Falcón headed down the narrow, cobbled street canyons to the bar on Calle Gravina. It was a converted mercería, still with the old scales on the counter. People were spilling out on to the street with their beers. Manuela was with her boyfriend deep in the crowd. Falcón squeezed through. Men he barely knew gave him un abrazo as he went past, strange women kissed him — Manuela’s friends. His sister kissed him and hugged him to her gym-worked body. Alejandro, her boyfriend, whom she’d met on the rowing machines at the club, handed Javier a beer.
‘My little brother,’ she said, as she’d always said since they were small, ‘you look tired. More dead bodies?’
‘Only one.’
‘Not another gruesome drug slaying?’ she said, lighting one of her foul menthol cigarettes, which she thought were better for her.
‘Gruesome, yes, but not drugs this time. More complicated.’
‘I don’t know how you do it.’
‘There can’t be many of your friends who could imagine that someone as beautiful and sophisticated as Manuela Falcón could have been up to her shoulder dragging out stillborn calves.’
‘Oh, I don’t do that any more.’
‘I can’t see you cutting poodles’ toenails.’
‘You must talk to Paco,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘He’s very stressed, you know.’
‘The Feria’s his busiest time of year.’
‘No, no, not that,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the vacas locas. He’s worried his herd has been infected with BSE. I’m testing the whole lot for him, off the record.’
Falcón sipped his beer, ate a slice of sweet and melting jamón ibérico de bellota.
‘If they bring in official testing,’ she continued, ‘and they find one animal with the disease, he has to slaughter the whole herd, even the ones with 120-year-old bloodlines.’
‘That’s stressful.’
‘His leg’s bad. It always is when he’s stressed. He can hardly walk some days.’
Alejandro put a plate of cheese in front of them and Javier instinctively turned his face away.
‘He doesn’t like cheese,’ explained Manuela, and the plate was removed.
‘Your name came up today at work,’ said Falcón.
‘That can’t be good.’
‘You vaccinated a dog for someone. It was a bill.’
‘Whose dog?’
‘I hope he paid you.’
‘You wouldn’t have found a signed receipt if he hadn’t.’
‘Raúl Jiménez.’
‘Yes, a very nice Weimeraner. It was a present for his kids … they’re moving to a new house. He was due to collect today.’
Falcón stared at her. Manuela blinked at her beer, put it down. This happened rarely, that real murder slipped into a social situation. Normally he would entertain, if asked, with tales of detection, his idiosyncratic approach, his attention to detail. He never told how it really was — always laborious, at times very tedious and interspersed with moments of horror.
‘I worry about you, little brother,’ she said.
‘I’m in no danger.’
‘I mean … this work. It does things to you.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know, I suppose you have to be callous to survive.’
‘Callous?’ he said. ‘Me? I investigate murder. I investigate the reasons why these moments of aberration occur. Why, in the heart of such reasonable times, such heights of civilization, we can still break down and fail as human beings. It’s not like I’m putting down pets or slaughtering whole herds of cattle.’
‘I didn’t know you were so sensitive about it.’
They were so close he could smell the menthol from the cigarettes on her breath, even over the sweat and perfume in the bar. This was how it was with Manuela. She was provocative and it was why her boyfriends, selected for looks and wallet, never lasted. She couldn’t keep up the fluttering femininity.
‘Hija,’ he said, not wanting this, ‘I’ve had a long day.’
‘Wasn’t that what you said was one of Inés’s accusations?’
‘You said the forbidden word, not me.’
Manuela looked up, smiled, shrugged.
‘You hoped I’d been paid for vaccinating that poor man’s dog. It struck me as hard-hearted, that’s all. But perhaps you were just being … phlegmatic.’
‘It was a small joke in bad taste,’ he said, and then surprised himself by lying. ‘I didn’t know the dog was a present for the kids.’
Alejandro stuck his magnificent jaw line in between them. Manuela laughed for no reason at all, other than it was early days and she was still keen to make her man feel good about himself.
They talked about los toros, the only topic they had in common. Manuela enthused over her favourite torero, José Tomás, who was, unusually for her, not one of the great beauties of the plaza but a man she admired for always being able to bring some tranquillity to the faena. He never rushed, he never shuffled his feet, he would always bring the bull on with the face of the muleta, never the corner, so the bull would always pass as dangerously close to him as possible. Inevitably he would be hit and when this happened he always picked himself up and walked slowly back to the bull.
‘I saw him on television in Mexico once. He was hit by the bull and it tore his trouser leg open. The blood was running down his calf. He looked pale and sick, but he stood up, got his balance, waved his men away and went back to the bull. And, the camera showed it, there was so much blood running down his leg that it was filling his shoe and squirting out with every step. He lined the bull up and put the sword in to the hilt. They carried him straight out to the infirmary. ¡Que torero!’
‘Your cousin, Pepe,’ said Alejandro, who’d heard that story too many times, ‘Pepe Leal. Will he get a chance in the Feria?’
‘He’s not our cousin,’ said Manuela, forgetting her role for a moment. ‘He’s the son of our sister-in-law’s brother.’
Alejandro shrugged. He was ingratiating himself with Javier. He knew that Javier was Pepe’s confidant and that, when work permitted, he would go to the plaza on the morning of the corrida to make the bull selection for the young torero.
‘Not this year,’ said Javier. ‘He did very well up in Olivenza in March. They gave him an ear from each of his bulls and they’ll invite him back for the Feria de San Juan in Badajoz, but they still don’t think he’s big enough for the Feria de Abril. He can only sit around and hope for someone to drop out.’
He felt sorry for the boy, Pepe, just nineteen years old, a great talent, whose manager could never quite get him into the