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The Spy with 29 Names: the Story of the Second World War’s Most Audacious Double Agent

FATAL SUNSET

Jason Webster

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Jason Webster has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

For Mary Chamberlain

‘He knew the detective’s world is not the sunlit world of the eighteenth-century philosophers, but a nighttime world where hunch and chance are more important than ratiocinative acuity.’

Josiah Thompson, Gumshoe

Hardly a sea of presents; only five. Left, as usual, outside his door. No cards: the game was to guess whom each was from.

He picked them up and walked back to his bed, throwing them down in a pile. He stared, then reached for the nearest one: a golden box wrapped in a turquoise ribbon tied with a bow. José Luis tugged at it. Would it be something specially chosen – crafted even – for his sixtieth birthday? It did not have to be big, of course; he was no child. Besides, the box was no larger than a cocktail shaker. But just then he required something of quality, and consideration.

The bow came undone and he slipped a finger under the lid to prise it open. He lifted out purple tissue paper that spewed from the top, tossing it on to the floor. Inside was a bottle of some kind, with a black plastic lid. Not so promising. His lips pursed: he felt certain he knew who this was from. Still, there was hope. Perhaps he was more of a child than he admitted to himself.

For the briefest moment he was with Mamá again, clutching her single parcel with nervous anticipation, her eyes expressing so much tenderness, so much anxiety, so much desire that it would please him. He had learned quickly to shower her with kisses, no matter what the wrapping contained. It was never – could never be – just what he wanted: even supplemented by her night work, the pension of an airman’s widow only just kept them alive. Lying alone in their bed, staring at the shadows moving across the ceiling with each passing car in the street – and shooting them down through imaginary sights – he had tried, on occasion, to remember his father, but his uniformed image only grew dimmer, outshone by the glow radiated by his mother. He would pretend to be asleep when she returned, analysing the smell she carried with her of alcohol, tobacco, and sharp, urgent sweat. She would wash herself at the sink in the corner of the room, splashing cold water over her face, neck, chest, and finally – quickly – underneath. Droplets of water would cascade down her thighs, catching the faintest reflection from the street lamps, and he would watch furtively as they hurried down her skin, racing towards the floor, before a towel extinguished them. Dry and freshened, she would plant a kiss on his restless forehead, slide under the sheets beside him and quickly fall into exhausted sleep. She worked hard, Mamá. Harder than anyone knew. Except him.

He paused as he fingered the present sitting impatiently in the golden box. Nothing had compared since. The pretence to his mother had only been partial, and with the years became no pretence at all, for despite the disappointments he had treasured every gift she had given him – every tin car, every wind-up train, every wooden whistle – because he understood the sacrifices that she made to afford it. And he had never let them go, not even when he left for training college and she threatened to clear them out, make some space in their little apartment. Now they were his mascots, staring down every day from the mirror-backed glass cabinet made specially for his rooms. Mamá had left him long before, but what she gave him, what she taught him, would stay for ever.

Sixty years old; he would have given anything to be with her today. Perhaps later, if there were time, he might visit the cemetery, put some flowers on her grave. It had been a while.

He closed his eyes, gripped the object inside the golden box, and extracted it. It was metallic, some kind of tin, with a liquid inside. Gritting his teeth, he peeped through one eye to see what it was.

A spray-on cologne. One of those advertised on the television, with a young man wearing a bright, white, too-tight shirt grinning knowingly at the camera while girls clung to his arm, trotting down a street on their way to a club. Or home from one. It wasn’t always clear. What was clear was the message: one spray of this stuff and you were guaranteed a fuck. Simple, primitive and – presumably, because he was being given it now – effective. He was only glad no one was there to see his face: no need for pretence. There was something shocking, colossal even, about its inappropriateness.

He gave the thing a shake and pulled off the lid. What did this stuff smell like, anyway? He pushed the nozzle and particles shot out into the air near his face, lingering in the streaks of sunlight piercing the shutters. He sniffed, and coughed: it was sweet and earthy, like fresh tar sizzling on an empty road. Did people really wear this stuff? He laughed to himself. Perhaps he should give it a try. Perhaps, on his birthday, he might get lucky. The first clients would be arriving shortly after dark – one of them, at least, could be tempted; he still had it in him.

With a silent prayer, he held his breath, closed his eyes and sprayed the cologne over himself, giggling. It was the last thing he would dream of wearing.

