A Body in Barcelona: Max Cámara 5

by Jason Webster

‘Come on, it’s our night. We haven’t done anything like this for ages. We can do anything, go anywhere.’

  ‘I think in the end just something simple,’ she said with a frown. ‘I don’t know, maybe a sandwich and a beer. Something close by.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Anything you want.’

  ‘I like the place on the corner at the bottom of the street,’ she said.

  ‘OK. Let’s go there.’

  While she disappeared into the bedroom, he went to the bathroom and quickly showered and changed his clothes, still riding a wave of elation after successfully arresting Terreros and bringing him to Valencia, where he was sitting in the cells in the Jefatura basement.

  When he was ready, Cámara sat on the sofa waiting for Alicia to finish. After twenty minutes, she reappeared looking almost exactly the same as when she had gone in: no make-up, the same clothes as before – jeans and a loose T-shirt. Her hair was brushed and her eyes were red.

  ‘Right,’ he said, lifting himself up. ‘Let’s go!’

  He held her hand as they walked the few metres from their block of flats to the bocatería at the end of the street. The place was busy and noisy, as it usually was. Many of the more expensive places in the city had closed recently, their clientele reduced to ever smaller numbers, but neighbourhood bars that had managed to hold on during the crisis were doing all right, in general.

  They had to wait ten minutes for a table. Cámara ordered a bottle of Mahou for himself; Alicia asked for a glass of red wine. They leaned against the bar, struggling out of the way as people squeezed past to get to the toilets, watching the waiters push their way through the throng with trays laden with hot sandwiches, more drinks, or, in the case of those already on the last course, plates of the bar’s celebrated chocolate cake. It was almost worth coming for that alone.

  Cámara smiled as the cake sailed past them.

  ‘Yum,’ he said, grinning at Alicia. She was staring into space.

  Finally they got their table – a tiny steel circle in the corner of the room – and could have a stab, at least, at a conversation over the background noise.

  ‘I’m starving,’ he said, picking up the menu and offering it to her. ‘I already know what I want. What are you going to have?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, glancing down at the laminated card. ‘Something different.’

  He finished his beer and tried to catch the eye of the ruffled-looking waitress standing at the next table.

  ‘I’ll have the number seven,’ she said, putting the menu down. ‘With Roquefort and dates. And another red.’

  Her glass was still half-full, but she drained it in one, placing it back on the table in front of him.

  ‘OK.’

  After a few minutes’ signalling, the waitress made it over to them and they placed their order. And in a moment they were on their own, two people sitting at a restaurant table; it was time to talk. It felt almost like a command.

  ‘So tell me about your trip,’ she said, waving a flag of sorts from the other side.

  He grabbed at it; it was not what he wanted to talk about. Not now, not to her. But it was all there was for the time being. So he filled her in, telling her about Terreros, about how he had tried to make a run for it, and how they had caught him on the border trying to swim to Morocco.

  He mentioned nothing about Carlos and the information that had led him to the colonel.

  ‘Did he kill the boy?’ she asked. ‘This Terreros character?’

  Cámara shook his head.

  ‘I’m convinced he was behind it, that he ordered it. We’ve got a lot on him, even the handwritten threat that he wrote to Segarra. Tomorrow we start formal interrogations. I’m sure he’ll crack, once he sees everything we’ve got on him.’

  ‘He wrote a threatening letter by hand?’ Alicia asked.

  ‘Yes, I know. Some old-fashioned notions, I suppose. Incredible, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Incredible.’

  Their sandwiches came and they ate and drank without speaking much apart from the occasional comment about the food. She nodded when he asked if she wanted a third glass of wine.

  He finished first: he was hungry now that the rush of the day’s earlier events was beginning to subside. After seeing his arm shoot up, the waitress made it over to their corner again.

  He glanced at Alicia. Her mouth was full but she nodded at his implied question.

  ‘Two pieces of chocolate cake,’ he said. ‘And I’ll have a brandy to go with it.’

  Alicia finished eating, wiped her mouth and then drank some more wine. It was that moment when he instinctively thought about smoking. Once upon a time, not too long ago, it would have been possible. But he did not feel like forcing his way through the tightly packed diners to join the small crowd on the pavement outside. He would hang on.

  She placed her fingertips to her mouth; he tried to smile at her.

  ‘I’ve been to see a friend,’ she said. ‘Marga, she’s a psychotherapist.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘How … how’s that going?’

  Both her hands closed in around her face, hiding her chin.

  ‘I’ve been four times now,’ she said. ‘Going back tomorrow.’

  He noticed that he was biting the inside of his lip. Quite hard.

  ‘Is it helping?’ he said. ‘This is about … what happened, I take it.’

  They did not speak about it; the cigarette burns, the sexual molestation. Yet it was always present, no matter how hard they both tried to ignore it.

  ‘About that,’ she said. ‘That and other things. Everything.’

  ‘I suppose it’s good to get it out,’ he said. ‘Talk to someone.’ He did not know what else to say.

  ‘Marga said I should talk to you,’ she said. ‘That there were things I needed to tell you.’

  He swallowed.

  ‘Tell me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused.

  ‘What do you need to tell me?’

  ‘I’m not attracted to you any more, Max,’ she said. Tears were pouring from her eyes. ‘I can’t make love to you any more.’

  He reached out to hold her hand, but she pulled it away.

  ‘It’s just a matter of time,’ he said. ‘Really, all this will heal eventually. I love you. We just have to give it—’

  ‘No, Max,’ she said. ‘It won’t heal, it’s not healing.’

  ‘It will,’ he said softly.

  ‘No, it won’t!’ she screamed. For a second the noise in the restaurant diminished, before picking up again.

  ‘Maybe we should go home,’ he said.

  ‘Stop telling me what to do.’

  ‘I’m not. Oh, look, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘Sorry? You think that’s enough. You think it’s enough to fuck around with people and then say sorry. That’s your problem. That’s the problem we have, right there.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘This. You. Do you think sorry can make up for everything? Do you think it can make everything go away? Do you even stop to wonder what I’m going through?’

  ‘Every day.’

  ‘You have no idea!’ She slammed her hand on the table; he caught the glass before it hit the floor, but the wine flew across and spattered his trousers.

  ‘How can you possibly know what I suffer?’ she said.

  ‘I was there,’ he said. ‘I saw it all.’

  ‘I know you were there. It was because of you that those bastards got me in the first place.’

  He lowered his head.

  ‘It was because of you that they did this to me.’

  She placed her hands on her thighs.

  ‘It will never go away, Max. Don’t you understand? I will live with this for ever. And no amount of apologies will ever change that.’

  ‘Look, I—’

  ‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘Don’t even dream of saying sorry again. Sorry erases nothing. It only makes it worse.�
�

  His stomach was cramped with pain, a wave of his own tears willing themselves up towards his eyes, but he pressed them down.

  ‘What …’ He coughed. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Her crying had stopped now, and there was a harder expression on her face.

  ‘We need to separate,’ she said. He felt something in him, an inner core, collapse.

  ‘Separate?’

  ‘For a time. I don’t know how long. But I need to be alone.’

  ‘OK,’ he said quietly, trying to hide the shuddering inside. ‘Whatever you want.’

  ‘It would be better that way,’ she said. ‘It’s what I need.’

  ‘All right.’

  He was dizzy, the room was spinning, and he felt an urge to splash his face with water.

  ‘I’ll be just a moment.’

  There was a queue outside the toilet. He waited with his back to the rest of the bar, not wanting to look back. Once in the privacy of the bathroom, he allowed a sob to pass through his shoulders and up to his face before pressing it down again. The water stung his eyes as he cupped and lifted it with his hands.

  Back at the table, there were two plates of chocolate cake. But Alicia had gone.

