The Anarchist Detective (Max Cámara) (8 page)

‘Saffron is highly valued and the freight costs are minimal.’

‘And it’s legal.’

‘Right, well, there’s a question. There have been suspicions of something odd going on for a while. The amount of La Mancha saffron actually grown and the amount sold on the international markets don’t tally. This kind of thing is happening all the time – the majority of Italian olive oil actually comes from Jaén, just down the road. They ship it off and it gets relabelled, and that’s it.’

‘And something similar’s happening here with the saffron.’

Yago nodded.

‘The saffron season’s starting now. But you just go out there and try and find some. Yes, there are some fields here and about, but not enough to grow all the stuff that gets sold around the world as Spanish saffron. All the unemployment, people leaving the countryside and coming into the city, or leaving for good, looking for work.’

He gave Cámara a look.

‘So what’s going on?’ Cámara asked.

‘I think there’s a mafia element. We spoke to Faro Oscuro – Paco – about it a few months ago. Interviewed him myself. He’s a tough old thing, wasn’t having any of it. Just kept going on about collective farming and the benefit to the community and the environment.’

‘And you think there’s a connection with Mirella’s murder.’

Yago pursed his lips.

‘I think it’s a line we need to explore. The problem is there’s an institutional reluctance to look into the saffron scam. Relabelling foreign imports as La Mancha saffron isn’t illegal. But vast amounts of money are being made from it. And just with drugs, people get greedy. I reckon customs people are in on it. And I’m certain a number of officers at the Jefatura as well, helping to cover things up, taking kickbacks. Even running the whole thing. That’s why we couldn’t talk there. Understand?’

Cámara nodded. He was also beginning to understand something else. This wasn’t just a chance for his old mate to pick his brains, or bounce some ideas off him. Yago wanted more.

‘I don’t know who I can trust, honestly,’ Yago said. ‘It’s a sad state of affairs for a head of the
Policía Judicial
to be in, but there you are. But I think we need to look into this. Mirella’s death may be a settling of scores, as we said.’

‘But not necessarily one to do with the drug world,’ Cámara butted in.

‘Exactly. Is there an angle here to do with Pozoblanco, and a saffron mafia there?’

‘I get it,’ Cámara said. He looked Yago in the eye.

‘Tell me what you want me to do.’

Yago let out a deep breath.

‘Good for you, Max. I knew I could count on you. Look, I know you’re on leave, and all that. But really, you could do me a favour here. And it would be good to have some support from someone of your calibre, if you get me.’

‘You want me to sniff around? Take a look at Pozoblanco?’

‘Yeah,’ Yago said. ‘That’s exactly what I want. If we go in now, officially, everyone’s just going to clam up. Especially if they’ve got people inside the Jefatura as well.’

‘I take it someone went up there after Mirella was found.’

‘That was just routine. Got a couple of statements – one from the grandmother, another from the mother, who’s come down from Madrid – and that was it. No problems. No, what I want you to do is find out anything you can about the saffron business. You could – I don’t know – pose as a journalist, or something. I can get you an accreditation if you like.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Just go in, check it out. It’s the harvest period, as I said, so you’ve got a good excuse. I need a pair of eyes there, Max. Someone I can trust. Find out what you can and then come back to me. Something’s happening up there. I just don’t know what it is.’

They finished their drinks and headed towards the door.

‘But whatever it is, we need to find out how it ties in with Mirella’s murder.’

THE COMPUTER WAS
still switched on, but Hilario was asleep, slumped in an armchair by the window which looked out on to the street. Normally he would have woken at the sound of his grandson walking through the door, but he was in a deep slumber, his breathing slow and heavy.

Cámara lifted his head carefully and placed a cushion between his cheek and the chair, wiping away a dribble of foamy saliva that had fallen from his mouth. Moving the mouse to turn off the screen saver, he looked at what Hilario had been doing on the computer before he’d nodded off. A medical website gave details of the recovery processes after a stroke. Hilario had scrolled down until it reached a paragraph talking about the need for sleep in such circumstances, giving the brain time to heal itself after suffering the damage caused by the blood clot . . .