He coughed again and walked to the bathroom, placing the can on the shelf with the rest of his collection. The other presents could wait. Sweat was beginning to form around his neck as the sun rose and the heat became more intense. The air conditioning hadn’t been working for a couple of weeks: he would have to get it fixed. June was just the beginning, a foretaste of the inferno that July and August brought. At least here in the mountains the nights were still cool. Down in the city the hours of darkness were already as sticky as the day. It was one thing that his nightclub had over the others: clearer, lighter air, and a sense of being elsewhere, away from the city and the usual faces: a place to lose yourself, become someone – or something – different.

He stared at the mirror, pulling with affectionate despair at the jowls sagging beneath his chin. They only ever got bigger, no matter which diet he was on. ‘Mos refem,’ Mamá used to say: we remake ourselves with age. ‘There’s more of you to love,’ others would – pathetically – insist, trying to cheer him up. But he had given up worrying about his looks years before. The threat of illness – diabetes, God knew what else – concerned him most about his increasing size. He might at least, if he managed to shift some of the fat, have more energy. Simply getting out of bed was becoming a challenge.

The phone rang as he cleaned his teeth. He gargled and spat, wondered about picking up, then wiped his mouth dry as he crossed back into the bedroom, trying not to notice the overhang of his gut in the mirror on the far wall. He pulled the phone to his ear and listened wordlessly, then he grunted an acknowledgement and hung up. More problems to sort.

He sighed and stepped over to the wardrobe, swinging the door open with intent. He needed something bright and cheerful, something that would announce to the world that today was his birthday: as loud a statement as possible. Birthdays – his birthdays – were about flamboyance and gaiety. He had sworn, when money had finally started to come, that there would be no more need for pretence: he owed it to the memory of Mamá. She would not approve of how he lived, had never, in fact, learned the truth – although at times he had suspected that she knew – but she would admire what he had built up, the creation of his own kingdom in the sierra, where nothing was wanting and no one told him what to do.

He picked out a white trouser suit with multicoloured sequins embroidered on the chest and arms. The fabric was stretchy: it would still fit – just, if he breathed in. And it was figure-hugging: perfect for making clear that even at his age – and size – he was as sexy as any of them, could do and take anything that the kids were into. He’d been there long before many of them were born: there was nothing he didn’t know.

The suit slid on; it felt like a second skin, silky to the touch, sequins glimmering. From a side table he picked up his favourite sunglasses: bright pink and oval with fake diamonds studded in the frames. His Dolly Glasses, he called them, as in Dolly Parton; at once both scandalous and ridiculous, which is why he loved them. Finally, he picked up a large straw hat with a dark red silk scarf wrapped around the head, placing it firmly over his bald scalp and tilting it to the side with a coquettish glance at himself in the mirror. That would do it. That would scandalise the bastard, teach him to call him out on this day. Urgent meeting? What could be so urgent about it?

Despite the hat and glasses, he squinted in the harsh flat sunlight outside. Evenings could be beautiful here, when the light softened to reveal hidden crags and undulations in the limestone mountains. And mornings too, if he was still up to see them. But the early afternoon was a time to stay indoors, a blanched, shadowless world where the sun ruled without mercy. A grey-skinned lizard sped away under a rock at the beat of his footsteps. He looked around: there was no one in sight; they would all be working. Or sleeping.

He took the path through the undergrowth towards the pine trees, breathing in their sharp, calming scent. The Chain was just a few metres further on. With luck he could get this over with quickly and then return.

A breeze, light and threatening, blew through the tops of the trees. When it dropped he heard something new, something he had not noticed before. There, in front of him, was the Chain, yet he was alone. Had the old man given up and gone already? But the sound came back to him: a buzz, circling, darting, changing course around him. Angry, and growing louder.

Confused, he felt an unexpected piercing stab in the side of his neck. The suddenness and intensity of it caused his knees to buckle, and he fell with a heavy thud to the ground in shock, clutching at the pain. But within an instant the skin on the back of his hand was punctured as well, as though by a hot needle, agony shooting like molten lead up his arm. More pricks and jabs came in quick succession: on his chest, his knee, his back. Harsher, quicker, striking again and again. Like fighter pilots swooping in for the kill.

His glasses fell from his face and his eyes became agonised orbs of glistening, bloodshot jelly. He opened his mouth to scream out against the unexpected violence. But the air caught in his throat, slamming against his tongue as it bloated and blistered at the back of his mouth like fungus on a dying tree.

