She had, it must be said, some very good officers on her team, men and women who justified the expense of their salaries by working hard and bringing in the kinds of results that made her, the accountants and even Madrid happy. Results that could be fed back into the statistical machines which provided the kinds of news stories every high-ranking officer dreamt of: lower crime figures, higher rates of citizen security, lower operational costs: the Holy Trinity of policing.
And, she told herself, as her blood pressure rose with the lift, she had achieved much in the two months that she had been in the job. Every uniform, every skipping pair of feet rushing to get into work on time, was a victory. Yet when it came to personnel matters, her hands were tied in ways that caused her to lose sleep. Contracts, labour laws, workers’ rights! God in heaven! How she dreamt of being able to point her finger and eliminate the worst offenders. But no, sacking a police officer was near to impossible. She had looked for every loophole, had even paid a lawyer to see if she could rid herself of the worst of them. Even if only one. For there was one man on her staff that she must, at all costs, free herself of.
The doors of the lift would open at this point, and Rita would sigh as she made her way to her office. Usually she would determine to focus on other matters by now. Yet this morning there was a change. This morning, as she walked out into the corridor, there was something resembling a skip in her step, even, to a closely observing eye, something of a smile on her thin, lightly painted lips. A plan had formed in her mind. Not particularly sophisticated – in fact it was so simple she wondered why she had not thought of it before. If, in the end, she wanted someone to leave, she could simply make life so unpleasant for them that they would remove themselves of their own will.
She turned the handle and walked into her office. Her secretary, Mari-Carmen, was at her desk. Rita looked up at the standard-issue clock on the wall: it was three minutes to eight. Good. Mari-Carmen stood up and saluted.
‘Buenos días, Señora.’
‘Good morning, Mari-Carmen. You may sit down.’
‘Thank you.’
Mari-Carmen returned sharply to her chair, her eyes fixed on her computer screen.
‘We have much to do today,’ said Rita.
‘Yes, Señora,’ Mari-Carmen answered.
‘Is everything prepared?’
‘Yes, Señora.’
‘Good.’
Commissioner Rita Hernández of the Policía Nacional walked over to her desk, placed her bag on the floor and hung up her coat on the stand near the window. She pulled the lace curtains to one side and looked at the traffic below, the buses taking people to work, the pedestrians hurrying to and fro, living their lives in quiet, industrious safety. As the world should be. With her, high above, making sure that nothing should harm them or get in their way. It made her feel maternal – a duty, given to her by God, to serve His creation and curtail the attempts of those inspired by evil to bring destruction on their heads.
And there was no greater sinner than a bad policeman.
A policeman whom she was now, finally, about to have done with.
She let the curtain fall and turned back towards her secretary. The clock on the wall showed a few seconds to eight o’clock.
‘Mari-Carmen,’ she said. ‘Tell Chief Inspector Max Cámara I want to see him here …’
She paused, watching for the second hand to sweep past the 12. Then she glanced back.
‘Now.’
TWO
‘Max?’
The sound of Alicia’s voice was drowned by the noise from the toilet bowl, where the efforts of a satisfying bowel movement were being flushed away into the labyrinthine and only partially effective hellhole of the Valencian city sewerage system.
‘Max!’
He pulled up his trousers, buckled his belt and went to wash his hands.
‘Is that you?’
He could hear a bleeping coming from the other side of the door.
‘Is that …?’
‘It’s your mobile,’ called Alicia.
Cámara finished washing his hands, dried them on the towel, made sure the window was fully open, then emerged from the bathroom. Alicia was standing with her dressing gown half-open, holding the bleating, vibrating thing in his direction.
‘What time is it?’ he said.
She shrugged, trying to relieve herself of the offending object.
‘Late enough, obviously,’ she said. ‘Here, take the damn thing, would you?’
‘Who is it?’
‘Who else is it going to be?’
He took the phone, wondering why it was still ringing and hadn’t gone to voicemail by now. Could a caller override something like that? Holding the screen at arm’s length, he recognised the number, closed his eyes, took a deep breath and pressed the answer button.
‘¿Sí?’
He listened patiently to the order barked at him efficiently from the other end.
‘Of course, I understand,’ he answered.
He was already showered and dressed, but hadn’t had any breakfast. Then it would take him five minutes at least to get to the Jefatura on his motorbike. Ten minutes if the traffic was bad.
‘Tell Commissioner Hernández I’m on my way,’ he said. ‘I’m downstairs in my office right now. I’ll be with her in two minutes.’
More barked comments from the secretary at the other end of the line.
‘Immediately, I understand. Yes. I’m leaving my office right now.’
The phone buzzed back in his ear.
‘Yes, and goodbye to you.’
He switched the thing off and threw it on to a side table.
‘You in trouble again?’
Alicia was in the kitchen, from where the smell of a toasted croissant was drifting down the corridor towards him.
‘Is there any coffee made?’ he said.
‘No, but I can put some on.’
He walked into the kitchen, planted a tender kiss on her neck and slid a hand over the curve of her hips.
