That four-wheeled plank had ended up lying motionless in the middle of a swarm of policemen who had taken over the area as soon as the report had come in.
Now, ten days later, it could be too late for Pablo. Too late for his frail child’s psyche. Too late to wake up untraumatized from his nightmare.
Now the skateboard was in the boot of the policewoman’s car, along with other objects: toys, clothes. Clues that Mila had sniffed out as she tried to find a trail to follow, and which had led her to this brown lair. To the music teacher, who taught in an institute of higher education and played the organ in church on Sunday morning. The vice president of the musical association that organized a little Mozart festival every year. The shy, anonymous bachelor with the glasses, the incipient baldness and the soft, sweaty hands.
Mila had observed him very carefully. Because that was her gift.
She had joined the police with a precise purpose and, after leaving the academy, had devoted herself to it completely. She wasn’t interested in the criminals, let alone the law. That wasn’t why she ceaselessly searched every corner where shadows lurked, where life rotted undisturbed.
As she read Pablo’s name on the lips of his jailer, Mila became aware of a searing pain in her right leg. Perhaps it was from too many hours spent in the car waiting for that sign. Then again, perhaps it was from the wound in her thigh, which she had stitched herself.
I’ll treat it properly later on, she promised herself. Afterwards, though. And as she formulated that thought, Mila realized that she was ready to enter the house, to break the spell and bring the nightmare to an end.
“Officer Mila Vasquez to headquarters: have identified suspected kidnapper of Pablo Ramos. The building is a brown house at 27 Viale Alberas. Possibly dangerous situation.”
“Fine, Officer Vasquez, we’re sending backup, but it’ll be at least thirty minutes.”
Too long.
Mila didn’t have that much time. Pablo didn’t.
The terror of having to utter the words “it was too late” when giving her account of events impelled her towards the house.
The voice on the radio was a distant echo and—pistol in her fist, arm lowered across her body’s center of gravity, eyes alert, quick, short steps—she reached the cream-colored fence that surrounded the rear of the little house.
An enormous plane tree loomed above her. The leaves changed color with the wind, showing their silvery outlines. Mila flattened herself against the fence and pricked up her ears. Every now and again the blast of a rock song reached her, carried on the wind from somewhere nearby. Mila leaned over the wooden gate and saw a well-tended garden, with a shed and a red rubber hose that snaked through the grass to a sprinkler. Plastic furniture and a gas barbecue. All very normal. A mauve door with frosted glass. Mila stretched an arm over the gate and delicately lifted the latch. The hinges squeaked and she opened the gate just wide enough to step into the garden.
She closed it again so that no one inside, looking out, would notice a change. Everything had to stay as it was. Then she walked as she had been taught in training, carefully weighing her steps on the grass—just with her toes, so as not to leave footprints—ready to leap if the need arose. A few moments later she found herself beside the back door, on the side from which she would cast no shadow when she leaned over to look inside the house. The frosted glass meant that she couldn’t make out the interior, but from the outline of the furniture it looked like a sitting room. Mila ran her hand towards the handle on the opposite side of the door. She gripped it and pushed it down. The lock clicked.
It was open.
The music teacher must have felt safe in the lair that he had prepared for himself and his prisoner. Soon Mila would find out why.
The linoleum floor creaked beneath her rubber sole with each step she took. She tried to control her footsteps to keep from making too much noise, then she took off her trainers and left them beside a chair. Barefoot, she reached the entrance to the hall, and she heard him talking:
“I would also need a roll of kitchen paper. And that cleaning product you use for polishing porcelain…yes, that one…Then bring me six tins of chicken soup, some sugar, a copy of the TV guide and a few packets of cigarettes, lights, the usual brand…”
The voice came from the sitting room. The music teacher was shopping by phone. Too busy to leave the house? Or perhaps he didn’t want to leave—he wanted to stay and keep an eye on his guest’s every move?
“Yes, number 27 Viale Alberas, thank you. And bring change for fifty, because that’s all I’ve got in the house.”
Mila followed the voice, walking in front of a mirror that reflected a distorted version of her own image. Like the ones you see at funfairs. When she reached the door to the room, she stretched out her arms holding the pistol, took a breath and burst into the doorway. She expected to surprise him, perhaps from behind, with the receiver still in his hand, standing by the window. A perfect living target.
Which wasn’t there.
The sitting room was empty, the receiver resting quite normally on the phone.
She realized that no one had made a phone call from that room when she felt the cold lips of a pistol resting like a kiss on the back of her neck.
He was behind her.
Mila cursed to herself, calling herself an idiot. The music teacher had prepared his lair well. The garden gate that squeak ed and the linoleum floor that creak ed were the alarms to signal the presence of intruders. Hence the fake phone call, the bait to attract his prey. The distorting mirror so that he could take up a position behind her without being seen. It was all part of the trap.
She felt him stretching his arm out in front of her, to take the gun from her. Mila let him do it.
“Shoot me, but there’s no escape for you now. My colleagues will be here soon. You can’t get away, you’ll have to surrender.”
