Read Online A Death in Valencia by Jason Webster - Free Book Online Page A

not only where he was, but how he’d got there. And more importantly–why. He glanced quickly at the other side of the bed as the door opened. Someone else had slept there with him.
    Almudena looked at him with a forced smile of concern as she placed the breakfast tray down by his knees. He hadn’t seen her for over a year. There was something harder about her face than he remembered. Was that the time that had passed? Or the fact that now he could barely recall what it had felt like to be in love with her.
    â€˜I’ve put your phone on silent. It’s been ringing all morning, but I thought you’d want to sleep. After last night.’
    Cámara placed a hand on the bed beside him where the shape of her body was still imprinted on the sheet and pillow.
    â€˜We didn’t…Did we?’
    She smiled.
    â€˜Come on, Max. Have some coffee.’
    She leaned over to the breakfast tray and poured him a thick, black café solo . His eyes strayed over the skin of her waist, exposed from under her T-shirt as she stretched out across his legs.
    â€˜You pretty much collapsed when you got inside,’ she said, handing him the cup. ‘I was hardly going to put you on the sofa. But I wasn’t going to sleep there myself, either.’
    Cámara took a sip–it was bitter and burnt, as it always had been.
    â€˜So, er, where’s what’s-his-name?’
    â€˜Esteban? Oh, he’s away. On business. In Paris.’
    â€˜Are you two still…’
    â€˜Business partners? Yes, that’s all going fine, thanks.’
    â€˜And what about bed partners?’
    She looked him hard in the eye.
    â€˜I think your toast will be getting cold.’
    He tried eating, but nothing would go down.
    Â 
    Torres was pouring brandy into a plastic cup for him almost before his backside hit the seat.
    â€˜I know you’re not into that Yankee I-love-my-job crap, but even I’m amazed to see you here.’
    Cámara drank it down in one, closed his eyes, then placed the cup back down on the desk, with a nod for Torres to pour some more.
    â€˜I’m as good here as anywhere else.’
    â€˜You want to go out for a smoke? You should take it easy.’
    â€˜I’ve done little more than smoke since yesterday. My lungs need a break.’
    â€˜As you wish. You know, if you need somewhere to stay we can always put you up at our place.’
    Cámara had seen Torres’s home once–a cramped, low-ceilinged flat in the Mislata district, just off the Madrid road heading out of the city. One of the blocks that had been put up in the seventies, with sliding aluminium windows and no balcony. There was barely room there for him, his wife and their little boy, let alone a guest.
    â€˜I’m fine. Thanks. Appreciate it.’
    Torres sat down opposite him, rubbing his hand through his beard.
    â€˜The Town Hall should probably be fixing something up for you.’
    â€˜They put people up in the school last night. But that can’t last long.’
    â€˜The landlady?’
    Torres had heard plenty of Cámara’s stories about his landlady, about how the tight old widow refused ever to carry out any improvements on the building, about how her husband had won the block of flats years back in a game of poker and added it to his property portfolio. The chances were, Cámara thought, that some of her other flats were empty, and she could put him and the other neighbours up somewhere–probably even for free, if they pressed her hard enough. But the thought of having to deal with her, just the grubbiness of having to ask her for charity, no matter what her responsibility was in the collapse of the building, made him queasy. He’d lost a large part of himself the previous day.
    â€˜Something will come up,’ he said.
    Last night it already had. He’d left Almudena’s without clearing up on what basis exactly he’d spent the night there with