A Death in Valencia (8 page)

The air-conditioning unit in the conference room had broken completely, so the windows giving out on to the street had been opened in an attempt to keep the temperature down. But the collective heat radiating from a score of men and women of the
Policía Nacional
punched him like a greasy fist. Unhindered by the glass, the noise from the cars and buses racing along the avenue outside filled the room like an echo chamber, and Cámara noticed that Chief Inspector Maldonado, recently promoted to head of the organised crime squad, was having to use a microphone to make himself heard.

‘Nice of you to join us.'

Spotting a seat at the back near the window, he eased himself down behind Torres, who sat bolt upright, ignoring him. Perhaps it was his position at the back of the room, or the fact that his old bugbear Maldonado appeared to be in charge of things, with a seriousness on his face that spoke of ambition and lust for power, but Cámara was seized by a schoolboy urge to lean over and pull on Torres's hair. Pardo, however, had taken a seat on the dais next to Maldonado, and was watching them all like a headmaster.

He leaned back, trying to make himself comfortable on the hard plastic chair. No breeze came from outside, and the yellow-and-white flags strewn across the street hung like dead animals being left to dry in the sun. From the front, Maldonado began his talk, revelling in his new-found importance.

‘As I was about to say,' he said. Cámara closed his eyes. ‘At 0835 hours this morning Sofía Bodí, the well-known abortionist, was kidnapped from outside her home near the Colón market. Two witnesses saw her getting into an unmarked dark saloon car with two men.' He paused. ‘Both of them were wearing
Guardia Civil
uniforms. The
Guardia Civil
, however, from the highest levels, have denied any involvement whatsoever in this morning's events.'

Cámara's eyes reopened. There was a collective intake of breath, followed by an outbreak of murmuring and swearing.
Ostias. Me cago en la puta
. People shuffled in their seats, turning their heads towards their neighbours with shocked expressions. In spite of the denials, this involved the
Guardia Civil,
the other national police force–the opposition. This was big.

Maldonado held out his hands for quiet.

‘Sofía Bodí, as you all know,' he said as the voices quietened down, ‘has been in the news recently thanks to the
Guardia Civil
investigation into her clinic over alleged malpractices.'

The murmuring picked up again.

‘You'll find details of the investigation in the handouts you've all got.'

Cámara saw that he was missing the report, and leaned over to grab the papers from Torres's lap.

‘Given the nature of what we're dealing with,' Maldonado continued, ‘the implication of the
Guardia Civil
, the high profile of the victim and the timing–need I remind you who's about to visit Valencia?–the case is being led by my unit.'

As he continued, Cámara quickly got up to speed on a case which his newspaper-reading colleagues were already familiar with.

Sofía Bodí was fifty-six years old, he read, a Valencian woman originally from the Benimaclet district, the only daughter of a school-teacher and his wife. The previous December her clinic, the
Clínica Levantina de Salud Ginecológica
, in the neighbourhood of Patraix, had been the subject of a raid by the
Guardia Civil
, who had conducted a search after clinic employees were seen carrying out bags of waste and placing them in a van. According to the official
Guardia Civil
account, at that moment the officers, from the environment-protection
Seprona
unit, suspected that an ecological crime was being committed–something to do with the waste not being disposed of in the proper way–and decided to investigate. When they raided the clinic and took away the refuse sacks, they claimed to have found the remains of foetuses up to twenty-five weeks old–three weeks over the permitted twenty-two-week limit. The officers involved, led by Comandante Lázaro, applied to the duty investigating judge to open a case, but she rejected it out of hand, saying their claims were unfounded. So they waited a couple of days, pulled some strings, until a judge they knew to be more conservative was available, and officially opened the case with him. This time the evidence was admitted.

Since then, the investigation had been continuing under intense media attention, until, two days earlier, the
Guardia Civil
raided the clinic once again, this time taking away the computers and files for inspection. According to comments overheard at the time, Comandante Lázaro, who was present, warned Sofía Bodí that the next time they would be back for her.

Despite his self-imposed media blackout–why read the papers or watch the news when you always heard in the end if something really important was happening?–Cámara was aware that the country's abortion laws had been under scrutiny over the past few months or more. The government in Madrid, he felt sure, was going to liberalise them, and make abortion legal, as opposed to simply decriminalised. Had they gone ahead and done it already? He seemed to remember images seen somewhere of large demonstrations in the capital against the move, with various grumpy old archbishops wagging their be jewelled fingers over the issue. The Pope's visit now was great timing for them.

Ahead, he noticed that Maldonado was still talking.

‘…which is how the case was being carried out. There is plenty of evidence,' Maldonado said, taking a deep breath, ‘to suggest that the Sofía Bodí investigation is politically motivated. We've already spelled out the backdrop to all this, particularly with the new abortion law and His Holiness's imminent visit.'

A couple of people sniggered. But no one was sure if Maldonado was being sarcastic this time.

‘Bodí herself,' he continued, ‘is a leading pro-abortion campaigner, and has been at the forefront of the movement since the mid-seventies. She's a founder member of the pressure group
Mi Cuerpo, Mi Elección
–My Body, My Choice. Then there's Comandante Lázaro. He's a known conservative–old school. And a churchgoer. There's ever more reason to suspect an ideological element to all this.'

A hand went up. Maldonado nodded for the policewoman to speak.

‘But you said the
Guardia
have denied anything to do with Sofía Bodí being taken this morning.'

‘Exactly,' Maldonado said, putting on the most serious face he could. ‘Officially, they have said they know nothing about this; no arrest order was issued for Sofía Bodí this morning.'

