Free Or the Bull Kills You by Jason Webster Page A

fringe cut at an angle so that it almost covered one half of his face. Cámara observed his slim build, the rising and falling of his chest as he breathed; his shirt looked one size too small and it seemed to stick close to his skin. Cámara had seen others wearing a similar style recently: it must be the fashion.
    Pulling out the chair on the opposite side of the desk, Cámara sat down and pushed out the lighter tucked inside Torres’s packet of cigarettes. Then he loosened one of the cigarettes and held it close to Aguado’s face.
    â€˜Smoke?’ he said.
    Aguado kept his head down.
    Slowly, Cámara withdrew the packet and took the cigarette for himself, then he placed it in his mouth and lit it. The smoke danced in the air above them as he inhaled and exhaled a couple of times. Smoke alarms had still not been installed in this area. Aguado didn’t move.
    When half the cigarette had been smoked, Cámara leaned in and slid the packet over the table towards Aguado, almost forcing it on him.
    â€˜Are you sure?’ he said.
    Aguado lashed out with his right hand, sending the packet back over the table towards Cámara.
    â€˜I don’t want your cigarettes,’ he said, momentarily looking up, before resuming his previous position.
    Cámara finished smoking and got up, stubbing the cigarette out on the floor with his toe.
    He stepped outside and rejoined Torres.
    â€˜Come on, let’s go,’ he said.
    They climbed up the stairs and found an emergency exit half hidden behind a buttress wall. Torres pushed on the bar: after the second go the door opened out on to a wasteland at the back of the building. From the amount of cigarette butts dotted on the ground, it seemed they weren’t the first to discover this addicts’ refuge.
    Torres pulled his packet of Habanos back from Cámara, placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. Smoke drifted out of his nostrils and filtered down through his thick black beard. Cámara grabbed his hand and took another one out for himself before he could put them back in his cardigan pocket.
    â€˜I thought you’d given up,’ Torres said.
    â€˜I have.’
    Smoking maría when he got home after work, he told himself, didn’t count. Torres’s Habanos were one of the strongest brands you could buy, like a mini-cigar wrapped in white paper – guaranteed to leave a coating of tar on the back of your tongue for at least a week afterwards. He was amazed they were still on sale these days.
    â€˜So what do you think?’ Torres asked.
    â€˜About Aguado?’ Cámara paused. ‘He’s a smoker. I saw the stains on his fingers. Yet he refused a cigarette.’
    â€˜Perhaps these are a bit too much for him,’ Torres said with a grin.
    â€˜Maybe,’ Cámara said. ‘But it was a lifeline of sorts, and he turned it down.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜Ah, I don’t know,’ Cámara said, waving the idea away. ‘But a guilty man might have accepted – have leapt through the door that had just been opened for him.’
    Torres shrugged.
    â€˜What do we know about him?’ Cámara said.
    â€˜Sculptor. Got a little workshop at his place in El Cabanyal. Lives on his own, no job, no pets, not much of a life, as far as I can see.’
    â€˜How does he make a living?’
    â€˜The sculpture, I suppose.’
    â€˜Any exhibitions? Is he known?’
    Torres sucked on his cigarette.
    â€˜I’ll get on to it,’ he said.
    â€˜What’s he saying?’
    â€˜About the time of the murder?’
    Cámara nodded.
    â€˜At home, on his own, not doing very much,’ Torres said.
    â€˜He said that?’
    â€˜More or less.’
    â€˜Did you sort out the lawyer?’
    â€˜I put in a call for a duty one to come down.’ Torres exhaled deeply. ‘Or at least I think I did. It’s a Sunday, anyway. No one’ll be showing up for a