He could tell from the smell in the flat what Pilar had prepared to eat: chicken with a thick, garlicky sauce with rosemary and white wine. It was a difficult dish to do badly, and even Pilar’s version of it was edible, although she did manage to stuff it with small, chipped pieces of chicken bone which you spent most of the meal prising away from your gums.

As he put it on the hob to heat up, Cámara opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer, pouring himself a large glass. Finishing it in one, he opened another before taking out a knife and fork from the drawer and drawing up a stool at the little kitchen table.

He smoked a cigarette as the chicken began to sizzle, watching the smoke lacing itself into messy, unfinished designs above his head. Always the desire to find patterns there, he thought, to give shape, when all there was was smoke, doing what it did, moving according to its own whims, not ours.

He wondered whether he was perhaps one of the last people who would be allowed to smoke, cook and eat in the same space. One day even this, in his own home, would probably come to an end – another prohibition, another law. Time to enjoy the old freedoms while they were still around.

Hilario walked in as he started eating.

‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

‘Well, you did.’

‘How are you?’

‘You know I hate that question.’

‘And I try to remember not to ask you. But you don’t have strokes every day, thank God. Saw you’ve been looking stuff up on the Internet.’

‘Snooping around like a policeman, eh? I should have guessed.’

‘So sleep is good for you, is it?’

‘Sleep is good,’ Hilario echoed flatly. ‘Makes sense. You become a child again, it says. Or at least in some ways. Your brain is having to make new connections, like you do when you’re young. I think that’s why children sleep more – it’s part of the process.’

‘You were lucky it wasn’t more serious. I mean, with you it’s just a physical thing, right? A partial loss of coordination on the right side. You’re not . . . ?’

‘I’m not a vegetable, no. I would have thought that was pretty obvious. Even to a policeman.’

‘But there’s nothing else,’ Cámara said. ‘No memory loss or anything.’

‘Franco’s still dead, isn’t he?’

‘Er, yes, of course. He died almost forty years ago.’

‘Good. Well, I’m fine, then. Wouldn’t want to wake up from a stroke and discover it had all been a dream, and that he was still in power. Now that would be a nightmare. Probably give myself a stroke again just to get away from it all.’

‘A self-induced stroke,’ Cámara said. ‘I wonder if that’s possible?’

‘Well, in my case all I need to do is stop taking the pills. Those blood-thinning ones. Probably be gone in a couple of days’ time. What, you thinking about new ways to kill people?’

Cámara curled up his nose as he chewed on the chicken.

‘Oh, yes, I forgot. It’s your job to catch the killers.’

Hilario sat down heavily in the chair opposite.

‘Still, it might make for a nice little mystery,’ he said. ‘A doctor who can induce a stroke in people so no one ever knows it’s him killing them. You should write a book. No, screw that,
I
should write a book. You just fill me in on the police details and all that nonsense. I’ll mention you in the acknowledgements.’

‘You never told me your father was executed.’

Cámara put his fork down and drained the last of his beer, watching Hilario’s reaction from the corner of his eye.

For a moment his grandfather barely reacted at all. His expression hardened a little, as though his eyes had turned to stone. Cámara had seen that in him only two, perhaps three, times before. The last time when he told him he was joining the police.

When finally he moved, Hilario’s reaction was to glance quickly at the calendar on the wall, before resting his eyes on Cámara.

‘Eduardo García been here, has he?’ he said.

Cámara nodded.

They looked at each other for a moment in a curious engagement, threatening and affectionate.

‘You didn’t need to know,’ Hilario said.

‘What?’

‘That’s why I didn’t tell you. Because it wasn’t important for you to know. Perhaps it is now, perhaps that’s why you’ve already heard something about it. This might be it . . .’ His voice began to tail away.

‘I suppose I always thought there would be a time when we’d talk about this. It was never something I could just start on my own, though. As though I needed a sign . . .’

‘He’s buried in the cemetery,’ Cámara said. ‘Maximiliano, my great-grandfather.’

‘Yes, he was your great-grandfather. And a true anarchist. He helped many people, saved many lives . . .’