Cámara was longing for a smoke, and started fingering the packet of Ducados in his trouser pocket. Sweat was pouring down his back and he was beginning to feel light-headed. He still wasn't sure why officers from
Homicidios
had been called to this meeting.

‘And I believe them,' Maldonado continued. ‘Which is why…' He looked down at the floor for a moment, as though collecting his thoughts. The guy should be on the stage, thought Cámara. ‘…we are seriously considering the possibility of a GAL-type operation being behind this.'

This time Cámara's own jaw dropped with surprise. Several years had passed since he had heard that word. He hadn't expected to come across it again, except in some retrospective articles or books on the González government–and the dirty war it had waged against ETA, the terror group seeking independence for the Basque Country.

For years, back in the 1990s, when he was still in Albacete, struggling to get promoted to inspector, people had spoken of little else. The GAL, the so-called
Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación
–the anti-terrorist liberation groups–had been active in the mid-1980s. They were a shadowy and violent bunch of anti-ETA activists, who murdered over twenty people during their campaign. Their targets were ostensibly ETA members, but innocent people, including several across the border in the French Basque Country, also suffered at their hands. By the late 1980s their string of kidnappings and shootings appeared to have ended, but then, in the early 1990s, a group of investigative journalists began to report that the GAL's members were in fact mostly mercenaries, policemen and
Guardias Civiles
, controlled by members of the government. After a judicial investigation, Interior Minister José Barrionuevo and his deputy Rafael Vera were jailed for their part in the conspiracy. The Prime Minister himself, Felipe González, was investigated at one stage and cleared of involvement, but there were plenty who still thought he had been the mysterious ‘
Señor X
', the supposed leader of the GAL. It was enough to give Spain's young and delicate democracy a serious jolt, and to lose the Socialists the election in 1996.

The fallout within the
Policía Nacional
and the
Guardia Civil
had been less visible but no less far-reaching. Older officers tainted by the scandal were moved on or forced to retire, one of the reasons, Cámara knew, why he himself had made chief inspector before he hit forty.

He became aware that the GAL comment had shocked others around him. Some were staring into space, others shaking their heads. Most were talking, either to themselves or to anyone who would listen.

‘This is not mere conjecture.' Maldonado raised his voice over the hubbub to make himself heard. Feedback whined from the microphone and he had to hold it further away from his mouth.

‘We've received information that I can't disclose right now that suggests that members of the
Guardia Civil
–and Comandante Lázaro may be among them–have created an illicit group to carry out acts of terror with a socially conservative agenda. If this is correct, then the kidnapping of Sofía Bodí may be their first, high-profile step. And I don't need to remind you that the GAL's kidnapping victims often turned up dead. We probably have very little time to get a satisfactory result.'

‘Where does the info come from?' came a question. ‘The CNI?'

Maldonado nodded. ‘The intelligence services are involved, which is why I can't say any more at this point,' he said.

Cámara groaned silently. The
Centro Nacional de Inteligencia
was not especially renowned for the accuracy of its information. Years before, when they were still called the CESID, the
Centro Superior de Información de la Defensa
, he'd heard a rumour that other national intelligence organisations tended to bet against any ‘information' coming out of Madrid, with consistently high returns. Changing their name had done little to improve their reputation.

Still, Comandante Lázaro already had a reputation in police circles for his reactionary views. He was a member of a right-wing officers' group, one of whose members, a few years back, had been forced into early retirement after calling on the armed forces to step in to prevent Catalonia's gradual but steady dislocation from the rest of Spain.

A hand went up. Maldonado nodded for the officer to speak.

‘Is the
Guardia Civil
intelligence unit involved in this investigation? Will we be liaising with them?'

‘Yes. But the
Servicio de Información
are talking directly with the CNI,' Maldonado said. ‘Anything we need to know will be passed on to me.'

He walked over to a large television set on top of a wooden bookcase and switched it on.

‘We have reason to suspect that Sofía Bodí may have known that an attempt of some sort was being planned against her.'

He picked up a remote control and pressed a button.

‘This is a recording of a news conference she gave yesterday morning.'

There was a whirring sound and colours flashed across the screen, before the image became clear. The
Policía Nacional
, it seemed, was still using video tape to record material from the television.

Cámara saw a picture of a slim, middle-aged woman with short silver hair sitting down at a table while cameras flashed on her. She was wearing rectangular, black-framed glasses–they didn't seem to make any other kind these days–and no make-up. Her face was drawn, and from the heaviness around her eyes she looked exhausted. She started reading from a prepared statement.

‘
Yesterday the offices of the
Clínica Levantina de Salud Ginecológica
were raided for a second time by agents of the
Guardia Civil Seprona
Unit…
'

Speaking in a low, weak voice, she gave details of the ‘harassment' she said she had been receiving over the past months, reminding the public of her lifelong campaign in favour of abortion, her time working in France before the practice was decriminalised in Spain in 1985, how her clinic had been one of the first to be set up in Spain after that, and her attempts to have the law changed to make abortion fully legal.

‘Though I may not wish to advertise the fact, my clinic is a high-profile target for the anti-abortion movement. I do not think this is a coincidence when we are talking about the so-called investigation that is being carried out at present. I call on Spanish society to witness what is taking place, and to make up its own mind, and not to accept the lies being fed by the conservative media. We reject all allegations being made against us, and are confident that there is no evidence to substantiate the claims being made. However, certain powerful forces are involved. They must understand that there will be consequences if things continue as they are. Authoritarianism is deeply ingrained in certain sectors of our country. We cannot allow them to control our lives as they once did. This is a time for action, to stand up and reject all attempts to smother a legal and ultimately humanitarian activity in the name of tradition and faith. Nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake.
'