The Ripper

by Carmelo Anaya

  What inspired my liberation?

  How did I think of it?

  The new Jack

  The new Ripper

  I can hardly wait!

  2

  I turn around at the Marina Mar Hotel and meander my way through streets lined with villas and upscale apartment buildings, up to the very top of this hill that just a few years ago was as naked and dirty as a drunkard's backside and is now festooned with loudly coloured bricks like a whore past her prime. As I get closer to the top, the evidence of the recession grows, the crowded buildings half-finished and overgrown. I prance through the last few housing estates and stop at the water tank, which sits loftily above the estates like a cheap cardboard crown. They wasted the best spot on a water tank while some of the housing estates at my feet are tucked away in tiny streets and corners without even a hint of a sea view.

  The sun gleams on the sea.

  A moment later I hear steps crunching through clods of earth. I don't need to turn around to know who's there.

  - "If you stay there we might as well have met up in town," he complains.

  Lazaro Asuncion. A name at odds with his occupation, if not his physical appearance. Tall and skinny as a wraith. A mournful face like Christ on the cross. Genetics haven't been kind to him.

  I move back a few steps and we lean against the sidewall of the water tank, in the shade. From here, the sea view disappears. I see fields as dry as a bone stretching out into the distance, to the foothills of Sierra Cabrera, looming like an ominous blue shadow on the horizon.

  - "We should go out to lunch together one day, everyone'll see that we're pals," I say.

  - "I'm not hiding, boss. It's just that I live near here."

  - "And you've made me come all the way out here?"

  I've never seen him laugh. He's playing the game because he's getting something out of it. He's never admitted to being the owner of Hotel Argaria, Baria's biggest brothel. He always slips in a comment about his boss, trying to make it sound like he's just the manager with a big, powerful boss man standing behind him in the shadows, tough enough to take on the increasingly fierce competition from the Romanian, Colombian and African mafia.

  - "What do you know about the girl?" I ask.

  - "I knew who she was. People talked about her. All good things. The best-looking one. But I didn't try to get her on board. You know how it goes... forbidden fruit. Romanian. In my business, she could have been charging two hundred a go and everyone would have come out ahead, but those Romanians won't negotiate."

  I take a draw of my cigarette and grind it out on the ground. A cigarette butt in such a dry place is like a blowtorch. Lazaro Asuncion goes on.

  - "If they were different, we could do business. They would bring in the girl and I would up her image with my establishment," he says again, shrugging. "Better clients, with more money. We would all have come out on top, including the girl, who wouldn't have to work in a crappy car. But all they know how to do is exploit those girls like there's no tomorrow. I don't want anything to do with them."

  - "That Bogdan, is he their boss?"

  - "Nah, he's just one of their henchmen, a thug. There's someone further up the food chain. A nasty piece of work."

  - "Who?"

  - "I saw him once. Mean-looking bastard. Looked like a soldier. Big, like. He was at my bar. I didn't talk to him. I'm a nobody, you know."

  - "What's his name?"

  - "They called him Radu. That's all I know. But he doesn't just deal in whores. He has other stuff going on."

  I light a second cigarette and open my mouth, seeking air. A warm breeze, uncooled by the shade, washes over us.

  - "What kind of stuff?"

  - "Robbery. Blackmail. They say sometimes when they girls work at the flats he films them. To blackmail them... you know."

  - "Where can I find him?"

  - "Beats me."

  I change the subject.

  - "Do you know of any perverts who might have done this?"

  Lazaro Asuncion lifts his hand to his skinny, bony chest. I feel a wave of revulsion as he pensively strokes it, his shirt open to the navel. I look down and see his feet, encased in flimsy fisherman's sandals on their last legs, and feel another wave of revulsion at the sight of his long, skinny toes. His sad, emaciated body reminds me of the sad starkness of Cristiana's dead body.

  - "No, Chief. In all the years I've been in this business I've never met anyone who would do that."

  - "What about the Romanians? Could they have done it, do you think?"

  He scratches his chest again, so hard that I can hear the sound of his nails pressing into his flesh. He moves his narrow head from side to side, unsure.

  - "Maybe..." he says, and a wave of crazy ideas hits me as he speaks. "Maybe," he says again. "Not that I know them that well, Chief. But they're violent. There was a rumour that the girl was sick of the job. It wasn't for her. She was pretty, that was all."

  - "Who's been saying that?"

  - "A client of mine was telling me about her, about a month ago. He'd seen her around and he drove her to one of the beach hotels. He didn't mind being seen, he's single. He took her out to dinner, they talked for a few hours. He didn't sleep with her. He says he respected her. He fell for her. Understandably so. She asked him to buy her. To get her out of the scene. She begged him."

  - "Did he try?"

  - "He talked to me. He was scared of pissing off the Romanians. Stealing their cash cow. He was smitten with her, but he was frightened. Rightly so."

  - "Do you think that might have pushed them to kill her?"

  He shrugs his narrow shoulders, the bones pointy under his shirt.

