Or the Bull Kills You (18 page)

At the other side of the photo the figure of his sister drew his attention, as it always did: she looked so happy, so cheerful, her long chestnut hair falling over her shoulders and young breasts. Had it been those fresh new curves that had caught her killer's eye in the first place? Cámara looked away and concentrated on his food.

‘Heading back to Valencia later?'

Cámara put his fork down and leaned over to put his hand on Hilario's arm.

‘Just a flying visit. I needed to come up anyway.'

‘This Blanco business, is it?' Hilario said, not expecting an answer. ‘He was the best; I'm sure they've told you that.'

‘Several times.'

‘Course,' Hilario said, watching Cámara closely, ‘I should never have taken you that time, when you were a kid. If I hadn't you'd probably know all about Blanco already, be an aficionado. Perhaps even a bullfighter yourself. But it put you off bullfighting for life, that did. Instead you've been landed with working out who murdered him. And we're not talking about a bull, neither. If I believed in a God – and I don't, let's make that clear – but if I did I'd say that right now he's having a bloody good laugh.'

They both smiled.

‘Sure you can't stay for a quick smoke? You know I don't like doing it on my own these days. It's a lovely crop this year. I get the giggles just walking into the drying room from the smell of it.'

It had long been a mystery to Cámara how the severe Pilar, whose word was final on most things in the household, had ever managed to let this one crime of theirs pass without comment or reproach. For a while he suspected she simply didn't know what it was and had decided it was nothing but a harmless hobby of his grandfather's. Until one day, when he'd asked, Hilario explained that he'd caught their black-robed saint short-changing him on the grocery money.

‘She had nothing on me after that. She was either out on her own, a lonely widow, or stay here and shut up. She chose to stay, not surprisingly. At which point I decided to try my hand at becoming a drug baron. I have to water them myself, of course. She won't go near them – thinks she might catch something if she did. But I know she'll never say anything to anyone.'

Cámara finished his lunch in silence, his mind wandering over details of the case, circling and probing Margarita de la Fuente's theory about there being more than one murderer. Instinctively he'd known all along – had done so since the morning they'd found Ruiz Pastor's body at the
barraca
. Now Margarita's comments seemed to confirm a previously unworded suspicion. From now on he'd work on that assumption, but would keep it to himself at least for the next day or so. Nothing would make things worse with Pardo than to tell him they might be looking at two killers rather than one. The obvious question to ask, though, was whether they were linked. Had someone held a grudge against Ruiz Pastor and then decided that this was the perfect time to murder him while making it appear that Blanco's killer was responsible? Or were the two actually working together? If so, why kill Ruiz Pastor as well and go to the trouble of making the two murders appear to have been committed by the same person?

Hilario got up from the table and wandered off down the corridor then returned a few moments later with half a dozen semi-transparent plastic bags filled with dry green leaves.

‘Here,' he said, placing them on the table next to Cámara's empty plate. ‘You going to the cemetery?'

Cámara shook his head. ‘Not this time.' He could never make it for the first of November, the day when traditionally people tended the graves of their dead, and so he would pop over whenever he could, on the odd times when he jumped in the Seat and drove up to his home town. The flowers where his sister lay at least were changed once, sometimes twice a year. Those of his parents less often.

He picked up the plastic bags and got up to leave. Hilario walked with him to the door. It was a short visit, but it was worth popping round, just to see how the old man was doing, Cámara told himself. Sometimes they didn't need to talk too much: just being in the same space was enough.

‘It's got to you,' Hilario said as Cámara opened the door and stepped out back into the stairwell.

‘What has?' Cámara looked down at the marihuana he was clutching in his hand. The light was poor where they stood, but he caught a glimpse of his knuckles gleaming white where he gripped hard. He wondered for a moment about telling him about being infertile. This particular Cámara line, at least, would soon be dying out.

‘This Blanco business,' Hilario said. ‘I can tell. Something about this is bothering you. Are you getting enough?'

Cámara sighed. As ever, his grandfather's solution to most problems was a full and active sex life.

‘That Almudena'll be giving you problems again, I'll bet.
Es una rosa pero pincha como un cardo
– She's as sweet as a rose but as prickly as a thistle.'

