Or the Bull Kills You

by Jason Webster

  Seventeen

  The more punishment a bravo bull receives, the stronger it grows

  Traditional

  ‘They’ve already got the photos,’ she said with a grin. ‘So we might as well.’

  Her skin was firm and sweet.

  ‘You won’t need one of those,’ he said.

  ‘We can’t be too careful,’ she said.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

  She came. And his body burst into a million pieces.

  Later, after she’d washed, Alicia went into the kitchen for a few minutes and returned carrying a tray.

  ‘Dinner in bed?’ she said.

  ‘Does this mean I won’t be getting breakfast?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  She placed a couple of plates on the sheets beside him with some slices of smoked salmon and pieces of ready-made toast smothered in cream cheese.

  ‘When did you find out?’ she asked.

  ‘About being infertile?’ He paused. ‘Not long ago. Except that it’s one of those things you later feel you’ve known all along.’

  She leaned over and kissed him fully on the mouth, her breasts brushing against the hairs of his arm.

  ‘Perhaps you should put something on,’ he said. ‘You’ll get cold.’

  ‘Don’t you fancy warming me up again?’

  He lifted the sheets on the other side and pulled her over to join him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘About…’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Cámara said. ‘For a while I’d convinced myself I was up to becoming a father. Now I don’t have to pretend.’

  He got up and closed the window in an attempt to soften the crashing noise coming from the fiesta outside, and turned back to face the room. Alicia stood up on tiptoe and kissed him, then walked over to the bed to find some clothes to put on. The flat was open plan – an old place that had been renovated in the past five or ten years, with walls ripped out and new windows put in. It was small – a studio flat, the kind of thing estate agents referred to these days using the English word ‘loft’, as though to give it some added, New York chic. Only the bathroom – little more than a cupboard, with a sink, shower and a loo – offered any privacy.

  ‘I got this place after the separation,’ Alicia said. ‘For a single woman it’s perfect.’

  She picked up the plates of food she’d left on the bed and took them over to a table in the kitchen area.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s eat. I always get hungry afterwards.’

  ‘I always get the urge to have a smoke.’

  ‘Eat first, smoke later.’

  Taking his cue from what she was wearing – a jumper and the pair of knickers which earlier had been pulled off her with his own hands – he placed a shirt over his shoulders and went to put his underpants on before going to sit down with her at the table. He’d always found it curious how the levels of intimacy in a relationship were never static, always shifting. At the beginning the changes were acute as surges of erotic energy brought a fleeting, ecstatic breakdown of all barriers only for them to be replaced instantly once the moment had passed. He himself would have sat down with her as naked as they had been just a while before, but her being half-dressed as she was had little to do with the ambient temperature and more to do with how comfortable she felt with him then.

  ‘Tell me about the Ramírez farm,’ she said as her teeth crunched on a piece of toast.

  ‘Have you ever been?’ he asked. She shook her head. For some reason the words of the barman back at the Bar Los Toros flashed through his mind, his comments about the Ramírez bulls.

  ‘Do you think they’re still what they were?’ he asked her.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Ramírez bulls. Do you think they’re still producing them as they always have? I mean, is there any sign of the quality decreasing in any way, producing weaker bulls?’

  He felt sure that if anyone could answer this question it was her. It was inevitable that they should talk about the case at some point, although he hadn’t wanted to bring it up so soon.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

  ‘Look, I know they’re legendary, the best in the whole country and all that. All I’m asking is if people have noticed that they’re perhaps not quite as good as they once were.’

  ‘Ramírez bulls are the best in the world, and that’s all there is to it,’ she said. ‘I would hardly expect someone like you to understand.’

  ‘You make it sound like an article of faith,’ he said.

  ‘Come on, let’s not talk about all this,’ she said. ‘Even I get tired of bullfighting sometimes.’ She leaned over the table and slipped her fingers in between his.

  ‘Here,’ she said, getting up and walking over to the fridge. ‘We need some wine with this.’

  After they’d finished she took him back to bed. This time the sex was slower, stronger, more joyful. Cámara had the sense of finally falling into an open void he’d been afraid of for some time. What awaited him at the bottom, he couldn’t tell. But for the moment he was happy simply not to have to cling on to the edge any more. There was something magical in the way she took pleasure in him.

  Later they shared a porro, Cámara pulling out one of Hilario’s plastic bags from his jacket. And to the sound of shuddering explosions and thudding pop music outside, they slipped into sleep, arms, legs, hair, breath all wrapped in one another.

  Friday 17th March

  The vibrating hum of his mobile brought him back into consciousness. Outside he could hear the brass band of the despertà passing through the nearby streets as dawn rose over the city. Sleep was all but forbidden during Fallas, and each neighbourhood made sure that none should offend even unwittingly by sending a musical band out to play as loudly as possible during the first hours of daylight. ‘Come out and take part in the fiesta,’ they seemed to say. ‘Or we’ll drag you out of bed ourselves.’

  Cámara removed Alicia’s hand from his belly and crawled over to where he’d hung his jacket over the back of a chair. As he reached for the phone he caught a glimpse of her naked body, the rounded curve of her hip, her arms and hands pressed up against her face as she lay on her side almost as if in prayer.

