‘What did you think when he went silent like that? Had he ever done that before?’
But their gently spoken questions were met by blank staring eyes and a shaking head.
‘I didn’t mean to swear at him,’ the boy had sobbed before they left. ‘Am I going to hell?’
Fermín’s neighbourhood was generally quieter than the rest of the city centre: elegant, wealthy and religious. The Opus Dei had a church there; there were few bars, little nightlife to speak of. It was not impossible that late on a midweek night very few people would be out on the streets, so an attack, if carried out quickly and efficiently, might not be witnessed by anyone. Especially if the victim failed to raise the alarm. The snapping of Fermín’s neck so cleanly would have taken care of that.
And so, from the Plaza de la Reina to the shallow grave in the huerta near Carpesa, they were faced with a hole, with only the text messages back and forth with Rafa to shed the tiniest glimmer of light. No more witnesses had come forward, no more evidence had been found, neither in the area where he had disappeared nor around the grave site. Given the nature of his murder and the lack of any sexual molestation, they were assuming that he had been killed quickly before the body was transported out of the city. Traffic cameras had been studied to try to spot a vehicle travelling from Fermín’s neighbourhood in the direction of Carpesa – which could theoretically give them a lead – but the scant material available from the handful of cameras in operation had offered them nothing to go on.
The general situation regarding clues was more noticeable for their absence than anything else. And so Cámara and Torres had devoted most of their energies to trying to find a possible motive: who might have wanted to kill Fermín? The obvious way forward was to concentrate on Segarra. They checked the teachers at the Sagrado Corazón and quickly decided that they could rule them out – there was nothing, not even the faintest hint, that any of them might have been capable of this. Stories about priests doing unspeakable things to children were commonplace but no such claims had been made about Fermín’s school, at least. And besides, they all had firm alibis for the time of the murder.
No, their instincts had pointed them towards Segarra from the beginning, and there they continued to concentrate.
At least, Cámara told himself, they had managed to build up a picture of Segarra’s life: born in Valencia in 1957 to parents from the satellite town of Almàssera, where Segarra was brought up. His father had a small amount of land in the huerta, but mostly made his living distributing fruit and vegetables in a truck to nearby towns. His mother was a seamstress: there was an elder brother, but he died of pneumonia at an early age.
Segarra passed through the local school with average grades and did his national service in North Africa before returning to Almàssera and starting to help his father. After a couple of years he set up his own fruit-and-vegetable stall in the markets as they moved from town to town on different days. Three years later he had enough money to set up his own shop. Around this time, when he was twenty-five, he married Francisca Grau, a girl he had known from school. They worked hard and soon Segarra had another shop in the nearby huerta town of Vinalesa. It seemed that he might carry on like this, a small-scale fruit-and-veg seller, but he began to have ideas for something bigger – a supermarket. He had heard about such places abroad, and a handful had been established in Spain. Segarra was clever enough to see that this was the future, that housewives would love not to have to traipse around half a dozen places to do the shopping, but find everything they needed under one roof. And so Horta was born and was an instant success. Francisca was not working by this time, having had the first two of their three daughters, but the business soon began to grow. Within a year of the first Horta supermarket opening in his home town, Segarra had established another in a residential neighbourhood in Valencia itself. Within ten years he had twenty more. Now, over thirty years after he had begun there were over 1,500 Horta supermarkets around the country. No one could give the exact number because so many more were opening every week.
As his success grew, so did Segarra’s importance: he bought a local football team – the lesser of the two main Valencian clubs – raising its fortunes with his money and bringing it up to the first division. He was courted by politicians – first being befriended by the local variety, later by those operating at a national level. He was a keen tennis player, and commonly shared courts with judges, government ministers, newspaper editors and celebrities.
And yet, for all his wealth, he did a good job of keeping himself out of the public eye. In the wake of the economic troubles, his opinions had become more sought after, as though his achievement of keeping Horta growing through the great recession might be extrapolated to the country as a whole. But you rarely, if ever, saw his face or his name mentioned in the gossip pages. Nor did he make political comments of any kind, despite his friendship with top members of the leading parties.
Frustratingly for Cámara and Torres, scratching around to find something – anything – that might give direction to their investigation, Segarra appeared to be held in high regard by almost anyone.
There were, as was to be expected, those who grumbled about him: union leaders complained that he worked his employees too hard for too little pay, and that he had taken advantage of the economic climate to squeeze them even further. A rival supermarket chain complained that Horta played unfairly in the battle over providers. Ecology groups accused the company of not doing enough to protect the environment and actually promoting the use of pesticides and herbicides that were banned in other countries.
But there was nothing there that pointed to a possible motive for murdering Fermín. Segarra appeared to have done the impossible and found enormous success without making any serious enemies. Journalists, it now emerged, had known for several years about his affair with Célia Capilla and about the existence of an illegitimate son, but it was as much a testament to his good name as to the lack of salaciousness in most serious newspapers that this had never been reported. Only after Fermín had been killed did the general public discover the double private life of Alfonso Segarra.
