A Death in Valencia

by Jason Webster

  Cámara stared absent-mindedly through the window.

  Hot damp sea air swamped him as he got off the bus. He darted across the road into the shade of a palm tree, using the cool of the air conditioning still clinging to him for a precious few seconds to get his thoughts together. The heat had intensified over the course of the morning, passing the crucial 37-degree mark when the air became hotter than blood.

  Why had Lucía lied about Sofía? Her house was a two-minute walk from where he stood; he could go there now and ask her directly. But coming here unexpectedly had moved some other piece inside his mind, and he decided to explore a different route first, to check on something he’d missed the first time.

  ‘So you’ve come back. I haven’t heard anything new, I’m afraid.’

  Mikel Roig was sitting behind his desk, talking on the phone, but he interrupted his conversation to beckon Cámara in. Fold-up metal chairs were arranged in rows, filling up the remainder of the large ground-floor room. At the far end a banner was scrawled with the slogan El Cabanyal, Sí–Especulación, No.

  Cámara remained on his feet. He could hear Roig trying to bring his phone conversation to a close, but the person at the other end kept talking. Roig rolled his eyes in a look of mock desperation at Cámara, before finally he was able to hit the hang-up button.

  ‘Admin stuff,’ he said with an apologetic sigh. ‘Takes up so much time.’

  ‘You’re having a meeting?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘Later this evening. We don’t usually hold them on a Friday, but we’ve heard there’s going to be another wave of bulldozing. Imminent.’

  ‘How many houses are they planning on knocking down?’

  ‘This time? I don’t know. There’s at least one building for certain, but they might come in and take half a dozen. You can never be sure.’

  ‘And in total? What’s the actual plan here?’

  ‘Over fifteen hundred houses have been marked for demolition,’ Roig said. ‘They pulled the first one down a couple of years ago. Just to show they could, you know. Some sort of power thing. It was a beautiful place. Had this magnificent wooden mirador looking out on to a hundred-year-old palm tree. Someone even used it as the location for a film years back, it was that special.’

  Roig pointed to a nearby chair.

  ‘Here, do you want a seat?’

  Cámara shook his head.

  ‘Have they knocked any more down since?’ he asked.

  ‘They took a couple of houses the week before last,’ Roig said. ‘The Municipales make a cordon round them, the demolition team comes in and they’re gone in a couple of hours.’

  ‘What about the residents?’

  ‘So far Valconsa are only pulling down what they’ve already bought on behalf of the Town Hall,’ Roig said.

  His phone rang again. He picked it up, looked who the caller was, then hit the reject button.

  ‘So how does it work?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘They could take the whole lot using the land expropriation laws,’ Roig said, putting the phone back on the desk. ‘They give them power enough.’

  Cámara had come across Valencia’s controversial land-grab laws, which gave the local government almost total powers to take whatever they wanted and even, in some cases, to force the owners they were depriving of their property to pay for part of the subsequent development costs. No one had been able to do much about it until a Scandinavian MEP with a holiday home on the Costa Blanca found himself having to fork out for the new dual carriageway running through what had once been his front garden. He took the case to Brussels, where officials forced the Valencian government to change the law. So the Valencian representatives went away, tweaked their legislation, gave it a new name, and carried on virtually as before.

  ‘The problem is, though,’ Roig continued, ‘that would mean having to give a set rate of compensation to the owners. And we’re talking about a lot of houses here; it would cost too much.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So they run the area down. They buy the houses they can, then let them out to Gypsies and immigrants. These people have no connection with El Cabanyal–they don’t care if this neighbourhood lives or dies. And they bring with them their own culture.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that in ten years El Cabanyal has gone from being a relatively quiet neighbourhood to becoming the city’s drug supermarket. I can tell you exactly where to go at exactly what time and who to talk to to get whatever drug you want. Soft, hard, anything.’

  There was nothing in Roig to suggest that he was some xenophobe or racist. This was not, Cámara could tell from the man’s demeanour and way of speaking, anything to do with a problem with skin colour. He was simply describing a reality, and the reality was that large sections of the Gypsy community were involved in the drug business. He’d known enough about it himself from when he’d been in narcotics, five years before. There had been indications the dealers were moving out of their usual haunts in Natzaret and La Coma back then. El Cabanyal had been one of the areas named as a new drug centre.

  ‘So the area gets run down,’ he said.

  ‘That’s it,’ Roig said. ‘Things start going downhill; dealers and junkies everywhere, people lighting bonfires in the middle of the street, a few skirmishes between rival gangs. No serious violence yet, but it’s enough to make people living here uncomfortable. Enough so that when Valconsa comes along offering to buy their property for next to nothing, they’re happy to sell.’

  ‘At a lower price than if they’d got compensation.’

  ‘You got it,’ Roig said with a resigned grin.

  ‘Aren’t these houses protected?’ Cámara asked. ‘This is like an open-air museum, with all this old tilework on the facades.’

  ‘Yes, they’re protected. But only until the Town Hall decides otherwise. Which, not surprisingly, they do on a regular basis.’

  Cámara got up and Roig went to join him at the door, stepping out into the street. The sun was intense and felt as though it were burning the skin off their backs.

