A Death in Valencia

by Jason Webster

  Cámara pulled out his cigarettes.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘We need some more background on Señor Roures,’ Cámara said, inhaling. ‘His past, people he knew, that sort of thing. And as his ex-wife, well, you’re an important part of that picture.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucía said. Her gaze drifted away, staring out from their terrace table at the empty, mid-afternoon street. It was still too hot for most people to venture out. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me about how you met.’

  Lucía took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  ‘Pep and I knew each other from way back,’ she said after a pause. ‘We were at school together. Both kids from El Cabanyal. But we didn’t get together until we were in our teens. He used to play pelota at the sports club and come round to a bar afterwards where I hung out with some of my friends.’

  She swirled her glass round, watching the ice clink against the sides.

  ‘Anyway, one night, well, you know, it just happened.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask when that was?’

  ‘No, that’s fine. I can tell you exactly. It was the night of the big demonstration in Valencia for the Estatut. The ninth of October, nineteen seventy-seven.’

  Cámara remembered Valencians mentioning the date to him, the day almost the entire city had rallied in support of the region becoming autonomous rather than governed directly from Madrid. Locally, it was one of the important moments during the Transición–the years following Franco’s death as the country moved towards becoming a democracy. Over 600,000 people from both the right and the left had marched through the streets.

  ‘I think it was a Sunday,’ Lucía continued, ‘and we all met up in our usual bar, El Polp, afterwards for a drink. Pep was there, and…that’s it.’

  ‘And then you got married?’

  ‘Yes. A few years later. A big, El Cabanyal wedding. They like those round here. Feels like a tribe, sometimes. So it’s always good when two people from the neighbourhood get together.’

  ‘How long was this before La Mar opened?’

  ‘That was pretty soon after. Pep always knew he wanted to open a restaurant, and was looking for somewhere from before we got married. Then, I don’t know, it must have been a few months later, that place became available–I think there’d been a bar there before–and we took it on. My father helped us out getting started.’

  ‘Your father’s dead, I understand.’

  ‘Yes. Was that on my file?’

  Cámara didn’t reply.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know, you’re just doing your job. Three years ago I lost both my mother and father in the space of four months. It’s just…There’s only me and my brothers now.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened? Between you and Roures?’

  ‘Why we divorced, you mean?’

  Cámara nodded, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray on the table.

  ‘It was the restaurant, really. It’s a small place, but there were only ever the two of us. Others came and went, but we shouldered the whole thing. Living there, working there. It took its toll.’

  ‘No kids?’

  ‘No! No time. The idea was crazy. Besides, I don’t think Pep…It wasn’t acrimonious, or anything. We knew it had to happen, so we arranged things, Pep gave me a lump sum for my share of the restaurant, and that was it.’

  ‘Still friends?’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, we didn’t hate each other or anything like that. But we weren’t socialising either. After you’ve spent so many years living every second of the day with someone you need a bit of a rest. Anyway, without me at La Mar Pep was busier than ever. It’s not as if we could have seen much of each other anyway.’

  She paused, taking another sip from her drink. And for a moment Cámara glimpsed something of what had dulled the spark inside her.

  ‘I used to bump into him in the street sometimes, or at the market. We’d stop and chat, catch up on things. But then he got involved more in the El Cabanyal, Sí thing and I hardly ever saw him at all. Last time must have been around Christmas.’

  ‘You’re not involved yourself?’

  Lucía shrugged.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong–I think it’s criminal what they want to do here. Pulling old houses down. But…’ She frowned. ‘I don’t think there’s much you can do. All right for me to say that, I suppose. My house isn’t one of the ones under threat. For Pep it was different–he was right there in the cross-hairs.’

  She placed her hands over her face, as though hiding herself.

  ‘Sorry. That’s not very appropriate language, is it?’

  ‘I’d like you to tell me what you can about the abortion,’ Cámara said.

  Her hands remained where they were, shielding her face and eyes from the rest of the world. Then very slowly she dropped them until they rested on her knees, her eyes downcast.

  ‘Wow,’ she breathed at last. ‘You really have…Is this relevant?’

  ‘I know it was a long time ago, but if there’s anything you remember.’

  ‘You don’t forget something like that. I think about it every day.’

  Her gaze remained fixed on the floor as she spoke.

  ‘It was a girl,’ she said after letting out a deep sigh. ‘I know because I developed a rash on my chest, just as my mother did when she was pregnant with me. Didn’t happen with my brothers. It’s a family thing.’

  The sun had begun to dip a little by this point and a shaft of light was beginning to stream over part of Lucía’s body, casting a twitching shadow where the vein in her neck pulsed rhythmically.

  ‘We weren’t very well off, so my aunt had to help out. My father called a doctor friend he knew, who gave us the name of a clinic in Paris.’

  Cámara took out another cigarette and lit it.

  ‘Pep had a little Renault 5, so we drove up. My mother as well. Set off in the middle of the night and we got to Paris late the following evening, driving straight through and eating sandwiches my mother had prepared to save money.’

  ‘Do you remember how much it cost?’

  ‘I think it was about fifty thousand pesetas. It was a lot of money, particularly back then.’

