The two men started walking in his direction. Their body language, the hesitation, the scuffing of their feet as they leisurely strolled towards him, all spoke of what Gómez had just been saying on the phone: the perception was that Cámara was on the way out. If the rumours had already got as far as Foreign Nationals, then he probably only had hours – days at best – left in Homicidios.
‘Get the paperwork out,’ Cámara said to Sánchez. ‘We’re going to need Judge Caballero to give us access to Carmen Luna’s phone records. Do it right. I don’t want any fuck-ups over some stupid mistake. You,’ he turned to Ibarra. ‘Just make sure he spells everything correctly.’
They turned and headed down the corridor again. Cámara didn’t stick around to hear the backchat. He opened a door; the incident room was empty except for a duty policeman manning the phones. He looked up as Cámara walked in, then quickly averted his eyes, pretending to stare at his computer screen.
‘Chief,’ Torres said as he came in moments later. ‘You might want to hear this.’
Not waiting for a reply, he reached up to a shelf and pulled down a small radio set. Cámara sat and watched as he switched it on and started scrolling through the stations. At any normal time of day pop music of some kind would be taking up most of the airwaves, but today it was all talk, and it didn’t take long for him to work out what the topic of conversation was. Carmen Luna’s name was being repeated endlessly, it seemed, in half-garbled flashes as the dial was turned. Eventually Torres settled on a station and placed the radio down on the desk, turning it to face Cámara to make sure he heard.
…in the light of recent events. You’re listening to Channel 4 radio, on 97.4, bringing news, news, news to Valencia City and beyond. To recap on our main story – our only story – at this hour: Carmen Luna, the singer, celebrity and fiancée of the murdered bullfighter Jorge Blanco, has been found dead at her home. Sources say she was drowned in her swimming pool after a weight had been tied to her ankle. Police have been on the scene all morning, and while there is no official word yet, there is surely going to be a lot of speculation over this latest in a string of deaths since Blanco was found butchered in the middle of the bullring only six days ago. Was Carmen Luna murdered, just like Blanco before? And let’s not forget Juanma Ruiz Pastor, Blanco’s apoderado, also found dead near the Albufera lake just two days after Blanco was killed. Is there some kind of feud going on? Has someone got it in for anyone associated with Jorge Blanco? Is anyone safe? Have the police got a handle on this? From here it doesn’t seem so. They had one suspect and they let him go. So what’s going on? Are we any closer to getting to the bottom of this? Or is Carmen Luna just the latest in what will prove to be a long list of bodies in the world of bullfighting and the rich and famous? Call us now with your thoughts. We want to hear what YOU have to say. Perhaps you were connected with Jorge Blanco in some way yourself. Do you feel safe? Dial 902 974 974 and tell us what YOU think…
Cámara leaned over and switched the machine off.
‘Flores is on the board of directors of that radio station, but they’re all saying pretty much the same thing,’ Torres said, pulling his hand through his beard. ‘Don’t you think we should put a statement out? Make it clear it was suicide? They’re treating it like another murder.’
‘We’ve got more important things to do,’ Cámara said. Not that it would make any difference if they did put out a press release, he thought. Normally he wouldn’t even have thought about such a thing – the press office dealt with that. Doubtless they were taking their time, just as everyone else around him, already anticipating the carrion that his dismissal from the case would provide.
‘Come on,’ he said. They left the incident room and went back to their own office.
Sitting down behind his desk, Cámara reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of Ducados, stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it.
‘Er, chief,’ Torres said. ‘You know you’re not supposed…You’ll set the smoke alarm off.’
‘You’d better open the window, then,’ Cámara said.
Torres walked over to the other side of the room and wrenched one of the windows out as far as it would go.
‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I reckon that’s the first time anyone’s opened these. Bit of fresh air will do us good. I might join you.’
And he pulled out his own packet of cigarettes and lit one using Cámara’s lighter.
‘Fill me in on the Ramírez family,’ Cámara said, putting his feet on the desk.
‘OK,’ Torres said. ‘Not a lot on anything untoward in the breeding area. Like you said, bit of a wall of silence there. I talked to a few people in the bullfighting world, but they all said the same – Ramírez bulls the best there’s ever been, etc. etc. Seemed to be offended by the very thought that they might be anything else.’
‘Yes,’ Cámara said. ‘I’ve been hearing something similar.’
With something of a jolt, he realised it was the first time he had thought of Alicia since he’d hurried out of her flat in the early hours of the morning. He could imagine her annoyance at his not telling her straight away about Carmen Luna, but there would be time for sorting that out later. She’d have heard all about it by now, just like the rest of the country. And in the meantime he’d allowed her to get a good night’s sleep. Still, it was strange she hadn’t called, if only to confirm the story and the police version of events.
‘So, nothing, then,’ he said.
‘Well, not quite,’ Torres said. ‘No one’s talking about this, but I went through the press reports for all the bullfights I could find over the past eight years where Ramírez bulls had been involved.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Yeah, took a bit of time, but I was just trying to see if there were any patterns, right?’
Cámara placed his fingertips together and nodded.
‘Look, bullfighting’s an art, there’s no official score, like in football. Or at least there’s not supposed to be. So it’s not easy for people to be objective about it, to say whether a bullfighter – or a breeder’s bulls, for that matter – are better or worse than they were the year before. And there’s always a bit of a tendency to say that things aren’t as good as in the past, and what-have-you. But listen, there is a kind of score we can look at.’
‘The press reports,’ Cámara said.
‘Yeah, and the number of ears and tails handed out at the end of each fight. So assuming that you need a good bull to produce a good bullfight…’
‘A good bull, and a good bullfighter,’ Cámara said. ‘But I take your point.’