‘Are you in a hurry?’ she asked.
He shrugged and sat down at the table, admiring her semi-naked figure.
‘No. Not really.’
Commissioner Rita Hernández’s face was a picture of rage when Cámara finally entered her office.
‘Something urgent came up …’ said Cámara.
‘It’s past nine o’clock,’ replied Hernández.
Cámara looked at the clock on her wall.
‘So it is. Doesn’t time fly when you’re—’
‘And I’ve been down to your office,’ she interrupted. ‘Twice. You weren’t there. Nor was there any sign of you having been there at all this morning.’
Rita Hernández was the kind of officer who made Cámara despair, someone for whom police work was nothing more than a path towards power. She might believe that she was working for the greater good, but deep down, as his friend Inspector Torres had accurately perceived, she was an apparatchik, a political animal who would be better placed in some corporation selling life insurance or engine parts or artificial fertiliser – anywhere but the Policía Nacional. Cámara glanced around the room. Filing cabinets lined two of the walls, a third was taken up by Mari-Carmen’s little desk, and the fourth was filled by aluminium-framed windows. There were no plants or decorations, the only break in the monotony being a crucifix, and a dozen plaques and awards for distinguished service that the commissioner had received over several decades. Most of them were the kind that no one else bothered to display, being handed out simply for turning up.
‘As I said, something urgent came up.’
One of the most curious things he had noticed about this office was that there was nowhere for visitors to sit. Hernández had her own chair, and then there was Mari-Carmen’s, but nowhere else. Cámara walked round the side of the main desk and, in the absence of an alternative, eased his behind on to the edge.
Hernández shot to her feet.
‘Get off my desk this instan
t!’ she barked. Cámara made to look for somewhere else, then turned back to her with an innocent shrug, as if to say, ‘Where else am I to go?’
The commissioner paused, realised that Cámara wasn’t going to back down, then smiled. It was unimportant: soon she would be rid of this insolent buffoon and life would be so much easier.
She positioned herself at the other side of the desk, opposite Cámara, forcing him to twist in order to look at her.
‘I want a progress report on your investigations in the Special Crimes Unit,’ she said.
‘Now?’ Cámara asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Verbally?’
‘Yes.’
‘You received the written report I sent two days ago.’
‘I want to hear it from you,’ she said. ‘What you’ve been … what you think you’ve been doing down there.’
Cámara got off the desk and stood squarely opposite her, hands on hips.
‘As you already know,’ he said, ‘Inspector Torres and I are investigating radicalisation programmes by Islamic terror groups inside the country.’
Hernández raised an eyebrow.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘They’re targeting ordinary Spanish kids,’ Cámara continued. ‘That is, ones with no Arab or North African background – to convert them. The danger is that such people will be harder for us to identify and pick up later on.’
‘And how far have you got with this investigation?’ said the commissioner.
‘How far?’
‘Yes, Chief Inspector, how far? I mean, how many arrests have you made? How many of these people have you managed to put behind bars? How many ordinary Spanish youths have you saved from this threat you describe?’
Cámara screwed his eyes.
‘You already know the answer,’ he said.
‘I want you to tell me,’ said Hernández. ‘I want to hear it from you.’
‘Memory playing up?’
‘Damn you!’ shouted the commissioner, beating her fist into the desk. ‘You will obey an order from your commanding officer, so help me God!’
Cámara sighed, picked up a pen and a sheet of paper from the desk and deliberately drew a large circle on it.
‘There,’ he said.
‘No arrests,’ said Hernández. ‘Not one.’
‘As you already know.’
‘That’s right, Chief Inspector. I do know. And for how long have I known? Hmm?’
Cámara gave a hollow laugh.
‘Is this necessary?’
‘Only two days,’ said the commissioner. ‘Only two days because it was only two days ago that you deigned to tell me what you were up to. And then only after I’d given a direct order in writing for you to issue a report on your activities. Which you then took a month to write.’
‘We were busy.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Were you too busy rounding up suspects and making arrests during that time?’
Hernández paused. Cámara glanced up at the ceiling, pressing his tongue into the side of his mouth.
‘You and Inspector Torres have been wasting everyone’s time for the past six months on this nonsense,’ she said. ‘And have nothing to show for it. I wouldn’t have minded you starting your own lines of inquiry if at least it had led somewhere. But you have nothing – just months of police time clocked up, thousands spent and resources wasted in what has turned into a farce.’
‘We were making progress,’ said Cámara. He knew it was hopeless: everything about her – her body language, her tone of voice, the manner of this summary meeting – told him that there was little left to fight for, but he persisted nonetheless.
‘These kinds of investigations take time – they don’t bring in immediate results. But what we’re doing is useful. The potential for pulling off something big, something spectacular, is there. We just need to be left alone.’
Hernández wrinkled her nose.
‘You see, this is exactly your problem, Chief Inspector. Some of us get on with ordinary police work. But you? In your eyes, you’re special. No boring investigations for you. There always has to be an element of performance, doesn’t there? That business at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona – I believe the Catalan government gave you a medal.’
