A Death in Valencia (11 page)

Then at the end a simple sentence:

He hated skunk. Hilario's home-grown, which kept him going through most of the year, was altogether a happier, gigglier drug, the kind of marihuana you could smoke without having to worry about anything worse than a dry mouth the next morning. But what little was left to him of that year's crop had gone along with everything else in his flat, and so he'd had to score off some Moroccan kid prowling around the alleyways off the Plaza del Carmen. And skunk was virtually all they had these days. Harder, harsher, smellier; he avoided it as much as he could.

He waited until he reached the beach before rolling his first joint, picking up a packet of Fortuna blond tobacco cigarettes at a bar along the way.

The Paseo de Neptuno beach-front bars were packed and hundreds of sweating, laughing young people were milling about the esplanade. He could sense a growing photophobia in himself as the skunk began to take hold, and he carried on walking, past the concentration of bars and nightclubs and further down the walkway before crossing on to the sand.

The residents' meeting back in Ruzafa would have started by now. He'd known from the start he wouldn't be going. Better to come for a stroll and a smoke on his own out here than wallow in collective anger and pain.

The sea stretched out before him, still and black and dead. He felt his feet lower into the damp with each step, then lose their grip as he tried to propel himself forwards. Slipping, sliding, sinking. The red glow at the end of the joint seemed to point him the way.

He crossed paths with a couple of late-night fishermen heading home, an old man walking his dog wearing deck shoes and swimming shorts that got lost in the fold of his belly cascading down towards his groin. A couple of girls, assuming they were veiled by the darkness, were kissing and petting a few yards further in from the shore, their bodies silhouetted against the starry glow that came from just above the horizon.

He kept walking. There was virtually no breeze, but he felt cooler nonetheless simply by being next to the water.

The drug was swirling inside him now. He tried to forget the nausea that skunk always produced in him, drawing hard on the last remaining flakes of burning grass, the heat searing his fingers where he held the joint. Breathing in deeply, he closed his throat and held it down in his lungs for as long as he could, as the blood in the back of his neck began to thud.

The dying dog-end gave off a barely audible
pffutt
as it hit the water.

And then there was the door, staring him in the face, so suddenly he wasn't sure how he'd reached it. But a man was there in a suit two sizes too small for his hormone-pumped body, nodding him in as though recognising a kindred spirit and embracing him to some hard, rocky, loveless bosom.

Inside, red and orange lights showed him the way to the main room. A girl with shiny plastic thigh-boots gave him a smile and took his hand to lead him through. A stool at the bar found its way underneath him, and he felt his weight sinking on to it. Over the pounding music and throbbing lights he could hear voices, one of them his, negotiating for a glass of brandy.

As he waited, he rolled a new joint while glancing around the room. There were a couple of other men in there. One was sitting underneath a statue of a masturbating woman, smiling at the semi-naked shadows that were being paraded in front of him. The other man was further down the bar, a young, wealthy kid spending his father's money on cocaine and flesh through the weekend. He'd already chosen and was being led away through a doorway with flashing neon hearts on either side of it. Another line, another hit, another cunt.

The joint rolled smoothly under his fingers.

There was a chink as the brandy glass was placed on the counter in front of him. He lifted it up for a sip, and felt breath on his neck–cold and male.

More voices over the rhythmic noise bursting from the speakers.

No, he didn't know they had a no-drugs policy. Of course it wasn't a joint. Just a cigarette. He liked to roll his own.

And then there was another man. The one he'd seen on the door with the kind of muscles they advertised in certain magazines in three-for-two deals. A hand was gripping itself around his upper arm, then another was reaching for the scruff of his neck.

And he smiled to himself.

First the shock up his arm as the initial punch landed in the bouncer's ribs, then numbness in his forehead where it connected with the side of the man's face. Then more noise, shouting and screaming as his elbow followed round and smashed into his jaw. Later it was almost as if he had sensed one of the man's molars being loosened from his skull with the impact, but perhaps that was just his brain filling in the blanks.

