"What's the reason that she's a suspect?"
"She went to Oxford on the very day of the murder, and we know she has returned to Spain this morning. On the other hand, although we still don’t know the details of her relationship with Rubial, she may have wanted to take revenge on her friend’s brother for reasons that we do not know, or maybe she went to visit him for some reason and ended up arguing. We're investigating.”
"Do you know anything about her past and her fondness for bad living?"
"Define bad living.”
"I mean the rumors of her disordered sex life and her love for drugs and other substances.”
"Those rumors are completely unfounded, and please, I would ask you to stick to the truth. The research will be simpler without details of a sordid life.”
"Give us some more information about the Rubial brothers.”
“There is little interesting information, but if we consider the unexpected disappearance of his father, the Mayor Rubial, some decades ago, we can deduce that it is a tragically, dysfunctional family.”
Marcos Tena looked thoughtful. He noticed that his boss, Julián Barreneche, was looking at him from the stand with an annoyed attitude. He scratched his head and waited for the conference to end.
Not five minutes had passed since the closing of Callejo's press conference, when Barreneche gestured to Marcos Tena from a distance, urging him so they could speak privately in his personal office.
"Sit down," he ordered imperturbably from his chair, on his side of the desk.
Tena obeyed without a word.
"I've been interested in you. I understand you're on a rookie contract.”
“Yes. I've been here for a month, and I have five more months.”
“How old are you?”
"Twenty-five."
"Who asked you to write the report for the press conference?"
"Judge Callejo. This morning he asked me to summarize the whole situation of the past few days. It didn’t take me more than a couple of hours.”
"Did he call you or did you go to him?"
“He called me.”
"Why do you think he did it?"
Tena hesitated. He had been working professionally for a very short time to know whether this interrogation by his superior was normal or, on the contrary, he was at a crossroads. In any case, he was beginning to feel uncomfortable in that cubicle.
"I suppose he wanted to test the newbie," he said, trying to sound relieved with a half-smile.
"And he knows that you're twenty-five years old, that you're dying to get into the police station, and that he can use you at his whim for his cause."
"His cause? I thought we all paddled in the same direction.”
"Callejo is a fucking softy. He still believes in that roll of presumption of innocence, and that is why he doesn’t want to take a false step and condemn Grifero without being completely sure.”
“I get it. But I...”
"You're just as soft as he is, normal, on the other hand, being wet behind the ears. But if you had put your time in like me, you'd be on my side.”
"I'm on your side."
"You didn’t prove it today."
“Excuse me!” Marcos Tena’s neck muscles tightened.
"I thought I'd made it clear to you that this was not Callejo's business, and that we were not going to tell him a single detail until we had Grifero handcuffed and in jail. And you go off and write a whole detailed report, five pages!”
“I am sorry.”
The young man understood that he was in the middle of a conversation that could negatively affect his future.
"I like you, Marcos, and I consider you an excellent policeman with a lot of potential. You apply yourself and you have a good eye for the investigations, so I will forget what happened today. But I will go straight to the point and I will summarize it in a single sentence: if you again disobey my orders and act on your own, you can forget about your internship here. You will never enter this police station.”
"Understood, boss.”
"I've decided to put myself on your side from now."
“I expect that.”
"I'll give you the case entirely. I want you to take this investigation and bring me Grifero. Without research, capture her period. Do it well, and you will have many cases to finish your internship.”
"All right, thank you."
"But you will not talk to the judge about anything you do."
“No problem.”
"Well, let me know whenever you want to extend your contract."
“Of course yes.”
"You'll have a chance to show what you're worth, a real cop, not an ass kisser. Do you agree?”
“I think it's great.” Tena, who had been struggling to keep his composure for a while, had to ask one last question, "What do we do with Sara Mora? She's in Oxford.”
"I know she's in Oxford," the Commissioner drawled. “I myself informed Interpol, so now that girl is in the hands of the Bobbies. Does the Kinder cop care?” He waved the last sentence to make him look ridiculous.
“Very good!” Marcos said very firmly.
"That's it then. Subject clarified.”
After a frosty handshake, Julian Barreneche beckoned him to leave the cubicle.
About two hours after the visit to the autopsy room, after reviewing certain reports on Miguel Lennard's life and answering some calls, Alfred Horner and Thomas Carroll were leaning on the Eagle and Child's bar and concentrating on their lunch, two raspberry muffins and espressos, as JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis did half a century ago. They ate the muffins in silence.
"Listen, Fred, I can’t stop thinking about it," said the blond, licking his fingers after the last piece of muffin. "Suppose the killer didn’t kill Lennard from the head shot. That is, the cut in the neck was quite deep. Suppose he ended his life strangling him with a rope, a cable, or the like, and then, once dead, shot him in the face. In the end, Kurt said that it must have been a shot near the bottom, and, on the other hand, you have to have a lot of aim to hit him full in the face while he is a moving target. If he were already dead, however, it would be another thing.”
“But what are you saying?” Horner reacted as if he were trying to convince him that the Earth was flat. “You mean he could of shot him once he had him on the floor, lifeless? What's the point of that?”
