‘I thought she was going to attack you,’ he replied.
‘That’s a lie. You killed her, you killed her because what she said was true.’
Markina shook his head sorrowfully.
‘Is this where they’re buried?’ she asked, standing up straight and looking towards the door of the crypt.
He didn’t reply. Amaia took a few steps back, and started kicking at the lock, just as Yolanda had been doing a few minutes earlier.
‘Don’t do this, Amaia,’ he implored, still brandishing his weapon.
She turned and threw him an angry look. Freezing rain lashed their faces.
‘Are you going to shoot me?’ she asked. ‘If so, then you’d better hurry up, because I intend to see what’s inside that tomb if it’s the last thing I do.’
Markina lowered his gun, rubbing his hand over his face to wipe away the water streaming into his eyes. She aimed another kick at the door, which gave way with a loud crack. The lock fell to the floor.
‘Amaia, I beg you, look all you want, but first listen to me.’
She stooped to pick up the broken lock, then tossed it aside. Pushing her hand into the hole it had left, she could feel the splintered wood dig into her fingers as she tugged the door towards her.
The unmistakable smell of death, of early stage decomposition, reached her from inside the dark crypt. With a look of disgust, she turned to face Markina, levelling her Glock at him.
‘Why the stench if no bodies have been interred here in the last fifteen years?’
She took fresh aim as he moved closer.
‘What are you doing, Amaia? You’re not going to shoot me,’ he said, gazing at her with a mixture of tenderness and regret, as though addressing a child who has done something wrong.
She wanted to reply, but felt her resolve weaken as he looked at her. He was so young, so handsome …
‘I’ll answer all your questions, I swear,’ he said, raising his hand. ‘No more lies, I promise.’
‘How long have you known? Why didn’t you report them? Why didn’t you stop them? These people are crazy.’
‘Amaia, I can’t stop this, you’ve no idea how powerful it is.’
‘Possibly not,’ she conceded, ‘but perhaps the most recent ones, like the Esparza girl, could have been prevented.’
‘I did my best.’
‘You went to see Berasategui in prison; the governor’s deputy denied it; you told me you had been nowhere near his cell. Those were your words, and yet Jonan had a photo of you right next to his cell,’ she said.
‘Berasategui threatened you, you were terrified,’ he protested.
‘You had something to do with his death?’
Markina looked away, ruffled but dignified; even in the rain he maintained that elegant aplomb that singled him out.
‘Did you kill Berasategui?’
‘No, he took his own life, you saw for yourself.’
‘What about Rosario?’
‘You said you’d never be at peace while she was still out there.’
She looked at him, surprised, not knowing what puzzled her more, the discovery that he was the grand instigator, or hearing him confess to his crimes with what seemed like a sense of entitlement.
‘I can’t believe this! I’m going in.’
‘Please don’t, Amaia, I beg you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Keep talking to me, but don’t go inside. I beg you,’ he said, raising his weapon once more and aiming straight at her.
She gazed at him in astonishment.
‘You aren’t going to shoot me either,’ she said, as she spun round, stooping to enter the crypt.
It was a simple design. A central altar supported a heavy wooden coffin adorned with elaborate carvings.
Arranged in an oval shape around it lay the remains of at least twenty babies. Some were so old they were mere bones, but at her feet, Amaia recognised the bloated, decomposing corpse of the little Esparza girl. Next to her, arranged on an old shawl, lay a bleached white skeleton missing one arm. ‘Like so many others.’ Overcome with revulsion, she let go of the torch, dropping to her knees. Markina appeared behind her. He picked up the torch, wedging it into a crack in the wall to illuminate the grisly scene.
Amaia shed burning hot tears of rage and shame. No, this simply couldn’t be happening, it was grotesque. She felt sick to her stomach, a nausea that filled her with anger and disgust. A torrent of questions broke over her like waves on the shore, each more furious than the last.
‘You knew your father was responsible for all this, and yet you concealed it from me. Why? To save your career? Your reputation?’