Cámara turned and went to switch on the stair light before heading back down into the street.

‘You'll come through it,' Hilario called after him. ‘You always did.'

The road out of Albacete headed south for a mile or two before arriving at a junction. Cámara reached the roundabout and stared for a moment at the large blue-and-white sign pointing the way east back down to Valencia. Ahead of him an old trunk road passed through a dusty industrial estate before breaking out into the open countryside and the hills of the Sierra Alcaraz in the far distance, smothered that afternoon by a heavy haze. He checked his watch: if he drove fast he could be back in the Jefatura by half past five, leaving plenty of time to go over Huerta's notes. Some thought was struggling at the back of his mind: a worry or concern he had managed to forget about for a while, yet an echo of it remained. What had that been about?

The lights of the car behind flashed in his rear-view mirror and he heard a horn blast: he was holding everyone up. He pushed a CD of Camarón de la Isla into the stereo, slammed the car into gear and pressed down on the accelerator, carrying on straight and ignoring the slip road heading down to the Valencia motorway. There was a place up in those hills he needed to see.

He found the village easily. In these underpopulated parts of the country it was difficult to get lost, with so few roads and a small town dotted only every ten or fifteen miles. The rest was a wash of green and yellow, stunted oak trees dotted over the hillsides, with an occasional flash of brilliant black as a small group of bulls came briefly into view only to disappear again as the gritty, unpainted road curved away. Cámara slowed to a virtual standstill as he cruised through the one street looking for signs of life. The houses were mostly old and small, the contours of their stone exteriors softened by centuries of annual whitewashing. A bar stood at the side, its presence signalled by a Coca-Cola sign in incongruous red hanging over its front door. But the iron gateway was firmly closed: the owner wasn't expecting any customers at that time of day.

He knew that the farm was another couple of miles beyond the village. Not spying anyone in the street, he slowly pressed on the accelerator and began to pick up speed. There was a risk that he might catch people during their siesta if he arrived now, but he wasn't prepared to hang around until a more sociable hour.

A small house was set back slightly from the road on the outskirts of the village. As he drew nearer he caught sight of a figure in black pouring a bucket of water out over the flagstones by the front door. He braked and brought the car to a stop. He remembered the old woman clearly: the black hair tied back in a bun; a small, frail frame; delicate, yet bony hands. He got out of the car and crossed the empty road. Hearing the sound of his footsteps, she slowly lifted her head to look, but the eyes that stared back at Cámara spoke of someone elsewhere, a spirit already moving in a different space.

‘Señora?' Cámara asked. She didn't reply.

‘Are you the mother of Jorge Blanco?' He tried again. At the sound of her son's name something seemed to stir inside the old woman. She placed the bucket by the side of the door and turned to head inside. Cámara followed.

A fire was burning in the stone hearth, the scent of wood smoke filling the air. Cámara stood by a dark wooden table as he watched the old woman head into an old-fashioned kitchen, with a marble sink and tiny gas stove. Did she remember wearing anything other than black, he wondered? Blanco's father had died before their son had been born. Doubtless he would have seen his mother dressed in mourning all his life.

She emerged again carrying an unlabelled bottle of wine and a glass tumbler. Not asking if he wanted any, she poured a full measure and handed it to him. Cámara took it and sat in the armchair she pointed to near the chimney.

‘
Le acompaño en su dolor
,' he said, repeating the usual phrase of condolence. She waved his words away as though flicking away a troublesome fly.

‘It's all dirt,' she said. ‘
Todo sucio
.' And she sat down opposite him, her hands wrapping over one another. Signs of forgetfulness, perhaps despair, were captured in Cámara's mind as his eyes flickered over the room: rotting fruit in a bowl on the table; firewood that had fallen from its shelf near the fire and was now perilously close to the flames; a purse spilling its contents over the floor where it had fallen and been left. He looked again into her eyes, but they appeared to be covered in a grey film.

‘I'm investigating the death of your son, señora,' he said, reaching into his jacket to look for his badge.

She gave the golden shiny metal the minimum of attention as he showed it to her. In the silence Cámara took a sip of the sharp, vinegary wine and swallowed hard, then looked for a safe corner of the hearth and placed the tumbler down.