Where was she? Hot, shamed tears streamed across his cheeks. He needed her now. Urgently.

Only the sun, patrician and unforgiving, staring down with a single, all-seeing eye at its child convulsing on the ground. Far, far below.

ONE

Her first act as commissioner had been to do away with the late starts. The idea that ten o’clock was a reasonable hour to begin the policing day was criminal itself. No more slinking in when it suited them, no matter what: all officers were obliged to report for duty by eight a.m. Non-compliers were punished by having their pay cut in incremental amounts for every five minutes late. Crime did not rest and neither should they. It was what the new masters insisted on: value for money. God knew most of her staff were already overpaid.

It had worked, and after only a few days the Jefatura had started to run – with only a handful of exceptions – according to the stricter regime that Rita Hernández insisted on. This was her ship now. Lower-ranking officers might carry out actual policing tasks, but everything was done under her supervision, her very watchful eye. Without her – paying their salaries and giving them their respective tasks – there would be no crime-fighting to start with. And she didn’t care what those ungrateful bastards thought.

Punctuality, however, was only the beginning. There was much clearing-up to do. Commissioner Pardo had received his distinguished-service medals and very generous pay-off, but in her eyes he should have been crucified for the mess he had bequeathed. Figuratively, of course, although if she were honest about her feelings – which was rare – she did sometimes fantasise about hammering the nails into his hands and feet herself. Blasphemy, perhaps, but he certainly deserved it.

Where to begin? Every morning Hernández’s thoughts followed the same routine as she drove her Range Rover down Fernándo el Católico, turned right by the main entrance to the Jefatura, down the back alleyway and past the policeman – never forgetting to smile and wave – who stood guard by the barrier to the central courtyard, where the highest-ranking staff were allocated parking spaces. She would begin by considering the aching perplexity of the finances – Pardo had frittered away thousands of euros in a complex web of accounts with names like ‘special measures’, or ‘emergency funding’, none of it ever explained.

This was the least of her worries. There had been attempts in the past to force officers to wear uniform at all times when on duty, yet the measures had never stuck. Pardo hadn’t seemed to care very much one way or another. In fact, it appeared that in his last months he had barely made an appearance at the Jefatura at all. Now, thankfully, uniforms were being worn as a matter of course by practically every member of staff under her watch. The only refuseniks being the same small group of individuals who were failing to adhere to her time directive and generally placing the greatest obstacles in her way as she turned the Jefatura into the police force that a major city like Valencia deserved.

Madrid was backing her all the way. It was why they had appointed her in the first place. She wasn’t Valencian and neither had she ever served in the city. Born in León to a churchgoing family, she was Castilian – patriotic, hard-working, and, most of all, endowed with a seriousness that was clearly lacking here on the east coast. Valencia had become synonymous in recent years with malpractice, the most rotten apple in a basket of admittedly poor-quality fruit. She would do what was needed to cut out the infection within the Policía Nacional. It was a difficult and necessary path, her own cross to bear. And she was damned if she was going to fail.

By this point of the morning she would be passing through the door of the Jefatura building and pressing the button for the lift to take her to the third floor. And it was here, at this point, that the darkest thoughts would come. For despite her growing successes with the finances, the discipline, and eradicating the whiff of corruption about the place, there was one issue that never ceased to furrow her brow as the lift doors closed behind her. And that was the issue of personnel.

She had, it must be said, some very good officers on her team, men and women who justified the expense of their salaries by working hard and bringing in the kinds of results that made her, the accountants and even Madrid happy. Results that could be fed back into the statistical machines which provided the kinds of news stories every high-ranking officer dreamt of: lower crime figures, higher rates of citizen security, lower operational costs: the Holy Trinity of policing.

And, she told herself, as her blood pressure rose with the lift, she had achieved much in the two months that she had been in the job. Every uniform, every skipping pair of feet rushing to get into work on time, was a victory. Yet when it came to personnel matters, her hands were tied in ways that caused her to lose sleep. Contracts, labour laws, workers’ rights! God in heaven! How she dreamt of being able to point her finger and eliminate the worst offenders. But no, sacking a police officer was near to impossible. She had looked for every loophole, had even paid a lawyer to see if she could rid herself of the worst of them. Even if only one. For there was one man on her staff that she must, at all costs, free herself of.