And he heard the magic words:
Stop! Police!
And so he stopped, and the bouncer fell to the floor, a streak of blood soaking into his clean white shirt where it had spattered out from his mouth.

Not much point having all those muscles. And all that making yourself so big ever did was turn you into a larger, and easier, target.

In the silence he noticed his hand held up high, his police badge open for all to see, and everyone looking at it with open mouths.

So it was he who had shouted, ‘Police!'

Of course the manager changed after that. Another brandy appeared as he drained the first, and the hand that had tried to grip his arm now kept a respectful distance. The bouncer disappeared and then returned after a few minutes in the bathroom, cleaned up, with a fresh shirt, and the swelling already beginning to show on the side of his chin. But he gave him a look of respect as he headed back outside. Probably the first time he'd ever had a proper fight.

The shadows were paraded in front of him, and he pretended to be only partially interested as he finally lit his joint and nodded at one of them, a girl with highlighted short dark hair.

Her name?

Lisa.

Alicia?

No. Lisa.

OK.

 

Some time later, he was back on the beach, sinking once again into the damp sand, seventy euros poorer, an opened but unused condom dangling lifelessly from his pocket.

That was the other problem with skunk, if it caught you on the wrong day. She'd tried, poor dear, rubbing his limp cock in every way she knew how, but to no avail. There'd been a moment when he thought something might happen, and he'd pulled the condom out himself, as though it might help things along a bit. But…

The sea was still there, inky and calm, as though inviting him to join in its darkness. You're almost part of me, she seemed to say, as lifeless and endless as these deadening waters. Just take a step and come in. Forget. Relax. Cease to be.

He thought of Roures. And Tomás.

And took a last breath.

Thursday 9th July

A blow to the back of the shoulders sent him hurtling off the bench, waking him in an instant. As he rolled across the pavement, trying not to get caught in the bushes at the other side, the sharp smell of chlorine filled his nostrils. The whine of an electric pump indicated where the blow had come from, and he looked up to see a couple of street cleaners in green dayglo suits–one with a stiff plastic broom, the other wielding the high-powered hosepipe–staring at him and laughing.

He stood up, drenched, eyes rolling as he tried to force them to work, while the cleaners hopped on to their little cart and drove off down the empty street before he could say anything, the sound of their cackling still audible above the whir of the engine.

His neck was sore from where his head had rested at an uncommon angle on the hard wood of the bench. He checked his pockets; street cleaners might be taking advantage of him sleeping rough but it seemed no one else had: everything–cigarettes, dope, wallet, phone, badge–was where it should be. With a sigh he realised he still had his old house keys in his trouser pocket. He jangled them in his fingers for a second, then spying a litter bin, threw them at it, expecting to hear a tinny clang as they landed inside. But he was still in the process of waking up and his aim was faulty, so they landed instead in a day-old dog turd at the side of the pavement, still soft enough for the keys to impale themselves in it like miniature shiny darts.

Coffee and a cigarette in the first place he saw, he told himself, but he seemed incapable of finding a bar. Eventually, after the intense rising sun had almost dried him out, his shuffling feet took him back to the Jefatura.

He grabbed the shopping bags from his office and walked up the white cement staircase to the bathroom he knew Pardo had had installed next to his office. Others might have more need of it, but it was deemed necessary for a commissioner to have access to a shower and other facilities at his workplace. Not even Pardo would be there this early, however, and Cámara let himself in, watching the light reflect off the shiny green marble panels on the walls as he turned on the switch.

His dirty clothes fell into a tightly crumpled pile on the floor and he stepped into the shower. Despite feeling hot from the sun and his walk back into the city, he turned the knob towards red, allowing a cleaner, cleansing heat to soothe his body. While in his mind he began to compose the resignation letter he would be leaving on Pardo's desk.

He pulled the labels off the new clothes before putting them on. The trousers felt stiff, the shirt scratchy around the collar. He looked at himself in the mirror: he hadn't shaved for a few days now; it was time to take out his emergency sponge bag. The clothes were brighter than he might have chosen had he been buying them now. They would have to do. At the bottom of the shopping bag he noticed the iPod Almudena had bought him. It could stay there, he thought.