‘There's some cheese, if you want.'

Getting to her feet, she disappeared into the kitchen. Cámara took advantage of her absence to put the firewood back on its shelf, and leaned over to pick up the purse and its contents, placing them on the table. The purse flicked open as he did so, revealing the woman's dated, old-fashioned blue-and-white ID card. Her name caught his attention for a second: Josefina Blanco Sol.

She was standing in front of him again, a plate of moulding cheese in her trembling hand. Cámara took it from her and they returned to the fire.

‘Did you meet Jorge's friend?' she asked, her face brightening up for a second before seeming to cloud over again, her eyes turning to the flames.

‘He had a friend,' she said. ‘A special friend, he always told me he was. He called me when…when…He couldn't make it to the funeral. He said…'

Whatever it was he had said, she seemed to have trouble remembering it now. Cámara thought of Aguado. Had she met him?

‘Señora Blanco,' Cámara said. She lifted her eyes again at the sound of her name. ‘Do you remember the last time you saw your son?'

‘You were there,' she said. ‘I remember you now. You spoke to his…'

‘I was at the funeral,' Cámara said as she tailed off again. ‘I was there. But I mean when he was alive, the last time you saw him alive. Could you tell me about that?'

The greying eyes began to drift again, her chin drooping as she seemed to fall into some dark reverie. He watched her for a few moments, trying to gauge whether he'd pushed her too quickly. Perhaps he was wasting his time anyway. If there were any clues about Blanco's death in his personal life he doubted his mother would be able to cast any light on them. Although she did seem to know about Aguado.

His eyes started to wander around the room again. If he had needed a clearer example of age being more about a state of mind, then it was here. The woman had just lost her only son, it was true, but she must have been twenty, perhaps thirty years younger than Hilario. The same age his grandfather had been when he lost his own son, or there about. Yet there was no comparison. How badly had Hilario been affected by all that back then? He had hardly asked himself, so wrapped up in his own grief had he been. He must have hidden it well, though.

A tiny spark of colour seemed to flash from a corner of the room and he looked up at an image of smiling people. Another framed family photo, another reminder of a happier moment. He squinted his eyes to see better: the younger figure was clearly Blanco, his hair longer, his hips clad in tight jeans that flared down below the knee. And his arms were wrapped around a woman wearing a brightly coloured floral dress, a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on top of her flowing auburn hair, a more reserved smile on her face as she looked with suspicion at the camera. A holiday snap, perhaps. There was an air of summer about the image, of tanned skin and late nights near the beach. But who was the woman? Cámara stared in the gloom, then looked back at the broken figure now seated in front of him. Blanco's mother had raised her face again and was looking him in the eye. It was her, the same woman in the photo. In a different time and a different world, but it was the same person.

‘It was two weeks before they killed him,' she said. Cámara swallowed. A sharpness seemed to have returned to her all of a sudden. ‘He came up here to see me. There was…' Drifting again.

‘Jorge came here?' Cámara said, trying to jog her along.

‘Afterwards,' she said after another pause. ‘Perhaps before as well. I can't remember too well. Things just get so…He came after he'd been up to the farm. Dirty, it's all so dirty.' She put her hands over her eyes, perhaps to hide, perhaps to see more clearly what she was struggling to recall.

‘He went to the farm,' Cámara repeated. ‘To talk to someone?'

‘Francisco was there,' she said. ‘He told me that. Roberto as well.'

‘Did he say what they'd talked about?' Cámara persevered.

For a moment she seemed to fade again, then returned, like a radio capturing and losing a signal.

‘Jorge was always so clean. Always insisted on being clean. Clean bullfighting. Honest bullfighting. There was no other way with him.'

‘How did he seem when you spoke to him? After he'd been up at the farm.'

‘He never showed it. Oh, he never showed it,' she said quickly, as though animated all of a sudden by their conversation. ‘But I knew. I could tell. His mother. I always knew what was going on with him. He said there was nothing wrong, but he was angry. Angrier than I'd ever seen…'

She tailed off again.