The doors of the lift would open at this point, and Rita would sigh as she made her way to her office. Usually she would determine to focus on other matters by now. Yet this morning there was a change. This morning, as she walked out into the corridor, there was something resembling a skip in her step, even, to a closely observing eye, something of a smile on her thin, lightly painted lips. A plan had formed in her mind. Not particularly sophisticated – in fact it was so simple she wondered why she had not thought of it before. If, in the end, she wanted someone to leave, she could simply make life so unpleasant for them that they would remove themselves of their own will.

She turned the handle and walked into her office. Her secretary, Mari-Carmen, was at her desk. Rita looked up at the standard-issue clock on the wall: it was three minutes to eight. Good. Mari-Carmen stood up and saluted.

Mari-Carmen returned sharply to her chair, her eyes fixed on her computer screen.

Commissioner Rita Hernández of the Policía Nacional walked over to her desk, placed her bag on the floor and hung up her coat on the stand near the window. She pulled the lace curtains to one side and looked at the traffic below, the buses taking people to work, the pedestrians hurrying to and fro, living their lives in quiet, industrious safety. As the world should be. With her, high above, making sure that nothing should harm them or get in their way. It made her feel maternal – a duty, given to her by God, to serve His creation and curtail the attempts of those inspired by evil to bring destruction on their heads.

She let the curtain fall and turned back towards her secretary. The clock on the wall showed a few seconds to eight o’clock.

‘Mari-Carmen,’ she said. ‘Tell Chief Inspector Max Cámara I want to see him here …’

She paused, watching for the second hand to sweep past the 12. Then she glanced back.

TWO

The sound of Alicia’s voice was drowned by the noise from the toilet bowl, where the efforts of a satisfying bowel movement were being flushed away into the labyrinthine and only partially effective hellhole of the Valencian city sewerage system.

Cámara finished washing his hands, dried them on the towel, made sure the window was fully open, then emerged from the bathroom. Alicia was standing with her dressing gown half-open, holding the bleating, vibrating thing in his direction.

‘Late enough, obviously,’ she said. ‘Here, take the damn thing, would you?’

He took the phone, wondering why it was still ringing and hadn’t gone to voicemail by now. Could a caller override something like that? Holding the screen at arm’s length, he recognised the number, closed his eyes, took a deep breath and pressed the answer button.

He listened patiently to the order barked at him efficiently from the other end.

He was already showered and dressed, but hadn’t had any breakfast. Then it would take him five minutes at least to get to the Jefatura on his motorbike. Ten minutes if the traffic was bad.

‘Tell Commissioner Hernández I’m on my way,’ he said. ‘I’m downstairs in my office right now. I’ll be with her in two minutes.’

Alicia was in the kitchen, from where the smell of a toasted croissant was drifting down the corridor towards him.

He walked into the kitchen, planted a tender kiss on her neck and slid a hand over the curve of her hips.

Commissioner Rita Hernández’s face was a picture of rage when Cámara finally entered her office.

‘And I’ve been down to your office,’ she interrupted. ‘Twice. You weren’t there. Nor was there any sign of you having been there at all this morning.’

Rita Hernández was the kind of officer who made Cámara despair, someone for whom police work was nothing more than a path towards power. She might believe that she was working for the greater good, but deep down, as his friend Inspector Torres had accurately perceived, she was an apparatchik, a political animal who would be better placed in some corporation selling life insurance or engine parts or artificial fertiliser – anywhere but the Policía Nacional. Cámara glanced around the room. Filing cabinets lined two of the walls, a third was taken up by Mari-Carmen’s little desk, and the fourth was filled by aluminium-framed windows. There were no plants or decorations, the only break in the monotony being a crucifix, and a dozen plaques and awards for distinguished service that the commissioner had received over several decades. Most of them were the kind that no one else bothered to display, being handed out simply for turning up.

One of the most curious things he had noticed about this office was that there was nowhere for visitors to sit. Hernández had her own chair, and then there was Mari-Carmen’s, but nowhere else. Cámara walked round the side of the main desk and, in the absence of an alternative, eased his behind on to the edge.

‘Get off my desk this instant!’ she barked. Cámara made to look for somewhere else, then turned back to her with an innocent shrug, as if to say, ‘Where else am I to go?’

The commissioner paused, realised that Cámara wasn’t going to back down, then smiled. It was unimportant: soon she would be rid of this insolent buffoon and life would be so much easier.

