DEAR GOD, HE thought, let me never end up like this.
Amy’s corpse lay on the cold aluminium table with a plughole between her feet for the leaking fluids to drain away. She lay face up, but her face was so destroyed that the phrase was almost meaningless. The rest of her body, despite having the yellow-purple colour of the recently dead, was young and fresh and beautiful. He would try to remember that, he thought. That and the smiling photo in her passport. Not the mangled mass of bone, hair and flesh that was now her head.
Darío Quintero was carrying out the autopsy. Cámara liked him. They had worked together in the past, and the elderly man with his full grey beard and thin white hands had a way of going about his work that ensured a calm dignity at such horrific and gruesome moments. Cámara had seen him operate many times before. It was not always necessary, but it formed a part of his job. This time he felt that he should be present. But seeing the young woman lying there, something rebelled in his insides. Some people, he thought, could never get used to this, no matter how many times they witnessed it. And he was one of them. On occasion he could stand it better, but it never left him unmoved.
Quintero spoke slowly in a gentle tone as he walked around the body, his giant-like assistant taking measurements, cleaning up splashes of blood. It was almost like a form of theatre, a soliloquy in honour of the deceased as her mortal remains were examined, prodded and cut apart. She measured 1.57 metres, he was saying, had thick chestnut hair and weighed approximately 65 kilos. Her eye colour was unknown as there were no eyes to speak of left in her skull.
The body was turned over and the assistant began shaving off her hair, collecting it from the floor with a dustpan and brush. The kind you could buy from the supermarket for three euros. Quintero was looking closely at the bullet entry points at the back of her head. Something about the muzzle burns had caught his attention. The assistant stood to the side with the saw in his hand, waiting to cut the top of the head off.
‘I’m . . . I’m going outside,’ Cámara said.
‘I’ll fill you in when we finish.’ Laura was at his side. She spoke without reproach.
The swing doors gave a satisfactory slap behind him as he walked out, symbolically reassuring him that he had left the autopsy behind. But his stomach and shoulders felt knotted and he rubbed his hands hard over his face as though trying to clean away a stain. Stepping over to a water dispenser, he drank hard and quickly, then belched and gave out a long sigh.
Thoughts of giving up police work, like those that had dogged him in the past, no longer featured in his mind. But there were moments like this when he remembered why, at times, it had been so easy to contemplate, and then so easy to dismiss. The horror and disgust were an essential part of his being a detective. The day you stopped feeling angry was the day you really had to consider carrying on or not. And there were still so many reasons for his blood to boil. Today, that reason was Amy Donahue.
He walked outside and reached for his cigarettes. The forensic medicine department was at the law courts, and as usual there were several dozen people mingling outside: lawyers and judges nipping out for a break, like himself; people with folders full of paperwork, shuffling and organising them before heading inside to the lobby; parents holding babies, come to register new births. This was the official, legal centre of the city and province, where the business of living, dying and breeding was played out.
Further on, in front of an annexe, wedding parties waited their turn to go in and take part in the quick-fire civil ceremony, some in formal suits and dresses, others in more everyday, if colourful, clothes. Would he ever be there himself one day, he wondered? As if unbidden, he knew in that instant who he would be standing next to: there could be no one else. And the thought brought a smile to his face. But would they ever come this far?
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of shouting and whistles being blown. Another demonstration was getting under way. A banner was unfolded beneath a group of around twenty people. Cámara turned away, but not before registering the words ‘corruption’ and ‘politicians’ painted in red on the white cloth. More upset citizens, complaining about the low standards of their supposed representatives. They should take matters into their own hands and stop expecting others to rule on their behalf. More and more, he thought, it was the only way.
He finished his cigarette and hovered at the door for a moment, his mind filled with dread at the thought of what was inside. Finally, after taking a deep breath, he pushed on the door and walked in.
Laura was standing in the entrance. She looked pale.
‘Finished already?’ Cámara asked.
‘We’ve got what we need,’ she said. ‘Quintero is continuing, but . . . he’ll get in touch if he thinks there’s anything more we ought to know.’
She did not look him in the eye.
‘I find a drink can help at moments like this,’ Cámara said. ‘A quick brandy. For the nerves. There’s a place round the—’
‘No, I’m fine.’ She pursed her lips. He felt pleased, somehow, that this affected her as well. She was like him, not one of the others with steel blood running through their veins. Quintero was different: it was his profession. But there were some in Homicidios who, he knew, could sit through autopsies an entire day and not be moved by them, as though watching procedures in an abattoir. That was not normal – at least not in his world.
