A Death in Valencia

by Jason Webster

  Maldonado leaned in on the table separating him from Ballester and bawled into his face.

  ‘What the fuck almighty were you thinking?’

  Ballester averted his eyes.

  ‘What did you think? That by strolling up to the Pope and landing him one you’d somehow bring your girlfriend back?’

  ‘They banned the anti-Pope rally,’ Ballester said softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Emilia. She banned the rally against the Pope. We were supposed to march—’

  ‘What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?’ Maldonado screamed. ‘You couldn’t stage a demonstration, so you went and took your anger out on the fucking Pope himself? What was he supposed to do? Talk to Emilia on your behalf? Get her to change her mind?’

  Ballester closed his eyes.

  ‘Or did you think you’d just stage your own one-man rally instead? Make a stand for democracy by taking a swipe at the Holy Father in front of millions of people watching on TV.’

  ‘That wasn’t my idea,’ Ballester mumbled.

  ‘What? That wasn’t your idea. Well, thanks very fucking much. But please do enlighten us, I mean, what the fuck was your idea? Hey! Did you even have one?’

  Maldonado pulled himself away from the table and placed his hand over his eyes in a gesture of frustration.

  ‘Me cago en la madre que le parió,’ he grunted. I shit on the mother who gave birth to him.

  ‘Do you realise the amount of crap you’ve just thrown at us? You’ve fucked everything up. Trying to save Sofía? Well, you’ve done that cause a lot of fucking good. How do you think her kidnappers are going to react to seeing her boyfriend assaulting the Pope? Do you think it’s going to help? Huh? Do you? Really? Did you even stop to think about the consequences of what you were doing?’

  Ballester hung his head in his hands.

  ‘We’re here sweating blood trying to get her back to you alive.’

  Maldonado looked up at Cámara.

  ‘Well, most of us are,’ he muttered to himself. ‘And then you come along,’ he continued more loudly, ‘and screw everything up.’

  ‘It’s all his fault!’ Ballester shouted, looking up from his seat.

  ‘What?’ Maldonado screwed his face into a sneer. ‘Whose fault?’

  ‘The Pope’s,’ Ballester choked. ‘The Pope and all those sycophantic bastards that surround him, inflaming people against us, against Sofía and people like us, and gays, and whatever. It’s all just hate spewing from their mouths. Have you heard them?’

  Maldonado gave a cry of mocking disbelief.

  ‘It’s the Pope’s fault, you say? The Pope what done it?’

  ‘Not the Pope himself,’ Ballester said. ‘I didn’t say that. But the people who believe in him. They all listen to him, and his talk of the family and having to save it, and that it’s under threat. He spurs them on, makes them do things.’

  ‘Incites them,’ Cámara said from behind the chair.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ballester said, looking round. ‘Incites them.’

  ‘So, what? He’s your fucking lawyer as well as your saviour now?’ Maldonado said. ‘Telling you what to say?’

  From his corner, Pardo scraped his foot on the floor as he lifted it to scratch his ankle. A wordless message to Maldonado–keep it on track.

  Maldonado sat down in the chair in front of Ballester and put his fingers to his lips. The blotches on his face, old acne scars which were scarcely visible normally, were beginning to redden. Cámara had only ever seen him like this once before, when years back they’d ended up in a fight. At least, Cámara had punched him in the chest and Maldonado had ended up on the floor. Some squabble over a pay review. Or that’s what he told people. It hadn’t really warranted the word ‘fight’.

  ‘So what happens now?’ Ballester asked after a pause.

  ‘What happens now? Maldonado asked.

  ‘Are you going to repeat everything I say?’ Ballester said, a rush of confidence seeming to come over him.

  Maldonado leaned over and pressed his finger hard into Ballester’s throat.

  ‘Don’t start getting chulo with me. None of that cockiness. You’re in serious fucking trouble.’

  Pardo took a step towards the table. Maldonado withdrew his hand.

  ‘You’ll be charged with assault,’ Pardo said. ‘That’s basic enough. How bad it’s going to be for you depends on how far you cooperate with us now in trying to find Sofía.’

