‘A WOUNDED BULL has its querencia, the place in the ring where it feels safest, where it returns to as often as possible. All we have to do now is go to Julio’s querencia.’
‘And arrest him?’
‘And wait. He’s hurt and frightened and won’t want to be alone for long. He’ll be looking for guidance, for someone to tell him what to do next.’
‘But we’ve got Soler, his boss.’
‘Soler is only a manager. Someone else is directing, someone with an enormous amount of power. It’s why we have to move quickly and quietly. It’s why it’s only you and me.’
‘Look, chief. About what happened . . .’
‘It’s all right. Really.’
‘I should never . . .’
‘Forget it. It’s over. You saved Alicia, you saved me.’
‘I almost fucked things up.’
‘We’ve been manipulated from the start. But it’s not always clear who’s been trying to pull our strings.’
Delayed shock from the events in the bunker vibrated in his blood, like static from an ill-tuned radio. He was forcing himself to carry on, feeding off the nervous tension, converting it into fuel for one more step.
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.
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.’