Offering to the Storm

by Dolores Redondo

  ‘Damned witches,’ whispered Amaia.

  They smiled, flashing their needle-sharp teeth at her, splashing their webbed feet on the calm surface of the water, which bubbled, as though heated by an underground furnace.

  ‘Cleanse the river,’ they said.

  ‘Wash away the crime,’ they demanded.

  Amaia looked downriver once more, only to see that the flowers had turned into small snow-white coffins that began to quiver, as if the bodies inside were struggling to escape from their eternal resting place. The coffins danced about on the stones by the river, making a sound like rattling bones. Then the lids flew off, emptying the contents on to the dry riverbed: nothing. There was nothing inside them.

  The sound of someone entering the room woke her up. Eyes half-open, she made to sit up as James perched on the edge of the bed.

  ‘You should dry your hair, you’ll catch cold,’ he said, passing her the towel that had fallen close to the bed.

  ‘How long have I been asleep?’ she asked, feeling the remnants of her dream dissipate despite her efforts to cling to them.

  ‘Did you sleep? Your aunt asked me to come and tell you that lunch is ready.’

  She could feel his eyes on her as she rubbed her hair with the towel.

  ‘What’s wrong, Amaia? And don’t say nothing. I know you well enough to tell when you aren’t okay.’

  She paused, putting aside the towel, but remained silent.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he went on, ‘if all this torment is about Rosario’s funeral, if it’s having such a bad effect on you, I’ll understand if you don’t come.’

  She looked at him, surprised.

  ‘This isn’t about Rosario, James. The case I’m working on has run into difficulties, to the point where the entire investigation may have been compromised, and I’m to blame. I made a big mistake, and now everything’s up in the air.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  ‘No. I’m not even sure what happened. I have a lot of figuring out to do before I can even consider talking about it to anyone.’

  He reached out to touch her tousled hair, brushing it from her face with great tenderness.

  ‘I’ve never known you to give up, Amaia, but sometimes it’s better to surrender today, so you can carry on the fight tomorrow. I don’t know if this is one of those moments, but no matter what happens, I’ll be by your side. I love you more than anyone.’

  She laid her head on his shoulder overwhelmed with exhaustion.

  ‘I know you do, James. I’ve always known that.’

  ‘I think it will do you good to get away for a bit and relax. We’ll spend a few days with my family, and in no time at all we’ll be home again.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ she said. ‘I think we’ll need to prolong our stay. I’ve been officially invited to take part in two weeks of intensive FBI seminars; I thought you and Ibai could maybe spend that extra time at your parents’ house, then we can all fly back together.’

  ‘That’s a great idea,’ he said.

  She received no calls. That afternoon, she immersed herself in her family’s love and protection and the benevolent influence of the house. She ate lunch at home, took an afternoon nap with Ibai, baked a cake, prepared dinner with James as they drank a glass of wine, and listened to the Golden Girls play cards in the other room. Later on, she took Ibai upstairs to give him his evening bath, one of the most rewarding moments of her day.

  Perched on the toilet seat, Engrasi watched as the boy, supported from behind by his mother, splashed about, revelling in the water like the river prince he was.

  ‘Auntie, what do you make of Flora’s sudden interest in Ibai? She was too busy filming her TV programmes to come and see him when he was born, she missed the baptism, yet now she behaves like a doting aunt. I can’t help thinking …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you know what Flora’s like. There’s always a reason behind anything she does. I’ve no idea what that might be, but I find her sudden adoration of Ibai suspicious. She must want something. If she thinks she can butter me up that easily, she’s got another think coming.’

  Aunt Engrasi pondered this for a moment.

  ‘I think you’re mistaken, Amaia. I believe she truly loves the child. The fact that she showed little interest to begin with means nothing; she fell in love with him the moment she saw him the way we all did. Flora has a tough exterior, but she’s a woman like any other; she wanted children, you know what she went through trying to get pregnant, but in the end it didn’t happen. And her interest in Ibai isn’t so recent; for months now, she’s been asking me about him whenever she calls. What’s more, I think he is the main reason why she calls. I swear she never used to phone me this often.’