‘Shall we head back to the Jefatura?’
‘Yes. Let’s.’
They had come together by car this time: the murder squad vehicle had been free. Laura drove, and for a few minutes Cámara watched the city speeding by – tower blocks, jacaranda trees with intense purple-blue blossom, small white clouds bubbling out over the sea. May was a good month to be in Valencia, before the thick heat of high summer arrived.
His mind drifted back home, to Hilario. Despite the scare of the evening before, he appeared to be settling well here. The blood-thinning pills had done the trick. Or so Cámara assumed. Alicia wondered afterwards whether it was merely tiredness that had caused Hilario to collapse. He had been working hard all day, and it could get hot down in the tunnel. She should make sure he drank enough water, she said.
The car got caught in traffic as they reached the centre again. Laura beat the steering wheel with the palms of her hands.
‘Fuck.’
She was not the swearing kind. He looked at her: her eyes seemed small, the centre of her forehead tight.
She caught the question in his gaze.
‘It was as we thought,’ she said. ‘Shot five times in the back of the head. And she’d been molested. There were abrasions on her vagina.’
‘Semen?’ Cámara asked. There was an edge to his voice. Semen could give them a very good DNA reading, which could – if they were lucky – lead them almost straight to the killer.
‘No,’ Laura said. ‘Nothing.’
‘So . . .?’
‘So I don’t know. Rapists don’t use condoms – not the ones I’ve come across. He must have fingered her or molested her in some way. Whatever he did, it shows.’
‘All right,’ said Cámara. ‘Do we have a time of death?’
‘It’s looking around eleven in the morning.’
‘Tallies with Ruiz Costa’s story.’
‘The gunshot wounds,’ Laura said. ‘Quintero was very interested in them. By the looks of it, our man used a silencer.’
‘Quintero can tell that?’
‘Leaves different patterns of muzzle burns on the skin. It’s complicated by her hair being in the way. But he wants the científicos to have a look at the bullets as well.’
‘A silencer,’ Cámara repeated. ‘They don’t muffle a gunshot completely, but it would explain why no one else in the building heard anything.’
‘At least as far as we know. We need those reports.’
‘Castro and Lozano are on it,’ he said.
Castro. In contrast to Laura he thought of her by her surname – she was one of the team, one of the men.
‘Well, as long as they are on it, and not on top of each other . . .’ said Laura.
Cámara chuckled. Laura smiled.
‘I’m serious,’ she said, trying to look as though she were.
‘Anything else?’ Cámara asked.
‘Her fingers,’ Laura said, a more solemn expression returning to her face.
‘I didn’t notice anything.’
‘They’d been smashed, broken.’
‘What?’
‘Almost every single finger had been broken by something blunt and hard.’
Cámara sat back and stared out of the window. They were creeping along the street, but had been held up by a traffic light.
‘Before or after?’
‘Hard to say. Quintero said he thought it was either simultaneous with death or perhaps just after. The bruising was marginally lighter than if it had happened before she was killed.’
‘Her fingers?’ Cámara asked, perplexed.
The lights changed and they pulled away.
‘Quintero wondered if they had been stamped on. Said he found traces of what looked like black rubber on the skin. Perhaps from the heel of a shoe or boot. He was having it tested.’
‘You think it will fit?’
‘With the husband?’ Laura asked. ‘We’ll have to check his shoes and find out.’
‘You still think it’s him?’
‘You still think it isn’t?’
‘I don’t think anything. It’s too soon.’
They pulled out from behind a bus and sped through a tunnel and past more lights before turning in behind the Jefatura and squeezing into a tight parking spot. Laura switched off the ignition and turned to look at him. As she spoke she pulled out the fingers of her left hand one by one.
‘He’s her husband. One.
‘He called it in. Two.
‘No one can prove that he wasn’t at home at the time of the murder. Three.
‘There was sexual molestation. Four.
‘She was shot five times in the back of the head. Five times. Not once or twice. That’s five.’
‘You’re going to run out of fingers,’ Cámara said.
She frowned.
‘The silencer,’ he said.
‘He didn’t want anyone to hear.’
‘What about her hands?’
‘So he was angry about something she did. Perhaps he hated this blogging of hers. Or was jealous, or something. I’m sure there’s a connection with his dead mother.’
She opened the car door and stepped out.
‘Where are you going?’ Cámara asked.
She looked towards the Jefatura, and the section of the building where the cells were housed.
‘I’m going,’ she said, ‘to find out.’