IT WAS LATE evening by the time he got away. The cemetery was about to close and he had to race north, jumping traffic lights and weaving in and out between the cars in order to get there in time. Pulling away from the main road, he took a short cut down a pedestrian path that crossed the fields. It was unpaved and bumpy, but the new shocks meant that the bike could take it. A few evening joggers were surprised to see him and were forced to jump out of his way. One of them, in a theatrical gesture, put out a hand as though to stop him.
The cemetery guard was tidying his office, carrying out his last tasks before closing for another day. He was disgruntled on hearing a late visitor arriving, just five minutes before he clocked off, but his expression changed when Cámara took off his helmet and showed his face. The guard remembered fondly the torchlit funeral of a few days earlier. There had been real feeling there, and although he had never met Hilario and had no idea who he was, he was convinced that a great man had been buried in his cemetery that day. Some things you just know.
‘The mason was here this morning,’ he said to Cámara, stepping out of his office to shake his hand. ‘Did a good job. I made sure of that. I think you’ll be happy with it.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Nice epitaph.’
‘He always lived by it.’
The guard nodded and let go of Cámara’s hand.
‘Take all the time you need.’
Cámara walked under the colonnade round the edge of the cemetery. His legs felt heavy and his lungs seemed to be pushing up into his throat. Another wave of grief: he should have expected it, coming here again, but he had kidded himself that he was getting over it. Now it caught him unawares. He tried looking at some of the other graves to remind himself that he was not the only person in mourning. For every other corpse in its niche, dozens must have cried and suffered. But the names and photos meant little to him, no matter how he tried.
Hilario’s plaque was made from a single piece of limestone and sat neatly over the bricks that sealed his grandfather in his tunnel-like tomb. The flies had gone. He could not have borne seeing them again.
He knelt down and placed his fingertips against the masonry, tracing the words.
‘Hilario Maximiliano Cámara Belmonte’.
Underneath were carved the dates of his birth and death. No crosses or symbols: Cámara had been insistent. The font was plain and undecorative, yet elegant.
At the bottom, in italics, ran a single sentence. Cámara had wondered about putting something there. It was impossible to sum his grandfather up in a single phrase, and he had been about to scrap the idea. But to leave the plaque with just a name and dates did not seem fitting to Hilario’s memory either. In the end, as he had watched over the dead body at the funeral parlour, the right phrase had come to him.
It was the single most important lesson that Hilario had taught him:
‘No sientas el tiempo perdido sino el que puedas perder’.
Do not worry about the time you have lost, but about the time you may yet lose.
He stood up, disturbed by the emptiness that had descended upon him.
Wiping his face with his sleeve, he made for the exit. Outside, on the other side of the gate, the single eye of the motorbike stared at him, unblinking.
The Barrio Chino prostitutes on his street had organised a barter system to keep going through the crisis. Many were holding pieces of card announcing that they would accept food or ‘services’ from clients with no cash to pay. He imagined queues of plumbers, electricians and restaurateurs quickly forming once word spread.
He skipped upstairs and found the flat empty, but Alicia had been back while he was out. Her computer screen was on and new notes were scattered on her desk. There was no sign of her, though. He thought of giving her a call, but at that moment a text message arrived.
He checked the fridge: there was half a packet of limp salad leaves, some cherry tomatoes and a stick of chorizo. Nestling in the door were two cans of beer: he would be fine. The crust of a baguette lying on the counter helped fill him up. Swallowing the last of it, he went into the living room, picked some files out of his bag and sat down in a chair near the window. Time to go through things again, from the beginning, taking in every detail that they had amassed during the investigation. It was time to see the murder of Amy Donahue through new eyes.
But the lack of regular sleep over several days and seeing Hilario’s grave again dulled him. He read the words but understood none of them. After twenty minutes he gave up, pulled off his clothes and climbed into bed. A last look at the clock before falling asleep told him that it was only half-past nine in the evening.
He woke just before dawn, images of metro trains and dank dark tunnels slipping from his mind as he pulled himself up and looked around. Alicia’s naked body lay next to his, her ribs rising and falling to the slow, steady rhythm of her breathing. He kissed her shoulder, made sure that the sheets were covering her properly, and got up.
The streets were practically deserted at that hour. A three-wheeled van drove past, bearing lettuces freshly picked from the fields to market. The driver had a cigarette hanging from his mouth and nodded to Cámara from his open window. There was a natural camaraderie among the city’s very early risers. Sometimes he had experienced it when returning from being out all night.
Two blocks away there was a baker’s oven that served most of the bread shops in the neighbourhood. If you banged loudly enough on the door they usually opened and let people off the street buy a couple of loaves.
‘You got cash?’ the unshaven man said when he opened. ‘We’re not giving credit. And we’re not interested in any new local currencies or barter systems either.’
Cámara pulled out the last note from his pocket and showed it to him.
‘How much do you want?’
Armed with some bread, spinach pasties and two slices of pizza, he strolled back to his street, hopped on the Kawasaki and sped off to the Jefatura.
Azcárraga was at reception on his own.
‘You must be about to finish,’ Cámara said.
‘Another hour to go,’ said the sleepy policeman. ‘They’re changing my shifts again. Don’t know if I’m coming or going.’
‘Here. You hungry?’
Cámara handed him a slice of pizza.
Azcárraga looked nervously up at the security cameras above the doors.
‘Not supposed to eat or drink anything at the desk.’
‘Well, look the other way, then.’
Azcárraga smiled.
‘Salud,’ he said, raising the pizza like a drink. Cheers.
‘Coffee machine working?’ Cámara asked.
Azcárraga leaned down and pulled up a flask.
‘Have some of mine,’ he said, pouring a cup. ‘The piss that machine makes will kill you.’
He almost had to force himself to sit down at his desk. Over the past days he had felt increasingly uneasy in the murder squad offices and now it took all his willpower to enter the room. It was empty – far too early, still, for any of his colleagues to come in – but every piece of chipped furniture, every screwed-up ball of paper in the waste bin and every broken tile on the floor reflected the tensions and low morale in the group. The real poison around here was not manufactured by machines, but by people. By Maldonado.
Azcárraga’s coffee was lukewarm, but drinkable. Within a few moments he began to feel its effects. Pulling the files out of his bag and laying them on the desk and on the floor in a rainbow around his chair, he began to concentrate on Amy and the investigation. After a few minutes’ warming up, the computer flickered at him as well, and his eyes darted between paper and pixels as he took up the details once again of the American girl’s murder and what they had learned so far.
Never forgetting Oliva.
Witness statements, reports, notes from the interviews with Alfredo Ruiz Costa, observations from Albelda, details and facts gathered from social media sites: Lozano and Castro had been looking at everyone who was connected with Amy on the Internet, checking their Facebook and Twitter accounts, blogs and websites. Meanwhile a patrol had been checking up on Ruiz Costa since he had been released from custody: Amy’s husband was spending little time at the flat. A relative – an aunt, by all accounts, a sister of his mother – had come round and he had gone to stay with her. They were not keeping formal tabs on him, but a policeman asking neighbours an occasional question could give them enough to go on for the time being.
And for the most part the information tied in with everything they already knew or had surmised. Nothing new or fresh jumped up at him.
Until he went over Albelda’s notes for the third time. Which was when he saw something that caught his eye: the gym opposite Amy’s flat, and its owner. Albelda had done a thorough job, trawling through the records to find every piece of information that he possibly could about the witnesses he had talked to, the people who had been closest to Amy at the time her life had been extinguished.
And the name he read on the piece of paper lying on the floor at his feet sent a chill up his spine.