  Cámara frowned at the death-threat graffiti that was still staining the front walls of the building.

  ‘It’s really nothing,’ Roig said. ‘We’ve had worse. The other day they smashed the windows and broke in. They didn’t take anything because there’s nothing to take.’ He laughed. ‘Of course we reported it, but the Municipales…’

  Cámara noticed a wooden board covering a hole in the window.

  ‘Who do you think it was?’

  ‘The Valconsa lot,’ Roig said.

  Cámara raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Trying to intimidate us, I suspect. Cuevas, the boss, used to be Guardia Civil. The company’s hand in glove with the Town Hall. They’ve even got the contract to build that big stage down in the river bed where the Pope’s saying Mass later on.’

  ‘Have you got anything that might show it was someone linked to Valconsa?’ Cámara asked.

  Roig shrugged.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But who else would it be?’

  Twenty-Two

  Cámara braced himself against the heat and set off, heading deeper into El Cabanyal. He glanced at the clock on his mobile phone: there was just enough time for him to check out something else.

  The public sports club was a ten-minute walk away, but in the glare of the sun it felt as though the pavement was sticking to his feet, clawing at him to stay and melt into the earth. Ignoring it as best he could, he zigzagged his way through the side streets, on to the main road.

  Eventually he found the large, deep-red brick building and crossed over to the gated entrance, passing a couple of open-air basketball courts before he found the shelter of the porch. The door was open and he stepped inside.

  A girl at the front desk pointed him in the direction of the trinquete–the pelota court–past the changing rooms and towards the back, taking up one whole side of the building.

  Cámara poked his head through the open door and looked out on to
a white rectangular chamber about ten metres wide and fifty metres long. A net, drooping in the middle, was slung at around head height, like some kind of afterthought. The steps along one side of the court indicated where the spectators sat, forming part of the actual playing area; if the ball fell among them they simply allowed it to bounce down through their feet back to where the players were standing and the game carried on.

  Cámara had seen pelota on local television often enough, the players dressed in white trousers, smacking the ball with ungloved hands from one end to the other. Usually there were two players on either side, but it could be played as a singles game as well; you often saw them with bandages wrapped around their hardened, swollen fingers. And it was mostly played in courts like this, although occasionally games took place in the street, the traditional location for pelota.

  He remembered chancing on a match one Sunday afternoon in a side street just around the corner from the flat. It was around midday, a couple of hours or so before lunch, and he was taking a stroll. Where had he been going? He couldn’t recall. It was as if all memories of his life there were seeping from his mind and getting lost.

  He stared out at the long empty court, an awareness of his homelessness striking him like a blow to the backs of the knees. He shut his eyes. It wasn’t that he forgot about it: the experience was burnt into him like the branding on an animal’s rump. But he distracted himself from it–with the investigation, a visit to the brothel, a chance dinner with Alicia. He’d thrown himself into that, he realised now, not just because of the emotion of seeing her again, but because it gave him another opportunity to block out the pressing issue of where he should live. Another night sorted, a hotel bed, perhaps with Alicia by his side.

  Except that it hadn’t turned out that way. Was she still in the city, or had she gone back to Madrid already? He imagined her somewhere in the centre of town, arranging to interview people, sitting in her flat with a laptop computer, writing out her notes. She might still be here, close by, close to him. Perhaps he could call her. A call he knew he would never make, but which briefly took form in his mind. Her voice on the other end of the line. Yes, I’d been thinking about you as well. I really enjoyed…

  He sat down on the steps at the side of the court. His fingers were already searching in his pocket for the plastic-wrapped ball of dope nestling in the heat of his groin. Absent-mindedly, he found a cigarette, pulled it to his mouth, licked it along the edge and then started to pull it apart, making sure the tobacco fell into the well in the palm of his hand. Then he unwrapped the skunk and placed a large pinch of it into the tobacco and started mixing them together with his fingertips, forming the dried leaves into a sausage shape. He placed a cigarette paper on top, flipped it over like a pancake, then rolled it into a joint, slipping in a piece of rolled cardboard torn from the cigarette packet to act as a makeshift filter.

  Pulling out a lighter, he flared the joint into life and inhaled deeply, glancing up with a frown to check for any smoke detectors. There were none, and with a nod of approval he noticed that large windows at the top of the court were open; no one would be able to tell someone had been smoking in here, he told himself.

  The skunk worked its way from his lungs into his blood. First a welcome chill as his blood pressure dropped, a slight sense of nausea which he did his best to ignore, and then the dizzying rush as he closed his eyes and the weight seemed to fall away from his body.

  It was enough.

  He stubbed the joint out on the back of the step while it was still only half-smoked. The damage was done, but there was still time to limit it.

  He got up and stepped back into the corridor. It was black in comparison to the brightness of the court, and he stumbled and swayed for a couple of seconds.

  Faces smiled and grimaced out at him from the walls. He stopped and looked. Photographs from previous pelota teams that had played here over the years. 1997. No, not that one. He shook his head, calling up wakefulness from somewhere as the reason for his coming here began to rise up and take hold, only to slip from his grasp.

  No. Further back. Other years.

  1983.