She positioned herself at the other side of the desk, opposite Cámara, forcing him to twist in order to look at her.

‘I want a progress report on your investigations in the Special Crimes Unit,’ she said.

‘I want to hear it from you,’ she said. ‘What you’ve been … what you think you’ve been doing down there.’

‘As you already know,’ he said, ‘Inspector Torres and I are investigating radicalisation programmes by Islamic terror groups inside the country.’

‘They’re targeting ordinary Spanish kids,’ Cámara continued. ‘That is, ones with no Arab or North African background – to convert them. The danger is that such people will be harder for us to identify and pick up later on.’

‘Yes, Chief Inspector, how far? I mean, how many arrests have you made? How many of these people have you managed to put behind bars? How many ordinary Spanish youths have you saved from this threat you describe?’

‘Damn you!’ shouted the commissioner, beating her fist into the desk. ‘You will obey an order from your commanding officer, so help me God!’

Cámara sighed, picked up a pen and a sheet of paper from the desk and deliberately drew a large circle on it.

‘That’s right, Chief Inspector. I do know. And for how long have I known? Hmm?’

‘Only two days,’ said the commissioner. ‘Only two days because it was only two days ago that you deigned to tell me what you were up to. And then only after I’d given a direct order in writing for you to issue a report on your activities. Which you then took a month to write.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Were you too busy rounding up suspects and making arrests during that time?’

Hernández paused. Cámara glanced up at the ceiling, pressing his tongue into the side of his mouth.

‘You and Inspector Torres have been wasting everyone’s time for the past six months on this nonsense,’ she said. ‘And have nothing to show for it. I wouldn’t have minded you starting your own lines of inquiry if at least it had led somewhere. But you have nothing – just months of police time clocked up, thousands spent and resources wasted in what has turned into a farce.’

‘We were making progress,’ said Cámara. He knew it was hopeless: everything about her – her body language, her tone of voice, the manner of this summary meeting – told him that there was little left to fight for, but he persisted nonetheless.

‘These kinds of investigations take time – they don’t bring in immediate results. But what we’re doing is useful. The potential for pulling off something big, something spectacular, is there. We just need to be left alone.’

‘You see, this is exactly your problem, Chief Inspector. Some of us get on with ordinary police work. But you? In your eyes, you’re special. No boring investigations for you. There always has to be an element of performance, doesn’t there? That business at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona – I believe the Catalan government gave you a medal.’

‘Oh, but I think you did, Chief Inspector. Deep down you long for the limelight. They say your earlier investigations helped bring down the previous government here in Valencia. Then there was that councillor in the Cabanyal, and the bullfighter case. All good headline material. You’re almost a household name these days.’

‘Good, good,’ said Hernández. ‘I’m so glad to hear it. You won’t mind, then, what I’m about to do.’

‘Mari-Carmen, would you please tell Chief Inspector Laura Martín to join us. It’s time we talked about Chief Inspector Max Cámara’s future.’

THREE

Less than a minute had passed before a knock came at the door. Mari-Carmen went to open. Chief Inspector Laura Martín walked in holding a file, looking almost like a schoolgirl sheepishly entering the headmaster’s office.

‘Buenos días, Señora,’ she said as she closed the door behind her and approached Commissioner Hernández. Cámara noted the formal means of address, and from somewhere in his memory he recalled some directive on the matter issued within the past months. Laura was clearly in uniform. Cámara was dressed in his usual shirt and jacket – no tie – but with nothing on him except the police ID in his pocket to say that he was a law-enforcement officer. He didn’t even have his pistol: a new consignment of Glocks was due, and rather than waiting for them to arrive first, many officers had had their old ones already taken away for ‘reassignment’. He was unarmed as well as inappropriately robed.

Cámara turned to his old colleague, trying to catch her eye. They had worked together in the past, never quite as friends, more as friendly rivals. Laura liked rules. She was neat and ordered and instinctively reeled from Cámara’s haphazard and intuitive methods. If indeed they could be called methods. In fact, there were strong similarities between Laura and Rita Hernández – both high-ranking women in a traditionally male environment, both driven to succeed through hard work and a rejection of anything approaching flair or ‘luck’. Yet a key difference separated them, and that was the fact that inside Laura’s breast there beat a human heart, one of blood and flesh, which responded to suffering and which could be reached – for Cámara had done so – when necessary. Despite all her neatness, Cámara knew that inside, Laura and he were the same: moved, essentially, to do their jobs by something that could only be described as love – love for their fellow human beings.

