these days. It was almost fifteen years old, and the clutch cable – already its third – didn't feel as tight as it should. He'd have to get it changed, but somehow he felt that if he used it for anything more than pottering around Valencia, or the odd trip up here, it would let him down. It felt like an elderly donkey or mule, with set habits. Make it divert from the routine and it would probably breathe its last.

Albacete didn't have much in the way of monuments. When they were boys, Cámara and his friends had dreamt of moving away. For anyone with any spark about them, life happened elsewhere, that much they understood. Some set their hearts on reaching Madrid, others Valencia on the coast. And at least half of them had made it in the end.

If anyone from outside had heard of Albacete it was either for the knives that the city made, supposedly the finest in all Spain. Or for it being the headquarters of the International Brigades during the Civil War. As a boy Cámara had often wondered if they'd only been sent here in order to keep them out of the way, although he'd heard later that they had suffered the highest casualty rates in the whole conflict. Doubtless many had wondered what the hell they'd come here for once they'd seen where they were to be billeted.

From the corner of his eye he spotted a movement near the door. He turned to see a stocky woman in a raincoat and wide-brimmed hat trying to shake herself dry. The cut of her short grey hair and the half-steamed glasses pressed high up her nose gave little room for doubt who she was. He took a step in her direction and she spotted him, walking towards him with small, delicate footsteps and a wide smile on her face.

‘
Profesora
de la Fuente.'

‘Margarita, please.'

‘You'll be wanting something hot,' Cámara said.

‘They do a very good
carajillo
here,' she said.

Cámara smiled.

‘A proper one. Not just a
café solo
with a splash of whisky or cognac in it.'

He lifted his half-empty glass, the toasted coffee bean still floating around the top.

‘Ah,' she said. ‘I see you've beaten me to it.'

Cámara signalled to the waiter that they were going to go and sit down at a small table in a quieter part of the bar, and they shuffled through the steaming, smoky air, hanging their coats up on a couple of hooks on the wall.

‘So,' Margarita said as they sat down. Her face looked brighter without the hat, Cámara noticed. There was a playful curiosity in her eyes. Probably in her late fifties, unmarried, if the absence of a wedding ring indicated anything. He'd been concerned she might be a dry, pompous academic, but there was a liveliness there. ‘Are you any closer to finding your killers?'

The use of the plural was clear and deliberate.

‘Of course I've been following it in the newspapers,' she continued. ‘Who hasn't? And once I received your phone call this morning I spent the whole time going back over the news reports. Of course I don't know how much information you're giving out.'

The barman came over with her
carajillo
and placed it down on the table in front of them along with a couple of biscuits on a small plate.

‘Thought you might like those to go with it,' he said.

Margarita smiled at him.

‘They treat me well,' she said. ‘Not many women come in here – it's a bit of a man's bar, as you've seen. But my father was a bullfighter in his time and he and a group of aficionados used to come here regularly for the
tertulia
after the fight – talking and analysing the afternoon's bullfight well into the early hours. So they have a soft spot for me.'

Cámara tried to remember if there had been a girl there when he had come in with Hilario all those years before. But Margarita would have been a grown woman by then, probably exploring worlds other than this.

‘This conversation and our meeting,' Cámara said with a lowered voice, ‘are not entirely official.'

‘Oh, I gathered as much.'

‘Not that there's anything wrong in it, but some of the people I work with are sticklers for doing everything by the book. You understand.'

Margarita nodded.

‘So I have to be confident that what I tell you here doesn't go beyond this table.'

‘I give you my word.'

‘I'm sorry to have to be so circumspect, but it's just the way things are.'

She raised her
carajillo
in salute.

‘However I can be of assistance to you. Really.'

‘Thank you,' Cámara said. ‘I appreciate it. Now what's been appearing in the newspapers is, as you've guessed, just part of what we know. But it seems to have been enough for you to reach your own conclusions about how many murderers we're talking about.'

‘It was the mutilation of Blanco's
apoderado
– Ruiz Pastor – that got me thinking,' Margarita said. She took a sip of the
carajillo
and then put it down on the table. ‘It is true, isn't it? What they say? That his genitals were removed?'

Again the image of the misshapen form floating in the Albufera lake flashed through Cámara's mind. He lowered his eyes.

‘It is.'

‘Yes, it's a delicate subject,' Margarita said, sensing his discomfort. ‘And not just for a man, believe me.'

But more than you can imagine, Cámara thought to himself.

‘This detail caught your attention, then,' he said aloud. ‘Why?'

Margarita leaned in.

‘I don't know how much you know about the symbolism behind bullfighting,' she said. Cámara shrugged. ‘I assume that's why you're here, to pick my brains,' she went on. ‘You were lucky to catch me, in fact. I'm supposed to be speaking at a symposium on religious iconography in the Bronze Age in Rome. Except that the airline went bust at the last minute. There's a car coming tomorrow to drive me all the way to Madrid to catch another plane from there. They know how to treat their academics, those Italians.'

Cámara took out his packet of Ducados and offered one to Margarita. She smiled, then refused. Cámara lit his cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. Another ex-smoker, he thought to himself.