  - "Maybe she tried to escape. Maybe she refused to work. Recently they starved one for three days after a beating. Broken bones, the works, you get the picture."

  - "But if they had killed her they would have done it in a less dramatic way, don't you think?"

  He sucks his teeth noisily, his lips moist. It's even more off-putting than the rest of him.

  "Sometimes they off people with blood and gore to make an example of them. Beats me," he says, with the jaded finality of someone who's seen it all. "Maybe it got out of hand."

  At the station, Soler, the Chief of the Homicide Squard at the Almeria Judicial Police and a Guardia Civil captain who introduces himself as Lizana are waiting for me.

  We shake hands and sit down at a workstation. Martin, who came up with the idea of investigating old crimes, joins us, to give us an update on his findings.

  But the conversation takes a different turn before it's even out of the gate.

  - "Chief," says Soler, "The captain and myself are here to present our superiors' complaints. You took the lead on this investigation without letting your superiors know first and without them assigning the case to you specifically."

  A long pause. The only sound is the quiet hum of the AC. I let my anger cool.

  - "I was informed of the crime and was the first person at the scene after the local police officers. I did my job. I don't see a problem with divvying up the tasks, and if that's what you're worried about we can work together. But if you think we're going to give up the case, I won't do so until I receive written orders to desist."

  - "Don't be offended," says Captain Lizana. "This is a serious matter. What we have to do is work together.

  - We don't intend for you to stop working on the case. But we do want you to keep us informed." "It's been thirty-six hours and the Head Commissioner of Almeria hasn't heard from you," Soler carries on.

  - "I sent him the preliminary report," I shoot back.

  Soler stares at me without saying anything. I study their faces. Soler's aging features under his thick grey hair. I've known him for years. Competent and meticulous, always criticizing other people's work. He wears a shirt, no tie or jacket, but buttoned so far up that he looks like an old-time farmer dressed in his Sunday best.
He has a small face with slight features: small eyes, small ears, small nose, small mouth. Fine, pursed lips. He and the Captain are night and day. Lizana is big and ungainly, sweating despite the AC. His balding scalp has a sweaty sheen, and his eyes are big, with a broad face and flattened nose that make him seem menacing. He slouches, his huge hands on the arms of the chair, and this makes him look honest.

  - Martin was the first to draw my attention to something that happened years ago in Almeria Province. "Apparently, there was a string of crimes, ten, I think," - I pause, looking at Martin, who nods - "Young girls, prostitutes murdered, and they were never solved. "Obviously we need to have a look through those files."

  Soler opens a briefcase.

  - "I have some copies here. I've looked through the cases, looked for any similarities."

  We open the folder. Martin scans it quickly. I flip through the pages. My eyes skate over details that shout loud and clear that these cases have nothing to do with Cristiana Stoicescu's murder.

  - "Do these files contain the same information as that article in the Almeria Daily a few months ago?"

  Both of them have read the article; they nod in silence.

  - "If I recall correctly, all the victims were young prostitutes, slim brunettes, am I right?"

  Soler nods again. Lizana brushes his fingers over the pages and scans the files again, with a look on his face that says he wishes things were different. I see Lopez in him, a man too good at heart for the misery of the task at hand.

  - "They were all from the wrong side of the tracks, drug addicts, most of them, and the bodies turned up in remote areas," says Soler.

  - "Our victim, Cristiana Stoicescu, did not appear to be addicted to drugs, and she wasn't found out in the middle of nowhere, quite the opposite.

  - Another big difference is that they were all beaten or strangled to death. Not one of them had her throat slit," Soler continues.

  - "Nor were the bodies mutilated."

  We look each other in the eye. Both of us shake our heads at the same time.

  - "When they arrested that German lorry driver, Volker Eckert, we thought it might be him, but it hasn't been confirmed," says Lizana. "Either way, our unit was in charge of some of those inquiries and the officers heading them up were questioned. They confirmed that the modus operandi could square with that son of a bitch Eckert." "They were almost all convinced it was him.”

  - “Not much use to us.”

  - “There was no way of confirming it."

  Soler isn't convinced.

  - "Some of those girls, there was a German one, Sandmeyer, you'll see her file there, her dad was linked to drug trafficking circles. Her death might have more to do with revenge ver her dad than a serial killer.”

  - “And if I'm not mistaken," he goes on, "the bodies were found all over the province, in different places with no connections. Vélez Rubio, Purchena, Roquetas…"

  The others confirm this last piece of information. I take a deep breath.

  - I don't believe that whoever committed those crimes is our man. "As you'll see in the report, our man slit his first victim's throat in the busiest spot he could find. He doesn't want to hide the crime. He wants to show off. And, most importantly, there was no sexual assault."

  I shake my head regretfully.

  - "I don't think it's the same killer. But we'll study violent men who were locked up in '96 or '97, when the last wave of crimes ended, and we got out last year, just in case."

  Soler grins mischievously.

  - "Chief, as you can see, we came straigt away. Why do you think it's a serial killer? He's only committed one crime for now. And those other crimes were committed years ago. There's no connection. Different M. O. It could be gender-based or the work of some kind of prostitution ring."

