Or the Bull Kills You Read online

  There was a kick to the door and it opened with a crash. Conversations stopped, and everyone turned to look. The doorway was empty, and across the street, election posters for the mayoress grinned back at them, while fiesta lights blazed down from their wire supports above.

  ‘¿Qué coño? What the fuck?’

  There was a bewildered murmuring from the guests before a huddle of people burst through the doorway and into the bar. On their chests were emblazoned drawings of a bull with a red line painted through it, while two of them were holding a banner with the words ‘Blanco asesino’ painted in dark green letters which they struggled to unfurl in the cramped room. Without moving from his position at the bar, Cámara looked over and quickly counted: there were nine of them, with perhaps a straggler or two outside. Most were in their twenties, one or two slightly older. Almost all of them were wearing jeans, with walking boots or trainers, and brightly coloured shirts and jackets. No sign of any of them carrying a weapon.

  Once inside, the demonstrators pulled out their whistles and started to blow, splitting the air with a tremendous sound, while someone banged a drum with a slow, stomping rhythm. Above the noise, a tinny voice echoed out from a loudhailer, the words angry and violent but incoherent in the racket. Cámara spotted the would-be spokesperson – a girl of about twenty-five, her hair in dreadlocks and pulled back in a loose bun.

  Some of the guests had stood up and were gesticulating aggressively at the intruders. Ramírez, the bull breeder, sat where he was, his skin reddening. The owner of the bar was rooted to the spot, an expression of panic on his face. Cámara looked for Carmen Luna, but she seemed to have disappeared. Instead he found himself being watched by the short woman with the highlights in her hair. He felt sure she knew who he was, and her wry, knowing smile seemed to tell him that he was the only one there who could deal with the situation.

  He placed his drink back on the bar and walked towards the intruders. They were now inching their way forwards with a growing group momentum, and there was a danger of imminent physical contact with some of the guests.

  Cámara stepped in and quickly placed himself between the two opposing forces. The whistling intensified, as though to blast him out of the way, before finally subsiding as the intruders paused to take their breath. Cámara grabbed his chance.

  ‘Venga. Come on,’ he said, gesturing towards the door.

  The girl with the loudhailer stood to the front and looked him up and down. She seemed curious: he didn’t fit here. The absence of an expensive watch on his wrist, his uncombed hair, the short sideburns framing his face, the stubble on his chin showing that he hadn’t been as careful as he might have been when shaving that morning. By the looks of it he should have been on their side.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s time to go,’ Cámara said. ‘You can carry on outside.’

  From behind, Cámara could feel the eyes of the guests on him, wondering if he was capable of solving their little crisis. In front, the demonstrators decided it was time to increase the noise levels again, and the cacophony started afresh, the whistling piercing his ears like needles. Yet instinctively he could tell, as he watched them jumping and waving their arms, stamping their feet to the sound of the drum, that they had not come here seeking any more than this – a minor discomfort, a show of strength, despite their limited numbers. Their intention was to embarrass and annoy, not cause a fight or a riot.

  He raised his voice.

  ‘I’m a policeman. I want you to leave.’

  The girl gave him another quizzical look.

  ‘Policeman? So what are you doing here standing up for these murderers?’ She pointed at Ramírez and his son. ‘You should be locking them up.’

  There was a surge in the group as she spoke, a lurching, unconscious step forwards. Cámara put out his arm and held them back. They felt his strength, like a rock. It would be difficult to get past this one.

  ‘I need you to leave,’ Cámara repeated, his voice lower this time. ‘Now.’

  A shout came from the back, while two of them took up their whistles once again, but the girl with the dreadlocks remained silent, flaring her nostrils as she looked into Cámara’s eyes. Moments passed and neither moved, but then, with a slump of her shoulders, she sighed. The others began to read the signal and started backing slowly, very gradually, away.

  ‘Murderers! Murderers!’

