The book

Nothing Bad Happens Here

18 chapters · 91,274 words · Chapter one always free

1. 01Chapter OneFreeThe early morning fog clung to the peaks of the Sierra de Tejeda like a lingering secret, softening the jagged cliffs and muting the vibrant greens of the pines and olive trees. Dr. Alejandro Marquez adjusted the strap of his shoulder...
2. 02Chapter TwoThe financial crimes unit had a file on the Maro Azul project that was fourteen months old and ran to sixty-three pages, which told Carmen two things immediately: that the project had attracted serious attention from serious people, and...
3. 03Chapter ThreePatrick Malone answered on the third ring with the specific brevity of a man who was in the middle of something but had decided the call was worth interrupting it for.
4. 04Chapter FourBernal called her back at seven-forty the following morning, which was Thursday, the third day of the investigation, which meant he had spent the previous evening reading with the name she had given him against the fourteen months of...
5. 05Chapter FiveShe spent three days building a picture of Ray Dunmore before she knocked on his gate, because in her experience the quality of a first interview was determined almost entirely by the quality of the preparation that preceded it, and a...
6. 06Chapter SixShe had been at her desk since six-thirty. She had not slept past five and had used the extra hour lying in the dark thinking about the dossier she was building and the name she did not yet have and the gap between them. At five she got...
7. 07Chapter SevenShe ran to the Balcón de Europa at six on a Tuesday morning, twelve days into the investigation, and Africa was not visible. Cloud had come in overnight from the west, the first cloud in two weeks, and it sat low on the horizon and over...
8. 08Chapter EightShe was at her desk at seven on Wednesday morning when Ortega called, which was Wednesday the fourteenth of August, thirteen days into the investigation, the day after Bar Havana, and the specific quality of the call — Ortega's tone,...
9. 09Chapter NineVerónica Anza had been a statutory auditor for six years, which meant she had spent six years looking at financial records through the specific lens of someone whose professional obligation was to say whether what was presented to her...
10. 10Chapter TenBernal called at eight-fifteen on Thursday morning and she could tell from the quality of the call — the specific controlled quality of a financial crimes investigator who had found the thing they had been building toward for a long...
11. 11Chapter ElevenThey walked east along the Balcón railing, away from the flagpoles and the main crowd, toward the place where the promontory narrowed and the stone steps dropped toward the sea path below. At this end the view was less composed — not...
12. 12Chapter TwelveShe was at the Balcón at six on the Friday morning and Africa was visible.
13. 13Chapter ThirteenShe arrived at the Nerja Caves at eight-fifteen, which was forty-five minutes before Saura was due and thirty minutes before the public opening began its first coach group of the day.
14. 14Chapter FourteenThe paperwork took the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday.
15. 15Chapter FifteenThe daughter's name was Rachel Hollis and she was twenty-six years old and she had come to Nerja on the overnight coach from Málaga airport because when she had seen Patrick Malone's story at two o'clock on Monday afternoon she had...
16. 16Chapter SeventeenShe drove to Antequera on Friday morning, leaving Nerja at nine and taking the road inland.
17. 17Chapter EighteenSeptember arrived on the coast the way September arrived in places that had been fully committed to August — not dramatically, not all at once, but in increments that were perceptible to the people who lived there and invisible to the...
18. 18Chapter NineteenThey found Andrade in the Alentejo on a Thursday morning in the third week of September, twenty-two days after the Caballero indictment and thirty-nine days after the body at Burriana Beach.