- 'What the fuck do you want?'
He looks resentfully at Lopez, who he probably knows. But there isn’t the slightest bit of comnplicity in his eyes, just the outrage of a lord being interrupted by a lackey.
- 'You like your little hot parties. I want all the information, and I won't ask twice.'
He stares at me speechlessly and a red flush of rage creeps over his face. His eyes bore into me with murderous hatred.
- 'Go fuck yourself.'
I grab him by the throat through the railings.
- 'When, where, how, who, what goes on, which women were hired. I want the videos. I want to know who goes and what they do.'
Lapuerta fights, trying to wrest my vice grip of his throat, but his strength is no match for my rage. Lopez tries to stop me, scared I'll take Lapuerta down before it's time.
- 'Boss...'
Lopez's huge hand forces me to let go and Lapuerta falls, banging his chin on the railings. He raises his hands to his chin.
- 'I'm going to report you,' he threatens.
- 'And I'm going to take you down.'
- 'You don't scare me. You don't know know who you're dealing with.'
Just need to hear so and an access of anger will obturate my last neurons. When I reach to grab him by the throat again, Lopez stops me.
- 'Wait! Wait!' he shouts.
The front door opens again and the silhouette of an old lady stands against the light.
- 'Is everything all right, Vicente?' she calls.
Without turning around or removing his hand from his chin, Lapuerta shouts that everything is fine.
- 'Ten AM at the station. If youre not there I'll be back.'
A moment later we're on our way to the beach compound.
- 'What are you thinking, boss? Lapuerta's going to phone his friends. There's a lot of them. With a lot of power. The mayor himself. Close friends. Uña y carne.'
- Le voy a separar las uñas de la carne, López.
- 'I didn't think you'd go so far.'
- 'Of course I would. Tomorrow we'll find out who he's phoning now. He'll be ringing round asking for backup, but most of his calls will be to his party cronies.
The Baria Beach compound. We park on a stretch of road by the beach wall. No problem finding a parking spot this time of year. Lopez points to a very weary BMW coupe.
- That's his car.
We look for apartment C, and when we're standing in front of the cheap wooden door, Lopez smiles. I gesture to the door in invitation and he starts banging on it so loudly even the Moroccans can hear it from the other side of the Med.
We hear an exclamation in English and then:
- 'Who is it?'
Peter Winston doesn't seem too surprised someone is banging on his door in the wee hours, because he opens up without putting the chain on.
I push him roughly and we go in like a bull in a china shop. Winston backs up, scared to see two men, bigger and taller than him, in his own house.
- 'What's going on???'
Lopez moves through a corridor and disappears behind a door. Winston protests, but I grab him by the shoulder and push him onto a couch. He half-sits, half-falls, heavily.
- 'Shut it.' I flash my badge.
He does, but keeps peering into the rest of the flat.
- Lopez comes back out. 'No one there.'
Then, with a magician's flourish, he holds up a small bag of white powder. The look on Winston's face would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. A stupefied expression followed by disbelief and a horrified grimace when the penny finally drops.
- 'That's not mine.'
- 'Yes it is,' I say placidly.
- 'No. No. You can't do this. I don't...'
- 'It's yours. Don't you get it? Baria's Chief of Police and one of the force's most respected, highly-ranked officers say so, Peter. It's yours.'
He opens his mouth but no words come out.
- 'It's yours until we say it isn't, capisce?'
He's short and slight. He has the translucent skin of a Brit, covered in freckles. But with a tan so deep on his milky skin he looks likely to wake up with skin cancer any day now. He's spent his life outdoors in the sun and is more wrinkled than a raisin. If Lopez hadn't told me he wasn't yet sixty I would have tipped him at seventy-him.
He has a small, round baby face, perched comically above his elderly body. Squalid arms and legs as skinny as twigs.
- 'You tell us what we want and the baggie is forgotten. We'll take it with us and this lovely little interview never happened.'
He's a survivor, and I know, since Lopez gave me the lowdown on him and his dealings, that he'll accept. Like magic, in under a minute we get our answer.
- 'What do you want?'
It is not the first time I hear an Englishment singing flamenco.
Only what is hidden is true
They talk about my profile
Boors. They will never understand
I play with them like a master with his puppets
9
Vicente Lapuerta turns up at the station at ten on the dot accompanied by his lawyer - none other than El Dandy. Staunchly arrogant, he looks at no one. El Dandy takes care of the hellos. Vicente Lapuerta's surly handshake is a mask of dislike.
I make them wait a good long time. Lopez complains.
I tell him to take Lapuerta down to the interrogation room. 'We won't be questioning him in an office. Just one more humiliation.'
Then I take my time again.