  ‘She never calls me.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. Deep down, Flora is one of those people who are afraid of appearing human. When I tell her about his little ways, how he is growing, she seems genuinely delighted.’

  Amaia recalled once more her surprise at the beautiful photograph of Ibai presiding over the luxurious sitting room in Zarautz. She scooped the baby out of the bathtub, handing him to her aunt, who wrapped him lovingly in a large towel, and placed him on the bed where Amaia would finish drying him.

  ‘Flora is the way she is, but she loves Ibai, believe me. And who could blame her? He’s so very special, our little boy.’

  Amaia poured a small amount of almond oil on to her palm and began to massage the baby’s feet. He relaxed with her touch, fixing her with his beautiful blue eyes.

  ‘Have you noticed that Ibai doesn’t have a single mole?’ said her aunt, smiling.

  Amaia removed the towel so that she could see his little body. She examined his back, the natural folds of his flesh. Engrasi was right: not a single blemish marked the child’s perfect skin. Creamy and golden, it bore no resemblance to the mottled appearance of Anne Arbizu’s otherwise unblemished skin as she lay stretched out on the pathologist’s slab; the image flashed into her mind as she recalled the popular belief that belagiles, or witches, have no moles. She covered him with the towel again so that he wouldn’t catch cold while she dressed him in his pyjamas.

  ‘Auntie,’ she said pensively. ‘There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘But not now,’ said Amaia, smiling at how Engrasi made herself instantly available whenever she needed her. ‘When we have a moment, I’d like to talk to you about the old religion, about what I saw in the forest, what you’ve seen too.’

  ‘I think we might be able to persuade your husband to leave us women to talk,’ Engrasi replied gamely. ‘I’m so pleased you’re interested in the subject. I worry sometimes that you’re too logical …’

  Amaia looked at her, frowning at the remark, then laughing as she finished dressing Ibai for bed and held him in her arms.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Engrasi. ‘Keeping an open mind, like when you were a child, helps you to understand life better, to confront the more difficult aspects of your job.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Sometimes I think my past has nothing to do with me, and yet it keeps coming back to haunt me.’

  Engrasi looked at her niece with sadness, not wishing to end the conversation on that note.

  ‘When we’re alone, Auntie …’ she said, gesturing towards Ibai.

  ‘When we’re alone,’ agreed Engrasi.

  28

  She was flummoxed – she admitted, eyes fixed on the TV screen, while in her mind she replayed the day’s events, conversations, facts … Thoughts she had thrust aside during the day, having decided to focus on her family. Now, lying next to her husband on the sofa, pretending to be engrossed in in a film he had insisted they watch, her brain was working overtime. The relentless juggling of facts and events was giving her a headache. She thought about going to fetch an aspirin, but didn’t want to disturb the pleasurable sensation of being close to James in that relaxed intimacy un
ique to people who are truly at ease with one another, and which had been lacking between them the past few days.

  Her phone rang shrilly in the pocket of the baggy cardigan she wore around the house. She glanced at the time as she reluctantly disentangled herself from James’s embrace. Nearly one in the morning. It was Iriarte.

  ‘Inspector, I’ve just had a call from Ainhoa. Yolanda Berrueta is seriously injured. It appears she tried to force open her children’s tomb using some sort of explosive device. She’s lost several fingers and an eye, and has been rushed to hospital. Right now, the French police are at the tomb with bomb-disposal experts.’

  ‘Call Deputy Inspector Etxaide and tell him to pick me up at home in forty minutes.’

  Iriarte sighed. ‘Inspector, the Chief of Border Police called to inform me as a matter of courtesy, but I have to warn you that after this morning I doubt your presence there will be welcome.’

