Synopsis

Campus Morte (184 pages) is Lito Vila Baleato’s first novel and received the Sarmiento Award, an award that is voted on by Galician schoolchildren.

It is January 2017. Iago Miranda is a teacher in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Hanover in Germany. He receives several messages from Martín, a childhood friend who lives in Santiago de Compostela, urging him to get in touch, but when he tries to do so, there is no answer. Later on, Iago receives a voice message in which Martín is audibly distressed. Martín tells Iago if anything should happen to him, then he should go and pick up an envelope in “the place where he met Mariana”. Before leaving his office, Iago decides to get in touch with Silvia, Martín’s long-term girlfriend (a girl he himself had a fling with), to see if she knows anything about his whereabouts. Martín’s last post on Facebook had been at 11 pm the night before, when he’d posted something about the University of Santiago selling off the old Provincial Hospital in an area of Santiago known as Galeras for a large sum of money and added a cryptic comment: “Was this where everything happened?” Silvia replies later that evening to inform Iago that Martín is dead. He has been found murdered on the university’s South Campus. Iago immediately drops what he’s doing and arranges a flight for the following day.

On arriving at Santiago Airport, he is met by another childhood friend, Roi Aneiro, who is now a renowned doctor and has twins. Roi says it seems Martín was beaten to death and he’s missing a finger on his left hand. We learn that Iago and Martín had been together in kindergarten, had studied together at the University of Santiago at the end of the nineties and the start of the new millennium, though two years in the Maths Faculty had been sufficient for Martín, who had then set up his own business, having studied programming and system management. Martín described his relationship with Silvia as “the best four years of his life”, and Iago wonders whether he did the right thing, not telling Martín about his fling with her.

On the next day, Iago receives a short message from Clara, Martín’s younger sister. He is confused why there is no information in the press about Martín’s death and can only surmise this is to avoid causing a scandal. He also wonders why Martín told him to pick up an envelope in “the place where he met Mariana”. Mariana was an old girlfriend who had later married a Brazilian engineer and moved to Salvador da Bahia, and they had met in a café in the Law Faculty. Iago goes to pick up the envelope and waits until he gets back to his parents’ house before opening it. The envelope contains a USB stick, a SIM card and a key. The key has no identification code or number on it. The USB stick, which he immediately copies, has two folders: “Medical History” and “KB”. When he opens the folder “KB”, he finds a photograph of Martín out drinking with friends on the South Campus. He only recognizes five of the eight people in the photograph: Martín, Roi, Roi’s cousin Lois (also a medical student), Mariana, David de la Riba (a party animal who used to drink with them) and three girls he hasn’t seen before. In the same folder, he finds some newspaper clippings from the years 2002 and 2003 about the hospital in Galeras moving to Vidán and about a fatal accident involving a German Erasmus student, Kathrin Brinkmann, who had fallen into a river and drowned. Iago identifies her as the girl between Martín and Roi in the photograph and wonders why Martín never told him about her death.

The narrative then backtracks fourteen years to October 2002. Martín wakes up extremely hung-over after a night on the tiles. It is obviously the night of the photograph, when Martín, Roi, Lois, David and Mariana met up with some other friends and got chatting to a group of Erasmus students on the campus. Just as he was leaving, he’d seen a girl disappear into the darkness. Back in January 2017, in the other folder, Iago comes across Kathrin’s medical files with the results of an autopsy performed two days after she died. Inspector Barreiro arrives at his house to ask him some questions regarding the death of Martín. Iago hands over the contents of the envelope – minus the key and the copy he made of the USB. He is taken to the police station, where he feels he is being treated like a criminal, even though he was still in Germany at the time of Martín’s murder. The next day, Iago meets up with Clara, Martín’s sister, who says she knew Martín was in trouble after a friend, David de la Riba, had come to see him. David has since gone into politics like his father, a famous cardiologist. When Iago describes the contents of the envelope, Clara explains that Martín had a post office box, which is probably what the key is for. They notice a thickset man in his forties watching them. They manage to escape the man, but when they get to the post office, they find the box is empty. Over lunch, they discuss Martín’s business, his two employees, who were seemingly happy, and the way the hospital in Galeras, such a prime location, has been left to rot for no apparent reason.

