The Anarchist Detective (Max Cámara) Read Free Page B

manufacture, and knife shops, selling anything from mediaeval-style swords to fat short blades for cutting off a pig’s testicles, catered to the odd tourist who happened to have got lost and found himself in this unloved part of the country.
    Albacete – caga y vete
, went the phrase. Albacete – shit there and get out. It was a motto Cámara himself had tried to live by.
    Except that now he was back.
    Not for long, he tried telling himself. But the truth was that he couldn’t be sure. Much depended on Hilario, and how he recovered. If he remained partially paralysed it would be too much for Pilar to look after him on her own. And there was no way they would ever get him into an old people’s home. Not that he really wanted that anyway, but the idea of Hilario sitting quietly in some television lounge surrounded by other OAPs was ludicrous. He’d either be trying to sleep with the nurses or digging a tunnel to get out before the sun had set on the first day.
    So what would happen? Would he have to stay here in Albacete indefinitely, acting as a home help? They could move together, go elsewhere. But where? Madrid? Valencia? That would mean taking up his job with the police again.
    And Alicia? What happened to her in this scenario? She’d texted him a couple of times during the day to see how things were going, and he thought about giving her a ring now, but he was still working things out. Time to think and digest first.
    These had been a good few months with her. If circumstances had been different he would never have moved in like that with any woman. And he told himself that he hadn’t – not really. It was just that he didn’t have a home at that moment – the last one in Valencia had collapsed into a heap of rubble after work on a nearby metro line had sent cracks running up the walls. So really he’d only bedded down for a while, until he could set himself up again, and decide what he was going to do.
    But weeks had passed, and vivified by an erotic energy that had quickly reignited between them – and which had surprised them both by its force – he had ended up staying in Alicia’s small attic apartment for the entire summer, enduring the intensity of the Madrid heat, splashing their bodies cool with water in between bouts of lovemaking.
    When the heat began to lessen, and Madrileños returned from their beach holidays, he got a job working at a bar in the next street. The late shifts coincided well with Alicia’s work at the newspaper, and they usually got part of the morning together before she had to leave again. Then at weekends he tried taking photographs with a new digital camera he’d bought. Shots of the city, of faces in the street, of details that caught his eye – a griffin statue on top of a facade, a broken ‘No Entry’ sign, anti-capitalist graffiti on the walls. Nothing anyone else would be interested in seeing, perhaps, but he enjoyed watching the city through a lens for a while.
    Yet the question remained: would he return to his job in the police? His boss in Valencia, Commissioner Pardo, had placed him on ‘indefinite’ sick leave at the end of the Sofía Bodí case back in July, but he knew that couldn’t last. It was late October already. Some time soon, he could tell, a phone call would come from someone in Personnel making enquiries about his state of health, hinting that his salary – or the 80 per cent of it that he was still getting paid – might not continue beyond the New Year. Money was tight; they were making big cuts. He would have to take a decision. But life with Alicia, enjoying a mini late adolescence, had drawn him in, and he was reluctant for it to end.
    Except that now, it seemed, decisions were being made for him.
    He checked the time: Pilar would be all right for another couple of hours at least.
    He’d meandered through the city centre. The flat was close by now, but rather than continue down the avenue that took him almost to his old front door, he