  ‘I’m counting on it,’ she replied, undaunted. ‘Do you know which hospital they’ve taken her to?’

  ‘Saint Collette,’ he replied, irritated, then hung up.

  She called the hospital, identified herself and asked for an update. The patient’s condition was critical and she was currently in the operating theatre. That was all they could tell her. She peered out of the window and noticed that it had stopped raining.

  It was two thirty when they arrived, having waited for Etxaide to drive up from Pamplona. Amaia was glad of the delay; the explosion had taken place about half an hour after midnight, so those two hours would have given the bomb disposal team time to secure the area, and any curious bystanders would have gone home. With any luck, all they’d find at the scene would be a police cordon and a patrol car.

  She was right about the bomb disposal team and the neighbours, though there were still plenty of forensic technicians at work. Amaia and her colleagues walked over to the Chief of Border Police, who greeted them with a mixture of courtesy and disquiet.

  ‘Good evening. You do realise that Judge De Gouvenain will be furious if she finds out that you’re here.’

  ‘Come on, Chief, who’s going to tell her? You? We’re European citizens, we were passing by, saw the commotion and stopped to ask what had happened.’

  He contemplated her in silence for a few seconds, then let out a weary sigh.

  ‘She arrived at the cemetery at around midnight, and parked over there,’ he said, gesturing towards a large four-by-four vehicle. ‘There’s no one about at that hour. Then she planted approximately two hundred grams of high explosive – possibly Goma-2, which is used in the mining industry, but that has yet to be confirmed. Her family are mine owners in Navarre, so we assume that’s how she got hold of the stuff.’

  ‘I imagine so,’ said Amaia. ‘Though it can’t have been that easy for her to steal. Since the 2004 terrorist attack in Madrid, explosives are no longer kept at mines. The exact amount to be used in each blasting operation is transported under armed guard by bomb-disposal experts specially contracted by the mining companies. Any left-over explosives are destroyed on the spot.’

  ‘The remains of the packaging we found suggest this could have been decommissioned material, pre-dating the terrorist attack. In any event, Yolanda knew how to use a fuse and manual detonator, but unlike an expert, she didn’t notice the loss of plasticity, the signs of “sweating”.’

  ‘How did she get hurt?’

  ‘She lit the fuse and waited, and when nothing happened, she became impatient. The ground was wet, so she probably thought the fuse had gone out, or the powder had got damp. She was approaching when it went off.’

  Amaia lowered her gaze and sighed.

  ‘Two of her fingers were blown to bits, another two were found on a nearby tomb, and she’s probably lost an eye. Not to mention the powder burns and the damage to her eardrums. She was still conscious, you know. Despite her wounds, she managed to drag herself to the side of the tomb, to see if her children were in there.’

  ‘And were they?’

  He looked at her with renewed displeasure.

  ‘Go and see for yourself – after all, that’s why you came, isn’t it?’

  Ignoring the chief’s reproach, she walked over to the police cordon, which extended up to the church entrance, where a light was on. The priest, who had said nothing that morning, decided to chime in.

  ‘Are you satisfied now?’ he asked her as she stooped to pass beneath the cordon.

  She walked on a few paces, then paused, striding back towards the priest, who stepped back, alarmed.

  ‘No, I’m not. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid, and if you lot, who claim to be so concerned about Yolanda, had any humanity at all, you’d have opened the tomb long ago to relieve her suffering.’

  She drew level with Iriarte and Etxaide, who were standing by the tomb. The neighbouring graves had borne the brunt of the damage: crosses and columns shattered, plant stands and urns blown sky high. The Tremond-Berrueta family tomb was largely intact, except for the slab, which, as the gravediggers feared, had been reduced to rubble, and lay scattered over the surrounding tombs; the largest fragment, measuring less than eighteen inches, had come to rest at the foot of the tomb in a pool of blood mixed with rainwater, which had seeped into the cracked stone.