- 'This is intolerable,' begins the lawyer as soon as I stroll in. 'It's unnecessary...'
- 'On the contrary.'
We face off across the table, and the lawyer, shifting uncomfortably next to his client, doesn't take his eyes off me. Lapuerta, however, doesn't even look in my direction.
- 'You have summoned my client and here we are, Chief,' begins El Dandy in a conciliatory tone. 'Though I don't know how to take this... interview, since I don't believe my client has been arrested.'
- 'He will be.'
El Dandy makes a little moue of disdain in spite of himself that would irritate the living shit out of anyone. As if he were constantly clapping you on the shoulder and telling you not to be silly.
- 'That's quite the legal provision, isn't it? Haven't had of that before. Future accusation.'
- 'Don't mess about. You know what this is about. Either you cooperate or we slam him. I don't give a shit whether this accusation leads to a sentence or not. Your client's reputation will be done for.'
- 'That's coercion.'
- 'You don't say.'
I challenge him with the most playful stare I can muster.
- 'Will his statement be taken?'
- 'That depends on him. If he gives me what I want, it won't.'
- 'There'll be nothing official?'
- 'Nothing.'
- 'We just want information,' adds Lopez, leaning against the wall.
- 'That information is of interest to no one,' interrupts Lapuerta abruptly. 'They are private parties.'
I stare at him levelly.
- 'Who attends these parties? What do they do there? I want to see the videos.'
- 'Theyre private, Chief,' insists El Dandy.
- 'Here and now, nothing is private. They're parties for perverts. And a pervert is exactly what we're after.'
Gonzalo Santana sighs. He understands now, and looks at his client: Lapuerta has failed to deny the existence of the videos.
- 'Do you really think you're going to find what you're looking for in these parties?' El Dandy leans back in his chair.
- 'I'll look wherever I need to.'
He raises both hands as if to beg forgiveness.
- 'I'm not trying to do your work for you, Chief.'
- 'To hear you talk , we should all be sitting round feeling sorry for the killer. According to your little talk, no one has any personal re
sponsibility anymore.'
- 'Don't get me wrong. I believe in good and evil. I mentioned a few conclusions that have come out from neurological studies, that's all.
- They kill due to a subconscious impulse.' 'Poor things,' I say sarcastically.
- 'You should read Eagleton, Chief.'
- 'If it's along the same lines as your conclusions, I'll give it a miss.'
- 'What if it's true?'
- 'So what do you make of intelligence, will, freedom, then? Don't they count for anything?'
- 'Come on, Chief...' El Dandy defends himself.
- 'What the fuck are you talking about?' interrupts Lapuerta. 'Didn't you arrest a British national? So why am I here?'
- 'The arrest is COU's business, not mine. I'm the Chief of Police.'
- 'Uh-huh,' spits Lapuerta sarcastically, then mutters: 'Not for much longer.'
I light up a cigarette but don't offer our guests a smoke. I'll be the only one smoking while I listen to the old pervert's tales of sexual prowess.
It's a pain, but the judge refused us permission to tap his phone due to insufficient evidence. Shame. I don't know who he rang last night.
Lapuerta's made a deal. His videos for our discretion.
He's given us a flash drive with a warning. If the content is shown to anyone besides us and names get out, he'll take me to court.
Lopez sits next to me to watch the tape. He'll be able to identify the actors.
The first video starts with a dinner scene with six men in attendance. They laugh, joke, eat, drink. The preamble to the soiree's big event. When they're nursing their after-dinner drinks, a door opens and Peter Winston enters the room with half a dozen women trailing behind him. Lapuerta said the video was filmed in a secluded house near Mojacar. The Ambassador's Country House.
- 'Those women work for Lazaro Asuncion,' Lopez sits up.
I curse him for not saying anything. Then he has the nerve to complain about my three thousand euro fee.
The camera pans over the walls and ceiling as we hear the guests greeting each other, talking, laughing. Then it fades to black.
When the next scene starts, they've already got down to business. The same men. The same women. An orgy of inexpressible vulgarity.
- 'That's Vicente Lapuerta,' says Lopez suddenly, chuckling.
His pathetic naked body moves towards a blonde woman while melodic Muzak plays like a porn film from the sixties. Lapuerta leans over the girl. She wears only a see-through negligee and cries out with pleasure before he even touches her. The camera pans away.
- 'El Vivales.' Lopez points.
El Vivales is sprawled in a leather armchair and one of the girls is showing her backside as she kneels before him. While she works on him, a different man, hairy and overweight, his back to the camera, moves towards her and starts touching her.
- Atienza, the millionaire.
A wave of emotions hits me. Stupefaction. Disgust. Morbid satisfaction in spite of myself. Lopez's face is a picture.