  He flipped the phone open.

  ‘¿Sí?’

  Seconds later he was dressing as fast as he could, searching the new, unfamiliar environment for pieces of his clothing that had been scattered over the floor. Without opening her eyes, Alicia reached out and pulled the sheets back over her skin, mumbling in her dreams. She’d find out soon enough, Cámara thought. No need to wake her now.

  The door barely made a sound behind him.

  There was no traffic at that time of the morning, and it took him less than half an hour to get there. Huerta’s Audi was one of the half-dozen already parked outside the metal gate when he arrived. The same flowers and plants decorating and shaping the garden, the same house, the same view over the sea. There were no waves that morning, however, and the water stretching out towards the eastern sun shimmered a deep, tranquil blue. Cámara had rarely seen it so calm and still.

  Quintero, the médico forense, shook his hand and led him wordlessly down to the swimming pool. Huerta was instructing his photographer on where to take his shots.

  ‘She was in the pool,’ Quintero said. ‘Tied the head of a marble statue to her wrist with a piece of rope and then threw herself in. Suicide, almost certainly, but Huerta’s having a check round just in case, as you can see.’

  He turned to where Carmen Luna’s body lay on the paving stones at the edge of the water. The grey colourlessness of her face seemed incongruous with the brightness of the morning and the rising sun. Her eyes were almost fully open, but were now nothing but balls of unseeing jelly.

  He walked over and crouched down to see more closely. She was wearing a black nightdress, her hair tied up in a bun, no make-up, the golden rings on her fingers shining more brilliantly against the p
ale, bloodless skin. Quintero would have checked already, but he scanned her all the same for any signs of violence or struggle. There were none. But for the death mask that now occupied her face, and the marks around her wrists where she’d tied the rope, she was the same as when he’d come to see her here himself. Nothing then in her behaviour, in her manner, had given any warning of this. He racked his brain for a clue, for something she might have said which seemed relevant or had a bearing on what he was now seeing, but his mind was blank.

  ‘The head came from that statue over there.’ He saw Huerta’s feet approaching from where he was crouching, and stood up. ‘She must have been pretty strong to have removed it in the first place,’ he said. ‘But I suppose she just wanted to be sure.’

  Cámara looked over and saw a headless marble statue of a naked man.

  ‘What did she tie it on with?’ he asked.

  ‘Got it from the gardening shed.’ He held up a length of yellow nylon plaited rope. ‘It’s been cut cleanly. The rest is inside, along with the knife. Prints on the cutter, but almost certain to be hers.’

  ‘No foul play, then?’

  ‘Unlikely. And to be honest, Cámara, you hardly look like a man who needs another stiff on his hands. It’s a suicide, plain and simple. Nothing to reflect badly on you.’

  ‘That’s not really what I’m thinking about.’

  ‘I know you’re not.’ Huerta pulled out a pack of Marlboros and offered him one.

  ‘Others might, though,’ he said as he fired his lighter. Cámara inhaled deeply. ‘You know what I mean. This isn’t your fault, though.’

  They both looked over at the figure of Carmen Luna’s dead pale body next to them.

  ‘A veces los muertos hablan,’ Cámara said. ‘Sometimes the dead talk.’

  He stood on his own for a few minutes, trying to remember as much as he could of his conversation here by the pool only two days previously. A few scraps and half-sentences came to mind, but there was no overall picture there, no coherence to the images, as though his memory of the occasion had been damaged in some way. He’d check his notes when he got back to the Jefatura, but then it might be too late. An instinct dulled by little sleep and the new emotions of the night before told him there was something here, something he should be doing now.

  He walked around the pool and found Quintero standing beside him again.

  ‘We’re pretty much finished here,’ he said. ‘Judge Caballero won’t be coming in. He said for me to stand in for him on this occasion. Again. So we can carry out the levantamiento del cadaver now if you’re ready.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ Cámara said. He drew on the last of his cigarette and looked for somewhere reasonable to stub it out. Leaving it at the scene of a suicide seemed unacceptable, somehow. But in the absence of any alternative, he pushed the burning end out against the side of a plant pot and kicked the stub into the undergrowth.

  Quintero was speaking to him again.

  ‘It must be hard for you, this,’ he was saying.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘A death, like this. Something so connected to the case you’re working on. I mean, in the end you must start taking it almost personally.’

  Cámara looked him hard in the face to see if the man was trying it on, but found nothing but a look of genuine concern.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he just managed to say. Why was everyone feeling sorry for him that morning?

  ‘Listen,’ he said, leaning in to speak to the médico forense more privately. ‘Is there any way, in your opinion, that Ruiz Pastor’s killer might not be the same as Blanco’s?’

  Never an over-demonstrative type, Quintero’s eyes gave just the slightest indication of surprise. He held Cámara’s gaze for a moment before seeming to cast his mind back to what he knew of each murder and its victim.

  ‘You do realise,’ he said at last, ‘what the implications would be if it got out that we were looking for two, rather than just one?’