  The exposed tomb had been covered with a blue tarpaulin. Iriarte lifted one corner, and they used their torches to see inside. Two decayed-looking adult coffins had been damaged by falling debris. A small metal casket, probably containing ashes, lay on the floor, the lid half off. Slightly further to the right, two white coffins had suffered the most damage from the blast: one lay crushed beneath a piece of debris, probably the same lump of stone that had damaged the larger coffins. The side had split open, and from it protruded what they could see clearly was a baby’s hand. The other coffin had turned over, spilling its contents on the ground. The dead child had been dressed in white for the funeral, although the colour was scarcely visible beneath the layer of mould, also covering the child’s face, turning it completely black.

  Deputy Inspector Etxaide slipped his camera out from under his coat, looking to Amaia for consent. She nodded, trying to silence her phone, which rang out incongruously in that place. She handed her torch to Iriarte to illuminate the inside of the grave, and glanced at the screen. It was Markina.

  ‘Your honour …’ she started to say. ‘I’ve been trying all day to—’

  ‘Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, in my office,’ he snapped.

  She found herself staring at the screen to check he had hung up on her.

  29

  She hadn’t slept a wink. She was so overwhelmed and distraught when she got home that the thought of going to bed didn’t even occur to her. She spent the early hours writing out what would be her deposition to Judge Markina, stifling the urge to dial Dupree’s number. She told herself that if, as she’d always believed, there was some kind of telepathic communication between the two of them, he would know when she needed him and would call her. But no call was forthcoming, and by the time dawn arrived she was filled with trepidation.

  The dark rings under her eyes and her dull complexion betrayed her lack of sleep. Her usual self-assurance dissolved the instant she walked into Markina’s office.

  Inma Herranz smirked when she saw her.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector, how nice to see you, it’s been a while,’ she said in her mellifluous voice. ‘Judge Markina is waiting for you.’

  Accompanying Markina were two men and a woman, who were talking to him in Spanish with a strong French accent. Markina introduced them.

  ‘Inspector, this is Marcel Tremond, Yolanda Berrueta’s ex-husband, whom I think you’ve already met, and his parents, Lisa and Jean Tremond.’

  She was grateful to him at least for introducing her as the inspector in charge of the case.

  ‘Monsieur Tremond and his parents have come here of their own free will to acquaint you with a few aspects of Yolanda Berrueta’s behaviour they feel you ought to
know about,’ explained Markina, after they had sat down. ‘Whenever you’re ready, Monsieur Tremond.’

  ‘Yolanda was always fragile. Although, when she was young this was less noticeable. Because she was spoilt and capricious, she did whatever she wanted. The partying, the drink and drugs didn’t help her behaviour, which her parents attributed to her rebellious nature. When we got married, Yolanda had no interest in having children, but I was keen to start a family, and in the end I persuaded her. Her pregnancy with the twins was complicated. She continued to drink and smoke, and even took sedatives; she was obsessed with trying not to gain weight and was on slimming pills. In the end, the twins were premature, underweight and suffered from respiratory problems. And then a miracle occurred. Yolanda changed, she seemed genuinely remorseful, all she did was cry and talk about what she’d done. She devoted herself to them wholeheartedly, and at last, when they were two months old, we were able to bring them home. After that, we had to hospitalise them twice because of respiratory problems, until that night …’ He swallowed hard before continuing, under his parents’ compassionate gaze, as they listened, obviously distraught. ‘She watched over them constantly, she hardly slept, and then she noticed that something strange was happening. We didn’t wait for the ambulance, we took them to hospital ourselves, but they never regained consciousness … they died the same way they were born, within sixteen minutes of each other. From that moment on, things fell apart. Yolanda suffered a breakdown, she refused to listen to reason, she stopped sleeping and eating. She started to slip out of the house at night, and I would find her in the cemetery, lying prostrate on our children’s grave.’