He didn’t reply. She could almost see him out of the corner of her eye. Was he smiling?
The music teacher took a step back. The barrel of the gun detached itself from Mila, but she could still feel that extension of magnetic attraction between her head and the bullet in the magazine. Then the man turned towards her and finally entered her field of vision. He stared at her for a long time. But without looking at her. There was something deep in his eyes that looked to Mila like the antechamber of darkness.
The music teacher turned round, fearlessly turning his back on her. Mila saw him walking confidently towards the piano against the wall. Reaching the instrument, the man sat down on the stool and looked at the keyboard. He set both pistols down on the far left.
He raised his hands and, a moment later, let them fall back on the keys.
As Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20 in C sharp minor filled the room, Mila breathed hard, the tension spreading along the tendons and muscles of her neck. The music teacher’s fingers slipped lightly and gracefully over the keyboard. The sweetness of the notes made Mila feel like a spectator at this performance, hypnotized by it.
She struggled to remain clearheaded and let her bare heels slide backwards, slowly, until she was back in the corridor. She got her breath back, trying to calm her thumping heart. Then she started searching quickly around the rooms, pursued by the melody. She inspected each of them, one by one. A study. A bathroom. A larder.
Until she reached the closed door.
She pushed it with her shoulder. The wound in her thigh hurt, and she concentrated her weight on her deltoid.
The wood yielded.
The faint light from the corridor burst ahead of her into the room, whose windows appeared to have been walled up. Mila followed the glow into the darkness until she met two terrified, liquid eyes that returned her gaze. Pablito was there, on the bed, his legs drawn up against his thin chest. He was wearing only a pair of underpants and a sweater. He was trying to work out if there was anything he should be afraid of, if Mila was part of his nightmare or not. She said what she always said when she found a missing child.
“We’ve got to go.”
He nodded, stretched out his arms and clung to her. Mila kept an ear out for the music, which was still pursuing her. She was worried that the piece wouldn’t last long enough, and that there wasn’t enough time to get out of the house. A fresh anxiety took hold of her. She had put her own life and the hostage’s at risk. And now she was scared. Scared of making another mistake. Scared of stumbling at the last step, the one that would take her out of this horrible lair. Or discovering that the house would never let her go, that it would close in on her like a silken net, holding her prisoner forever.
But the door opened, and they were outside, in the pale but reassuring light of day.
When her heartbeats slowed down, and she was able to forget the gun that she had left in the house, and press Pablo to her, shielding him with her warm body to take all his fear away, the little boy leaned towards her ear and whispered…
“Isn’t she coming?”
Suddenly heavy, Mila’s feet were rooted to the ground. She swayed, but didn’t lose her balance.
Fueled by the strength of a terrifying realization, she asked, “Where is she?”
The little boy raised his arm and pointed to the second floor. The house watched them with its windows and laughed, mockingly, with the same gaping door that had let them go a moment before.
It was then that the fear fled entirely. Mila covered the last few meters that separated her from her car. She sat Pablo on the seat and told him, in the solemn tone of a promise, “I’ll be right back.”
Then she went back to let the house engulf her.
She found herself at the bottom of the stairs. She looked up, without knowing what she would find up there. She started climbing, gripping the banisters. Chopin’s notes went on undauntedly, following her exploration. Her feet sank into the steps, her hands stuck to the banisters which seemed to be trying to hold her back.
Suddenly the music stopped.
Mila froze, her senses alert. Then the dry report of a gunshot, a dull thud and the disjointed notes from the piano beneath the weight of the music teacher as he collapsed onto the keyboard. Mila quickened her pace as she continued on her way upstairs. She couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t another trick. The stairs curved round and the landing stretched into a narrow corridor covered with thick carpet. At the end, a window. In front of it, a human body. Frail, slender, against the light: feet stretched on a chair, neck and arms stretched towards a noose that hung from the ceiling. Mila saw her trying to slip it over her head and gave a cry. The girl saw her and tried to speed up the operation. Because that was what he had told her, it was what she had been taught.
If they come, you must kill yourself.
“They” were the others, the world outside, the ones who couldn’t understand, who would never forgive.
Mila hurled herself towards the girl in a desperate attempt to stop her. And the closer she got, the more she seemed to be running back in time.
Many years before, in another life, that girl had been a child.
Mila remembered her photograph perfectly. She had studied it closely, feature by feature, running through her mind every fold, every expressive wrinkle, cataloging and repeating all distinguishing features, even the tiniest imperfection of the skin.
And those eyes. A speckled, lively blue. The eyes of a ten-year-old child, Elisa Gomes. Her father had taken the picture. An image stolen at a party as she was busy opening a present and didn’t expect it. Mila had imagined the scene, with the father calling her to make her turn round and take the picture by surprise. And Elisa turning towards him, without time to be surprised. A moment had been immortalized in her expression, something imperceptible to the naked eye. The miraculous beginning of a smile before it opens up and spills onto the lips or brightens the eyes like a rising star.
