Or the Bull Kills You (23 page)

‘
Me cago en la puta.
'

He checked the radio set, but it was still there. Then he reached for the glove compartment: it was locked, as he had left it, with no sign that anyone had tried to force it open. Switching on the inside light, he finally saw: in the footwell of the passenger seat were three A4-sized photographs. They were slightly out of focus, but lifting them to have a look, Cámara could easily make out the images of him and Alicia kissing outside the restaurant in the Barrio Chino quarter from a couple of nights before. In the first two their faces were partially concealed by being pressed against each other, but in the third, both were looking in the direction of the camera, in Alicia's case with an expression of bewilderment, in Cámara's of blazing anger. There was no mistaking who they were.

He put the key in the ignition and started the engine. First thing in the morning he'd take it round to Alejandro, his mechanic. For the time being, Hilario's gift would help him get through the night. Revenge would have to wait.

Saturday 18th March

‘
Escucha, tío
.'

Alejandro was being even friendlier than usual that morning. The garage was filled with broken cars and oily, rusting parts lying around like the diseased, discarded innards of an ailing patient, but even though he clearly had a lot of work on, he immediately agreed to fix the Seat window. After what felt like a sleepless night thanks to the
Fallas
noise, Cámara had dragged himself over as Alejandro was opening up, catching him climbing into his overalls, with his fourth or fifth cigarette of the day clamped between his lips. Alejandro didn't believe in health and safety, and the more smokers there were in his highly inflammable and explosive environment the happier he was. He wasn't a great believer in
Fallas
either, which was why he tended to stay open during the holiday period when everyone else shut down, even working Saturday morning.

Alejandro had said he'd park the car himself once he'd finished, probably be done in half an hour if he wanted to wait. But no, Cámara had to get going; he didn't mention the clutch cable: that could wait till another time. It was only then that it became clearer why Alejandro was being so nice to him.

‘Listen, mate,' he said. ‘I know you don't like to get too much into all the media stuff. At least that's what you've always said.'

‘What is it?' Cámara asked.

‘Look, no one likes to be the messenger of bad news, right? But I don't know if you've seen today's
El Diario
.'

Cámara shook his head.

‘Do I really want to?'

‘I don't know,
tío
. I really don't but, well, you'll probably find out about it sooner or later.'

‘You got a copy here?' Cámara asked.

‘No. Saw it in the bar this morning. I can go and get it for you if you like.'

‘That's fine. Thanks, Alejandro. I'll pick up a copy on my way in.'

Cámara turned to leave.

‘Don't worry about the car,' Alejandro called after him. ‘I'll sort it out for you.'

The morning editions were stacked up on a shelf below the newsseller's green metal booth on the corner of the street. Carmen Luna's name screamed out from a dozen headlines alongside some of the last pictures taken of her next to Jorge Blanco. No one appeared to have got wind of the suicide note, he saw. He'd handed it over to Huerta once he'd read it; it seemed his colleague had managed to keep its contents to himself for the time being. Cámara scanned the headlines; they didn't have to make an effort to sensationalise the story: it was big enough on its own. Of all the newspapers on display, however, only
El Diario
went for a more sinister angle:
The black holes of the Blanco case
, Cámara read.
Police investigation ridiculed as Carmen Luna found dead at her home
.

He gave the man inside the kiosk
1.10, picked up a copy and walked away with it. Just as on the radio the day before, the fact that Carmen Luna's death was a suicide was largely glossed over. There was a third body now linked to the Blanco affair: that was all that seemed to matter. And the police were being given the blame.

But it wasn't just the police as a whole, as Cámara realised when he turned the page and looked inside. Staring at him from the middle of page 3, with a little photograph next to his byline, was an editorial by Javier Gallego entitled
Why heads have to roll in Blanco case
. Cámara took a breath and glanced back at the article. When he saw his own name in the very first line he closed the paper shut: there was no point going on.