"Maybe he did it on purpose in order to confuse us. Maybe it's all part of a set up to drive us crazy, God knows why.”
"Look, suppose your hypothesis made sense.” Horner immediately smiled unwillingly to soften the arrogance of his comment. “We would have found the bullet dented between the floor of the sink and Lennard's head. Also, in that case, the wall tiles would not be spattered with blood. My friend, use your brain.”
"Shit, you're right, I'm saying bullshit.” Carroll shook his head repeatedly, embarrassed. “The bullet is the key to everything. We should check down the alleyway to the bathroom window. Chances are it’s stuck there after the shot.”
Horner said nothing for a moment, but Carroll could almost hear the shifting gears of his mind evaluating and analyzing the stage for weaknesses.
"It's not necessary, it's not there," he said.
"How the fuck can you know that, Fred?”
“The bullet came out of the back of Lennard's neck and hit one of the tiles beside the mirror. Then it fell to the floor, inside the room.”
“Wait a minute. I thought you said there were no traces of the bullet.”
"There wasn’t. There was no need for it. The killer, aware of the importance of the bullet as evidence of the crime, picked it up from the floor once the work was done and took it with him, but that would have been impossible if the bullet were found between the victim's brains and the cold, bloody floor. Impossible without rummaging around the corpse, I mean.”
Carroll wondered how he had been so clumsy not to notice the gap in the wall tiles, and he felt how, once again, he lagged behind his brilliant companion.
"He does it after rescuing the bullet. He knows he has a short time before the first curious neighbors arrive, but it will not take him more than twenty seconds, after all he is dealing with a few swift lines on a dead person. It was certainly part of a premeditated murder. Not only did he want revenge on Lennard, but he also wanted to leave us a message, tell us something.”
"But what I mean is, what does the fucking message mean?"
"Isn’t it clear to you?"
"Not really. Do I have to guess something because it's a symmetrical riddle?”
"It’s not a riddle, but a Spanish saying. Symmetry, if nothing escapes me, is mere coincidence.”
Carroll stared at his companion and waited for him to continue with his presentation.
"Ojo por ojo... diente por diente," he said in perfect Spanish from the peninsula, “or what is the same: revenge. I told you that a moment ago.”
They stood leaning on the bar in silence and gazing at nothing, side by side, for several minutes. Carroll's mind was more focused on the powerful gift that Alfred had for collecting clues and recomposing scenarios, than on the murder itself. For him, Fred was like the typical out-of-tune note that, however, he liked to hear it. While he was sure that he would never match his partner's ability to solve cases, he made a point:
"The message makes the killer's motive clear."
"Not only that. He made two things clear: the murderer's motive was revenge, and he wanted us to know that.”
"But for what reason?"
"That's what we don’t know.”
Carroll shrugged and, as if he were a fantasy character created by Tolkien at the same wooden bar, he asked Gandalf for his opinion.
"Well, reviewing the info," said Horner, and unfolded a paper napkin on the bar, "we have the following information. Do you have a pen?” He felt his jacket outside and felt something he didn’t expect in his inner pocket. “Wait! I have a pen.”
"I didn’t know you use a pen."
"Neither did I, really," said Alfred, and then he turned on his hypothesis, which was all he cared about at that moment. “Let's see: we know that the homicide is Spanish, or at least dominates the language well enough to express himself through Spanish sayings.”
He wrote Hispanic on the napkin.
"Besides, the guy seemed to be in control. He shows he know about the subject of the bullet, the speed to disappear in time, and, of course, the exquisite aim with a gun.”
He underlined expert killer.
"Don’t forget the motive, Fred, it's important,” said the older of the two agents.
Horner added revenge to the list of tips. Without saying anything else, as if his fingers worked faster than his tongue, he extended the list with two more hypotheses, both between question marks:
• Get police attention?
• Symmetry?
Horner had a way of working in a team that made Carroll feel much inferior.
"Conclusions?" Snowflake said, struggling to appear necessary.
Alfred drew a vertical line that divided the napkin in two, and in an enigmatic way that enraptured his companion, he deduced:
"We have a firm candidate right now." And while he was speaking, he wrote SARA MORA, in large letters, on the left division of the paper. Then, as Thomas's countenance told him that he was rushing, he proceeded to argue: "She is Spanish, she lied to me in the interrogation, and she had no reason to be there. To make matters worse, this morning Interpol has informed us that Lennard's twin brother was about to rape her a few weeks ago, before committing suicide.” Carroll sighed heavily as he listened to the sequence of arguments. “Also, don’t forget that she carried traces of blood on her hand.”
"Okay, but we must weigh other options. Remember that Interpol asserts that the Spanish have more than enough evidence to indict a girl, whose name I don’t remember right now, about Lennard's murder.” He licked over the crumbs that had remained at the corner of his mouth, and he continued to wonder aloud: "Apparently the girl had a relationship with her twin brother, and they have also discovered that she traveled from Madrid to Oxford yesterday, that is, the day of the crime. God, this case is crazy," he said, massaging his tired eyes with his fingertips.
"Precisely that’s why I have divided the napkin into two equal parts.” Horner said this as if he had just made the final move of a magic trick, and then wrote TRAVELER SUSPECT on the right half of the paper.
