The Anarchist Detective (Max Cámara) (21 page)

She frowned.

‘Not really, not just by looking at it like this. I’d need the equipment.’

‘No matter. Listen, tell me, is an AK-
47
very accurate?’

‘It depends.’ Teresa shrugged. ‘Over short range it’s quite good, if it’s set to single shot. It’s pretty inaccurate if you’re on automatic.’

‘Long distance?’

She wrinkled her nose.

‘Not really. It’s best for close combat.’

‘So you wouldn’t use it for a sniper weapon.’

‘What? An AK-
47
?’

She laughed. Cámara’s expression didn’t change.

‘Well, no. No, of course not. Not if you actually wanted to hit anything.’

‘All right. Thanks.’

‘No problem.’

Cámara fell into silence again. Torres had already sat back down at her desk.

‘Well, er, I might just go and get some coffee,’ Teresa said. ‘You want some?’

‘Black, please,’ Torres said.

Cámara said nothing.

‘Same for him.’

The door closed behind her and Cámara went to sit down next to Torres. He had a glassy, distant look in his eyes, one that Torres was familiar with.

‘There’s something else I want to look at.’

Torres knew something about the Mirella Faro case in Albacete. Cámara filled him in on the details he had.

‘I want to check murders with a similar MO,’ he said. ‘Can we do that?’

Torres turned to the screen.

‘Time frame?’

‘How far back can we go?’

‘Your sister’s murder won’t be on there, if that’s what you mean.’

‘All right, all right. Just see what you can get, will you?’

Torres tapped on the keyboard, trying combinations of search words. A few moments later they were looking at a list of over a dozen killings.

‘The victims were all girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen,’ Torres said. ‘All with some sexual aspect to the attack. I’ve ruled out ones where the attacker was a member of the family.’

‘What about MO? Were they all strangled?’

‘No.’ Torres looked down the list. ‘Two were knifed, one suffocated, and for two others cause of death is unknown.’

‘Why?’

‘One of them was badly mutilated, the other—’

‘That’s fine. Can you get rid of those ones. I just want to see the girls who were strangled.’

Torres fiddled with the mouse, then clicked and the screen was refreshed. Cámara pulled out a notebook and pen, ready to jot down some notes.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s start from the first one we’ve got.’

The door clicked open again and Teresa walked in carrying three cups of coffee. Cámara and Torres got up to take theirs, thanking her, then all three started blowing and sipping on the hot liquid. Teresa looked a little uncomfortable, not quite sure what to do with these two senior policemen in her office, using her computer in a not-entirely-regulatory fashion.

‘Teresa,’ Cámara said after a pause. ‘I wondered if you could help us.’

He explained briefly about the Mirella Faro case, and what they were doing.

‘You’re looking for links, patterns. Great. I like that kind of thing.’

Torres looked at her.

‘Thanks, Teresa. I suppose I should point out—’

‘That neither of you has ever walked into my office, or used my computer. Yeah, I’ve got it.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Do you want to use my login, to be safer?’

‘No, we’re fine.’

There were ten cases left to look at. Torres scrolled down to each one, letting them all read the details over his shoulder and see the photos of the murdered girls. Details included each one’s name, date of birth, age when murdered, weight, height, hair and eye colour, what they were wearing – if anything – when found, and what they were last seen wearing when alive. Then there were accounts of how, exactly, they had been sexually assaulted, with a primary murder scene and a secondary in the cases where the body had been moved after death. Except for two, each case had been resolved, with the killer named, a mugshot provided, and information about his sentence and where he was currently being held. No women were involved in the attacks.

The first murder dated back to
1992
, in Seville.

‘The year of the Expo,’ Teresa said.

Julia del Barrio’s body had been found near the banks of the Guadalquivir, her dress ripped, although not entirely, from her body. She’d been raped and then strangled with a hemp rope. One of her silver hoop earrings had been torn out in the struggle. The three of them looked at the school photo taken of her a month before she was killed, and then the black-and-white police images taken where they found the body. At the bottom of the file was a picture of a man by the name of Antonio Gabarri. He’d been found guilty of the murder after a shred of the girl’s clothing was found in his car, an Opel Astra. Given life, he’d been refused bail for never admitting his guilt. He was still being held in Seville’s Number Two Prison, although his term was due to finish in eight months’ time.