  ‘How long were you in Paris for?’

  ‘Just a couple of days. We stayed the night in some pensión on the outskirts of the city, went to the clinic the next morning. They carried out the procedure, and we had to go back in the afternoon for a check, to make sure everything was all right. Then it was back in the car and poor old Pep driving through the night to get back here.’

  ‘Do you remember what the clinic was called?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’

  ‘Any other Spanish girls there?’

  ‘Yeah. One or two. I remember the girl who went in before me. Catalan, I think she was. Very nervous. They had problems with the anaesthetic and she was screaming.’

  She lifted her eyes.

  ‘I was only fifteen. I was way too young to have a child. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life then, but I was thinking of going to university, I don’t know. Just not, you know, settling down, having a baby. My parents thought about adopting it, bringing it up as their own, but they were already quite old by then. There was nothing else we could do.’

  ‘And no solutions here in Spain.’

  ‘No way. I mean, everyone knew where to go for a back-street job, but…’ She rolled her eyes. ‘There was no guarantee you’d get out of there alive.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard,’ Cámara said.

  ‘I haven’t talked about this for a long time,’ Lucía said, taking a sharp breath. ‘And now here I am telling all my secrets to a policeman. Anything else you need to know while I’m at it?’

  ‘How’ve you kept yourself going since the divorce? Financially, I mean.’

  ‘Ooh. You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re going to tell me now you’re not from Homicidios, but actually a tax inspector.’
<
br />   ‘No, I’m not from Hacienda. But all of this does help us build up a picture, and brings us closer to finding who killed your ex-husband.’

  ‘If you put it like that.’

  She shivered and let out a sigh.

  ‘Oh, what the hell. I’ve got a little sewing business. From home. Mending people’s clothes, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Cash in hand?’

  ‘Hey, you just told me you’re not interested in that.’

  ‘You’re right. And I don’t think it’s important here.’

  ‘I should bloody well hope not.’

  ‘Any other emotional attachments since the split with Roures?’

  She looked at him sharply.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have to ask.’

  ‘Men…come and go,’ she said, looking away. ‘Nothing serious. And nothing at all for the past couple of years.’

  Cámara got up and went to pay the barman, then returned to the table. Lucía was finishing the last of her drink.

  ‘Still,’ she said as she got up to go. ‘I’m glad to see you’re really concentrating on this.’

  ‘It must be hard for you.’

  ‘He was my husband. It’s been a long time now since we split up, but when someone you’ve been close to dies…And suddenly and violently like that…’

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Yes. So am I.’

  She reached out to shake his hand.

  ‘Will I be seeing you again?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cámara said. ‘There may be some loose ends to tie up later on. One of my colleagues may be in touch.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do.’

  ‘You’ve been a great help.’

  She let go of his hand and made to leave.

  ‘One other thing,’ Cámara said.

  She turned and looked him in the face.

  ‘Has someone called Sofía Bodí been in touch with you at all recently?’

  She squinted.

  ‘Sofía Bodí? What, like the woman in the news?’

  Cámara nodded, catching sight again of the pulse in her neck.

  ‘No,’ she said with a frown. ‘Not at all.’

  Eighteen

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d show up.’

  In her text message she’d said the Bodeguilla del Gato restaurant. Ten o’clock. Cámara knew it well, tucked away down an alley behind the Plaza del Negrito in the heart of the Carmen area. In a moment’s rush to the head, he’d booked a room for the night at a small boutique hotel around the corner. Something far more expensive than he would otherwise choose. Just in case. Yes, a double. He’d need somewhere to sleep anyway.

  The restaurant did the best patatas bravas and rabo de toro he’d tried anywhere, but his stomach felt tight-squeezed like a sponge as he stepped into the cramped, rosy-lit space. Couples perched on stools at the bar, bodies engaged, gaze distracted as they sipped on cool red vermouth, condensation pouring down the glass and dripping on their laps in spite of the dry cold draught blowing from the air conditioning unit. A blur of faces soaked into his eyes until he found one that appeared clear, delineated, silent. Alone.

  Alicia hesitated before looking up. Cámara sat down at the table as she busied herself with a cigarette, fishing it out of the packet with dark-painted nails and taking three strikes with the lighter to catch a flame. Then finally, as smoke drained from her nostrils, her eyes met his.

  ‘I wasn’t sure either.’

  Cámara took in the details of her face: the upturned nose; the slight, endearing gap between her front teeth; crow’s feet around her eyes, perhaps a tad deeper than when last he’d seen her. She was keeping her hair longer, he noticed, not the short, wiry crop of when he’d first met her, at the start of the Blanco case. Her skin was darkened by the sun, shiny and inviting, and her breastbone was decorated with a black-and-silver necklace with a deep red stone at the centre. Moroccan, by the looks of it. He felt he’d seen the design before, perhaps in a market in Fès, or Tangier. He couldn’t say.