Cámara kept his eye steadily on Laura as she crossed the room, willing her to turn his way, but she refused. And yet, he felt certain, there was a silent communication that spoke of understanding, pity even. He braced himself.

‘Thank you,’ said Hernández as Laura drew closer. ‘Now, Chief Inspector,’ she said, turning to Cámara. ‘As of this moment the Special Crimes Unit is dissolved.’

‘Your written report and our earlier conversation make it clear enough to me, at least, that it is a waste of resources. I’ve been clearing up my predecessor’s mess from the day I arrived. It was his decision to set you up in that unit, and it’s mine to bring it to a close. I hope that’s clear.’

The commissioner waited a moment, realised that she wasn’t getting anywhere, then continued.

‘I’m assigning you back to Homicidios, where you’ll be working under the command of Chief Inspector Martín here.’

‘You are, of course, both of the same rank, which is unusual, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem, will it?’

‘As I say –’ she addressed her words to Cámara – ‘you will be under Chief Inspector Martín’s direct command. No more ad-hoc investigations, no more taking off and following your own whims. You will do exactly what she says and you will report directly to her. I hope that’s clear.’

Working for Laura was the least of his concerns at that moment: he was thinking of the months of work with the Islamic groups, the long hours of research, the tentative steps towards making contacts. He had felt certain that Torres and he were on the brink of establishing a mole, a disaffected young Spanish kid passed over for promotion within the group hierarchy and bent on revenge, with tales of something big, a link with the drug trade. Could Cámara still work it, pretend to be in the homicide team while actually continuing to develop his contact? It would be difficult, but not impossible. He and Torres had formed a semi-official unit-within-a-unit inside Homicidios before. They could do it again.

‘Your partnership with Inspector Torres has come to an end as well,’ Hernández continued. ‘I’m passing him to Narcotics. You won’t be seeing much of each other any more.’

Cámara gave a silent, stifled groan. His partnership with Torres was almost an institution within the Jefatura, the two mavericks joined at the hip. Other officers used to joke about their ‘marriage’ while secretly admiring the work they did, if despising their politics. Years of association had created a kind of telepathic connection between them that others were sometimes aware of. Splitting them up felt like an abomination of a natural order. Even Laura seemed to wince.

‘And there’s no need to go back to your office,’ the commissioner went on. ‘There’s a team inside clearing up as we speak. Your new desk in Homicidios is waiting for you. Although …’ She paused and looked at Laura with faux concern. ‘I understand you may have to share with someone? Is that right?’

‘Right.’ Rita slapped her hands together, smiling. ‘Now that’s done, Laura can give you your new case. Something came in late last night and you’re the perfect man for the job.’

‘José Luis Mendoza Uribe. Died yesterday, his sixtieth birthday. Was the owner of the Sunset nightclub in the Sierra Calderona just north of the city. Body found on the premises by one Abdelatif Cortbi. Cause of death still to be determined. Body currently being held at the Centre for Forensic Medicine. Autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow.’

‘Is there a problem, Chief Inspector?’ said the commissioner. ‘Is this case not high profile enough for you, perhaps?’

‘You said the body was found at the club,’ he said to Laura, ignoring Hernández. ‘That’s Guardia Civil territory. Why’s it with us?’

‘He was found at the club, that’s right,’ said Laura. ‘But he was brought to La Fé hospital in an ambulance. It was only here in the city that he was declared dead. Which means that he’s on our patch.’

‘Possibly. It’s still not clear. Hopefully the autopsy will provide more details.’

‘They’ll just have to accept it,’ said Laura. For a moment the two of them were speaking like colleagues, as though their commanding officer were not present. Cámara caught the connection between them and silently thanked her.

‘The Guardia Civil will cooperate in every way,’ Hernández butted in, sensing what was going on. ‘I think that is the last thing you need to be worrying about, Chief Inspector.’

‘At the moment, very little,’ answered Laura. ‘Apart from the gossip, of course. We’ve all heard of Sunset. And of the kinds of things that go on up there.’

‘I’ll look into it,’ he said. ‘What about this other guy you mentioned? Abdel-something.’

‘One thing at a time, please, Chief Inspector,’ said Hernández. ‘I know you’re used to charging off, spending police resources with little or no justification, but things have changed. We’re not getting the crime-scene investigators involved until we know that this is an actual murder.’