There was just one thing he wanted to do before bringing an end to all this. The reference to Roures's restaurant in Sofía's diary had produced a faint spark of intrigue. The place was popular and well known, and Sofía was the kind of person he could imagine eating there, so it might be nothing. But the red mark with the date pointing to 1977 was odd. What had happened back then?

 

He couldn't see any policeman at the entrance that morning, but the main door was open and he stepped into the hallway before taking the stairs again up to Sofía's flat. The door was locked, as he'd expected, but the window from the stairwell out on to the light shaft was open. He threw a leg over the edge and eased his body over. There was a ledge he could just reach with his toe if he stretched enough. Then from there he could get to the bedroom window into Sofía's flat which he had left open the previous day. It hadn't been deliberate at the time, but now it almost felt as if some more prescient part of him had done so deliberately to allow him future access.

His toe slipped from its foothold just as his fingers caught the windowsill. Hanging on, he looked down. High enough to break a leg, and perhaps a rib or two if he landed badly. But he was all right. No more slip-ups now. Not after last night.

He sensed something, and still hanging on to the window, he turned his head to see one of the neighbours–an elderly woman still wearing her blue-and-white floral dressing gown–staring down at him in disbelief from an open window on the floor above. He forced a smile, and was about to say something when a more determined look appeared on her face and she vanished from the window. Doubtless she had gone to make a call. Someone in the
Policía Local
was about to have their early-morning newspaper-reading shift interrupted.

The window creaked slightly as he pushed it open and hauled himself inside. The flat was the same as before; Ballester had probably left shortly after he had. The sofa still showed a dent in the cushions where he had been lying down, curled up in a ball.

He went straight to the study, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom for a moment before trying to find the diary he was looking for. For some reason his heart was pounding heavily in his chest. Perhaps the shock of almost falling, or the feeling that he didn't have much time before a couple of
Municipales
came knocking. Why hadn't there been a
Policía Nacional
on the door this morning? Had something happened in the case during the night? Admittedly he'd got into the Jefatura early, but he was surprised to find it as quiet as it was.

He started working his way back through the diary years, the gold numbers reflecting faintly in the scant sunlight filtering through the shutters. He'd look for 1977 in a moment; first he needed to check an entry from just the year before.

He picked up the volume and skimmed through the pages, looking for the month of May. The name he was searching for was there in the middle of the third week:
Alicia Beneyto
.

Closing his eyes, Cámara breathed slowly and deeply for a moment, then calmly returned the diary to its place on the shelf and carried on moving back through the years. He could react to this later; for now he needed to continue being a policeman.

His finger fell on the diary for 1977 before he'd even seen it: it was pushed in slightly more than the others. Which would make sense, he thought, if she'd taken it out recently to check something.

The table lamp gave off a yellowy glow as he sat down and switched it on to read. Entries for September, then October, and finally the beginning of November. He remembered what Torres had told him: she'd have been in Paris at that time, working as an intern at the
Clinique Fontaine
.

November 1…2…3
. Her handwriting had been slightly loopier back then, more open, not so tight and neat. He read through the entry for the day: arriving slightly late for work because of a breakdown on the metro. A conversation with Dr Bouvier, her boss, about a lecture he was preparing for a conference later that month in Geneva. He'd asked her to go with him as his assistant. She'd said yes, but now, as she was writing her diary, she was having doubts. Did he want something else from her? Without spelling it out clearly, it seemed the young Sofía was worried that her employer was fishing for a romantic weekend, away from the eyes of his wife and the other workers at the clinic.

Then details of what she'd had for lunch: a chicken salad with a tarragon sauce and a glass of fizzy mineral water.

And at the end, the now familiar list of names–eight that day. Most of them were French, but three were clearly Spanish girls, taking advantage, no doubt, of the presence of their compatriot there, someone they could understand and who could understand them. He read the names aloud to himself as his finger skimmed along the page:
Josefa Fernández, Ana Pastor Sampedro, Lucía Bautista
. And there, just beside the last name, in the same red ink he'd seen in her more recent diary, was a tiny little ‘
x
', barely visible unless he brought the book closer to the lamp.

