Free The Anarchist Detective (Max Cámara) by Jason Webster

the chicken began to sizzle, watching the smoke lacing itself into messy, unfinished designs above his head. Always the desire to find patterns there, he thought, to give shape, when all there was was smoke, doing what it did, moving according to its own whims, not ours.
    He wondered whether he was perhaps one of the last people who would be allowed to smoke, cook and eat in the same space. One day even this, in his own home, would probably come to an end – another prohibition, another law. Time to enjoy the old freedoms while they were still around.
    Hilario walked in as he started eating.
    ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
    ‘Well, you did.’
    ‘How are you?’
    ‘You know I hate that question.’
    ‘And I try to remember not to ask you. But you don’t have strokes every day, thank God. Saw you’ve been looking stuff up on the Internet.’
    ‘Snooping around like a policeman, eh? I should have guessed.’
    ‘So sleep is good for you, is it?’
    ‘Sleep is good,’ Hilario echoed flatly. ‘Makes sense. You become a child again, it says. Or at least in some ways. Your brain is having to make new connections, like you do when you’re young. I think that’s why children sleep more – it’s part of the process.’
    ‘You were lucky it wasn’t more serious. I mean, with you it’s just a physical thing, right? A partial loss of coordination on the right side. You’re not . . . ?’
    ‘I’m not a vegetable, no. I would have thought that was pretty obvious. Even to a policeman.’
    ‘But there’s nothing else,’ Cámara said. ‘No memory loss or anything.’
    ‘Franco’s still dead, isn’t he?’
    ‘Er, yes, of course. He died almost forty years ago.’
    ‘Good. Well, I’m fine, then. Wouldn’t want to wake up from a stroke and discover it had all been a dream, and that he was still in power. Now that would be a nightmare. Probably give myself a stroke again just to get away from it all.’
    ‘A self-induced stroke,’ Cámara said. ‘I wonder if that’s possible?’
    ‘Well, in my case all I need to do is stop taking the pills. Those blood-thinning ones. Probably be gone in a couple of days’ time. What, you thinking about new ways to kill people?’
    Cámara curled up his nose as he chewed on the chicken.
    ‘Oh, yes, I forgot. It’s your job to catch the killers.’
    Hilario sat down heavily in the chair opposite.
    ‘Still, it might make for a nice little mystery,’ he said. ‘A doctor who can induce a stroke in people so no one ever knows it’s him killing them. You should write a book. No, screw that,
I
should write a book. You just fill me in on the police details and all that nonsense. I’ll mention you in the acknowledgements.’
    ‘You never told me your father was executed.’
    Cámara put his fork down and drained the last of his beer, watching Hilario’s reaction from the corner of his eye.
    For a moment his grandfather barely reacted at all. His expression hardened a little, as though his eyes had turned to stone. Cámara had seen that in him only two, perhaps three, times before. The last time when he told him he was joining the police.
    When finally he moved, Hilario’s reaction was to glance quickly at the calendar on the wall, before resting his eyes on Cámara.
    ‘Eduardo García been here, has he?’ he said.
    Cámara nodded.
    They looked at each other for a moment in a curious engagement, threatening and affectionate.
    ‘You didn’t need to know,’ Hilario said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘That’s why I didn’t tell you. Because it wasn’t important for you to know. Perhaps it is now, perhaps that’s why you’ve already heard something about it. This might be it . . .’ His voice began to tail away.
    ‘I suppose I always thought there would be a time when we’d talk about this. It was never something I could just start on my own, though. As though I needed a sign . . .’
    ‘He’s buried in the cemetery,’ Cámara said. ‘Maximiliano, my