‘I said we don’t know if this is a murder yet.’ The commissioner smiled. ‘My apologies, we should have made it clearer at the beginning.’

‘You may find you have to get used to this kind of police work from now on. A bit of a step down.’

Cámara sniffed. It was clear enough what was going on. Laura handed him the file.

‘Just one thing,’ he said. ‘Why even pass it to Homicidios at all? I mean, if there’s no suspicion of foul play?’

‘A call came in last night,’ she said. ‘Anonymous, relating to the death. Certainly a hoax, but suggesting that it wasn’t an accident, that José Luis was killed.’

‘The details are all in the file, Chief Inspector,’ said the commissioner. ‘Now if you’ll excuse us, I have some matters to discuss with the head of Homicidios.’

Cámara looked at Laura, but she stared at the ground. Clinging to the file, he walked out of the office, closing the door as gently as he could behind him.

FOUR

His old office was out of bounds, and the thought of walking into the dark, cramped, ground-floor offices of Homicidios where a cool reception and a shared desk awaited somehow failed to appeal. Instead, he took the lift to the basement, where a small room with a cement floor, strip lighting, two bare tables and a couple of vending machines pushed against a wall had been designated a ‘canteen’. No one used it, preferring to frequent the several bars in the local neighbourhood. But the room allowed some pen pusher in the system to tick a box on a form with a list of ‘employee facilities’ on it.

Cámara stepped in, switched on the lights, and breathed in the hard, metallic, musty smell that he recognised from the previous time – the only time – he had been here. One of the machines was supposed to produce something resembling coffee, but it was never used and he doubted it could make anything now. The one next to it had cans of soft drinks, brightly coloured packets of nuts and crisps – almost certainly well past their sell-by date – and bottles of water. He placed a couple of coins into the slot, heard the machine swallow them, and pressed a button. With a clunk a plastic bottle fell out at the bottom. He picked it up: it was dusty and warm.

He placed the water on one of the tables and sat down to glance through the file. It stared back at him, unopened. He already knew, simply by holding it in his hands, that it was thin and held very little information. Almost certainly nothing more than what had been mentioned in the commissioner’s office. The question was whether he should bother reading it at all. What had happened earlier, what was going on in the Jefatura, felt like a palace coup: bright new faces with a bright new mandate busy sweeping away the old guard, introducing their bright new world. The plan was transparent enough. He thought for a moment about giving Torres a ring, but checked himself: his colleague would doubtless be in Rita’s office receiving his own dressing-down.

Instead, the question for Cámara now was how to respond: accept what had happened and carry on, or do what Rita really wanted and hand in his resignation.

The fact was, leaving the police force was always a possibility somewhere at the back of his mind. He had no problem with putting criminals away. The problem came when it was no longer – and when was it ever? – a simple matter of catching ‘bad guys’. Cámara came from a long line of anarchists – his grandfather and his great-grandfather before him – active members of libertarian groups who had suffered and even, in his great-grandfather’s case, been shot for their beliefs during a more authoritarian past. Deep down, Cámara knew that he shared their views, if in a less militant form. Years before he had managed to come to terms with being both a State employee and not believing in the State to begin with: in the absence of an anarchist revolution, working for the common good was good enough. And it did well to have the odd anti-authoritarian within an organisation that tended to attract his polar opposites: something about trying to balance things out, or so he told himself.

Only Torres, a lone Socialist – although he hinted at the presence of others – was on any similar kind of wavelength. It was why they worked so well together. But now even that relationship was being taken away from him.

Daydreams of a life outside the police had come and gone, getting him excited for a few days or even weeks before fading. And he would share them with Alicia. Things were good with them again, the sparkle returning to their relationship after the difficulties and scars of the past. Now both in their late forties, they had enough life behind them to know what they liked, enough life ahead of them to build something new if they wanted.

And now this. The door out of the police had been opened and he had been given a sudden push in its direction.

He nibbled the side of his mouth, eyes unfocused as he let his mind wander. Reaching for the water, he unscrewed the lid, tossed it on to the tabletop and lifted the bottle to drink. It tasted old and stale: how many years had it been sitting in the vending machine? He coughed as the liquid hit the back of his mouth, lurching forwards to clear his throat.

He stood up, coughed again, and shook himself out of his dream state. The bottle of offending water seemed to laugh at him from the table.