‘Do you know what he was angry about?' Cámara tried, leaning in towards her across the open space of the hearth in front of them.

‘Not like his father,' she whispered under her breath. ‘I've never understood him the same way.'

‘
Señora
Blanco,' Cámara called. He wanted to reach out and hold her hand, as if to hang on to her, to keep her from slipping into the other world that was pulling at her.

‘Dirty,' she said at last, her eyes lost in the last flames now flickering from the untended fire. ‘
Todo sucio
.'

 

Cámara was greeted at the front door of the Ramírez farm by a slim woman in her late sixties with pale blue eyes and white-blonde hair. Aurora Palacios bore herself with the same hauteur as she had at Blanco's funeral, her back stiff and straight, and with a mild yet seemingly permanent frown.

Cámara introduced himself, standing in the shade of a well-established bougainvillea that had been trained over the doorway, its budding purple-red flowers set against the yellow walls of the
finca
. The rain that had found him in Albacete had blown away, and an afternoon sky of brilliant clear blue now arched over the hilly landscape.

‘My husband isn't here,' Aurora said simply once she'd established he was who he said he was, examining his badge and ID with a schoolmistress's scepticism.

‘Can you tell me where he is?' Cámara asked.

She gave a snort.

‘What are you asking me for?'

A noise came from nearby, the call of what sounded like a bull or a cow. Cámara turned.

‘Don't be alarmed,' Aurora snapped. ‘You're quite safe here.'

‘I take it someone is with the animal, however,' Cámara said. ‘It sounded quite close by.'

‘Paco's here,' she said, already backing into the house. ‘You'll find him.'

And the door was firmly closed behind her.

Cámara turned and started walking in the direction of the animal call. Box hedges formed a pathway along the side of the house, and his feet crunched on white gravel underneath. Pines stretched high overhead, giving more shade to the garden with a sunken pool and a small stone fountain. Black-painted, ornate iron railings were bolted over all of the downstairs windows while a burgundy stripe had been painted along the bottom of the outside wall, perhaps a metre high, the same colour as the painted frames around the doors and windows. The house itself was large and square, with two storeys, although Cámara could make out a tower with a mirador in one corner, looking out towards the peaks of the Sierra Alacaraz. It all spoke of relatively old money, of a long-established family business. Perhaps Ramírez's grandfather, the founder of the breeding farm, had had this place built. It looked to be well over a hundred years old.

Beyond the garden the pine trees came to a stop and Cámara could see some outbuildings sitting in the strong sunlight. He guessed that they were close to a thousand metres above sea level here – enough to notice a thinning in the air, and a blanching, all-powerful glare of the sun. Passing out from the shade he made out a low, ring-shaped wall, again with a burgundy stripe around its base. It was almost certainly a practice bullring, and over the top of the wall he could see the figure of a man.

Paco didn't seem to notice him at first, watching carefully as one of his farmhands flashed a cape in front of what looked like a small bullock skipping aggressively on the dirt floor of the ring. Both men were giving guttural calls, egging the animal on as it charged at the cape, stopped, lost its concentration momentarily, then focused on the cape once more and charged again.

‘
¡Eh-he!
'

‘
¡Toro!
'

Paco was wearing a flat woollen cap, with a dark green jerkin slung over a checked shirt. His sleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms and smoke rose from a cigarette clutched between his fingers as he leaned on the edge of the wall, his concentration never wavering from the centre of the ring. When Cámara walked up to him he nodded to acknowledge him momentarily before turning back. After a few moments he gave a low whistle and the farmhand promptly stopped, leaving the animal breathless and perplexed, vapour streaming from its mouth and nostrils.

‘I've seen you before,' Paco said, finally giving Cámara his attention. ‘The policeman, aren't you?'

Cámara nodded.

‘You've come all the way here?'

There was a roughness about him, in contrast to the studied disdain of his mother. Was Ramírez the father responsible for giving him that? Or did living and working on this land have something to do with it? Breeding deadly animals in this empty, underpopulated landscape, the pasture barely clinging to the thin grey soil, demanded a harsh simplicity of being, Cámara thought. It had a certain beauty, perhaps, but he found himself longing for the complexities of the city in environments such as these.