Markina sighed, and gazed at her with that smile of his, as a flash outside lit up his silhouette against the only exit. It occurred to Amaia that she would rather be outside with the cold wind and rain whipping her face, the roar of thunder above her head. Surely the storm would provide more sanctuary, more solace than this desolate place.
‘Amaia, my reputation is my least concern. This is far greater and more powerful, far stronger and more savage … A force of nature that existed long before we arrived.’
She stared at him, aghast.
‘You mean, you’re part of this?’
‘I am a simple medium, the conduit for a religion as ancient and powerful as the world that originated in your valley, beneath the stones upon which your village was built, the house you live in. To a power such as you could never imagine, a power that demands to be fed.’
Amaia’s eyes filled with tears as she contemplated him. How could this be? This man whom she had held in her embrace, for whom she had crossed what she thought were sacred boundaries, this man whom she had believed was a fellow victim, someone unloved by the person who should have loved him, was collapsing like some fallen idol. She wondered how much of what he had said and done was designed to throw her off the scent, to foster those beliefs. She wanted to ask him if any part of their relationship had been genuine. But she refrained, because she knew the answer, and she knew that she couldn’t bear to hear it from his mouth, a mouth she still desired.
Outside, the storm raged, howling among the trees surrounding the cemetery, as the rain beat down harder and more furiously. Water was starting to flow down the steps into the open crypt, spilling over them in waves and soaking the floor.
‘Is that what you believed you were doing? Feeding this power by offering up young girls so that a demon could suck the life from them?’ she said, pointing her gun at the blackened remains on the ground around the altar. ‘Making their parents sacrifice them? In my book, that’s murder.’
Markina shook his head.
‘The price is high, a sacrifice cannot be easy or simple. But the rewards are unimaginable, and this practice dates back to the beginning of time. Then Christianity came along, clothing everything in sin and guilt, making men and women forget how to commune with living forces.’
She gazed at him, unable to believe that this was the man she knew. His words belonged to preachers and prophets of doom.
‘You’re insane,’ she murmured.
Lightning struck somewhere in the cemetery with a deafening crack.
Markina closed his eyes.
‘Please don’t say that, Amaia, I’ll explain as much as you want, just don’t call me that, not you.’
‘How can you people be described as anything other than dangerous lunatics? My mother killed my baby sister!’ she exclaimed, looking down at the mound of bleached bones screaming out from the dark earth. ‘And then hounded me all my life … You were going to murder my son!’ she screamed at him.
He shook his head, moving another step closer, lowering his weapon again, adopting a patient, conciliatory tone.
‘Berasategui was a psychopath, and your mother couldn’t see beyond fulfilling her promise … You understand, some people do this, not because it has to be done but out of enjoyment. But I’ve solved that problem, and I promise no one will ever harm you or Ibai again. I
love you, Amaia, give me the chance to leave all this behind, to start a new life with you; we both deserve it.’
‘What about Yolanda?’ she said, looking towards the doorway. Her crumpled body lay sodden in the rain, which was descending the steps like a miniature waterfall forming a dark pool at the entrance.
He made no reply.
‘Why did you send her to me?’
‘When she came to see me in that confused state, spouting that absurd story about her missing boys, I saw the perfect opportunity for you to investigate the case, to see that it led nowhere, that her boys were in the tomb, and that these were the ramblings of a madwoman. It never occurred to me that you’d go over my head. I had to be part of the process, I couldn’t let Judge De Gouvenain ruin everything. Her exhumation order was non-specific, and if Yolanda had seen the other casket, they would have been obliged to open it. So, I was forced to intervene. Naturally, I never imagined she would be crazy enough to blow up the tomb.’
A flash of lightning, alarmingly close, made them both duck, instinctively. The Lady is coming.
Trying to ignore the frenzy of natural forces converging above them, Amaia went on:
‘You let this poor woman disfigure herself, you sent her like a lamb to the slaughter, and now you’ve killed her.’
‘She had just knocked you down, for all I knew she had explosives or a weapon.’
‘Why did you do this to me? Why did you pursue me?’
‘If you’re asking why I fell in love with you, that wasn’t planned. Haven’t you understood? I love you, Amaia: you were made for me; you belong to me just as I belong to you. Nothing can come between us, because, however hard it is for you to accept what you see, I know this doesn’t change your feelings towards me.’
The storm roared and flashed magnificently above them, even as Amaia’s head filled incongruously with statistics about the probability of lightning striking the same place twice. She is here, the Lady has arrived. She could all but hear their voices above the howling storm. Mari had arrived amid thunder and lightning, a spirit of the air, accompanied by the heady aroma of ozone. Markina swung round to face the door, as if he too had heard the chant of the lamias welcoming their lady.
‘You broke into my house and stole that memory stick. Dr Takchenko’s accident – your secretary saw me handing her the envelope …’
‘I regret what happened to your friend. I like her. I’m glad she didn’t die. They went too far, I never intended for her to suffer, I’m not a cruel man.’
‘You’re not a cruel man? But what about all those women, those young girls found dead by the river, all those babies. How much blood do you have on your hands?’
‘None, Amaia. Each of us is in control of our own life, yet I am responsible for you. I love you, and I won’t let anyone hurt you. Go ahead and condemn me for having protected you. Although you were right about one thing: your mother was out of control, she wouldn’t listen to reason, she would have gone on until she achieved her goal, which was to kill you, and I couldn’t allow that.’
‘She was waiting for the final command, like Berasategui, like all the others. What power do you have over those people? Enough to control their lives?’
He shrugged, smiling in that charming, knowing way that had so beguiled her. A series of thunderclaps made the ground beneath them tremble, shaking the land of the dead, which felt like the mouth of hell when he gazed at her like that. It disturbed her deeply to admit that she loved him, she loved that man, she loved a demon, the ideal of manly perfection, the great seducer.
‘Where is your grey coat?’
He gave a look of dismay and clucked his tongue: ‘It got destroyed.’
‘Oh, God!’ she groaned.
The raging storm crescendoed outside. Like mourners expressing her pain, fresh bursts of thunder and lightning mingled with the wind howling amid the gravestones, rending the sky as the tears of Baztán gushed down in torrents, and the lamias cried out: Wash away the crime, cleanse the river.
He walked towards her, hand outstretched.
‘Amaia.’
She raised her tear-stained face.
There was a catch in her voice as she asked:
‘Did you kill Jonan?’
‘… Amaia.’
‘Did you kill Jonan Extaide?’ she asked again in a whisper. The lamias were crying outside.
He looked at her, shaking his head.
‘Don’t ask me that, Amaia,’ he pleaded.
‘Did you, or didn’t you?’ she shouted.
‘Yes.’
She gave a wail of pain, sobbing as she leaned forward, her face touching the trodden earth of the crypt. She saw Jonan lying in a pool of blood, tufts of hair ripped from his skull by the blast, his eyes which his merciful killer had closed after slaying him. She straightened up, raising her Glock, using the sights to aim straight at his chest. Her eyes were brimming with tears, but she knew she couldn’t miss. Not at two metres …
‘You bastard!’ she cried.
‘Don’t do this, Amaia.’ He gazed mournfully at her, reluctantly raising his weapon, which she saw then was Jonan’s. Aiming at her head, he whispered: ‘What a pity.’
The shots fired from the entrance were deafening inside the small space. Later on, Amaia would not be able to say whether she heard two or three shots above the noise of the storm. Markina looked down at his chest, surprised by the pain, which didn’t register on his features. The force of the bullets fired at close range pitched him forward, and he landed face down beside Amaia. Blood flowed from his back, staining his grey suit. She saw Iriarte stooping in the doorway, drenched, the gun still smoking in his hand. He made his way towards her, and asked if she was okay. Amaia leaned across Markina’s body and retrieved Jonan’s pistol, looking up at Iriarte as if she owed him an explanation:
‘He killed Jonan.’
First came the silence as the storm moved swiftly away, as though fleeing the scene. Soon afterwards, the ambulance arrived, and so did the forensic team, officers from the Ertzaintza, the magistrate, and the commissioner. They wore solemn, anxious faces, spoke in the hushed tones of funerals and wakes, shock and bewilderment obliging them to adopt an attitude of moderation and caution. Then it was time for words. It was midday when they completed their statements. The lawyers Lejarreta & Andía were arrested at their offices, amidst protests and threats of legal action. The police in Elizondo took care of Argi Beltz, in Orabidea, where it seemed Rosario had been holed up since her disappearance. They arrived at Fina Hidalgo’s house in Irurita only to find her dangling from her beloved walnut tree at the end of a rope. In Pamplona, true to her obsequious nature, the ugly, spiteful geisha, Inma Herranz, broke down in tears, trying to convince anyone willing to listen that she had acted under coercion. The forensic pathologist team in San Sebastián, sadly famous for their success at identifying human remains, particularly those of children, were working the case. It would take them weeks to identify and date the remains of the little girls arranged in that macabre offering around the coffin. A coffin that turned out to be empty.
An arrest warrant was issued for Xabier Markina AKA Tabese.
Considering they had shot and killed a magistrate, Internal Affairs processed the case far more quickly than expected. They gave Iriarte a bit of flak, but left Amaia alone, once she had handed in her written report. A report that included everything about the investigation, but omitted any mention of her intimate relations with Markina.
She drove herself home in her own car, as the afternoon faded into evening, observing the effects of the previous night’s storm on the road between Hondarribia and Elizondo: fallen branches, trees stripped of their leaves. There was very little traffic, and she lowered her window to enjoy the calm that seemed to permeate everything, as if the valley were buried beneath a layer of cotton wool that soaked up every sound, spreading the fresh, moist aroma of clean, wet soil that was ingrained in her soul.
A thread of silvery light lingered in the sky as sh
e came to a halt on Muniartea Bridge. Stepping out of the car, she inhaled the earthy smell of the River Baztán flowing beneath her feet. She leaned over the parapet, and saw how high the water level was after the downpour in Erratzu, at the head of the river, which had broken its banks all the way down to the coast at Hondarribia. Seeing the Baztán flowing so calmly and she had difficulty imagining the powerful force it could become. She ran her hand over the cold stone, upon which the name of the bridge was engraved, and listened to the sound of water in the weir, wondering whether this was enough, whether the river had been cleansed, the crime washed away. She hoped so, because she doubted she had any fight left in her. Her hot tears fell onto the cold stone and trickled towards the river, on that inexorable journey taken by all water in Baztán.
Engrasi was waiting to embrace her niece the moment she stepped into the house, and Amaia wept in her aunt’s lap, as she had so often when she was a little girl. Hers were tears of fear, rage, bitterness and regret; she wept for what was lost, tainted, for what had died, for the bones and the blood. She cried so hard she fell asleep in Engrasi’s embrace, and when she awoke she cried some more, while her aunt wished that the doors could remain closed forever, that her girl could cry away all the ills of the world. A day passed, then another, then another, until finally she had no tears left. That was the way things had to be. She needed to be ready to do what she had to do.
Afterwards she made four calls and received one.
The first was to Elena Ochoa’s daughter to tell her that her mother had not taken her own life, and that the letter she had enabled them to apprehend and arrest members of that dangerous sect of child-killers currently making all the headlines.
The second was to Benigno Berrueta, to tell him that he could bury the remains of his granddaughter next to Yolanda.
The third was to Marc to tell him that they had shot the bastard who killed Jonan. She omitted to add that, as he had predicted, this hadn’t brought Jonan back, or made her feel any better; in fact she felt worse.
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