  Ballester shook his head.

  ‘Finding Sofía? I don’t understand. All I’ve ever wanted to do was to find Sofía.’

  ‘Right,’ Maldonado said. ‘And a fat lot of good it’s done us so far. The kidnappers have sent a message to the newspaper in the past half-hour.’

  Cámara shifted in his spot. He hadn’t heard anything of the kind. This was a bluff, he felt sure.

  ‘They’re not happy about what you did. Pretty fucking pissed off. They’ve given a deadline. If the government doesn’t repeal the abortion law by tomorrow Sofía’s dead.’

  Ballester covered his face with his hands and started to shake.

  ‘What do I have to do?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Firstly, you’re staying here. You’re not going anywhere. On bail or in any other form,’ Maldonado said.

  ‘Secondly, you agree to do everything we tell you. If we need to feed you to this lot to get Sofía back, we’ll do it. And you’ll go along with it.’

  Ballester placed his hands down on his knees and nodded, as though agreeing to his own death sentence.

  ‘We’ll also need you to agree to a statement we’re preparing,’ Pardo said. ‘The grief of losing Sofía has pushed you off balance. You aren’t quite all there at the moment.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m loco?’

  ‘Some would say trying to lash out at the Pope is proof enough. And we’ve got a police psychologist who’ll agree.’

  ‘It’s about limiting the damage you’ve already caused,’ Maldonado said. ‘If you ever want to see Sofía again, this is how it’s going to be.’

  But it was unnecessary to press the point further: Ballester was already broken. He wouldn’t be arguing any more.

  He nodded his agreement and Maldonado got up to leave. Outside, the corridor was quickly emptying, the onlookers realising that the show had ended. As Pardo opened the door, Cámara caught a glimpse of Torres’s black beard by the noticeboard.

  Ballester looked up at him.

  ‘One quick question,’ Cámara said as he glanced at the doorway, and the exiting form of Maldonado. Pardo looked round, saw that Cámara was talking to Ballester, and quickly ushered Maldonado out, closing the door behind them.

  ‘Before the kidnapping, about six weeks ago, you and Sofía went to La Mar restaurant in El Cabanyal, right?’

  Ballester shook his head.

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Think, man. This is important. It was a Saturday, in May. Sofía and you went for paella at a place not far from the beach.’

  Ballester paused, then started to nod, gripping his forehead with his hand as he did so.

  ‘Yeah. Hang on. Yeah, I remember now. The paella place.’

  He looked up.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Did either you or Sofía speak to the owner at all while you were there? A red-haired guy called Pep Roures.’

  Through the small reinforced window in the door, Cámara saw that Maldonado was trying to see what was going on back inside the interrogation room, while Pardo did his best to distract his attention.

  ‘Come on!’ Cámara grunted.

  ‘I remember a red-haired guy. Yeah, the one who served us. Is it his restaurant then?’

  ‘Yes, look, did you speak to him?’

  Ballester was still dazed from everything that had happened and was struggling to think straight.

  ‘No, I didn’t speak to him. Except to give the order, I suppose.’

  ‘What about Sofía?’ Cámara s
aid urgently. He could hear the doorknob rattling as Maldonado tried to get back inside.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ballester said. ‘Wait. Yes, I remember now. She went up to pay at the counter. I remember because I was in a hurry to go home and watch the practice for the Grand Prix, and she was taking her time. She was talking to the bloke with the red hair. Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?’

  ‘What did they say?’ Cámara asked. ‘What did they say?’

  The door was already opening in on them.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ballester said. ‘She didn’t tell me.’

  The door opened and Maldonado walked in, the blotches on his cheeks now bright crimson.

  ‘Barely said a word for the rest of the afternoon,’ Ballester said to himself, ‘now I think about it.’

  Cámara stepped into his office, seeking solitude and a moment to think. There was somewhere else he needed to go, someone he needed to talk to, but for a minute or two at least he could stand here, undisturbed.