‘Gypsy?’ Torres said.

Cámara pursed his lips. It wasn’t easy to say.

The next two cases were in Madrid, involving Vanesa Romero Pérez and Rosa Esquivel Fuentes. They had been murdered two months apart in
1998
, and at the beginning police had suspected a link, but none had ever been established. The first girl was aged sixteen and had started working as a prostitute only a couple of months before. No one had ever been found guilty of her murder.

The second Madrid victim, Rosa Esquivel, had been found not far from the railway tracks leading out of Atocha station. She’d been assaulted, although not raped, strangled by someone using their hands, and her body stripped and left. No trace of her clothing had ever been found. A young friend of the girl’s, with a previous record for drug dealing, was convicted of her murder. He was currently serving at the Valdemoro prison in Madrid.

The following three murders took place from
1999
to
2001
, occurring outside the capital. One in Barcelona, another in Badajoz, near the border with Portugal, and the third in Guadalajara, about an hour’s drive north-east from Madrid. In each instance the MO was similar or the same – a young adolescent girl assaulted and strangled. No one had been found guilty of the Guadalajara case, while two different men – one an Algerian immigrant, the other another drug dealer – were serving time for the other cases.

The next case had taken place in Albacete seven years previously. Paula Gutiérrez Soria’s body had been found in a rubbish container, like Mirella Faro’s, although this time it was near the university campus area.

‘Not long after they finished building it,’ Cámara said.

The name of the murderer was one he had already come across: Juan Manuel Heredia, currently held in Albacete’s Torrecica jail. Cámara picked up a pen and paper to jot down a couple of notes before Torres scrolled on.

The last two murders had taken place in Madrid again, one in
2005
, the last in
2008
. Carmen Montero Ferrero had been fourteen when her killer had attacked her as she left home one Friday night to meet up with friends for a birthday party. Her semi-naked body was found four days later in a tip three kilometres away. A former vagrant she’d been seen with a few times in the run-up to the murder was sentenced to life after it was learned that he’d lost his job as a teacher eight years previously for inappropriate relations with two of his female students. His wife had divorced him and refused to let him see their three children any more, since when he’d lived on the streets.

The last case before Mirella’s involved María Teresa Machado Ballesteros, fifteen, a promising basketball player who used to go training on Tuesday and Thursday nights at a sports centre a ten-minute walk from her home in the Leganés district of Madrid. Her trainer’s assistant, Raúl Rojas Sánchez, had been found guilty of raping and murdering her after her body was found in pieces inside his freezer.

The final case was that of Mirella Faro in Albacete. A photo of her, taken just a couple of months before, took up a large part of the screen.

‘That’s it,’ Torres said, standing up.

Both he and Cámara reached for their cigarettes.

Teresa coughed.

‘Would you mind,’ she said, smiling. ‘It’s just that I have a chest infection that’s not going away.

‘Oh, yes, of course.’

Torres put his cigarette back in its box; Cámara left his in his mouth, unlit.

‘So,’ Torres said, ‘any thoughts?’

Cámara sniffed.

‘The similarities are obvious. It’s less obvious similarities I’m wondering about.’

‘There’s something similar about quite a few of the attackers,’ Teresa said.

‘You mean they’re fringe people,’ Torres said.

‘Drug dealers, a suspected paedophile, a Gypsy . . .’

‘Yes. That’s right. Except for the basketball trainer.’

Teresa kept looking at the screen.

‘Anything else?’ Cámara asked.

‘I’m just wondering,’ she said. ‘Not all of them, but with quite a few of the girls they’re of a similar type.’

‘What do you mean?’

Cámara looked down at the screen with her as she picked up the mouse and began to scroll over the cases again.

‘These ones,’ she said, pointing out the Seville murder, the first of the
1998
Madrid cases, the Guadalajara girl, the Albacete girl, the Madrid case from
2005
. And then Mirella Faro, the last one they’d looked at.