  He focused on a group of boys in their late teens, wearing the long-sleeved outfit of the pelota player, hair flowing down almost to their shoulders. The Socialists of Felipe González had already been in power for a year by then.

  But no. Further back.

  1979. The faces glared at him. No.

  1978. No.

  1977.

  There.

  A flash of red hair caught his drifting eye. He looked down at the name. Yes. Pep Roures was younger back then, but the future creator of so many well-appreciated paellas was recognisable, his features slimmer, his body longer, it seemed. Lucía had been telling the truth about that: he had played pelota here.

  He tried to look into the boy’s face. Was there some part of Roures back then that knew how he would die, as though his destiny had been programmed at birth? Would he, Cámara, be able to see it in his eyes through the lens of this thirty-year-old photograph?

  He saw nothing. Just the serious, self-conscious expression of a red-haired teenager, with thoughts of little more than girls and pelota.

  He turned away, but as he did so he knew at once he had to look again at the photo; there was something else there he needed to see.

  Roures was in a group of three other boys: two at the front and Roures with another boy at the back. He checked their faces but didn’t recognise any of them.

  He shook his head again. The dope was swelling inside him like the body of a rotting fish and he was struggling to register what his eyes were seeing.

  He glanced down at the names of the four boys typed on a white card underneath the photo. There was Roures’s name again, jumping out at him and blocking out the others. But he forced himself to read, first one, then another, then…

  Clarity hovered around him like a fly. He read the fourth name once, twice, then a third time before looking up at the face to whom it belonged.

  It had changed over the years, but yes, yes, he could see it now.

  It was the last person he expected to find.

  Twenty-Three

  The traffic had been cut off along Avenida Reino de Valencia and crowds were pressed tight in around the top of his street. Cámara nudged his way through as best he could. A fleet of police vans was parked up on the far side of the pavement, while members of the Policía Nacional had taken up positions at the front of the throng, holding people back from what might otherwise turn into a stampede. Over five thousand officers had been drafted in for the papal visit, many bussed over from other cities to make up the numbers. High over their heads two police helicopters flew in wide, slow circles, cameras trained on the heaving mass below.

  Yellow-and-white flags fluttered everywhere, clutched in little girls’ hands, used as a pin for one woman’s hair bun, waved high in the air by a group of smartly dressed teenagers, climbing a lamp post in their enthusiasm as they tried to catch a better glimpse.

  Across the street a Policía Local was angrily pulling porn magazines down from the display of a newsagent who’d defied the temporary ban on public images of naked people during the Pope’s stay in the city. The newsagent shouted back at the policeman, waving his own red, yellow and purple Republican flag in his face. A small act of defiance which would only serve to increase his chances of getting a fine.

  Cámara pushed his way through till he got to the corner of Vicent’s bar. Showing his badge, he was let through the cordon and into the inner group of dignitaries, security men and residents of the street who were allowed to be this much closer.

  The block of flats had fallen down so soon before his arrival that the Pope, or someone in his team, had decided it would be a good idea for him to make time in his schedule to come and visit the scene of the city’s recent tragedy. Not to have done so, Cámara pondered, would have looked bad, uncaring. So the Pope was about to show up, to say a few prayers and throw some drops of
magic water on a pile of rubble that had once been his home. And home to Susana and Tomás.

  This was the latent anarchist in him, he thought, years of being brought up by an active member of the once-banned CNT union. Hilario would be proud of him standing there, stoned and silently swearing at the Pope, so close to where the Bishop of Rome was about to appear. This was nothing more than public relations. So far nothing had been done in the wake of the building’s collapse four days earlier, no responsibility admitted, no charges brought for criminal negligence. Emilia posed for the photos but you didn’t see her actually talking to any of people affected by this, not even to Susana and Tomás’s relatives. The Pope’s hosts–the smiling officials forgetting for the moment while the television cameras were switched off that this was supposed to be a solemn occasion, and that frowns and tears were more appropriate–were happy to use the pageantry of his visit to cover up for the fact that no one was going down for what had happened.

  At the far end a sudden buzz of excitement was gripping the crowds; they were looking to the side, along the length of an adjacent street, cheering and stretching their necks to see. The Pope was pulling up in his Popemobile, complete with sixteen-vehicle entourage, and would soon be stepping out and walking towards them.

  A smaller group of people was standing next to the pile of rubble. Emilia Delgado was there, wearing a dark blue summer suit with large shoulder pads and gold nugget-like earrings. In her hand swung her patent leather handbag, brushing backwards and forwards over her knee as she stood waiting for the Pope to arrive and to welcome him to the site of the accident. She wasn’t happy doing this, he could tell. Far better to use the Pope’s visit to showcase all the recent advances in the city: the new museums, the America’s Cup port. Training the world’s cameras on this scene of destruction and ineptitude had not been part of the grand scheme. But there was no avoiding it.

  She looked at her watch a couple of times, double-checking on some detail of security with a man with sunglasses and a wire in his ear who was standing close by. Cámara didn’t recognise him; doubtless the Town Hall was mixing its own men in with those of the Policía Nacional. They’d be lucky if the two security bodies didn’t start shooting at each other.