Cold anger acted like a lens in his mind, his thinking sharp and decisive, a singularity about every movement he made – all geared towards one end.
The details of everything that had happened circled inside him, had become part of his being. He did not need to dwell on them – neither the burn marks puncturing Alicia’s flesh, nor Amy’s dissected corpse, nor the swollen, broken body of Oliva lying helpless and inert in a hospital bed. His own body shrieked from the pummelling he had received, but he could ignore the worst of it.
Poised like a cat, he was about to pounce, to reach out his claws and catch the person who was really responsible.
The slush fund had bought favours and loyalties, had corrupted a whole stratum of Valencian society. The LOP had received some of the funds – that much was clear. It was why they had gone to such lengths to silence those who were about to reveal the secret. Murdering Amy and Oliva had not been enough, however. The affair was already messy and out of control. The very methods they used to keep tabs on Amy and her articles were also a weakness – the information itself might not have leaked out, but clues as to what she was involved in had reached her online networks. All it had taken was for Alicia to start chatting to the right people and the dots began to be joined up.
First the link between Amy and Oliva’s deaths: the murders had been carried out simultaneously by members of the same group – by Julio, Gonzalo, José Antonio and other LOP thugs answering to party leader Francisco Soler. Those who had not been at the bunker would have scattered, but there would be time to find them later. They were not the important ones: they were actors playing parts handed down to them. Others had been in command.
Soler, certainly. And he would have been in contact with Felicidad Galván, who ran the slush fund. But even she was not in complete control. She too, as Oliva said in his letter to Sonia, was under orders from someone else.
Their investigations had been compromised from the beginning: talk of a competition between the two had been a smokescreen. They were never meant to solve the cases properly in the first place.
Yet the slush fund in itself was not the major crime. Political favours had been commodities on an open market since the beginning of time, accepted as part of the political landscape. Voters seldom cared about such things: they expected their rulers to be corrupt – up to a point.
No, the real scandal was where the money had come from. The slush fund was not created from donations by party supporters or big business, but built on cash destined for medical care – hospitals where now, through a lack of drugs and doctors to treat them, people were dying. There was no way to cover over the shortfalls: theft on such a grand scale was having a real and direct effect. They might as well have stormed into clinics and stolen machines and pills directly from the doctors and nurses. The result was the same: dead patients.
Whoever was behind the scheme was a murderer, with the blood of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people on their hands. The blood of his grandfather. The blood of Hilario.
Forgiveness was not part of his plan.
There were no parking spaces available, so Torres pulled in behind a car at the crossroads just a few doors down.
‘It’s further away than I would like,’ he said, ‘but at least I can cover the entrance.’
‘Look at the padlock at the bottom of the shutters,’ said Cámara. ‘It’s open. Julio will already be inside.’
‘Hasn’t turned the lights on. Clever boy.’
‘Wait here. I’ll switch my phone to silent, but text me when you see something.’
Cámara got out of the car, checked that his pistol was loaded, and walked along the pavement, stepping quickly Through the pools of street lighting to the next. Pascual was inside the entrance hall of his building, sweeping up at the end of another day. Cámara tapped very lightly on the glass and caught his attention. Raising a finger to his lips, he slipped inside and closed the door before Pascual could say anything.
‘Come with me,’ he said in a low voice, placing a hand on the doorman’s elbow.
Pascual saw his bloody face and clothes and heard the urgency in his voice, and responded immediately. They hurried to the back of the building and the doorway that led to the patio. Cámara explained as simply as he could what was going on.
‘And you don’t want me to do anything?’ the old man asked. His blood was up at the thought of something so dramatic happening.
‘Just stay here, out of sight,’ said Cámara. ‘It’s crucial that no one sees you from outside.’
‘It’s quiet at this time,’ Pascual said. ‘Midweek. Everyone’s in bed. We expecting someone, then?’
‘Yes.’
Cámara stepped through into the patio. The ladder was still there from the other day, propped up against the side wall. He lowered his voice to a whisper.
‘You can’t be seen or heard. But I want you to stay close, just in case.’
Pascual gave him a thumbs-up. His pulse had not raced so much in decades.
Cámara gripped the ladder with both hands and started climbing, silently praising Pascual for having a wooden one rather than the cheap and creaky aluminium kind. He reached the top of the wall and paused, listening and watching for any signs of movement inside the gym. The lights were still off, but he was certain that Julio was in there, hiding, frightened and waiting for his saviour to come. Without Soler he was lost and had only one recourse – to go directly to the very top.
Cámara could not stay on the ladder waiting for something to happen. By the time he got over and down it would almost certainly be too late. There was no alternative but to drop into the patio at the back of the gym as quietly as possible.
He pulled himself up on to the wall and then carefully he slipped his legs over and let his weight slide down the other side, hanging on at the top with his fingers. When he had reached full stretch, he let go.