Cámara held his hand out in time to stop Hilario from falling forwards on to the table. His eyes were heavy and half-closing.

‘I’m not feeling . . .’

‘It’s all right.’

Cámara helped him across the corridor and into the bedroom. Hilario lay down on the bed and immediately turned on to his side, curling up into a foetal position, already asleep again.

Cámara cleared up in the kitchen, then went into the living room. One lamp in the corner was switched on, casting a dark yellowish glow. He went to the windows, opened them, and stepped out on to the balcony. It was cold by now, the night air cooling rapidly as they moved towards winter, but he felt a need to breathe different air, something from outside the flat.

The lights in the street were on, and apart from the parked cars below, it was empty. From behind curtains and blinds he caught the blue flicker of television screens, the clatter of dishes being washed, the sound of a teenage girl complaining to her parents. A couple of doors away a cat was chewing a piece of dirt-smeared bone that had fallen from the rubbish.

Even here, in a city as small as Albacete, a background hum told you that life of a sort was carrying on, despite the wasteland all around. He felt a pang of desire to be somewhere else. Where? Anywhere but here.

His phone rang and he slid it open.

‘I was thinking of you,’ she said.

‘Same here. I was just about to call.’

‘How is he?’

‘He’s here at home.’

He hadn’t spoken to Alicia since he’d arrived, and now, hearing her voice, he felt something settling in him. He told her about Hilario, about how he’d found him, and his grandfather’s escape from hospital.

‘From what you’ve told me about him it doesn’t sound too surprising, somehow.’

‘It’s the kind of thing I’d expect him to do. Still, I’m not sure if it’s right, whether he should be back in hospital. You’d think they’d be wanting to do checks.’

‘Get someone to go round.’

‘I will. But I have to do it carefully, get the right person. If some interfering doctor or nurse comes in here ordering him about it might set him off again.’

He stepped back into the living room and closed the windows behind him.

‘How are things there?’ he asked.

‘I’m missing you,’ she said. ‘I’m probably not supposed to say that, but it’s true.’

‘And I’m missing you. But I meant at work, at the paper.’

‘Oh, sorry. It’s fine. A bit quiet, strangely.’

‘I think I might have a story for you here,’ he said.

‘You’re joking.’

‘No, seriously.’

‘You’re just trying to be nice, to show how much you want me, get me down to Albacete, have a tumble . . .’

‘No, wait, really.’

‘What?’

‘I need your help. I need you.’

He told her about Pozoblanco, and Yago’s suspicions about the local saffron trade, and how they might be related to the murder of the young girl Mirella in the city a few days before. Alicia listened silently.

‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘It’s interesting. I’m interested. Let me talk to the boss, but I’m sure there won’t be a problem. I can make it down on the train tomorrow, all being well.’

‘Let me know what time you’re arriving. I’ll pick you up.’

‘OK.’

This was new, he thought as they said their goodbyes. From lovers they had become like business partners in an instant: he the policeman; she the journalist. And the conversation had become drier, less affectionate.

No matter. It would be good to see her again. It was true – he had been missing her. Being back in Albacete had somehow smothered that in him. Or drowned it out in so much other noise – noise blaring from several directions at once.

Hilario had always kept it in neat little transparent plastic bags for Cámara to take back with him to Valencia. Now that he hadn’t been smoking for a while, and with the new crop in, the supply of home-grown would have been enough to at least raise an eyebrow in the local narcotics squad, if not actually get them reaching for their handcuffs.

Cámara plucked one of the bags down from the top shelf in the small room that gave off the living room, and settled down on the sofa, avoiding as best he could the loose spring in the middle. Hilario always kept a packet or two of blond tobacco handy for rolling with: black tobacco Ducados were too strong for making a decent joint.

Cámara went through the motions like an old professional, licking the length of the cigarette to help pull off the paper, rubbing the tobacco in the palm of his hand as he mixed in the marihuana, squeezing the mixture into a sausage shape and then slapping a roll-up paper on top with the palm of his other hand before flipping both hands over while clasped together so that the mix now lay on top of the paper. Then he rolled it, glued it, stuck it in his mouth, lit it, and inhaled.