At the next kiosk further down the road he saw an elderly man wearing a heavy coat and scarf against the cold morning air shuffling towards the stacks of newspapers.

‘Here,' Cámara said, thrusting his copy of
El Diario
into his hands. ‘Save yourself the money.'

For some reason Flores's face kept flashing in his mind. He couldn't say exactly why, but part of him felt sure he had something to do with this: a sense, like a lingering stench of rancid lard. He and Gallego were friends, Alicia had said. The connection was there.

He'd barely got any sleep the night before since the open-air disco beneath his bedroom window had belted out endless pop ‘classics' until five in the morning. Most people were sleeping off the excesses of the night before, preparing for another two days of hard-core fiesta before the final explosion – literally – the following night.

It was election day the next day, Cámara remembered. By now all the campaigning would be over and voters were allowed an official ‘day of reflection' before casting their votes. Not that there'd be much reflecting going on, if truth be told. If anyone actually went to vote the next day they'd probably be doing so pissed out of their skulls. Which may have been what Mayoress Delgado's team was banking on.

He listened in vain for the brass-band sound of the
despertà
. Perhaps even the musicians were too hungover to get up that morning.

At the corner of the block he came across another
falla
statue, one of the smaller ones that dotted the entire city, perhaps only three or four metres high. He hadn't seen it before. The central theme appeared to be bullfighting in general: the main figure at the centre was a gigantic bull breathing fire out of its nostrils and with an angry expression on its face. Standing next to it, and almost as high, was a skinny matador raising his
muleta
, encouraging the bull to charge. There was something effeminate about him, though. Cámara walked closer to have a better look. Was it possible? Had someone really built a
falla
about Blanco and kept it up, even in the wake of his murder? Perhaps even hinting at the rumours about Blanco being gay? Circling around the
falla
to see, he was relieved to discover that the face of the bullfighter was definitely not meant to be a representation of Blanco.

Cámara had no idea what the ‘message' of this particular statue was meant to be. Standing around the central figure were the lesser statues – the
ninots
: a fat picador on a horse with a lance, a handful of
monosabios
with their blue-and-red uniforms. At their feet were scraps of verse painted on to pieces of board. He leaned forwards to get a closer look: they were all in the local language, Valencian. Although he didn't speak it, he'd been in the city long enough to pick some up, and it was close enough to his native Castilian Spanish to be able to understand without too much difficulty. The problem came when there was a play on words or the use of some dialect or archaic words that most Valencian-speakers understood, even if they didn't use regularly. The doggerel that was written on the
fallas
was almost invariably of that kind.

He scanned three or four of them, and while the specific meaning was elusive, the general sense was quite clear: bullfighting, the national fiesta, was, according to this
falla
artist, in crisis. And the bulls themselves – representing the pure spirit of the corrida – were soon going to rise up and rebel if the art form was cheapened with ever more lacklustre performances. Hence the effeminate matador, Cámara thought.

Cámara looked for a reference to Jorge Blanco in there. If anyone had been bucking this perceived trend it had been he, surely. But he couldn't see anything.

One of the
ninots
caught his attention as he took a last look: a man in a suit, with grey hair combed back, a hooked, aquiline nose parked on the front of his long, slender and ageing face. Cámara glanced down at the verse painted at his feet. Whoever had composed the lines was convinced that the man caricatured above was very much a part of the present crisis in bullfighting.

Cámara flipped open his phone and put a call in. After a few minutes he was given an address, which he memorised. Heading back down the avenue he turned left and started to cross town.

 

The house was a 1930s villa set back from the road, with a large wall and wrought-iron fencing surrounding the garden. It stood near the top end of Blasco Ibáñez Avenue, just across the road from the Viveros park, the university quarter and one of the most exclusive parts of the city.

The gate was slightly ajar. Cámara pushed and the hinges gave a low groan as it swung open. A stone pathway led through the rose bushes to the steps and the front door. In a couple of moments he was standing under the porch, raising the large brass knocker.