On the phone, Roi explains that his cousin Lois was friends with the two Austrian girls who were also with them on the night Kathrin fell into the river. Iago asks where he went after Martín went home, but Roi claims not to remember. He arranges to meet Roi and Lois to discuss the contents of the envelope. Silvia, who now works for the regional government, explains that her relationship with Martín was over some time ago, but she had seen him by chance visiting David de la Riba in the government building. This is the second time David has been linked to Martín in the days leading up to his murder. Iago meets David for lunch. David claims his argument with Martín was because of work – an application Martín installed for him which didn’t function properly – and doesn’t think there is a link between the deaths of Kathrin in 2002 and Martín in 2017. Perhaps it has to do with some crazy people on the Internet – after all, Martín was a computer engineer.

Over dinner, Roi explains that he had a fling with one of the Austrian girls on the night Kathrin Brinkmann died – that was why he hadn’t wanted to say where he’d been. Roi and Lois confirm that the hospital in Galeras must have closed in about 2002 or 2003. They don’t see a connection between Kathrin’s death and the hospital’s closure, but Iago is sure Martín’s post on Facebook is what got him killed. He decides to go to the library to consult the local press, but is waylaid by Barreiro and his sidekick, Liñares, who suggest he stop playing the detective and return to Germany. Iago concludes that the thickset man who was following them may have been working for the police. He then visits the shop where Martín had his business and is surprised to find his two employees, Pancho and Xabi, there. Pancho suggests he might make an offer for the company to Martín’s family, since it’s unlikely Clara will want to take over the business, having studied Geography and History. They both claim to know nothing about the work Martín was doing for David de la Riba, but Iago is not sure he believes them.

The narrative now backtracks five days – to the day Martín was murdered. Martín has been accosted in the street by an elderly man, whose face is somehow familiar, and a younger thug who asks why Martín has been digging into Kathrin’s death, which he says was an accident, but Martín suspects might have been deliberate. Martín is given a beating. We now go forward in time to the day of Martín’s funeral, where David suggests perhaps the reason Martín was looking into Kathrin’s death was because he himself was responsible. Clara sends Iago a message, saying something has just arrived in the P.O. box. It turns out to be two photographs Martín had managed to take of the two men who accosted him six days earlier. Immediately, David de la Riba and his father appear in the post office, accompanied by the younger thug, demanding that Clara hand over the photographs, which are of David’s father and the thug, and the two of them stop digging into Kathrin’s death. David admits he was there when Kathrin fell into the river. He claims he called his father, and the two of them did what they could to save her life. He also claims it was never their intention to kill Martín, just to frighten him off.

The narrative now goes back to the night of Kathrin’s death. After Martín leaves, Kathrin, who is very drunk, asks David to accompany her to her residence. She then gives him a kiss. However, she doesn’t feel well and, when David tries to kiss her again, she pushes him away with such force she falls to the ground and knocks her head. David panics and calls his father, who immediately comes to his aid. Kathrin is unconscious, either because of the blow or because of the alcohol she has imbibed, but instead of taking her to the new Clinical Hospital with its modern equipment, they take her to the old, semi-abandoned hospital in Galeras, where David’s father still has an office. He administers vitamin B1, but soon after that Kathrin’s heart stops beating. Father and son abandon Kathrin’s body in the river and agree to pretend that none of this has ever happened. The news of her death when her body is discovered two days later confirms the hypothesis that it was accidental.

Iago receives a call from his mother to say the police have been searching in his room and have confiscated his computer. Iago and Clara do everything they can to contact the company that printed the two photographs for Martín, but it seems the De la Riba family with the help of Inspector Barreiro have erased all trace of what happened almost fifteen years earlier. A week later, Iago is at the airport on his way back to Germany. On arriving home, he is relieved to find the copy of the USB stick, which he mailed to himself two days after Martín’s death. He sends all the information he has gathered to the eight most important newspapers in Galicia, causing the cases of Kathrin Brinkmann and Martín’s deaths to be reopened.

This is an entertaining novel which recreates student life in Compostela and Iago Miranda’s own journey back to his past as he tries to follow the clues his friend Martín has left him. The novel takes the reader on a tour of the Galician capital and touches on themes of corruption in government (David de la Riba, who is a member of the local parliament) and in the police force (Inspector Barreiro, who seems to follow De la Riba family orders). The narrative is set in the present day, but there are several flashbacks to the time of the earlier murder. This – and the author’s own familiarity with the city, student life and Germany – make Campus Morte a convincing read. The novel has already been reprinted five times.