  And then there was a certain glow about her, something he’d perceived the moment he’d first seen her. Other men, he could sense, were drawn to it as well, an energy, an eroticism, a way of looking at the world with a cheeky, playful grin. That, more than anything else, had intoxicated him back then, an attraction that went not to the heart, but which seemed to get under his nails and seep into his blood. As he absorbed and observed her now, an inner sense momentarily more active than his outer ones, he could see it was there, just as before, but less brilliant, perhaps, of a slightly duller, less intense hue.

  ‘I’m glad you came.’

  The waiter walked over and Cámara ordered a bottle of Mahou; Alicia a gin and tonic.

  ‘I need something cold,’ she said.

  ‘And strong.’

  She grinned.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I could do with one myself.’

  He called the waiter back and changed his order. A moment later, two tall tubular glasses of fizzy, slightly fluorescent liquid stood on the table between them.

  ‘Chin-chin?’ she asked, raising hers.

  Cámara hesitated, then lifted his and tapped it lightly against her glass.

  ‘Going to be like that, is it?’ she said. She took a long drink, emptying almost half of it in one. Vapour was rising from the ice cubes, while her lip was wet from where the gin had splashed against the side.

  ‘OK, it’s not just a social call,’ she said. ‘Although it is…’

  ‘I realised that. Let me guess, the paper in Madrid has sent you over here to write something on The Case of the Missing Abortionist.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose we could use that as a headline, but it’s a bit clichéd. Sounds like Sherlock Holmes meets Stieg Larsson.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good job I’m not a journalist, then.’

  She pulled on her cigarette and looked him in the eye.

  ‘I didn’t know what to expect, really. Thought you might be, well, a bit hostile, a bit sharp. But it’s been over a year. Are you so angry at me?’

  Cámara waved her comment away.

  ‘It’s just our usual banter,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Yes. I suppose it is.’

  They decided to order some food. Thick peppered gammon served on a wooden platter, leeks soaked in vinegar, and, of course, a serving of bravas. If they were still hungry afterwards they might order the oxtail as well. They opted for a bottle of Somontano wine to accompany it.

  ‘Go on,’ Cámara said as they started eating. ‘I know you’re itching to. Ask me about the case.’

  Replying to her questions, he confirmed the Maldonado theory, that a GAL-type organisation was behind the kidnapping, and that, nominally at least, he was part of the investigation team, that all other cases had been suspended to bring manpower to this. He told her what he knew about Sofía, about her background, her history as a pro-abortion activist. Much of this Alicia already knew, but she was fascinated by his description of Sofía’s old-fashioned flat, and the curious, foetus-like behaviour of Ballester, her lover. About the diaries, however, he remained silent.

  ‘You know the Pope’s arriving tomorrow morning, right?’

  Cámara’s eyes opened wide.

  ‘Christ, I’d almost forgotten. Tomorrow already.’

  ‘Pretty strange timing, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’ll have been planned for months, years.’

  ‘Not the visit. I mean kidnapping Sofía.’

  ‘That’s part of the thinking,’ Cámara explained. ‘We find Sofía as quickly as possible so that as the Pope’s here preaching anti-abortion the Policía arrive on a white horse saving the abortionist who’s now in the headlines.’

  ‘I get that,’ Alicia said. ‘Although it is a bit far-fetched for the police to cast themselves as heroes of democracy all of a sudden; they’ve hardly got a clean record themselves. What I mean, though, is why, if you’re a bunch of hard-line conservatives, would you kidnap Sof�
�a just as the Pope’s arriving? Doesn’t it just embarrass him?’

  Cámara shrugged.

  ‘Oh, come on. You’re not going to tell me the thought hadn’t crossed your mind.’

  Cámara stabbed a fork into the gammon.

  ‘This lacón is delicious.’

  ‘Or is it just because Maldonado’s in charge that you’re not taking the idea seriously.’

  ‘Here. Try some.’

  ‘You’re not going to answer me, are you?’

  ‘Listen,’ he said, dropping his fork on to the plate. ‘Right now it’s a united police force working tirelessly together to solve this as fast as we can. That’s the public image they want, that’s what it’s got to be for now. All right?’

  Alicia held up her hands in a defensive gesture.

  ‘OK. I get it.’

  She lifted one of the leeks on to her plate and started cutting into it. ‘Although it’s hardly that tireless if you’ve got time to have dinner with a journalist the night before you-know-who shows up.’

  ‘I’ve switched off my phone,’ Cámara said with a grin. ‘Besides…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Cámara drained the last of his gin and tonic and poured them both some wine.

  ‘You going to be doing any other stories while you’re over?’ he asked.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like, I don’t know, this whole El Cabanyal thing?’

  She pursed her lips.

  ‘That’s turning into a big story, a national story,’ she said. ‘It’s like we can’t believe that kind of old-fashioned, bulldoze-it-all development is still going on. Most people have realised we spoilt whole swathes of coastline by building as fast as we could, and that this needs to stop, but in Valencia there’s this old-style mentality insisting on razing anything old and characterful and replacing it with concrete blocks of flats.’

  ‘Creatures of habit.’

  ‘Bloody dinosaurs, you mean.’

  ‘Jobs for the boys?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. That’s part of it as well. You know Javier’s on the Valconsa board of directors?’

  ‘Gallego? Your ex?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘On the board of the construction company?’