  A final cry of defiance, until there was just the girl left, and a young man standing beside her; he was taller than the others, with a slim, muscular build. He grinned mockingly at the people in the bar, then turned and walked out into the street, leaving the girl on her own. She cast a disgusted eye about the room, and turned to Cámara. Tilting her head up, she blew him a kiss, then spinning round she swept her arm out over one of the tables nearby, sending glasses and cutlery crashing to the floor, before running out to join the others.

  Cámara felt a powerful reflex in his leg, a desire to lunge after her and pull her in. But he held back, his jaws tight, fists clenched. The stand-off was over. Peace, albeit of an uncertain kind, had been restored.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he saw the barman holding out a glass of brandy for him.

  ‘You might want this,’ he said.

  The owner of the bar sauntered over, all smiles now the crisis had been resolved.

  ‘We’re indebted to you, Chief Inspector.’ And he held out a cold damp hand to shake.

  ‘Tonight is not the night, but those sons-of-bitches need teaching a good lesson, if you ask me,’ the owner said.

  Cámara returned to the main group, many pressing forwards to pat him on the back. He nodded and smiled, cursing that it would be more difficult now to leave unnoticed.

  The woman with the highlighted hair was the first to break the newly found bonhomie.

  ‘I’ve just called Blanco on his mobile,’ she said. ‘He’s not answering. He should have been here by now.’

  She looked over at Cámara, and this time he remembered who she was – Alicia Beneyto, a journalist on the local newspaper El Diario de Valencia.

  ‘I’m just wondering if he’s having difficulties getting here,’ she said. ‘Perhaps the demonstrators have put him off. Would it be a good idea to call for backup, Chief Inspector?’

  All eyes were back on Cámara. He’d saved them once. Now it seemed he was expected to pull their missing guest of honour out of a hat as well.

  Before he could say anything, the door from the street opened again and in stepped a Policía Local – a municipal policeman – his dayglo jacket flapping in the breeze just above the hilt of his revolver.

  ‘Chief Inspector Cámara?’ he called out.

  Cámara walked over. The young policeman’s breath was shallow and cold.

  ‘Chief Inspector. There’s something you should see.’

  Jorge Blanco’s naked body was slumped in the middle of the empty, unlit bullring. He was curled into a ball, his legs tucked underneath his body, and a pair of bright yellow and red banderilla darts hung from the centre of his back, their sharp fish-hook points ripping at his flesh as they flopped to the ground. Higher up, towards his shoulders, a red-handled matador’s sword had been thrust into his ribcage, still swaying as the upper half of the blade caught glimmers of the street lights outside. A Spanish national flag was tied around his neck like a noose and lay mingling with congealed dark black bloodstains in the sand.

  Cámara felt an icy weight sink in his guts, and a fierce, electric buzz beginning to crawl up his spine. The Municipal who had brought him was coughing and hacking some yards behind, trying not to throw up. Outside in the street, cars streamed past and Fallas music blared, the city still unaware of the storm about to break over the cold corpse curled up at its heart.

  Cámara’s phone bleeped. It was the duty officer back at the Jefatura.

  ‘The científicos are on their way,’ he told him.

  ‘Pardo?’ Cámara asked.

  ‘He’s
been informed. You’re the nearest officer to the scene.’

  There was a pause: no need to say it, but the duty officer felt compelled to spell it out.

  ‘It’s your murder, Cámara.’

  Two

  I believe that bullfighting is the most civilised fiesta in the world

  Federico García Lorca

  Cámara reached out for his ivory inlaid box in its usual place by the sofa as he switched on the TV news. Most of the channels were still showing their usual programmes, but already the local station, Canal 9, was running a ticker-tape news flash across the bottom of the screen, while Cuatro seemed to have been on the story for a while already. He picked out a small dry bud of marihuana and crumbled it into the palm of his hand. Then he placed a Rizla paper on top of it and flipped it over on to his other hand in one deft movement, before pinching it into a cigarette shape, rolling it, licking it together and placing it in his mouth.

  The end of the paper flamed for a second as he lit it, then dulled into a warm glow as he took his first puff and inhaled. The Cuatro newsreader was reading from the screen of the laptop at her side.