  He had almost lost control earlier on, he could see that now; almost strangled Ballester as he’d pulled him away. That was why the security men had allowed him to take over: not because he was a policeman or had more authority than they did, but because there was a more intense aggression in him that they responded to instinctively, and respected.

  It had only been for a second, but it had been enough, and Ballester was still ruffled by it.

  Getting stoned on duty: he couldn’t remember doing anything so idiotic.

  The skunk was buried deep in his pocket. He lifted it out, crushed it in his hand and dropped it in a grey plastic bin at the side of his desk.

  That was it. No more.

  He’d seen enough of himself, enough of what he was in danger of becoming.

  Twenty-Six

  The Pope was deemed to be shaken, but unharmed, and it was agreed that his schedule should continue unchanged. After celebrating Mass and visiting the scene of the collapsed block of flats, he had a late lunch and a lie-down at the archbishop’s palace next to the cathedral before being driven through the city streets once again in the Popemobile to the old river bed, where a vast stage had been erected for him to preach to a crowd numbering hundreds of thousands, all sizzling in the intense afternoon sun.

  The bridges and avenues leading up to the venue were closed to traffic and lined with police vans back to back, while the helicopters were in the air again. All taxi and bus services in the city centre had been stopped, as had the metro line where it coincided with the papal route, in case of underground bombs. As he strolled in the shade of the pine trees, Cámara could sense, rather than see, the marksmen crouching on the rooftops. His old friend Beltrán, the best shooter in the force and the man who had saved his life only a year before, had mentioned being roped in for security duty. Back in the Jefatura, staff levels were below the supposed minimum, while the other police stations around the city were standing practically empty. After the incident with Ballester, no chances were being taken, and only Maldonado and his immediate team were spared from ‘Pope duty’.

  Already the voices of dissent were making themselves heard: 15 million euros had been spent on security and they still hadn’t prevented that morning’s attack. Far better to use the money on hospitals or schools than on some old man who couldn’t be trusted to look after himself. Around the city, people protesting at the Pope’s visit were leaning out of their windows and banging pots and pans as loudly as they could.

  Others more commercially minded, meanwhile, were happily using his trip to make some extra money: flats with balconies near where the Pope was going to speak were being rented out for the day, and wealthier members of the faithful were paying up to 18,000 euros to watch, a safe distance from their sweaty, less affluent fellow believers below.

  Coming out from the shade of the trees, Cámara walked past a kilometre-long line of grey plastic portable toilets before crossing a bridge and descending into the old river bed itself, once the home of the unpredictable waters of the Turia and now an arch of parkland around the city centre. Wending his way through the multitude, almost all wearing yellow-and-white caps and sipping bottles of water handed out for free by Town Hall and Church volunteers, he used his police badge to cross the various checkpoints designed not only to protect the Pope, but to separate the audience into categories of ‘ordinary’, ‘special’ and ‘very special’. Cámara was looking for the ‘very special’ section.

  He was pointed in the direction of an area cordoned off close to the main platform, which had been constructed on top of a bridge crossing the old river bed. Next to it, a temporary white cross, thirty-five metres high, towered above them. The Pope himself had yet to arrive, but all seats were taken and proceedings were about to begin. Cámara climbed up an incline to arrive at a gateway manned by two Policías Nacionales. Cámara didn’t have an invitation, and the timing was strange. But he outranked them.

  José Manuel Cuevas was sitting at the end of the third row, wearing a dark suit with a white shirt and a black-and-ochre striped tie. A silver pin in his jacket lapel seemed to denote membership of some fraternity–religious, probably–but Cámara couldn’t make out the detail. His short greying hair was slightly out of place owing to a moderate breeze that was mercifully blowing in from the sea. Unlike most of the others present, with their fixed smiles of anticipation, he had a more pinched expression, his lips tight, his eyes reflecting something more like anxiety than joy.

  Sitting next to him, in a grey suit, his skin tanned to a deep bronze and his hair dyed black, was Javier Gallego, the editor of El Diario de Valencia.