A week of work, a week of digging. And they had discovered nothing. No motives, no potential motives, not even the whisper of a motive. And their reaction had been to keep on, to keep circling, scratching away, diving down into whichever cavity appeared, only to re-emerge empty-handed.
A week, and the sense of desperation was beginning to increase – they were both arriving earlier at the office and leaving later. Cámara had barely spoken a word to Alicia. The case was becoming all-consuming, giving them nothing back in return.
Everything was there – the elements, the ingredients – and yet it felt as though nothing had actually started yet. The gods, luck, destiny, the invisible currents, the duende, had so far failed to assist them in any way.
They finished the paella in silence, and drank the last of the wine. It was Cámara’s idea – to head out of the office, a change of space, let their minds drift for a while. Sometimes – often, in fact – it helped, particularly when an investigation was stuck like this. But the restaurant had let them down – the food had been edible, nothing more. It felt as though they had wasted their time.
‘I’ll get it,’ Cámara said, waving to the waiter to bring them the bill. Torres did not protest.
Cámara had signed the receipt and was putting on his jacket when his phone rang. The number was withheld.
He pressed the button and lifted the phone to his ear.
‘Cámara,’ he said.
‘My name is Carlos,’ came a voice. ‘We need to meet.’
Cámara raised a weary eyebrow.
‘What’s this about?’
‘About a trade, Chief Inspector. I can give something to you, and I want something in return.’
‘Listen, I’m pretty busy right now.’
He pulled a face at Torres and was about to hang up.
‘Believe me, you won’t want to lose this opportunity.’
It was rare to receive crank calls – he was careful about who he gave his number to – but a few managed to get through every now and again. Usually it was someone with proof that a new order of Templar Knights was about to stage a coup, or some such rubbish.
‘What are you offering?’ he asked. He and Torres had reached the doorway and were stepping out into the blinding afternoon sun.
‘Information relevant to the murder of Fermín Capilla,’ said the voice.
Cámara stopped dead.
‘Now about that meeting,’ the man continued. ‘Listen carefully and I will give you instructions. You must come alone. Leave Inspector Torres to make his own way back to the Jefatura. I’m sure he’ll need an hour or two to digest his lunch. Not always easy on the stomach, a late paella.’
FIFTEEN
‘BY NOW YOU’LL have guessed who I work with, so we should clear it up straight away. I’m from the CNI.’
Carlos was pushing fifty. He wore a light blue linen suit, a white-and-blue shirt and a dark blue silk tie. He had the body of one who had once been fit, with a bulge around his waist and rounding shoulders, but with a physical memory buried inside there of what it meant to run, to sweat and to fight. Cámara walked at his side as they descended the steps from street level down to the old river bed. Carlos led them off the main pathway, where cyclists and rollerbladers whizzed in and out, and into the shade and privacy of the pine trees.
Cámara had taken in every detail of the man: the short, thinning grey hair; the rimless glasses; the high forehead and the blood pressure. He looked like a fairly ordinary businessman: standing at the agreed spot, his hands in his pockets, relaxed, glancing out at the traffic as it passed. But few people were able to do that these days, to stand motionless in a public space with little to distract them: everyone nervously buried themselves in a portable screen of some kind, as though hiding from the real world. And curiously this difference had made Carlos stand out, which was not necessarily a good thing, Cámara thought, for a spy.
The Centro Nacional de Inteligencia – CNI – was the country’s low-budget version of an intelligence community, covering both external espionage and internal security. It operated out of Madrid and was made up mostly of military types. In general, relations between it and the Policía Nacional were poor – CNI men were much happier operating with the paramilitary Guardia Civil, who shared a common culture and outlook. The Policía Nacional was far too ‘civilian’ for the spies, and the two organisations avoided each other as much as possible. True, Cámara knew of the Brigada Operativa de Apoyo – a small group of his colleagues who could be called on by the CNI if ever they needed someone with a police badge to get something done for them – for example, arresting or identifying someone. But there was something of a stigma attached to the idea. The CNI and Policía Nacional existed in a kind of Cold War, suspicious of each other, occasionally breaking out into open hostility. Cámara had never – to his knowledge – had anything to do with them.
It was not so much a tribal thing with him as the fact that the CNI was not held in particularly high regard – either inside our outside the country. The organisation’s predecessor, the CESID, had been closed down after becoming a national joke – its ‘secret’ operations had been anything but after confidential papers were stolen and leaked. A former spy chief had been convicted in 1999 of illegal phone tapping – including the mobile of King Juan Carlos – only for the sentence to be quashed by El Tribunal Constitucional the following year. And the scandals had continued with the creation of the CNI after another director was forced to leave following accusations of spending intelligence money on luxury hunting and fishing holidays and treating CNI employees like his personal staff, even getting them to clean his swimming pool.