  ‘To recap our breaking news story: Jorge Blanco Sol, the celebrated matador, has been found dead in the Valencia bullring. Officially the police are saying they’re treating his death as suspicious, but we understand that a murder inquiry is already underway. There is reason to believe that Blanco, who only this afternoon was awarded four ears and was taken through the main gate in triumph at the end of the afternoon’s fight, was killed in a particularly brutal fashion.’

  Images of the matador’s life flickered across the screen, while a rapid résumé of his achievements was read out. Blanco was only thirty-four years old and at the height of his career. A year before he had come out of early retirement, many claimed in order to counter the sharp decline in bullfighting’s popularity across the country. Since his dramatic comeback performance in his favourite venue, Valencia, bullrings around the country were beginning to fill again, with people talking of a Golden Age and of Blanco as a new Manolete to lead bullfighting into the twenty-first century.

  Cámara pulled hard on his joint, filling his tiny living room with smoke as a shield against the barrage of journalistic clichés. The screen cut to an ‘expert’ on bullfighting, a man with grey hair and rectangular glasses with bright red frames, who struggled to keep his composure as the microphone was thrust under his chin. His name – Santiago Rodríguez – flashed at the bottom.

  ‘Blanco was known for his…classical, fearless style of bullfighting, always insisting on traditional rituals and customs. He was the only matador on the circuit who insisted on visiting the chapel both before and after each fight. He was gored several times during his career, most famously in Seville back in 2002, when it seemed for a while we might have lost him for ever. And indeed he stayed out of the bullring for four years after that. But his comeback was the event of last season. Not everyone was happy to see his return – he had his detractors in the bullfighting world, as all matadors do. But this is a grave, grave loss, one which we will be reeling from for years to come.’

  The screen was filled with a photograph of a man wearing a trilby hat, a closely cropped grey beard wrapped around his chin like felt, and a cigar stuck firmly into the side of his mouth. The newsreader’s voice blared through the speakers.

  ‘There’s been no statement yet from Blanco’s apoderado, Juanma Ruiz Pastor. Blanco’s relationship with Señor Ruiz Pastor had been in the headlines recently after reports of a rift between the bullfighter and his manager. There is no…And we’re going over live now to the Valencia bullring.

  The image cut to show a woman standing in front of the arches of the Coliseum-like building, a huddle of microphones and mobile phones pressed up to her mouth. The harsh white television lights reflected off a tired face, but Cámara immediately recognised her from the Bar Los Toros. The words ‘Alicia Beneyto – journalist and friend of Jorge Blanco’ were ticker-taped across the bottom of the screen.

  ‘As you can imagine, this has been the most terrible evening. Bullfighting has lost the greatest matador of this generation, and perhaps the greatest of all time. And I say that with all due respect. Bullfighting was on its knees in this country before Blanco reappeared, and there were many who were happy to see it there, perhaps even help it in its decline. But Blanco turned it around single-handedly. Bullrings are full once again. Blanco showed the way; now it is up to others, the younger generation, to take up his mantle and lead bullfighting into the future. Bullfighting is here to stay. It is the national fiesta of this country. They cannot make it go away. Bullfighting has never been more popular, but it has never been so fragile. This is the worst night of our lives.’

  For a second the camera stayed on her as a dozen questions were fired at once. Cámara wondered if she had been crying: heavy make-up dulled the skin around her eyes.

  The joint squeezed between his fingers had almost gone out, and the slight tremble that had developed in his hands after seeing the corpse had begun to subside. He glanced into his box as he brought the lighter towards his mouth to fire it up again. His supplies were running out: he’d have to ring Hilario back home in Albacete to see if there was any left, and make sure he’d sowed some more seeds for harvesting in September. It was too late now, well past twelve o’clock. He’d call him tomorrow some time, if he got the chance.