He dropped a metre and a half and as his feet took the impact, he bent his knees to absorb the fall and rolled backwards on to his haunches, doing a full somersault until he was upright again. He whipped out his pistol and listened. His heart pounded and his damaged ribs screamed. Had anyone heard him?
He waited until he was certain that his presence had not been detected and then began to pace slowly towards the gym, treading silently on the sides of his feet and rolling them with each step. When he reached the door he stopped. The glass was still smashed from his last visit and the shards lay on the floor untouched – either no one had been back here in the meantime, or they had not noticed. He should be able to open it easily when the time came.
He crouched down and waited. From inside he could hear footsteps, the sound of a man sighing, and the click and slide of a gun action being tested. A foolish exercise in the dark, but Julio was anxious and needed something to occupy his hands.
Cámara dug his fingers into his pocket and fished out his phone, placing it near his feet to catch any text messages from Torres. So far none had come through. An intense aching was beginning to spread around his back and down into his thighs. It was hard to keep still for so long and the painkilling adrenalin was subsiding. He longed for a cigarette, but the thought brought a flash of the burn marks on Alicia’s skin and he closed his eyes, willing the vision away. He did not know if he would ever be able to smoke again.
The phone shuddered gently at his feet and the screen lit up.
He’s here.
Cámara picked up his phone, switched on the voice recorder and pocketed it again. Then he pulled out his pistol and waited. From the front of the gym he heard the sound of the shutter being lifted halfway up and then closed down again. Footsteps closed in, bringing the new person towards the back of the gym. Still waiting, Julio coughed.
‘Is that you?’
‘You made it then.’
‘Course I fucking made it. But do you have any idea how dangerous it is for me to come here?’
Julio mumbled something unintelligible.
‘I mean, here of all
places?’
‘I didn’t know where else to go,’ Julio said apologetically.
‘And just what the fuck is going on? Where’s Soler?’
‘Police.’
‘What?’
‘That detective you told us about. He found us.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know, but he just turned up. We had his girlfriend, the journo woman you mentioned.’
‘Is she still alive?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. And Cámara?’
‘Yes.’
There was a silence.
‘You have got to be kidding me. I gave one simple order and you fucked it all up.’
‘There were others. We had it covered but then others showed up.’
‘Other what?’
‘I don’t know. Police, I think.’
‘Impossible. I had that sorted.’
‘He had help. They came. Took us by surprise. Shot Gonzalo. I think he’s dead. And they got Soler and José Antonio.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘I don’t know. I got away. Came here. I don’t know anything that’s going on.’
‘You fucking stupid idiot. You’re like a bunch of fucking monkeys. I pay you to work for me, to do a job and you fuck it up completely.’
‘But you can fix it, surely. You always have in the past.’
‘Fix it?’
There was a pause. Cámara could hear Julio panting.
‘Yeah,’ came the voice. ‘I can probably fix it. There’s a lot of shit to sort out first, though.’
More footsteps.
‘Where exactly are you? I can hardly see anything in here.’
‘I’m here,’ said Julio.
‘Walk towards me.’
Julio stepped across the gym.
‘Right, there you are. That should do.’
‘What do we do now?’ asked Julio. ‘Tell me. I’m freaking out here.’
‘You still got a gun?’
‘Yeah.’
‘With the silencer?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Give it to me.’
Silence.
‘Thanks.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Julio. You were all right. Just out of your depth.’
‘What are you going to do? Wait.’
There was a single shot, high-pitched and short, like a muffled firecracker, and then a heavy slumping sound on the ground.
Still holding his pistol Cámara leapt up and threw himself at the door. Glass scattered over the floor as he pushed his way inside.
‘Stop!’ he cried. ‘Stop!
Two more shots were fired. He dived to the ground and lifted his head. The place was still dark, but thanks to his opening the door a glimmer of light was now streaming in from the back patio. He saw a shadow dart across the open space of the gym, making its way towards the front shutters. Leaping to his feet, Cámara reached up to the wall and felt with his fingers till he found a light switch.
After a stutter, the neon strip lights illuminated the entire area.
Julio’s body lay by a bench, a single hole in the front of his face and blood pouring from the back of his head.
And standing at the front of the gym, holding a gun with one hand and furiously trying to open the shutters with the other, was Javier Flores.
Cámara fired once and the bullet hit the shutters, just to the left of Flores’s head. Flores ducked and reached down with both hands to pull up the shutters and make his escape.
The second bullet hit him in the hip, and he fell to the ground, screaming. Cámara held his pistol in both hands and walked up to him slowly, aiming at Flores’s head.
‘This,’ Cámara said, ‘is for everything.’
FORTY
IT WAS LATE but lights were still lit on the top floor. Cámara identified himself at the main entrance and took the lift up. The place looked clean and undamaged: it seemed that, despite his best efforts, the demonstrators had not found a way into the bankers’ castle. A head-on assault by an angry mob was not always the best way to break a corrupt institution, but there were alternatives.