The organisation was ludicrous on one level. But for Cámara it represented something sinister – State control and unaccountability – that, viscerally, he opposed. The CNI was a common factor in the many, labyrinthine entanglements of Spanish politics: every embarrassing leaked document or susprising revelation had a whiff of the spy organisation about it. Officially it focused on North Africa and South America and supposed threats to Spanish security, but the suspicion was that most of the officers’ energies were dedicated to stirring up the already murky waters of political power at home. There was no doubt in his mind that the corruption scandal that had brought down the previous Catalan government had been born within the imagination of the CNI. The man now next to him was not like some of the policemen who he worked with every day, serving the authoritarian needs of their masters like dogs with an unthinking, almost thuggish, sense of discipline. This man was one of the minds, one of the defenders, of State authority itself, in all its devious tyranny.
Despite introducing himself over the phone earlier, Carlos insisted on repeating his name once they met.
‘Carlos,’ he repeated, shaking Cámara’s hand, as though flagging up that this was a code name. The hairs on Cámara’s arms stood on end. He wondered if Carlos made up a new name for each person he met.
Cámara remained silent, but once they reached the pine trees, the CNI man began to speak.
‘I know you’re investigating the murder of Alfonso Segarra’s son.’
He kept his eyes ahead and alert, barely glancing at Cámara, a large part of his attention focused on their surroundings and environment.
‘And I know that it isn’t going as well as you might hope.’
‘Have you been spying on me?’ Cámara asked.
Carlos grinned.
‘It’s what I do. But no, as it happens, I haven’t been spying on you. Or at least not in the traditional way. You see, I know that you haven’t got anywhere with your digging into Segarra himself because I’m the only person who can help you there. And so far I haven’t passed on any information to you.’
‘If you have any information relating to the case, then it’s your duty to help the police investigation.’
Cámara knew such a straightforward approach would not wash, but it was worth spelling out, if only to make his own position clear.
Carlos pulled out a packet of Marlboro Lights, took one for himself and then, in an afterthought, offered one across. Cámara refused.
‘Oh, that’s right,’ Carlos said. ‘You smoke Ducados. I almost forgot.’
He lit his cigarette, inhaled deeply and breathed out. Cámara waited.
‘The information you need to conclude this case,’ Carlos began, ‘will be yours. In fact, once I give it to you, you’ll realise your investigation has barely begun. And without it you will remain as stuck as you are now. We all want to see little Fermín’s killer brought to justice. Believe me, we do our bit, often with enormous difficulties. Don’t think we haven’t been hit by the crisis as well these past years. Sometimes I’m amazed how we survive. But our job is to make a difference – no matter how small. We’re in the same game, essentially, you and I. We’re guardians, peacekeepers, shepherds. Which is why I believe we should help each other wherever possible.’
Cámara kept his face expressionless. Carlos was treating him like a machine, attempting to press his buttons and set him in motion, like a child’s toy. The deliberate slips meant to demonstrate how well-informed he was; the promise of a panacea for the Fermín investigation; the shared problems; the faux camaraderie; the vision for a better world: it was as though the man were speaking from a prepared speech, perhaps one he had used successfully in the past on others. Cámara imagined that he had four or five like this, one for each perceived psychological ‘type’. They were probably buried in the appendices of some spying manual somewhere, the one they gave you when you signed up.
He checked the clock on his mobile phone: his late lunch had taken up a good couple of hours and now his time was being wasted by some shifty intelligence officer with vague promises of help. He should cut things short and get back to the Jefatura before the rest of the day was lost.
‘You’ve got one more sentence,’ he sai
d to Carlos, ‘to get me interested.’
Carlos stopped and turned to face him.
‘The information – hard evidence – that I will give you will lead you directly to the person responsible for Fermín’s death. I know, because I’ve seen it. I know where it is and I know where it’s been buried. And I know that without me you will never, ever, find it. Too many people, too many interests, are at stake for a simple detective such as yourself – and I mean that with no disrespect – to find it.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I can’t say any more.’
‘Listen—’
‘You know how this works,’ Carlos interrupted. ‘We’re not idiots here. You can get on your moral high horse and start talking about my duty as a citizen to assist you. But you know perfectly well that things don’t work like that. What are you going to do? Get a court order to force me to reveal everything? You wouldn’t know which name to put on the paperwork – you don’t know who I am. Dig around a bit and you’ll even wonder if I exist. But believe me, you need me, you need what I’ve got to give you. Otherwise this investigation will go absolutely nowhere.’
‘I need you,’ Cámara repeated.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Or perhaps you need me?’
Carlos shot him a look.
‘You could be useful to us, yes. What I’m offering is a trade. A mutual back-scratching exercise. It’s the only way anything in this world ever gets done. You didn’t get to chief inspector without learning that, for all your high ideals.’
Cámara could feel blood pulsing in his temples, a pressure building at the back of his head. Almost every part of his being shouted out that he should turn and walk away, that this man, for all his bravado, had nothing to offer him. Or if he had, it would cause problems, lead him down avenues he should avoid. And surely he was a good enough detective to solve Fermín’s murder on his own. But the hook was already there – what if Carlos really did have something useful for him? The truth was that he was right – the investigation had stagnated.
A Body in Barcelona: Max Cámara 5 Page 9