  - "Just a hunch."

  - 'Well I wouldn't go around saying that or we'll have a real mess on our hands," he jumps in quickly. He's not wrong.

  Martin is on me as soon as the others leave my office.

  - "We can't dismiss..." he starts.

  I stop him in his tracks, raising one hand as I keep my eyes on the case files. He smokes restlessly as I read. They called it Operation Indalo. Five of the crimes were attributed to the same killer. Eckert died in his cell in a German prison in 2007. He never admitted to the crimes. And some of the details in the cases lead me to believe that he couldn't have committed them. The so-called Ravine Killer - he would leave the bodies in ravines - almost aways struck at the weekend, which was an unlikely M. O. for an international lorry driver, who would have had a hard time returning to the same place week in and week out. Not to mention that the inquiry focused on the driver of a grey Opel Corsa that the final victim, Aurora Amador Carmen, got into in April 1996. The team had two letters and a number from the number plates, based on statements from other prostitutes who saw Aurora get into a car matching that description. The Guardia Civil searched through thousands of number plates that matched and found a suspect, a prison officer who lived in a small town with his mother. That year, they interviewed his coworkers and friends, who admitted that he would have violent episodes and had threatened a fellow employee with an axe during an argument. But no solid evidence was found, and the inquiry slowly lost steam and eventually ground to a halt, forgotten. The prison officer left his job and the police lost track of him.

  I'm stupefed to see that, in 1996, the Portuguese police, who'd been alerted to the crimes, asked us to collaborate - in case there were any similarities - with them in their hunt for the Lisbon Ripper, who had mutilated and murdered five prostitutes in the city. But the M. O. was completely different. The Lisbon Ripper also strangled his victims, but then he made cuts in the breasts and vagina and slit their stomachss open. He eviscerated them. Only one of the women killed in Almeria had cuts in her buttocks.

  I turn the page and see a photo: Aurora Amador's lifeless body, lying at the very bottom of a embankment. Her arms are by her sides, her legs spread and bent, her neck snapped at an angle impossible in life.

  "We're not going to ignore this. I'm giving you three jobs: find violent convicts with sexual assault records that got out a year ago. Then find out who that prison officer was. I want to know what happened to him."

  - "What about the third job?"

  - "I'll tell you later."

  Martin takes the case files back, but turns around at the door and asks:

  - "Do you really think it's a serial killer, boss?

  - I think we could have another Joaquin Ferrandiz on our hands."

  - "He says he knows why they killed the girl there."

  I look up from my computer screen. I'm looking for information on macabre murders, trawling for inspiration, since it doesn't seem to be forthcoming from anywhere else. I wonder why the killer took such a big risk. I emerge from my reverie and tell the officer to send whoever says they have the information through.

  - "Good morning, Chief," he greets me politely, stretching out his hand and waiting for me to tell him to take a seat.

  A male in his seventies, with flyaway, thinning white hair through which his scalp, dotted with dark spots, gleams. Slim, he wears Terylene trousers that are too big for his shrinking, bony frame, and a short-sleeved plaid shirt that's much too loose, buttoned all the way up to the top. His face is also covered in dark spots, but he's clean-shaven. The deep smell of his classic aftershave hits me, reminding me of the cologne Dad used to wear. He sits down, his back ramrod straight, and places his skeletal fingers on the edge of my desk.

  - "How can I help you?"

  The man smiles, showing off a row of perfect falsies that a TV presenter would ache to get his hands on.

  - "You don't remember me. You came to my organisation to give a talk when you were assigned here."

  Something clicks. I remember: I was invited to give a talk on crimes in postmodern society at the headquarters of an organisation whose name I can't
remember. I didn't choose the topic. I had to study postmodernity like a sciologist. I ended up focusing on terrorism, which, unfortunately, was my specialisation.

  It mustn't have been a success - they never invited me back.

  I make a gesture, trying to remember, and the man obliges.

  - "Sebastian Rodriguez. I'm the chairman of the New Destiny Organisation."

  - Now I remember.

  - "What an interesting talk that was, Chief."

  - "Maybe I didn't live up to your expectations."

  Lopez laughed at me - the organisation focuses on the occult and spirituality, esoteric topics, and their members are reputed to be slightly out of touch.

  - "Of course you did. It was very interesting."

  - "What brings you here?"

  He leans forward, perching on the very edge of his chair, and squares his hands firmly on the desk. He says:

  - "I know you're very busy and that crime must be causing you an awful lot of stress, so I won't keep you long."

  He blinks a touch too long and then opens his eyes like someone who's just experienced an internal revelation.

  - "I didn't want to just let it go in case it was important. What happened was so horrible I felt I had to tell you.'"

  I nod impatiently.

  - "I read about the murder in the papers. I don't know whether all the details are right, but something struck me immediately. I've been turning it over for a whole day, wondering whether it was worth taking up your time, but finally I decided I had to tell you. Up to you to say whether it matters or not."

  He licks his lips and goes on: