Offering to the Storm

by Dolores Redondo

  ‘Iriarte.’

  ‘Good news, Inspector. The Policía Nacional have arrested Mariano Sánchez, the missing prison guard. He was hiding out at a friend’s house in Zaragoza. It seems they went out drinking last night and were involved in a collision with another vehicle. Montes and Zabalza have gone to fetch him, they’ll be back in a couple of hours. We’ve also made some progress tracking down possible victims – I think this will interest you.’

  Mariano Sánchez was still hung-over after his drinking bout. His eyes were bloodshot, his speech slurred. During the brief time he’d been kept waiting, he had asked for water three times.

  ‘I have nothing to say,’ he blurted when he saw them walk in.

  ‘That’s fine by me. In the meantime, how about I do the talking? You don’t have to answer, you don’t have to say a word,’ said Iriarte, showing the guard an enlarged image of him passing something through the slot in the door to Berasategui’s cell. ‘Despite the prisoner being in isolation, you approached his cell and, as you see in the image, you gave him the drug with which he took his own life.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove a thing. You can’t see anything. All I did was shake the guy’s hand, I liked him.’

  ‘That would be a plausible lie,’ said Iriarte, showing the prisoner an evidence bag containing packaging from the chemist where he had obtained the sedative, ‘if the pharmacist hadn’t remembered you.’ Sánchez looked at the bag, annoyed, as though this small detail had wrecked an otherwise foolproof plan. ‘I don’t think you understand quite how much trouble you’re in. This isn’t just about flouting the rules, which will cost you your job, or being charged with smuggling drugs into the prison. Allow me to introduce Inspector Salazar, from Homicide. She’s here to charge you with the murder of Dr Berasategui.’

  The man looked at Amaia and began visibly to shake.

  ‘Oh, shit, oh shit,’ he repeated, clasping his head in his hands.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Amaia, ‘there’s still a way out.’

  The man looked up at her expectantly.

  ‘If you agree to help us, I may be able to persuade the magistrate that you’ve been cooperating with our inquiries, and to limit the charge to supplying the prisoner with what you thought was simple medication. Perhaps the doctor had a stomach ache, and he asked you to buy him some painkillers, for example.’

  The guard nodded vigorously.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what happened.’ The man’s relief was palpable. ‘Dr Berasategui asked me to bring him some medicine. I had no idea what he was going to do with it. I’m sure the magistrate will understand, he told me to look after him.’

  ‘Which magistrate?’

  ‘The one who came to the prison that day.’

  ‘You mean Judge Markina?’

  ‘I don’t know his name, the young guy.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Just after we moved the doctor.’

  ‘And you say he asked you to look after Berasategui.’

  ‘Not exactly. He said something about seeing to his needs. You know the weird way those guys talk.’

  ‘Try to remember,’ Amaia urged him. ‘There’s an important difference between telling you to see to his needs or to look after him.’

  The man looked at her, confused, and took his time responding, his face contorted as he strained to remember.

  ‘I don’t know, it was something like that. I’ve a splitting headache – can I have some Ibuprofen?’

  Amaia left the interview room and went up to her office, convinced she had been missing something, something related to what the prison guard had said about Markina. She opened Jonan’s file on Berasategui, which included the images Iriarte had just shown to Mariano Sánchez, taken from the CCTV footage, showing him handing the phial to Berasategui. But Jonan had also focused on the hours that followed. She went over one by one the images of her and her colleagues entering and leaving the cell, of the prison governor talking to Markina, with and without her; in another, San Martín joined them, and then there was one of Markina on his own. She wondered why Etxaide had made several enlargements of that one, and examining it closely she saw why. In the photographs where Markina appeared in the corridor speaking to her and to San Martín, he was dressed in jeans and a blue shirt; she remembered how handsome he had looked, how nervous she had felt seeing him after her dream that night. In the others, he was dressed in a suit, no doubt the one he had worn to the courthouse that morning when she called to tell him about the incident with Berasategui. She magnified the image to look at the time code at the bottom of the picture. It was taken at 11.59 a.m.

  The prison governor had told her that Markina called to ask them to move Berasategui immediately, and because he was out of town, Markina had spoken to his deputy. The deputy hadn’t mentioned that Markina visited the prison. She closed the file, removing the memory stick, which she pocketed.

  Amaia hadn’t made an appointment, although she called ahead to make sure Manuel Lourido was working the morning shift. She gave her name at the main gate, and noted the man’s surprise as she entered the prison.

  ‘I didn’t know you were coming today, Inspector,’ he said, checking the visitors list. ‘Who do you want to see?’

  ‘You won’t find me on your list,’ she said, grinning. ‘I’m not here to see a prisoner; I came to speak to you.’

  ‘To me?’ the man replied, puzzled.

  ‘It’s about Berasategui’s suicide. We’ve arrested Mariano Sánchez, who confesses to supplying him with the drug, as the CCTV images show, but it seems he doesn’t want to go down alone. He’s attempting to implicate some of his colleagues,’ she lied. ‘Not that we believe him, but we have to check out these allegations.’

  ‘That bastard! I can tell you right now that it’s a pack of lies – the only ones involved are him and those two pea-brains, Tweedledum and Tweedledee.’

  ‘I need to verify that the prisoner received no other visitors that morning.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, typing his password on the computer keyboard. ‘Berasategui had no other visitors that day except you.’

  ‘Possibly his lawyer, or Judge Markina, who ordered his transfer to the isolation unit?’

  ‘No, only you.’

  Disappointed, she thanked the man and turned towards the exit.

  ‘But Judge Markina was here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I remember seeing him at the end of my shift. His name doesn’t appear on the list because he wasn’t here to visit a prisoner. He came to see the governor’s deputy, and we only log visits to prisoners,’ he said, gesturing at the screen.

  Amaia digested this information, then said, ‘Could you tell the governor I’m here? Ask him if he’d be good enough to see me.’

  Manuel lifted the receiver of the internal phone, dialled a number and relayed her request.

  The silence dragged on for a few seconds presumably while the governor thought it over. Considering how hard on him she had been during their last meeting, this didn’t surprise her.

  ‘All right,’ said Manuel, speaking into the receiver. He hung up and came out from behind the counter.

  ‘He’ll see you now. Follow me, please.’

  ‘One other thing, Manuel: please don’t discuss our conversation with anyone; this is part of an ongoing police investigation.’

  Expecting this to be a hostile encounter, she steeled herself as she entered the governor’s office. They were on his territory now; one false move and he would send her packing.

  He rose from his chair to greet her, shaking her hand guardedly.

  ‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’

  ‘It’s about Berasategui’s suicide. We’ve arrested Mariano Sánchez, who has confessed to supplying him with the drug, and I wanted to tie up a few loose ends before we close the case.’ She could almost hear the man’s relief. ‘I understand this has been a difficult time for you. Yours isn’t an easy job, and what with all these tragedies …’<
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  She’d been deliberate in her choice of words: ‘tragedies’ made the deaths sound unavoidable, something no one could blame him for. Deep down, he wasn’t such a bad guy.

  ‘So, to wrap things up. On the day in question, I visited the prisoner in the morning. Did he receive any other visitors?’

  ‘Well, I’d need to check, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Shortly after he received my call, Judge Markina called to tell you that Berasategui should be moved.’

  ‘Yes, and because I was away, I asked my deputy to take care of it. I then called him fifteen minutes later to confirm that the prisoner had been moved without incident and was told that he had.

  ‘Would you mind if I had a word with your deputy, to double-check? It’s purely a formality, for the report.’

  ‘Of course.’ He pressed a button on the internal phone, and asked a prison officer to fetch his deputy. The man entered seconds later, giving the impression of having been outside the door.

  He looked a little nervous when he saw her. Beaming, she stood up to shake his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I was just saying to the governor that we’re closing the Berasategui case. As you’re probably aware, we’ve arrested Manuel Sánchez, who has accepted full responsibility for supplying the doctor with the sedative. I’m writing up the report and … well, you know how it is.’

  The man nodded sympathetically.

  ‘The governor states that he called you at Judge Markina’s request to tell you to move the prisoner, and then called you again fifteen minutes later to make sure everything had gone smoothly.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said the deputy.

  Amaia turned to the governor.

  ‘And then Judge Markina called you back to confirm that the move had taken place?’

  ‘No, I called him.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, pretending to note it down. ‘And did Judge Markina come here to see for himself?’

  The governor shrugged, and looked at his deputy.

  ‘Did Judge Markina come to the prison that morning in person to make sure the prisoner had been moved?’ she repeated.

  The deputy stared straight at her.

  ‘No.’

  Amaia smiled. ‘Then that’s all, we’re done. Thank you both for your time, you’ve been extremely helpful. I can’t tell you how glad I am that this case is over.’

  The governor’s relief was palpable, as was the barely concealed concern on his deputy’s face.

  She climbed into her car and called the station to summon an afternoon meeting. As she left the city for Baztán, she marvelled at that huge web of lies. The deputy denied that Markina had been at the prison, but not only had he been there, CCTV footage placed him outside Berasategui’s cell.

  47

  Her aunt had cooked stewed lentils for lunch. The aroma of food and the fire in the hearth comforted Amaia, yet without James, and above all without Ibai, the house was plunged into a silence that felt alien to all three women. She decided to call James, who was surprised to hear from her. After a brief, stilted conversation, she had handed the phone to her aunt and Ros, so they could fuss over Ibai, who, according to his father, pricked up his ears and grinned when he heard their voices.

  Above her the sky darkened and the first rumble of thunder reached her from the mountain. As she walked to the police station, she mulled over the conversation she’d had with her aunt when Ros left for the bakery. Engrasi had asked her:

  ‘What’s going on between you and James, Amaia?’

  She had tried to evade the question. ‘What makes you think something’s going on?’

  ‘Because you replied with a question, and because I overheard your conversation with him. All you talked about was the weather.’

  She had smiled at her aunt’s observation.

  ‘When couples have nothing left to say to one another, they talk about things like the weather, the way you do with taxi drivers. Laugh all you like, but it’s one of the signs of a breakdown in communication.’

  Amaia’s expression clouded at the thought.

  ‘Don’t you love him any more, Amaia?’

  She had left on the pretext of being late, and in her haste had left her car key behind. Daunted by her aunt’s probing gaze, she hadn’t wanted to go back for it. She never ceased to be astonished by that woman’s ability to second-guess what she was thinking, what was troubling her.

  The question echoed in her head. Did she still love James? The immediate response was yes, she loved him, she knew she did, but in that case … How could she explain her feelings for Markina? Dupree would have called it infatuation, Montes would have said sexual attraction. Jonan had been blunt: he thought Markina clouded her judgement, prevented her from being objective. She remembered how irritated she’d been when he said it, but in view of the latest revelations, she was beginning to think he had a point.

  As she entered the meeting room, she could see that Montes had started to pin up the images and documents they’d been gathering on the white board.

  ‘Have you made any progress?’ she said, addressing the general company as she gazed through the windows at the darkening sky, thick with storm clouds. She went over and switched on the lights.

  ‘Some, not a lot,’ said Montes. ‘By ruling out baby girls who’ve been baptised we’ve been able to cut down the list, but it’s a time-consuming process finding the relevant parish, then speaking to the priest in person, because no one else has access to that information. And all this during office hours, which in most churches are restricted. Of the four cases in Hondarribia, we’ve ruled out two – one was a little German girl, who died during a family holiday, and the other was baptised.’

  ‘Zabalza?’

  ‘Obviously by including statistics for the whole of Navarre, the number has increased considerably. But if we limit our search to towns near the river, we can whittle them down to one case in Elizondo, another in Oronoz-Mugaire,’ he said, marking them on the map, ‘another in Narbarte, two in Doneztebe, and the two Inspector Montes just mentioned in Hondarribia.’

  Amaia studied the line of red dots on the map as a loud thunderclap shook the building. She looked up in time to see a squall of rain hit the window.

  ‘How far back do these cases go?’

  ‘Ten years,’ replied Zabalza. ‘Do you want me to look further back in time?’

  ‘It would be good if you could go as far back as the first cases we know about, possibly further. Use a different colour for the older cases – in Elizondo, the girl at Argi Beltz and my sister; the girl in Lesaka; the daughter of the lawyer couple, Lejarreta & Andía in Elbete; as well as that of the father who threatened the pathologist in Erratzu.’

  The line clearly followed the River Baztán, or Bidasoa, as it became known, all the way from its source to the estuary, in a sinister succession of dots designating the towns or villages through which it flowed.

  She wheeled round to see Inspector Iriarte standing behind her, contemplating the map with a worried look.

  ‘You seem to have established a pattern.’

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, by way of a reply. ‘I have some news. Following your advice, Inspector,’ she said, addressing Iriarte, ‘I sought Father Sarasola’s help. To my surprise, he arranged for me to interview the protected witness who denounced the sacrifice in Lesaka. He more or less told me the same story as Sarasola: this was a spiritual sect with satanic overtones, but instead of worshipping the devil, they were encouraged to return to the supernatural traditions of Baztán. Or in the words of the witness: to the old spiritual traditions, which allowed man to commune with the powerful, mysterious, magical earthly forces around which the region’s inhabitants based the religion they practised for thousands of years. They also drew on the ancient practices of witchcraft, with its potions, spells, herbalism and shamanism, learning to explore the limits of man’s power.’

  ‘Did they actually believe all this?’ Iriarte looked horrified.

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p; The rain smashed against the windows as a lightning bolt illuminated the dark sky, revealing swirling clouds, like waves on the ocean.

  ‘I’m going to quote Father Sarasola’s words when I asked him the same question: Stop thinking in these terms. Of course they believed it, faith is the driving force behind millions of people, millions of pilgrims who travel to Santiago, to Rome, to Mecca, to India; sales of spiritual books top the yearly charts, the number of sects is growing, attracting followers to the point where police forces all over the globe have set up specialised units dedicated to dealing with them. So, let’s forget what we consider rational, acceptable, probable, because we’re talking about something quite different here, something incredibly powerful, which in the hands of a charismatic leader can be extremely dangerous.

  ‘This particular sect espoused a return to the old traditions, a respect for their origins, for the primordial forces, and their way of doing this was through “the offering”. They adopted the old religion’s belief in the existence of magical creatures associated with this part of the world since prehistoric times. The entire region is criss-crossed by ley lines – which are widely believed to be associated with paranormal phenomena – along with megalithic markers established by the first inhabitants of Baztán to designate places of spiritual significance – mountains, cliffs, rocks, ravines, caves and other places – where they could commune with those supernatural forces. One theory, espoused by a man called Watkins, suggests that such markers date back to Neolithic times, and served as landmarks during mass migrations.

  ‘The sect leader instructed his followers in ways to summon these forces and secure their favours. Not through prayer, self-denial, obeying rules, or negotiating obstacles placed in the way of desires. The sect summoned their evil spirits with offerings of living creatures. To begin with, they sacrificed domestic animals; according to our witness, the results were so astonishing that they soon progressed to human sacrifice. But not just any old human: this ultimate offering, which they called the sacrifice, demanded a female child under the age of two. At that age, according to their beliefs, her soul is still between two worlds, and this makes her particularly attractive to Inguma – the demon they worship. She must also be unbaptised, and killed in the exact same way Inguma claims his victims …’