‘There’s something quite similar about them,’ Teresa said. ‘Not so much their colouring – the Guadalajara girl is quite pale and has light brown hair; the others are darker. But there’s a look there – they’re all quite slim, athletic looking, and there’s something strong, almost square about their faces. Perhaps it’s their jaws, I’m not sure.’

Torres and Cámara looked at the photos – they had been taken at different times, with different cameras of different quality. But Teresa had seen something they hadn’t.

She was right. Something about all of the girls she mentioned was very similar.

‘It’s almost as if they were related in some way.’

YAGO HAD TOLD
them to expect him. The guard at the gate checked his name and ID number and then rang through to the administration office. Cámara was made to wait a few minutes; there was nowhere to sit and the guard didn’t look like the kind who wanted to make conversation, so he paced around the small room, humming a song by the Flamenco rock band Triana.

‘
Abre la Puerta
’. Open the door.

Eventually a second guard appeared to escort him inside the Torrecica prison proper. Cámara followed in silence as they went through a series of entrances and doors that had to be unlocked and locked again each time. Cámara could hear voices as they passed along corridors, groups of men in various rooms hidden behind the brown-painted bars. In fact, the whole place had been decorated – if that was the word – in shades of brown: light, dark, chocolate, coffee, and . . . well. The walls, the doors, the floors, the guards’ uniforms – it was all brown. Even the smell, he thought, had a brownness about it.

Another door was opened. The guard stepped through and then stopped, beckoning Cámara wordlessly to follow. Inside, there was a scuffed wooden table at which sat a man in a toffee-coloured shirt, hunched over, his chin resting on his hands.

The guard began to back out.

‘I’ll call you when I’ve finished,’ Cámara said.

‘You’ve got ten minutes. No more.’

The door slammed behind him, but his face remained at the small window of reinforced glass at the top.

Cámara moved towards the table. The prisoner sat still, looking bored, his eyes unmoving from the wall in front of him. Cámara pulled out a chair and sat down, placing himself in the man’s direct line of vision. The eyes rested on him without emotion, and stayed there.

‘Do you know who I am?’ Cámara asked.

The man didn’t move. Cámara had seen photos of Juan Manuel Heredia years before, when he’d been a suspect in Concha’s murder. He’d been much younger then – more than thirty years younger – and considerably thinner. But he still wore his hair long, like many Gypsy men, while the walrus moustache he always sported was distinguishable over the thick carpet of black spiky bristles that covered the lower half of his face and neck. There were spots of white there now, as well as in his hair; he was in his mid-fifties, and old age appeared to be making inroads.

‘I’m Max Cámara. Does that name mean anything to you?’

Heredia shrugged.

‘You must be police,’ he said. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t let you in. It’s not visiting hours.’

‘Yes, I’m police.’

Cámara thought for a moment before pulling out his packet of Ducados and lighting a cigarette. People were becoming so tense about smoking, but that also made it useful in certain circumstances. It had worked with the FBI man. Now, for want of a new idea, he would try it again. He took a deep drag before releasing a plume into the air. Seconds later, as though on cue, there was a knocking at the door from behind. Heredia’s eyes darted from him to the door and back. The knocking came again, but still Cámara ignored it. Finally the door opened and the guard barked at his back.

‘No smoking!’

No reaction. Heredia’s eyes were beginning to widen.

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ the guard barked, taking a step forwards. ‘This is not a designated smoking area.’

‘It is now,’ Cámara said. Heredia sniggered.

‘If you’ve got a problem,’ Cámara said, ‘you’d better go and call your superior officer.’

There was a pause, then eventually the guard backed out, slamming the door behind him and locking it.

‘Just you and me,’ Cámara said.

‘Give me one of those,’ Heredia said.

‘You still don’t know who I am, do you?’

Heredia sighed.

‘Look, what do you want? That was good, what you did just now. But you want to play games with me as well?’

‘Cámara. Doesn’t the name Cámara mean anything to you? Concha Cámara. Think, Heredia, think. Quite some time ago. You were in your twenties then.’