  ‘She’s already paid,’ said the waitress, not without some sympathy.

  He stepped out into the street; there was no sign of her.

  THIRTY-TWO

  THE FEELING WAS new, as though his skin were no longer a simple film over his flesh, but had sprung into being, become a living, pulsating force that was both a part of him and also, somehow, possessed of a consciousness of its own. He was no virgin. But this experience had been so different that his previous encounter felt like a shadowy dream, as though it had never really taken place at all. This, he told himself, holding Sònia’s sleeping body close to his as they lay in bed, was making love. And he was therefore, by logical reasoning, in love with her. At last he understood.

  Her head lay heavily on his chest and he stroked a couple of fingers through her hair, bending his face down to plant light kisses on the top of her brow. The room was still gloomy: only the half-light of early morning was penetrating the window. He must have slept for an hour or two at most, convinced that they had carried on well into the night. And he might have expected to fall into deep dreaming afterwards, not least to recover from the intense physical exertion. But now his eyes clicked open almost with a will of their own, as though his body and mind needed to register every second of this moment.

  Her breath was warm against his chest and stirred the hairs around his nipple. Below the sheet, his cock twitched unbelievably for more. He wanted to turn her on her side there and then and repeat everything, the desire surging within him with sudden ecstatic force. He placed a hand on the curve of her hip, sliding it round to her buttocks. His breath quickened and he pressed more kisses on her face, lowering down to her nose, her cheek and finally her mouth.

  With her eyes still closed, she opened her lips and met his tongue with her own, twisting it around and thrusting it into his mouth. He loved the way that she kissed him, forcefully, penetrating him above as he did her below. Her hands awoke and began sliding down his side, fingertips caressing his ribs before moving down to his belly and delicately starting to stroke. With her mouth she moved away from his lips and nibbled at his neck, the top of his chest, pausing at each nipple before continuing further down. He gave a low groan as her tongue played once more on his sex, pulling away in spasms as the over-sensitised nerves fired pain-pleasure shots towards his brain.

  ‘Gently,’ he whispered.

  She started to moan, the vibrations of her voice passing through her mouth, into his cock and spreading out into his body.

  And he felt the rising within him, the imminent orgasm begin to take hold.

  The door slammed open, and before either of them could register, the sheet that had partially covered them was pulled off, exposing them completely.

  Instinctively, Dídac shot back in the bed, covering himself with his hands. Sònia stayed where she was, naked, crouched on all fours.

  ‘What the fuck!’ Dídac shouted.

  And he looked up to see Daniel standing over him, staring him hard in the eye. Then his father bent down, grabbed some of Dídac’s clothes from the pile on the floor and threw them in his face.

  ‘Here,’ he said in a calm, direct voice. ‘You can either stay here all day wasting your time, or you can come with me and learn what real action is about.’

  He turned and walked back towards the door.

  ‘It’s time to step up.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  HIS MIND WAS heavy. He had to forget the events of the previous evening and leave them behind. It was time to head back to the Jefatura. Time to interrogate Terreros.

  As he walked out of the cheap hotel where he had stayed the night, something distracted him: a slim man, perhaps in his late forties, was ambling down the street wearing enormous placards made out of pieces of cardboard and tied around his shoulders with string. He had already passed by and Cámara could only see the message written on his back: Es la solución del mundo.

  But what was the solution to the world’s problems? Cámara fell in behind the man, the leadenness of early morning and a sleepless night momentarily shaken off by a curiosity to discover the secret of the street-prophet in front of him. From the drab appearance of his clothes it was clear that he was not wealthy, but the top button of his shirt was done up, his hair was cut short and he was clean-shaven; he might be the kind of person that you saw every day and paid little attention to: ordinary, going about their business, not trying to change anything much in the world. But the confused and amused expressions on the faces of pedestrians coming the opposite way, who could read what was written on the man’s front placard, suggested that the gospel he was preaching was eye-catching, perhaps extraordinary.