Francisco Ramírez was already washed and shaved and wearing a fine woollen suit and silk tie when he answered the door.

‘Chief Inspector Max Cámara of the
Policía Nacional
,' Cámara said as soon as he appeared, placing a hand on the door to insist that Ramírez let him in.

Ramírez looked bemused for a moment.

‘Are you still—?'

‘Yes, very much so,' Cámara interrupted him.

Ramírez moved away from the door and Cámara stepped inside.

If on the outside the house had a slightly Modernist, avant-garde appearance, with rounded lines and large, circular windows, inside it was decorated in a much more traditional style. Dark rugs were thrown over the flagstone floor, the walls were painted white, while the furniture was of the heavy ‘Castilian' style – carved oak tables and throne-like chairs painted in thick, almost black varnish. A Valencian family might have given the place a lighter touch – some colourful tile work, perhaps, or curtains in bright pinks or orange. But the Ramírez family had brought their tastes down to the coast with them from further inland and although he had never lived in houses like this himself, it was very familiar to Cámara.

Ramírez led him through to a living room. A large mirror with an ornate gilt frame hung from the wall above the fireplace and Cámara caught a glimpse of himself as he walked past. His hair was ruffled, bags developing under his eyes from the lack of sleep. He'd barely taken any care of himself over the past few days.

Cámara studied Ramírez as they sat down. The man he'd seen back at the Bar Los Toros the night of Blanco's murder had had an air of defiance, even anger about him. But this Ramírez, the one sitting in front of him now, had lost that hardness. Grief had broken something inside him, despite his appearance of normality.

‘I would offer you some coffee,' Ramírez said. ‘But Mari-Luz, my maid, is having the morning off. It didn't seem fair to keep her here all the time when the rest of the city is having so much fun.'

Without asking permission first, Cámara pulled out his packet of Ducados and lit a cigarette.

‘I wanted to ask you about your son,' he said, breathing out a trail of smoke.

‘Paco?' Ramírez said. ‘Yes, he told me you'd been up to the farm. I take it your leg is fine now. Oh, and by the way, there's an ashtray on the table next to you.'

‘No, I wasn't referring to Paco,' Cámara said. ‘I mean Jorge Blanco.'

Ramírez's face remained perfectly still. Cámara pulled on his cigarette, glanced down at the table to locate the ashtray, then looked up again. The silence, the lack of response, told him he'd hit his mark. For a moment it was as if Ramírez had been paralysed.

‘He wasn't just
like
a son for you, was he?' Cámara said.

A new shine had come into Ramírez's eyes, and in the reflection a slight tremor was just visible.

Cámara thought to himself of the details that had given the secret away: the photo of Señora Blanco in a colourful summer dress – not traditional mourning – with her teenage son; of how she'd spoken of his father in the present tense. Then there was her surname – Blanco had exactly the same as hers, not that of his supposed father – a sure sign of an illegitimate birth.

‘Did she tell you?' Ramírez blurted out. He'd been holding himself in. Now that he spoke a spray of saliva showered from his mouth; his voice trembled.

‘No, she didn't,' Cámara said.

‘
Zorra!
' Ramírez spat. ‘Bitch.'

There was a pause. Ramírez wiped his mouth, breathing heavily through his nose. The fingers of his left hand tapped on the armrest of the chair. He looked up and glanced around the room, as though searching for something to hang on to, but could find nothing. Avoiding Cámara's gaze, he turned his attention to the empty black space of the fireplace and stared at it. Then with a gulp of air he suddenly leaned forward and wrapped his hands around his face. His body shuddered as emotion erupted and streamed through him.

‘I've lost a son,' he said, his words barely audible through his hands. ‘I've lost a son.'

His body continued shaking as he struggled to compose himself, wiping at his eyes and trying to clear his throat. With a jerk he sat up straight in his chair, still partially covering his face. His tie was stained.