‘Anyway, you've got me here today, which is the important thing,' Margarita went on.

‘I was told you were the leading expert,' Cámara said. ‘And when I realised you were based in my old home town…'

‘Look, this is a huge subject. You really can't understand the culture and history of this country without knowing something about bulls and bullfighting.'

Perhaps just a few days ago Cámara might have rejected her comment out of hand as just more pro-bullfighting rhetoric. Now he sat and listened.

‘Great national writers and artists have recognised the truth of this,' Margarita continued, ‘from Picasso to García Lorca to Ortega y Gasset. Something about bulls and the lore of bulls runs deeply in us. In folklore they often refer to the Iberian peninsula itself looking like the hide of an ox. While the tenth labour of Hercules – taming the bulls of Geryon – took place here, not in the lands of the Greeks.'

‘OK,' Cámara said, trying to catch where this was all going.

‘What I'm trying to get across,' Margarita said, ‘is how deeply rooted bull imagery and stories are in our culture. The Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all had important bull rites of one kind or another. You remember the pictures of the famous Minoan bull rituals in Crete, I'm sure.'

Images of scantily clad women jumping somersaults over bulls' backs passed through Cámara's mind. They must have made up some of the very first erotic visual representations he had ever come across.

‘The point is,' Margarita said, ‘that Spain is the only country to retain this contact with the ancient Mediterranean culture where bull rituals formed a part of everyday life. Yes, there's bullfighting in southern France and in Portugal, but here in Spain is where you find the real thing.'

Cámara was wondering when she was going to get to the point and explain how all this tied in with Ruiz Pastor's genitals being cut off. Not that it wasn't interesting. But the policeman in him was thinking about the investigation going on without him back in Valencia. He hadn't mentioned to Pardo he was disappearing for a while – effectively taking the morning off. Torres could keep things going for the time being. He'd give him a ring later on. As long as Margarita didn't take it too slowly he should be able to get back to Valencia by just after lunchtime. Perhaps even earlier.

‘So I like to think of bullfighting as a rear-view mirror for human existence,' Margarita was saying.

Cámara raised his eyebrows. He was talking to an academic who specialised in symbolism; metaphors were her stock in trade. But this one went right over his head.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Bullfighting tells us where we've come from, culturally.' Margarita picked up one of the biscuits, broke it in two and then dipped the corner of one half into her
carajillo
.

‘When you go to a bullfight,' she explained, ‘you're allowing yourself a moment's communion with the Heroic Age – the world of Hercules, Theseus and the rest. So a bull represents where we come from, a world we left behind many, many centuries ago. But it also represents something deeply Spanish. And perhaps that is why Spain alone has retained this connection with its ancient bull rituals. Think about it: the stubbornness of the bull, its unwillingness to give in, even as more pain and suffering is laid upon it. And yet still it keeps running, keeps charging at the matador. Any other animal would crawl away and hide in a corner somewhere. That's why the spectacle is unique. You couldn't do this with any other beast. Not even an ordinary bull. It has to be a
toro de lidia
, a direct descendant of the ancient aurochs. But this is why I think we Spanish feel a connection with bulls – because we see ourselves in them, in their behaviour. The stubbornness, the pride, the unwillingness to give in, even if we're driving ourselves to our own deaths.'

Cámara smiled as he recognised the truth of what she was saying. Wasn't that a good description of himself? Didn't he ask himself often enough why he kept going? And yet somehow he believed deeply in the rightness of his police work. And so he went at it again, and again, doggedly, ignoring the obstacles that got in his way. Wasn't that him right there now with the Blanco case? Yet he carried on. He might have no interest in bullfighting, but the bull in him – his Spanishness – seemed inescapable.

‘This really is fascinating,' he said, stubbing out his cigarette and leaning back in his chair.

‘But what's it got to do with Blanco and Ruiz Pastor?' Margarita interjected. ‘Yes, I'm getting to that.'

She drained the last of her
carajillo
and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. There was a certain masculinity about her, Cámara realised, which made him feel at ease with her.

‘Part of the ancient origins of bullfighting has to do with matters of sex, fertility and gender roles.' She marked the three elements off with the fingers of her right hand. ‘In almost the entire ancient world bulls were associated with the sun. It's common in ancient cave paintings to see bulls portrayed with solar discs in between their horns. This bull–sun link is particularly evident from Mithraism – an ancient faith which was competing with Christianity to become the state religion of the Roman Empire at one stage. Like Christianity, it was a hotch potch of different ideas, but essentially for the followers of Mithras their god had to sacrifice a bull every morning to ensure the sun came up for another day. In that you have the elements of the bull, the sun, sacrifice and a kind of key for engaging with the cosmic order. All these are present in some form in the contemporary bullfight: the circular bullring, much like a solar disc; the death, or sacrifice, of the bull; even the bullfighter's costume is called
el traje de luces
– the suit of lights. So what we're probably dealing with here is the remnant of an ancient sacrificial ritual relating to sexuality and fertility, the bull being a symbol of male sexual potency.'