‘I didn’t join the police force for medals.’
‘Oh, but I think you did, Chief Inspector. Deep down you long for the limelight. They say your earlier investigations helped bring down the previous government here in Valencia. Then there was that councillor in the Cabanyal, and the bullfighter case. All good headline material. You’re almost a household name these days.’
‘Not my intention, nothing to do with me.’
‘Good, good,’ said Hernández. ‘I’m so glad to hear it. You won’t mind, then, what I’m about to do.’
She called to Mari-Carmen, who had been listening throughout.
‘Mari-Carmen, would you please tell Chief Inspector Laura Martín to join us. It’s time we talked about Chief Inspector Max Cámara’s future.’
THREE
Less than a minute had passed before a knock came at the door. Mari-Carmen went to open. Chief Inspector Laura Martín walked in holding a file, looking almost like a schoolgirl sheepishly entering the headmaster’s office.
‘Buenos días, Señora,’ she said as she closed the door behind her and approached Commissioner Hernández. Cámara noted the formal means of address, and from somewhere in his memory he recalled some directive on the matter issued within the past months. Laura was clearly in uniform. Cámara was dressed in his usual shirt and jacket – no tie – but with nothing on him except the police ID in his pocket to say that he was a law-enforcement officer. He didn’t even have his pistol: a new consignment of Glocks was due, and rather than waiting for them to arrive first, many officers had had their old ones already taken away for ‘reassignment’. He was unarmed as well as inappropriately robed.
‘Chief Inspector,’ the commissioner beckoned Laura over. ‘Join us.’
Cámara turned to his old colleague, trying to catch her eye. They had worked together in the past, never quite as friends, more as friendly rivals. Laura liked rules. She was neat and ordered and instinctively reeled from Cámara’s haphazard and intuitive methods. If indeed they could be called methods. In fact, there were strong similarities between Laura and Rita Hernández – both high-ranking women in a traditionally male environment, both driven to succeed through hard work and a rejection of anything approaching flair or ‘luck’. Yet a key difference separated them, and that was the fact that inside Laura’s breast there beat a human heart, one of blood and flesh, which responded to suffering and which could be reached – for Cámara had done so – when necessary. Despite all her neatness, Cámara knew that inside, Laura and he were the same: moved, essentially, to do their jobs by something that could only be described as love – love for their fellow human beings.
Cámara kept his eye steadily on Laura as she crossed the room, willing her to turn his way, but she refused. And yet, he felt certain, there was a silent communication that spoke of understanding, pity even. He braced himself.
‘Thank you,’ said Hernández as Laura drew closer. ‘Now, Chief Inspector,’ she said, turning to Cámara. ‘As of this moment the Special Crimes Unit is dissolved.’
She held up a hand.
‘Don’t argue. That’s an order.’
Cámara hadn’t said a word.
‘Your written report and our earlier conversation make it clear enough to me, at least, that it is a waste of resources. I’ve been clearing up my predecessor’s mess from the day I arrived. It was his decision to set you up in that unit, and it’s mine to bring it to a close. I hope that’s clear.’
Cámara was silent.
‘I said I hope that’s clear.’
He looked confused.
‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘A simple acknowledgement that you’ve understood will suffice.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘I’m assigning you back to Homicidios, where you’ll be working under the command of Chief Inspector Martín here.’
Laura nodded in his direction, still refusing to meet his eye.
‘You are, of course, both of the same rank, which is unusual, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem, will it?’
‘No, Señora,’ said Laura.
‘As I say –’ she addressed her words to Cámara – ‘you will be under Chief Inspector Martín’s direct command. No more ad-hoc investigations, no more taking off and following your own whims. You will do exactly what she says and you will report directly to her. I hope that’s clear.’
After a pause, Cámara nodded, remembering what was expected of him.
Working for Laura was the least of his concerns at that moment: he was thinking of the months of work with the Islamic groups, the long hours of research, the tentative steps towards making contacts. He had felt certain that Torres and he were on the brink of establishing a mole, a disaffected young Spanish kid passed over for promotion within the group hierarchy and bent on revenge, with tales of something big, a link with the drug trade. Could Cámara still work it, pretend to be in the homicide team while actually continuing to develop his contact? It would be difficult, but not impossible. He and Torres had formed a semi-official unit-within-a-unit inside Homicidios before. They could do it again.
‘Your partnership with Inspector Torres has come to an end as well,’ Hernández continued. ‘I’m passing him to Narcotics. You won’t be seeing much of each other any more.’
Cámara gave a silent, stifled groan. His partnership with Torres was almost an institution within the Jefatura, the two mavericks joined at the hip. Other officers used to joke about their ‘marriage’ while secretly admiring the work they did, if despising their politics. Years of association had created a kind of telepathic connection between them that others were sometimes aware of. Splitting them up felt like an abomination of a natural order. Even Laura seemed to wince.
Fatal Sunset Page 2