"Fuck you, man, you’re brilliant.” Carroll had no choice but to give in to his colleague's demonstration. “Sometimes it’s as if you’re one step ahead of the rest of the mortals. Anyway, you see things that nobody else sees!”
Horner took the compliment as something to ignore, so that he only showed a half smile and rose from the stool.
"But....wait a moment. There’s one thing that doesn’t fit at all.” The blond cop put his hand to his chin and prepared to give a new twist to the matter: "neither that young woman they suspect in Spain, nor of course the Sara Mora we spoke with yesterday, respond to the profile of calculating psychopath. They’re practically two kids!”
"You’re quite right there, Thomas, but we can’t be fooled by appearances. In short, any human being is capable of doing something terrible at any given time. I know what I'm talking about.”
Horner was absorbed for a fraction of a second, until finally he spewed:
"Come on, we have a lot of work ahead of us yet. It’s urgent to investigate the background of these two girls also Lennard himself. It’s clear that he did something in the past to annoy someone to the point of wanting to shoot him dead and mark his body. However, before that I want to return to the scene of the crime.”
"To Lennard's house on Cowley Road?"
"Yes, are you on board?"
Thomas Carroll nodded without hesitation.
Jaime Vergara didn’t remember the last time he had been so nervous, and even more so that a woman was the cause that unnerved him. Since Sarita had sent the text message to his cell phone, he had found it impossible to focus on anything else. He'd just wandered around the room, holding the phone in his hand and reading the message every few seconds, as if it were a nervous tic he couldn’t control. He thought of how surreal it was that the imminent encounter with a woman with whom he had almost lost all connection, moved the unfortunate Shapiro case into the background.
And yet he could think of nothing else. What would happen when Sara knocked on the door and met, face to face, on the landing? He would invite her in, of course, and then what? What would the encounter bring about? Focus Jaime, fuck! Sarita comes to tell you something important, don’t behave like a teenager. Unable to concentrate on anything concrete, he approached the window of the room and began to contemplate on the traffic of people coming and going along Orense Street. That was one of the things he liked most about his bachelor floor: Orense was full of life practically twenty-four hours a day, and when he sat by the window he never felt alone at all.
Suddenly the cell phone rang in his hands, and his heart skipped a beat. It was a long number that was not kept in the agenda (that discarded Sara). He pressed the green button and brought the device to his ear.
“Yes, tell me.”
“Am I talking to Dr. Jaime Vergara, from La Paz hospital?”
"Look, if you’re calling from the press to ask me uncomfortable questions, I'm not available, is that clear?"
"The press? No, no, nothing like that. My name is Luis María Encinas, and I am the psychiatrist at Ámber clinic.”
Something stirred inside Jaime when he heard the word Ámber.
"Ámber's clinic? I’m listening.”
"I have a message for you from Dr. Sara Mora. Does that name mean anything to you?”
What's going on here?
“Yes of course. She is a friend of mine. Is something wrong?” Someone ran
g at that moment through the doorbell. "She's finally here!" Jaime's soul shouted excitedly. “One second, please,” he said to the telephone, “I have to go and open the door."
The young doctor, with the cell phone still attached to his ear, approached the door telephone that hung on one of the walls of the receiver and pressed the open button without asking who was calling. Then he resumed the telephone conversation.
"Look, I have to leave you, I have a visitor.”
"Before that let me give you the message, I repeat that it is very important to Sara.”
"Okay, I'm listening," Jaime agreed with a snort, thinking that whatever Sara had to say to him, she could tell him in person in less than a minute.
“According to Dr. Mora, you must connect to your Skype account this afternoon at 6 pm, Spanish time. She will be waiting for you.”
Connect to Skype to talk to Sara? This must be a misunderstanding, Jaime thought logically. The doorbell rang. “Message received, sir. Now I must leave you, my visit has just arrived. Thank you very much for the information. Bye.”
There was no time for the psychiatrist to say goodbye. The young neurosurgeon hung up the phone as he opened the door without even looking in the peephole to see who it was (something that he was going to consider, that maybe he should have done).
"Hello Sar...!"
What Jaime saw on the other side of the door made such a knot in his throat that he couldn’t finish the salute. He had perfectly recognized the young woman who had murdered a man in cold blood in England the day before and who today was the headline in all the news in the country. Now she was standing in front of him with a casual smile.
Chapter 10
"Doctor Salas, I've been wanting to ask you something for a while.”
"Shoot, Morgan.”
"Do you regret your past?"
"What do you mean?"
"You look like a wise man, balanced and at peace with yourself. Would you act differently from knowing then what you knows now?”
“Bingo! You’ve hit the spot with that topic. You see, we're never happy when we're supposed to be. We tend to think that our life will be better when we finish the class, when summer arrives, when we pass a test that has been goal, when we find a beautiful girlfriend, or a good job; when we get married, when we buy a car (and at that point, we'll crave a better car), when we stop smoking, when we have children, when we have more money, when we pay the mortgage, when we win the lottery, when we divorce, when we get a promotion, when we have grandchildren, when we retire...”
The Butterfly Effect Page 13