He heard a car pull up outside. Soon a couple of
Municipales
would be forcing their way in, sniffing around, asking questions. Should he stay here and waste time explaining? Or leave now? He'd found what he was looking for, and suddenly there was a lot he needed to do. Urgently.

He got up, switched the lamp off and ran to the open window in the bedroom. But already he could hear footsteps downstairs in the hallway; it was too late. He skipped back down the corridor and into the kitchen. It had a window looking out on to the back of the block of flats with a small balcony. Forcing the bolt, he stepped outside into the sunshine, tiptoeing around a couple of spare orange butane gas bottles to peer over the edge. As he'd hoped, the flat underneath, on the first floor, had a much larger balcony. He could lower himself over the edge from the rails where he was standing now: the drop wouldn't be too far for him to make a safe jump.

He felt his new shirt rip at the stitching under the arm as he reached over and held his weight, his body hanging like a swaying pendulum. He should have gone to a better shop than Zara.

Inside the flat, he could hear the door being opened from the hallway. Somehow the
Municipales
must have got hold of a spare key. It wouldn't take them long to find the open kitchen door out on to the balcony. He had to jump. Now.

His feet stung as they took the impact. He lost his balance and rolled back on to his haunches as the fall pushed him hard into the balcony floor below. Stumbling to get up, he could hear voices above in the flat he'd just left. He ran to the edge to find some way down to the ground floor, and the alleyway that ran along the side of the building. If he could just see some way of getting down there that didn't involve breaking an ankle. Already his bones were complaining about the first jump. He wasn't used to this kind of thing any more. Part of the problem of being a chief inspector, and being expected to get others to do the running around for you. But this was his kind of police work, on the move, adrenalin rushing, chasing his man down. Or in this case, scampering blindly to avoid the biggest problem a policeman ever faced–other policemen.

He could hear the
Municipales
pounding about in the flat above. Any minute now they would look over the kitchen balcony and see him standing there. At which point not only would he have to explain who he was, and why he was here, but also why he was acting more like a thief than a member of the
Policía Nacional
's executive branch.

Then he spotted his way out–a disused length of television aerial cable, hanging limply from the wall where it had been disconnected. There was no time to wonder if it would take his weight: the door on to the balcony above was already being opened. He swung his leg over the railings, lodged his heel as best he could in a ledge of brickwork and launched himself towards the cable.

The skin on the backs of his fingers scraped against the masonry as his hands were propelled forwards, grasping at the dirty white plastic lifeline. He caught hold of it just as his weight started to pull him down to the greasy floor below. There was a tug, then a lurch, as he tightened his grip, only for the cable to start popping out of its brackets higher up the wall. It wouldn't hold him for long. Quickly, he slid down as fast as he could while simultaneously putting a brake on his downward progress.

Above him one of the
Municipales
was out on the balcony, casting an eye over the adjoining terraces. Cámara was partially hidden from view, but still had another three metres to go before hitting the ground. Some instinct, however, told him the cable was about to break, it couldn't hold him any longer: he had to jump.

He let go, staring down hard at the spot where he would land, calculating the roll he would need to break his fall. But the force of the impact took him unawares and his jaw cracked on his knee as his legs bent to absorb his collision with the earth. In a second he found himself lying in the dirt, face up, winded and struggling to breathe. But as his eyes adjusted to the light streaming down from the slit of sky above him, he could see that there was no face staring down at him, no
Policía Local
up on the balcony. He must have gone back inside.

He picked himself up and scrambled to get to his feet. He could feel blood welling up in his mouth from where he'd bitten his tongue. Spitting red as he emerged back out on to the main street, from the corner of his eye he could see a squad car parked outside the main door. Ignoring it, he walked in the other direction, only to be passed by the
Policía Nacional
who was meant to have been on guard duty all the time. The policeman passed Cámara at a trot, a strong scent of brandy and coffee clouding around him. He gave Cámara a bemused look as he sped past, then carried on.

The morning was turning out to be less peaceful than expected.