‘Right, well listen. Eight years ago, which is as far as I went back, Ramírez bulls only took part in six bullfights in the whole country.’
‘Doesn’t sound much.’
‘No, but they managed to be at the big fiestas – Madrid, here, Seville, Pamplona, etc. But get this: six bullfights, that’s thirty-six bulls, OK? But guess how many ears were awarded to matadors fighting their bulls that season?’
Cámara shrugged.
‘Twenty-one,’ Torres said.
‘To my ignorant ears that sounds quite high.’
‘You’re right,’ Torres said. ‘I had a quick look at some of the other big farms at the time and no one even comes close, not even with twice the number of bulls on the circuit.’
‘So that was eight years ago,’ Cámara said. He’d finished his cigarette and leaned over to throw it out the open window. Above them he noticed that a small white plastic dish on the ceiling – the smoke detector, he assumed – had a little blinking red light. Had it always done that? He looked away. ‘What’s been going on more recently?’ he said.
‘OK, this is interesting,’ Torres said, his cigarette still clutched between his fingers. ‘About five years ago the number of fiestas the Ramírez bulls were involved in started to rise. Nine for that year, then ten the next, then twelve, until last year Ramírez bulls were taking part in fifteen bullfights across the c
ountry. For this year’s Fallas fiesta they were providing bulls for both the first and last fights. That’s pretty much unheard of, but what with them sending bulls for the Blanco tribute fight as well, it means their bulls will appear three times in the same bullring in the same fiesta.’
‘I’m amazed they can even do that,’ Cámara said. ‘What about the ears and tails over those years?’
‘They actually started to go down at first,’ Torres said. ‘Only ten one year. Then they picked up again. Last year matadors fighting Ramírez bulls were awarded twenty-seven ears and two tails.’
‘Out of a total of…’
‘Ninety bulls over the season.’
‘So we’re talking about a huge drop in the number of ears per bull, as it were.’
‘If we can take this method as a legitimate way of measuring how good the Ramírez bulls are – and I admit it’s probably got more flaws than advantages – then we’re look at a fifty per cent fall off in quality over the past five years.’
‘Yet this is coinciding with a massive increase in the number of bulls they’re putting out for fiestas,’ Cámara said.
‘Which means greater revenues.’
A gust of wind from outside brought the window crashing back into its frame. Torres jumped. Cámara stood up to close it tight, then looked up at the smoke detector again. The little red light appeared to be flashing even faster than before.
‘Does that mean something?’ Cámara asked, pointing up.
‘Joder!’ Torres quickly stubbed his cigarette butt out on the inside of the waste-paper basket. ‘Open the window again!’ he said. ‘The fucker’s about to go off.’
Cámara opened the window and grabbed his jacket.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for a stroll.’
They’d made it downstairs, across the large, glass-and-cement entrance hall and were just passing through the doors out into the street when the high-pitched scream of the alarm finally pealed out.
‘I don’t know about you,’ Cámara said. ‘But I need a drink.’
Realising at the bar that he hadn’t had any lunch yet, he ordered a sandwich mixto and some patatas bravas – fried potatoes laced with spicy tomato sauce and garlic mayonnaise – to go with his beer. Outside they could hear the sirens as the first fire engines began to arrive.
‘Make it a doble,’ Cámara told the barman as he reached for a glass to pour the beer. ‘And give me a brandy as well to follow up.’
‘So how was your day trip into the country?’ Torres asked.
Cámara told him about what he’d learned.
‘If there was anything dodgy going on with the Ramírez bulls,’ Torres said once Cámara had finished, ‘softening them up and all that, making them less aggressive, I can’t imagine Blanco being too happy about it.’
An hour later they headed back over the road and up the stairs to the office. The fire engines had gone and everything appeared to be returning to normal.
‘I wonder if they had to evacuate the cells in the basement,’ Cámara said.
‘Probably just leave them there to fry,’ Torres said. ‘If it’s a real fire, I mean.’
The office looked much the same as when they’d left, but Cámara was the first to notice the change.
‘Oh,’ Torres said when he saw it too.
Someone had placed a ‘No Smoking’ sticker almost a foot wide on the window pane, blocking out much of the daylight.
‘Something tells me we’ve been rumbled.’
Although it was late by the time Cámara left the Jefatura, a group of journalists was camped on the other side of the road from the front door, TV cameras pointing at them to catch any sign of movement from inside. Usually it was only the hotshot judges who got this kind of media attention, but this was turning into an exceptional case. He left through the back door and started circling the neighbouring streets trying to remember where he’d parked the Seat.
Surprisingly, Judge Caballero had offered no resistance to the idea of looking at Carmen Luna’s phone records. Cámara had expected some kind of questioning, evidence of a direct link between her suicide and the murders they were investigating. But he’d called up as soon as he’d received the request and given his approval. Almost too easily, Cámara thought. Perhaps he thought there was nothing in it.
He put his hand into his jacket pocket and felt his phone nestling at the bottom. He thought for a moment about calling Alicia. They still hadn’t been in touch since the night before. Was that all it was, all it was going to be? The phone seemed to tingle between his fingers as he rolled it around, then he let it fall back to the bottom and pulled his hand out once more, reaching into his other pocket for his packet of Ducados.
Cars were rammed into every available space – on the pavements, across the zebra crossings, as many as five deep in a mini-square where two roads converged. At last, turning the corner of another street, the flash of fireworks lit up the dark red of his Seat just a few yards ahead. Inhaling deeply, he strolled towards it, feeling for his keys in his trouser pocket. It was only when he sat down behind the steering wheel that he noticed the broken glass covering the passenger seat.
‘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.
Nineteen
Women, bulls and melons – how they appear is how they are
Traditional
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.’
Or the Bull Kills You Page 23