  Cuevas looked suspiciously at Cámara’s badge as he introduced himself.

  ‘You want to talk to me now?’ he said.

  On his other side, Gallego took a while to notice that something was going on, but then turned his attention on Cámara, looking at him as though trying to remember who he was.

  ‘This is important,’ Cámara said. ‘I’m conducting a murder investigation.’

  Cuevas sat immobile; Gallego indicated the still-empty papal platform in front.

  ‘Pero, hombre,’ he said. ‘This can wait. We’re here to see the Pope.’

  ‘I’m investigating the murder of Pep Roures,’ Cámara insisted. ‘He used to own the La Mar restaurant.’

  Cuevas looked ahead, ignoring him.

  ‘In El Cabanyal.’

  ‘If this is something to do with the El Cabanyal project,’ he said with a sigh, ‘then you’d better talk to my aides. We do these things through the usual channels, not by charging up to someone on a day like this. I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

  But Cámara didn’t budge.

  ‘Valconsa is responsible for the bulldozing of the El Cabanyal area,’ he said.

  ‘Very good, er, Chief Inspector. Didn’t you hear me the first time?’

  Gallego was still staring at Cámara as he dipped a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a mobile phone.

  ‘I’m calling your superiors,’ he said. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Cámara. Chief Inspector Maximiliano Cámara, of the Grupo de Homicidios.’

  Cuevas turned around, as though looking for someone he might call over to eject the intruder. But the policemen were smart enough to have their backs to what was going on. Disturbed glances from the others sitting in the VIP area were equally unsympathetic.

  ‘Valconsa,’ Cámara continued, ‘was also responsible for building the block of flats that collapsed the other day in the Ruzafa area.’

  ‘What?’ Cuevas spluttered. ‘You’re talking to me about some place that was built, what? Fifty years ago?’

  ‘Fifty-seven years ago,’ Cámara said. ‘By your company.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Cuevas said. ‘Would you mind getting to the point. Look, the Pope’s meant to be arriving any minute.’

  Beyond him, Gallego was holding his phone but had yet to dial a number.

  Cámara pulled out a clipping fr
om the newspaper showing photos of a young woman and a little baby boy.

  ‘These people were killed when your building fell on top of them,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Cuevas said. ‘It…yes, sad business. Very sad.’

  ‘They were my neighbours.’

  Cuevas’s eyebrows twitched, and he looked back towards the empty stage. Next to him, Gallego gave an awkward cough.

  ‘Look, what is this?’ he said. ‘You said this was a police matter.’

  ‘It is a police matter,’ Cámara said. ‘We’re looking to see if there’s scope for an investigation into criminal negligence. Señor Cuevas may be responsible for the deaths of these two people.’

  ‘Me?’ Cuevas said. He stood up and tried to push Cámara away. ‘Me responsible? You’d better have a bloody good reason for coming down here right now and throwing allegations like that around, or I warn you—’

  ‘Valconsa was also the company contracted to carry out sewerage work on this building shortly after it was built,’ Cámara said. ‘Work that it got paid for by the Town Hall, but never carried out.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘The fact that our building wasn’t connected to the drains wasn’t discovered until a few weeks ago, thanks to the work on the new metro line,’ Cámara continued. ‘For all these years our drain water has been seeping into the ground underneath the building.’

  ‘So it’s a problem with your drains now?’ Cuevas said. ‘Call a fucking plumber.’

  Around them, no one was saying a word. All eyes were fixed on the two men arguing while priests scrambled around the edge of the stage in preparation for the Pope’s arrival. On the other side of Cuevas, Gallego was also standing up to join in. To the side, the two policemen were watching from the corners of their eyes but maintaining a distance.

  ‘Over fifty years of waste water sitting under the building,’ Cámara went on. ‘Do you know what that does to the foundations, Señor Cuevas? I imagine you do, because you’re in construction. It’s not very good, believe me,’ he said. ‘The building starts to rot. Damp in the walls. Cracks start appearing. And then, one day, all of a sudden, it falls down, collapses like a sandcastle being kicked by a dog.’