  The TV continued its coverage of the story as Cámara got up and strolled across his living room to the fridge in his tiny grey kitchen. The rubber seal around the door was peeling away with age, leaving a black stain in its wake: one of the downsides of having to buy second-hand white goods. The fridge contained a single limp carrot, some Manchego cheese with just the hint of a fluffy white mould around the edges, half a can of chopped tomatoes, and two cloves of garlic. But no beer or wine. Convinced he was about to leave the city to escape the Fallas madness, he hadn’t bothered to do any shopping. He turned on the tap and poured himself a glass of water. The maría had made him thirsty, while if he was still going to pop round to Almudena’s, as she had insisted, he’d do well to wash the taste off his tongue.

  He started unbuttoning his shirt as he passed back into the living room, stubbing out the joint in a white marble ashtray he’d stolen from a restaurant when they’d first been going out together. He’d wanted her to have it, but she insisted it stay in his flat.

  Cámara remembered the smell around the body back at the bullring. Had it been Blanco, or just the lingering scent of so much death in that place? He had noticed there was less blood than there might have been.

  ‘The wounds you see were inflicted after death,’ Dario Quintero, the médico forense, had explained back at the bullring. ‘Hence the lack of bleeding. At a guess I’d say we’re looking at a secondary crime scene here. You need to look for the primary, Cámara: the place where the victim was actually murdered.’

  Quintero was all right as far as forensic doctors went. Others tried to keep their distance, insisting on their role as medical practitioners, associates of the investigating judge and the employees of the law courts, not the police. But Quintero had been doing this for years and didn’t bother with the usual hierarchies of power and responsibility. Cámara had worked with him on the Calle Puerto Rico case a couple of years back – one of the many simple crimes of passion that had taken up most of his three years in Homicidios: couple splits up; husband/boyfriend loses it, grabs gun/knife/something and uses it to kill his beloved, and sometimes anyone else happening to be around, like any kids they might have, or a mother-in-law or two; then moments later, perhaps after a drink with his mates, he is filled with remorse and hands himself in at the nearest police station. Three years of taking statements from shattered men sobbing over their shattered lives.

  Quintero had pulled on his long grey beard as he muttered some more details to the secretaria judicial, Irene Ortiz, who was busy jotting down notes. Time of death: no more than a couple of hours before; anything m
uch more than that and Blanco would still have been fighting bulls here on this very spot with several thousand witnesses to his state of good health. Cause of death: from the marks on his neck, and the burst capillaries in his eyes, almost certainly strangulation, probably with some kind of thong. In addition, from the small cut marks on his skin, Quintero suggested that Blanco’s traje de luces, his shiny, colourful bullfighter’s costume, had been cut from his body.

  ‘Probably the only way he could get it off the dead body,’ he said, placing his hands into the front pockets of his white coat. ‘And I do think we’re talking about a he. Just the physical effort of killing Blanco somewhere and then bringing his body here makes it very unlikely that we’d be talking about any but the most powerfully built woman.’

  There had been more, though: not just the sword and the banderillas.

  ‘There’s a deep cut very near the genitals,’ Quintero had added. Cámara had refused his offer to show him.

  ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘It’s not pretty, I agree. And I need to get a closer look at it, but from the angle and depth of the cut it’s possible the killer was attempting to remove the genitals completely.’

  ‘Why didn’t he?’ Cámara said. Quintero shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps he heard something. Perhaps he got frightened off. I don’t know. That’s more your department, I’d say.’

  The Juez de Guardia arrived at that point and Cámara was called away. Moments later, aware of how late it was getting, and with an eye to the public aspect to the case, the judge had ordered the body be removed, and the crime scene was left in the hands of the Policía Científica to scour for clues.

  Cámara glanced down at his notes, tossed on to the table as he’d walked in. Unsurprisingly, the overweight, balding guard at the bullring had seen nothing, too busy watching the Valencia–Real Madrid game in his little booth. (It ended in a goalless draw.) There was only one security camera, fixed on the main entrance, and there was nothing on it as they’d run out of film three months before and no one had got round to replacing it.