‘Only one place for you,’ Cámara mumbled, snatching it up. He rescrewed the top and took a step towards the vending machines, sending the bottle flying towards a small, empty dustbin sandwiched between them. The bottle ricocheted off their side walls and clattered with a heavy thud into the metal container below.

He turned back to the table: the file was still there, undisturbed by his little drama.

No answer, and as if expecting it to tell him what to do, he flicked it open, casting an eye over the scanty contents. He had been right: everything had been mentioned already back in Rita’s office.

Everything except one name that seemed to wink up at him from the page, someone involved in the case who had definitely not been mentioned earlier. Someone Cámara wouldn’t mind having a chat with just now.

FIVE

Carlos watched the ambulance carrying his agent’s dead body drive up the street and disappear around a corner. He checked his hands and clothes for any blood, nodded at the policeman charged with securing the crime scene, then climbed into his Audi, fired the engine, and put it into gear. It would take almost an hour to cross Madrid and reach the HQ of the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia.

After he had sped up side streets, zigzagging partway, the traffic began to slow: roadworks on the A6 were causing tailbacks as far as the Plaza Moncloa. In the hard morning light the city felt stiff and wheezy like an old man trying to cough his dying lungs into life. Across the pavement, the doors of the metro station opened and belched out another huddle of commuters: men with ill-fitting suits, elderly women laden with bags, students making their way with grim purpose to classes in the nearby university complex. All was movement and noise: the crashing hammer of a pneumatic drill tearing into the tarmac, the crackling buzz of a swarm of mopeds filtering past to reach the front of the traffic lights, the tearing roar of a thousand combustion engines. Carlos watched the bustling hordes: they knew nothing, saw nothing, understood nothing. Which was how it should be.

He turned his attention away as the traffic moved in a short burst along the clogged-up avenue. His schedule would suffer, and his right hamstring was beginning to tire from shifting his foot from accelerator to brake and back. And yet, he told himself, he was calm. Carlos was always calm. It was who he was, who he needed to be. Uncontrolled passion – rage, lust, greed – were a source of weakness in a man. And Carlos had no time for weakness. Which was why he had got where he had, been given the responsibilities that only he could take on.

Nonetheless, he had to admit that despite his usual sense of control, a sensation of annoyance, even mild frustration, was stirring somewhere within him. He put it down to a lack of coffee: it was fast approaching ten o’clock and the two cups he had drunk with his breakfast at six – washing down the bread, olives and fried eggs with cumin that had been his staple since living years before in Morocco – now faded into memory. Yet somewhere he knew that insufficient caffeine was not the sole cause of his discomfort. Despite being only four hours old, this morning had already brought its fair share of problems, of which the traffic jam was merely the latest.

Carlos had a rigid system of categorising people. There were three basic groups: idiots; useful idiots; and the enemy. The majority fell into the first – the crowding thousands now surrounding his car; the commuters and office workers; the students, housewives and unemployed; the bus drivers and shopkeepers; the tourists and street cleaners – these were all, unless demonstrated as otherwise, idiots, the dumb, the stupid, the uncomprehending. The very people whose lives it was his job to keep safe. And the less they knew, the safer they were. And the easier his task became.

But the work of a security-service officer could not be performed in a vacuum – that would be absurd, if, admittedly, an attractive proposition at times. No, people – the idiots – could not be held at a complete remove, hence his second category: useful idiots, easily the most complicated of the three. A useful idiot could take several forms: almost anyone who worked for him, for example, was viewed as a member of this category. A useful idiot was, naturally, of use to him, but lacking knowledge he or she was still, technically, an idiot. Others who entered his world in a less hierarchical manner, like a colleague working in a different government department with information or leverage that could be helpful, were also part of the second group. Then there were those whom Fate occasionally sent his way: a one-time informant passing on a tip, or a person who could be turned into an operative of sorts. The great advantage of these informal contacts was the ease with which any association with his organisation could be erased: no paperwork to destroy, all connections denied. And the assistance of the mainstream, which tended to regard with suspicion claims about government ‘dirty tricks’ or conspiracies. No one of consequence took them seriously. Besides, endemic corruption had so muddied the waters of public life that few people believed very much at all these days.

The problem with useful idiots, however, was an inherent instability within the category itself. Ordinary greed meant

ALSO BY JASON WEBSTER

FATAL SUNSET

Jason Webster

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