Chapter One

Nerja in July was different the second year.

The first summer Carmen Reyes had arrived late — 12 August, 06:15, a call to a body at Burriana Beach at the tide line. That was her introduction: forty thousand people in a town built for eight, streets already at high-summer density.

This time she'd been here eleven months. She knew the town thin and full.

At 05:45 she ran to the Balcón.

In June she'd moved the run fifteen minutes earlier. At six, you ran through other people's mornings. At 05:45 the town still belonged to itself — cleaners, bakers, delivery vans. Tourists still asleep in hotels and rentals.

The route had become automatic. Old town, down to the promontory, eastern railing, south. That was why she ran — the body handled the descent while the other half of her mind worked.

Warm air at 05:45. That was July. Light already present, not the grey of March or the dark of November. The sky committing to blue before the hour turned. The sea below hard blue, full summer. Horizon clear. No Africa — too much haze in July. Just water to the edge.

The current case was small. A hotel room theft on the eastern beach road, professional, balconies, guests reliably at dinner eight to ten. It would resolve next week when the pattern produced a name.

Ordinary work. Summer produced it in volume — pickpockets, bar disputes, traffic, domestics in rental flats where two weeks of enforced proximity did its work. She gave it the attention it deserved and kept a separate attention for what was not ordinary.

What was not ordinary had been there since May.

Not something seen. Something left behind. Faces in the seasonal workforce that didn't fit. Young men from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa — normal for the beach, the restaurants, the plastic-covered fields behind the coast — except a subset with no paperwork. No tax, no social security, no padrón, no contracts. Present and working and invisible in every system the comisaría could access.

She'd run checks in the background. Not a formal case yet, no number. Private work, before it became official.

On Tuesday of the last week of July, Khalid Alami told her.

Fifty-two, Moroccan-born, twenty years in Nerja, café owner since 2006. She'd been coming two or three times a week since March, late morning, the walk and coffee when the comisaría work paused.

He said, flat, not an allegation — a fact: "You know things are different this year."

"What things."

"The workers. The boys coming on the boats. Every year more. This year more than ever. And younger. Last year the youngest in the kitchen on the corner was twenty. This year I've seen boys who look sixteen on the market stalls."

"Where are they staying?"

"I don't know exactly. A warehouse on the industrial estate, people say."

He looked at her. "Someone should know. You should know."

She walked back to the comisaría thinking: sixteen. Not twenty, not eighteen. Sixteen — the line where a young adult making a risky choice becomes a child being processed.

The case was here. It had been here since May. She'd been noticing it without a name.

At her desk she opened a new file. At the top she wrote: INFORMAL — LABOUR — NERJA — JULY