The Anarchist Detective (Max Cámara) Read Free

There’s a lamp here somewhere by the bed.’
    Cámara fumbled around until he found a switch, and a pool of harsh, bluish light shone down on them.
    ‘It’s these low-wattage bulbs,’ Hilario said, squinting.
    Cámara stood up and walked to the window. He pushed the blinds back and looked out at an occasional car streaming past, a solitary smoker outside the hospital entrance stubbing out his cigarette before heading back inside to watch over a loved one for the night. An ill wife? A child?
    ‘I can’t sleep,’ Hilario said. ‘Too much going on in this damaged brain of mine. Repairing itself, I shouldn’t reckon. Nothing to do with the pills they’re giving me. Just let nature take its course.’
    ‘Do you want anything?’ Cámara asked, turning back to the room. ‘Some water?’
    ‘I’m fine. You can read to me if you like. There’s a copy of today’s paper around somewhere. I saw Pilar with it earlier.’
    The newspaper was resting on a ledge opposite the bed. Cámara picked it up, sat down, and started flicking through the pages.
    ‘A new kindergarten’s been opened on Calle Cervantes.’
    ‘Stop showing off. I know you hate newspapers. Doesn’t stop you going out with a journalist, though.’
    ‘I don’t hate the media. I just don’t like the way they manipulate people.’
    ‘A story about a new kindergarten is hardly major propaganda.’
    ‘Albacete FC lost again.’
    ‘That’s not news. More like the weather report.’
    The pages ruffled as Cámara flicked through. He paused.
    ‘What’s that?’ Hilario said.
    ‘They’re digging up part of the cemetery.’
    ‘Run out of space, have they? Too many dead people round here. Some of them still walking the streets.’
    Cámara continued reading.
    ‘Something to do with people executed under Franco, after the war. They reckon many were buried in an unmarked mass grave, right in the middle of the cemetery. It’s just a patch of wasteland now. The Town Hall’s behind it, putting up the money. Say it’s time to heal the wounds from the past.’
    ‘Funny way to heal wounds by opening them up again. These Socialists just want to remind everyone how nasty the right-wingers were. Forget that they were capable of killing a few people themselves in their time. It’s just vote grabbing. There’ll be elections coming up soon. Otherwise they wouldn’t bother.’
    Cámara was silent.
    ‘Anything else?’
    Cámara folded the paper and let it fall on to the floor below his chair.
    ‘A murder,’ he said. ‘Fifteen-year-old girl. Found her body near the tip by the industrial estate.’
    He closed his eyes.
    ‘She’d been raped.’

TWO
Thursday 29th October
    GETTING OUT OF the hospital proved difficult. The morning brought a wave of visiting doctors, nurses, more doctors, and people who didn’t identify themselves, but walked in, peered and prodded at Hilario in various ways and then left, without a word. Afterwards he had to track some of these creatures down, trying to get them to say something coherent about his grandfather’s condition. After several hours’ shadowing and buttonholing, it seemed that medical opinion was that the patient was ‘stable’, ‘improving’ even, but would need ‘continued observation’. The stroke had been mild, thankfully, but he was still at risk.
    Pilar turned up after lunch, in time to find a nurse showing Cámara how to put a bedpan in place.
    ‘He hasn’t eaten since his last bowel movement. What’s he need that for?’
    ‘In case of emergency,’ Cámara said. ‘During the night, when I’m here. They’re putting him on to solids later this afternoon.’
    ‘He’ll be constipated after all that’s happened. And the drugs they’ve filled him with won’t help. Always bung you up.’
    Hilario fell in and out of sleep. Cámara had tried putting the television on during the night to help his grandfather through his insomnia, but you needed a special plastic card-key from reception, and no one