A passing secretary, carrying a tray of coffee cups and clearly disgruntled at having to stay so late, confirmed what he suspected and pointed him in the right direction. The lush and exotic pot plants on either side of the corridor softened the sound of his footsteps.
Felicidad Galván was on her own, sitting at her desk with hundreds of papers in neatly stacked towers in front of her. He walked in and she looked up over small, gold-rimmed reading glasses, her face expressionless, almost as though she had expected him.
‘The policeman from the other day. Forgive me if I don’t stand up,’ she said.
Cámara walked to the other side of the desk and was going to sit down when he changed his mind, picked up the chair and carried it round to Felicidad’s side. As he eased himself down she stared at him, confused.
‘I’m assuming you’re going to explain yourself at some point.’
Cámara glanced at the papers in front of her and saw handwritten documents with lists of names and numbers.
‘Javier Flores has confessed,’ he said.
Her eyes widened and a tense smile rippled across her thin mouth.
‘Javier Flores?’
‘He told us everything. About the slush fund, how it operated, where the money came from.’
She blinked.
‘How you were running it,’ said Cámara.
Her jaws tightened as she tried to conceal her reaction. For a moment Cámara got the impression that she was going to resist.
‘I’ve just come from seeing Flores now,’ he said.
Dried blood still clung to his shirt, his face was pale from the pain in his ribs and back. He wanted a shower and to sleep for days. But first he had to do this.
‘It looks like you had a rough time of it,’ said Felicidad.
‘I also came across some members of the LOP,’ Cámara said. ‘The Legionaries of Order and Progress. I think you know them. The leader, Francisco Soler, has been arrested. He has some interesting things to say as well.’
She took off her glasses and placed them on the desk.
‘Is that why you’ve come? To arrest me?’
‘That depends on you.’
She shuffled in her chair and picked up one of the documents, pondering it for a moment.
‘Do you know what this is?’ she asked. ‘It’s one of the many thousands of documents I’ve been keeping over the past ten years.’
She glanced back at him.
‘All handwritten, no copies made. No one else knows they even exist. Not even Diego Oliva. And he knew a lot of things. Too many things.’
‘Is that why you look at them late at night, all on your own?’
She smiled.
‘Yes, probably. All on my own. You make it sound like a death sentence. Is that it? Am I on my own?’
She shook her head, more resigned than defiant.
‘Perhaps I can still buy some friends. I’ve done it before. With a different sort of currency, of course.’
‘You mean those documents?’
‘Yes, these documents. You’ve probably guessed what they’re about.’
‘Is it all there?’
‘Everything. Every cent we received, where it came from, and where it went.’
‘And who ordered it to be spent where.’
She paused.
‘I suppose that’s the most important thing, is it? The puppetmaster behind it all. But yes, you’re right. That’s here as well. JF. I’ve used his initials throughout, but there’s no doubting who it refers to.’
The solitary siren of a police car screamed down the road several storeys below, very slowly diminishing as it sped past and continued its journey across the city.
‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘In the daytime, with all the background noise, it’s as though you can’t hear an
ything up here. We’re isolated from the rest of the world, lost in our little tower, removed and yet here, in the heart of things, moving our pieces, playing our grand games. And it’s just that we’re deafened by so much noise. So it’s only at night, when everything is silent, that you can really hear. And understand.’
‘Did you think the police car was coming for you?’
She frowned.
‘Yes. For a moment I did.’
‘But to help you or to take you away?’
She squinted at him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know that Chief Inspector Maldonado has been tipping Flores off,’ Cámara said. ‘We’ve known for years. He is so transparent, despite his best efforts not to be.’
For a moment, Felicidad was silent, then slowly she began to nod.
‘You almost sound fond of him,’ she said.
‘It’s not quite the word I would use.’
‘No, perhaps not.’
‘How involved was he?’
‘Are you asking me questions now?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Why should I answer you? Am I being arrested? But if so, where are the handcuffs, the investigating judge, the other policemen who would surely be here? Not just a single chief inspector acting alone in the middle of the night.’
‘I shot Flores,’ he said.
She gasped.
‘That’s why I’m covered in blood. One of the reasons.’
‘Is . . . Is he . . .?’
‘Did you know Julio? One of the LOP men.’
‘I . . .’
‘Flores had just murdered him, put a bullet through his head. From point-blank range. Hard to miss, although admittedly it was in the dark.’
Felicidad could not speak.
‘That’s when I found him, with the gun in his hand and Julio’s shattered skull on the floor. So I shot him.’
‘You . . .’
Cámara spotted a glass of water on the desk. He leaned over and passed it to Felicidad.
‘So you see, this is no longer a political game. We’re not talking about people wriggling away by claiming they can’t remember anything, or simply denying taking kickbacks. You know, the usual way these cases end up, taking years in the courts and the guilty always walking free in the end, paying off the right people.’
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