  At that moment the secretaria judicial called Quintero over and Cámara found himself on his own again. In the reflection on the water of the pool in front of him he could make out the trees swaying gently overhead, the increasing light in the sky, and the house a little higher up the slope of the garden, with its large windows stretching almost all the way around. For a moment he thought he saw a movement, a face staring down at them. He looked up, but there was no one there.

  ‘Just one thing,’ he said as Quintero and Irene Ortiz went over the final paperwork. ‘Who called this in?’

  ‘There was a call from the emergency services,’ Irene said. ‘There should be an ambulance arriving now to take the body away.’

  ‘Yes, but who made the call?’

  Before she could answer Cámara was striding up the garden slope and towards the sliding glass doors that led inside the house. One of them was partially open and the white curtain was flapping gently in the breeze. He pulled it aside and stepped in. The house seemed just as it had the first time he’d been round – the same neatness, the same smell of perfume.

  ‘Cyril!’ he called out. There was no reply. ‘Cyril! I need to talk to you.’

  The living room was empty, so he tried some of the doors leading off a corridor that led to the other end of the house. The first opened on to a bathroom, the second was locked. Cámara banged on the door.

  ‘Cyril! It’s Chief Inspector Cámara.’

  He heard a sob from inside, then the shuffling of feet. Eventually, after a few minutes, the lock clicked open. Cámara waited, but when the door remained closed, he pulled on the handle himself.

  Carmen’s young Moroccan butler was lying on the floor of his bedroom, curled up into a tight ball.

  ‘Cyril?’ Cámara took a step into the room and then closed the door behind him. There was another sob. Cámara knelt down and placed a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  ‘I need you to tell me what happened.’

  Quicker than Cámara had expected, Cyril began to uncurl himself and placed a hand on the floor to push himself up.

  ‘This is the end for me,’ he said as he got to his feet. Cámara led him to the edge of the bed and then sat down on a nearby chair.

  ‘Carmen was my life. Now I have nothing. No papers, nowhere to go.’

  ‘Cyril,’ Cámara said. ‘Listen to me. I work in homicides, murders. I don’t care how you got here or if you stay. Understand?’

  Cyril looked down at the floor.

  ‘Now you must have friends, someone you can turn to.’ The Moroccan was silent. ‘But right now I need you to tell me exactly what happened. It was you who put the call through, right? You called the emergency services.’

  After a pause, Cyril nodded.

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘Perhaps an hour ago.’

  ‘Did you find Carmen?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I found La Señorita, then I made the call.’

  ‘Did you hear anything?’ Cámara asked. ‘How did you find her? It must have been dark.’

  Cyril held his head in his hands and began to sob. Tears streamed through his fingers and down on to the floor by his feet. Cámara looked for a handkerchief or paper tissue, but his pockets were empty. He got up, went into the bathroom opposite, pulled out some toilet roll and then went back into the bedroom.

  ‘Here,’ he said, thrusting it under Cyril’s face. ‘Here, take this.’

  Cyril grabbed it and blew his nose. His eyes were burning red, his slim brown hands shaking as he gripped at the tissue paper.

  ‘Last night,’ he said, ‘La Señorita received a phone call. She could receive a lot of phone calls, but this one was different.’

  Tears were still falling from his eyes and he dabbed at them before carrying on.

  ‘I could not hear what was said. La Señorita herself said almost nothing during the entire call. It was perhaps ten, fifteen minutes long. I don’t know for sure. But afterwards she shut herself in her room. This w
as not normal with her. Normally she liked to stay up and eat, enjoy my cocktails. Then, since Jorge died, and if no one came round, then sometimes we would stay up just me and her for hours, talking. She liked people, being with people. But last night was different. She just went to her room and closed the door. Didn’t even say goodnight or anything. So I knew something was very wrong.’

  A shudder seemed to pass through him, and for a moment Cámara thought he was about to break down again.

  ‘I stayed up later than usual,’ Cyril eventually continued. ‘I thought La Señorita was perhaps ill, or would come out of her room at some stage and would need me there. So I stayed up, waiting. But eventually I fell asleep on the sofa.’

  He brought his hands to his face for a second, covering his eyes as though with shame.

  ‘If I’d managed to stay awake I could have stopped this,’ he said. ‘I could have stopped her. But I fell asleep, I fell asleep.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Cámara said. ‘Please, go one, tell me what happened.’

  ‘Something made me wake up. I don’t know what. I heard nothing, I swear. No sound. But suddenly I woke up, as though some hand had reached out and grabbed me.’

  ‘Something didn’t feel right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. I don’t know, but I just knew.’

  Cámara had heard words to this effect often over the previous years. They had become so common in the murders he had dealt with that he had come to expect them. A sense of something not being right in the moments before the body – or bodies – were found, as if the person already knew, at some primitive level, that something awful, something horrific, had taken place. An intuition, perhaps? Or just the mind playing tricks, creating powerful false memories after the shock? It didn’t really matter which – the experiences were all too real for those who went through them.

  ‘What happened then?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘That’s when I looked out the window and saw La Señorita in the water,’ Cyril said.

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I ran out. I went down to the pool. I cried. I…’