So Mila had not been surprised when Elisa Gomes’s parents had given her that particular photograph when she had asked for a recent picture. It certainly wasn’t the most suitable photograph, because Elisa’s expression was unnatural and that made it almost unusable for re-creating the ways in which her face might change over the course of time. Her other colleagues who had been put on the investigating team had complained. But Mila hadn’t cared, because there was something in that photograph—an energy. And that was what they should have looked for. Not a face among others, one child amongst so many. But that girl, with that light in her eyes. As long as no one had managed to extinguish it in the meantime…
Mila grabbed her just in time, clinging to her legs before the rope could take her weight. She kicked out, struggled, tried to scream. Until Mila called her by name.
“Elisa,” she said with infinite gentleness.
And the girl recognized herself.
She had forgotten who she was. Years of prison had erased her identity, a little piece every day. Until she had become convinced that this man was her family, because the rest of the world had forgotten her. The rest of the world would never save her.
Startled, Elisa looked Mila in the eyes. She calmed down and let herself be rescued.
3.
S ix arms. Five names.
With that mystery, the squad had left the clearing in the middle of the forest and joined the task force waiting on the highway. Snacks and fresh coffee seemed to clash with the situation at hand, although they did provide a semblance of control. But no one on that cold February morning touched the buffet.
Stern took a box of mints from his pocket. He shook it and slipped a few into his hand before throwing them straight into his mouth. He said they helped him think. “How is it possible?” he asked, more to himself than anyone else.
“Fuck…” Boris muttered, shaking his head. But it came out so quietly that no one heard him.
Rosa concentrated her attention on a spot inside the camper. Goran noticed. He understood—she had a daughter the same age as those girls. It’s the first thing you think about when you find yourself faced with a crime against minors. Your own children. And you ask yourself what would happen if…But you don’t get to the end of the sentence, because even the very thought is too painful.
“He’s going to make us find them in bits,” said Chief Inspector Roche.
“So that’s our task? Collecting corpses?” asked Boris with a hint of annoyance. A man of action, he didn’t want to see himself relegated to the role of gravedigger. He wanted a perpetrator. And so did the others, who quickly nodded at his words.
Roche reassured them. “The priority is always an arrest. But we can’t avoid the heartrending search for remains.”
“It was deliberate.”
Everyone stared at Goran, pondering his words.
“The Labrador scenting the arm and digging the hole: it was part of the ‘plan.’ Our man had his eye on the two little boys with the dog. He knew they took it into the forest. That’s why he put his little graveyard there. A simple idea. He completed his ‘work,’ and he put it on display.”
“Do you mean we’re not going to catch him?” asked Boris, unable to believe his ears, and furious.
“You know better than me how these things go…”
“But he’s really going to do it? He’ll kill again…” This time it was Rosa who didn’t want to give up. “He’s got away with it so far, he’ll do it again.”
She wanted someone to contradict her, but Goran had no reply. And even if he had had an opinion on the matter, he couldn’t have translated into humanly acceptable terms the cruelty of having to divide himself between the thought of those terrible deaths and the cynical desire for the murderer to strike again. Because—and they all knew this—the only chance of catching him would be if he didn’t stop.
Chief Inspector Roche went on: “If we find the bodies of those little girls, at least we’ll be able to give their families a funeral and a grave to weep over.”
As usual, Roche had put it in the most diplomatic manner possible. It was a rehearsal for what he would say to the press, to soften t
he story to the advantage of his own image. First mourning, grief, to take time. Then the investigation and the finding of the culprits.
But Goran knew that the operation wouldn’t be successful, and that the journalists would hurl themselves on every scrap, greedily stripping the matter to the bone and spicing it with the most sordid details. And more than anything, from that moment the police would be forgiven nothing. Their every gesture, every word, would acquire the value of a promise, a solemn undertaking. Roche was convinced that he could keep the hacks at bay, feeding them a bit at a time with whatever they wanted to hear. And Goran left the chief inspector with his fragile illusion of control.
“I think we’re going to have to give this guy a name…before the press does,” said Roche.
Goran agreed, but not for the same reason as the chief inspector. Like all criminologists who present their work to the police, Dr. Gavila had his own methods. First and foremost that of attributing traits to the criminal, to transform a still rarefied and indefinite figure into something human. Because, faced with such fierce and gratuitous evil, we always tend to forget that the one responsible for it, like the victim, is a person, often with a normal life, a job and perhaps even a family. In support of his thesis, Dr. Gavila told his university students that almost every time a serial killer was arrested it came as a complete surprise to his neighbors and family.
“We call them monsters because we feel they are far away from us, because we want them to be ‘different,’” Goran said in his seminars. “And instead they’re like us in every respect. But we prefer to remove the idea that someone like us is capable of so much. And we do so in part to absolve our own nature. Anthropologists call it ‘depersonalization of the criminal’ and it is often the greatest obstacle to the identification of a serial killer. Because a man has weak points and can be caught. Not so a monster.”
The Whisperer Page 2