At Close Quarters is a 2007 novel by Spanish author Eugenio Fuentes. Martin Schifino's English translation appeared in 2009 under Arcadia Books' imprint Euro Crime.
Plot
The unexpected death of a highly disciplined and successful army member of Camp San Marcial is officially explained as suicide. Major Olmedo had always followed the letter of the law and never questioned orders through the army hierarchy. He only broke the law in one respect and that was to carry an unauthorized pistol, since his name had appeared on a terrorist organization's hit-list.
Major Olmedo had recently completed a report which was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence in Madrid. In it, he recommended the closure of Camp San Marcial as an efficiency measure. This highlighted the growing cleavage between his own generation and style of troop which were dedicated to peace-keeping and winning wars with technology; vis-a-vis the older, Francoists, who still believed in numbers and yearned for a reinstatement of the recently abolished compulsory military service.
When he gets shot there is an internal inquiry which results in a verdict of suicide. Marina, the Major's daughter, is not satisfied with this outcome and hires a private detective, Ricardo Cupido. Cupido sets about investigating the "crime" scene with rigour and a professional manner. The scene itself simply is the pistol and a note in hurried handwriting saying two words, Forgive me scrawled on one of the Major's business cards.
Cupido questions each of the suspects and mulls over this problem even where Marina gives up on learning the truth because of the strain it is putting on her and dismisses him. Cupido does get to the bottom of the mystery.
Main characters
Samuel is a young man who has come through a divorce and lives by himself. He has a corner-house with a suntrap balcony and many plants and flowers that he tends to as his main hobby. He also does some photography. His business is in paper collection and recycling which he developed from his father's business as rag-and-bone man.
Samuel gets infatuated with a beautiful young woman, Marina, who has two children one of whom she drops off at the school bus-stop each morning outside Samuel's house. Samuel one morning sets up his digital camera to take a picture of the lady, and programmes it to take a snap every 60 seconds. He comes home after work to find rather more than just pictures of her.
He seizes his opportunity to get to know her by observing a dropped gold bracelet and then the next day rushing out to go and return it to her. He reaches her as she is getting to the steps to her own apartment and is surprised to learn she only lived nearby all along.
Samuel and Marina get chatting and she is equally surprised to learn the plants she had been admiring belonged to his house because she is also a keen gardener. They become an item.
Marina Olmedo is the daughter of the dead soldier. She has two children but has divorced from their father, Jaime. Jaime kept the business whilst she kept the house. Marina is beautiful and sensuous and after seven months is ready to move in with Samuel.
Major Camilo Olmedo is a long-serving soldier with an impeccable record and fully disciplined and respectful of the military hierarchy. However very few of his colleagues actually like him, because he recognizes that times have changed and that modern armies are fighting the terrorist within rather than the enemy nation without.
Major Olmedo's one misdemeanour is to always carry the type of pistol for which he has not been authorized, and he does so because he trusts no-one. He will sit with his back to a wall in any public place and is always on the lookout; this is why it was necessary for the army to reach a verdict of suicide where they investigated because it was so unexpected that he should be murdered.
Olmedo's wife, Marina's mother, had died under anaesthetic when she had been in for cosmetic surgery.
Captain Bramante is one of the Camp Marcial colleagues who was upset at Olmedo's report. Both he and Captain Ucha were absent from an informal meeting scheduled right after Olmedo delivered his damning report, to determine what their stance should be. Bramante falsely claimed to have been at the gym working out. His marriage is actually in danger and this lie ended up proving a red-herring because really he has been trying to hide things from a wife who is no longer proud of him, and he would love to go to Afghanistan and die what he considers a hero's death.