  Cámara followed him for a hundred metres or so, trying to work out what the message might be, not wanting to break out into a run in order to catch a glimpse of the front placard. Finally they reached a crossing; the light was red and the man had to stop. Seconds later, Cámara caught up with him and stood at his side. As soon as the light changed, he dashed out across the road and quickly looked back to read the words, scrawled with black and red marker pen: Jovenes: Practicar mucho el sexo y procrear CERO. Youngsters: Have a lot of sex but NO children.

  So that was all it took.

  Something in him warmed to the idea that ambassadors of free love were still wandering the streets – even incongruous ones. No parents, no families. No break-ups. Sex – at least when it was done right – could make people whole, could turn two bodies, fleetingly, into one.

  By the time he reached the Jefatura, he had convinced himself that the stab of pain – of separation – had disappeared.

  ‘Why did you run, Colonel?’

  Terreros sat on the other side of the interrogation table, his hands resting on his knees, back straight and eyes focused dead ahead on Cámara. He wore a grey suit that had been collected from his flat before they left Ceuta; it was crumpled and his shirt was creased, yet by his bearing he still managed to convey an air of concentrated energy, unruffled by his sudden downfall.

  Amazingly, he had refused his right to legal representation for this formal interview. He would, he said, be looking after himself. God alone would be his judge.

  ‘Con un par de cojones,’ said Torres with grudging admiration when he heard. ‘That macho legionario stuff really runs deep. Except for the fact that he doesn’t have any balls. Perhaps that’s why.’

  Every half an hour they had to break for ten minutes because of Terreros’s medical condition.

  ‘It’s my legal right,’ he said. Nobody could come up with a good enough reason to deny him. The entire interrogation time could last no more than ninety minutes in a twenty-four-hour period.

  Torres now sat on Cámara’s left. With one eye on the clock, Cámara fired off question after question into
the hot silence of the room.

  ‘Why did you threaten Segarra?’

  ‘Was it because he was no longer sending you any money?’

  ‘What was the money for?’

  ‘Why did you advocate the kidnapping of children as a legitimate military tactic?’

  ‘Did you order the kidnapping of Segarra’s son, Fermín?’

  ‘Did you order him to be murdered?

  ‘Why did you run, Colonel? Why did you run?’

  Terreros was silent. He stared.

  And finally spoke.

  ‘I don’t talk to Reds.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘DON’T START GETTING the wrong idea. You’re not the only one she’s fucking.’

  The bus took them west out of the city centre, from the Passeig de Colom by the sea, through the Eixample district and inland towards the suburbs. Dídac hung on to the rail, trying not to fall against other passengers standing next to him as they turned hard around tight corners. Beside him, his father stood still, seemingly able to balance without any trouble as they rocked from side to side, as though his feet were nailed to the floor.

  Daniel kept his gaze on the road, looking over the heads of the other people, but glanced momentarily at Dídac.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘You’re a romantic. You think she’s the one. After just a few fucks.’

  His lip twitched.

  ‘But believe me, things aren’t as simple as that.’

  Dídac dropped his head, his mouth sharp and hard, his stomach tightening into a retch as the bus threw him to one side again.

  At the next stop a large group of passengers got off and some seats became free. Daniel prodded him in the small of the back, pushing him to go and sit down. He himself remained standing for the rest of the journey.

  The bus route terminated in the centre of a drab satellite town: blocks of flats and a handful of shops. Daniel hitched his rucksack higher up his back and set off walking, Dídac following a couple of paces behind.

  The joy that had flowed through his body turned into poison. He hated everyone.

  He lost track of how long they walked. After what could have been five minutes or half an hour, they struck out beyond the last tower blocks and over dry scrub ground littered with household rubbish. Beyond, in the middle distance, he could make out rows of street lamps arching over a grid system of roads that appeared to lead nowhere.