The camera moves again and we see the man Lopez identifies as Carlos Escribano busy with another one of the women.
- 'Winston's manning the camera. He's not in the video,' Lopez notes.
- 'He gets the girls and films the event, like he said.' 'But this isn't all of it. Yusida wouldn't have mentioned the orgies if there weren't something else. Lapuerta's taking us for a ride. Have a look at the other videos. I'm going to make a call.'
Lazaro Asuncion apologises, alleging that he didn't think this would be relevant. 'They're just a bunch of old perverts with money and Viagra,' he says.
- 'I haven't got any videos, Chief. When they call my girls, they go round there, do their job and go home. They've never had any problems.'
- 'Have they ever mentioned anything that might be relevant?' I lean against the wall, sighing.
- 'Maybe a few more risque things. That's it.'
- 'Get one of the women you trust most. One who was at the orgy.'
- 'What for?'
- 'To report them.'
- 'What?'
- 'For rape.'
- 'You're going to put me out of business, Chief!'
I hang up and go back to Lopez, who's had enough of Vicente Lapuerta's naked antics and the rest of them.
- 'This is repulsive, Chief. But there's nothing we can use here.'
- 'Bring me three of them. You know them. The most vulnerable ones, who have a family, something to lose.'
I shut myself in my office. I spend some time at the window watching the journalists huddled under the arches of the old market. My windowpane reflects the light and they can't see me. Sounds of the market and people's voices drift up to my window. 'Those COU guys know what they're doing,' says one of the journos. 'They arrested a guy as soon as they got here.' 'Something had to be done. Not like the police. They're too busy arresting small-time drug dealers,' says another. For lack of anything better to do, they start trying to get passers-by to talk. They ask them what they think of the murders, who they think might be behind the crimes. They get prostitution rings to a lone madman on the loose. From an introverted professor to an occult fanatic talking to the dead. From a pissed-off chav to a cuckold. From a woman who hates prostitutes to a mad doctor. An old man with his shirt open down to his bellybutton, sitting on a stone bench, shouts cynically that he won't be caught, he's too clever for the bloody stupid police.
- 'Enjoying the view? You must have caught the Ripper, then.'
I whirl around, ready to punch the impromptu, unannounced visitor to my office.
Trainers with more dirt on them than a hobo's nest. Mud-flecked, discoloured cut-offs, knobby knees and leg hair sparser than a ten-year-old's. Heavy metal tee that may once have been black but has faded to grey with sweat and dust. Dirty-looking stubble and a bald scalp shining with sweat. The perfect beggar, just missing the bottle.
- 'How could I do it without you, distinguished inspector?'
- 'I've found a different Ripper.'
He's holding a folder. He shuffles to the table, throws the file down and plops into a chair.
- 'I see your manners are improving.'
He ignores me and points to the folder. I see the satisfied weariness of the find on his face. I light up and toss him the packet, which he catches with one wraith-like, grubby hand.
The photographs in the folder show a house hidden away in a thicket of pine and cypress trees. Water sparkles in a pool. Open gable roof, blending into the scenery like a chameleon. An old house with wooden doors and windowframes and a stone facade. In the last picture are a man and a woman in an old BMW driving down a dirt path.
- 'Bogdan's boss.'
- 'You sure? This is no proof.'
He laughs.
- 'I told you I'd find him.'
- 'Where is he?'
- 'In the mountains.'
- 'A villa. A pool. I bet he's even got a gardener.'
- 'Of course. That's how I found him.'
I can't be sure whether he's joking or not.
- 'I asked around, asked the people who work up there. That guy couldn't be living in a caravan like a gypsy. That's the image he likes to project, so they never know where to find him. Makes him more authoritative, scarier. But when he finishes the meetings, he hides away in his villa.' 'It's not that luxurious.' I bite the words back.
- 'And?'
- 'They say they work for an Englishman. So to the gardener, plumber and carpenter who've worked there in the last two years, they're not the owners. They call it Mr Brian's villa. But the funny thing is that Mr Brian doesn't exist. He's not stupid.'
We stare at each other for a few moments.
- 'You're sure it's him?'
- 'I'll bet you a good beating. If I lose, you get to beat me up. And if I win, I get to beat you up.'
- 'Does anyone else know about this?'
- 'Just you and me.'
- 'We'll need backup.'
- 'Fuck that!'
- 'If we're going up there, we need people to break in with us. He's dangerous.'
- 'Just you and me! On our own!'
- 'Has he got security? PimpsMatones = henchmen?'
- 'You're a wimp. He's got no one there. His fat ugly wife and him. That's it.'
- 'What if we fail and he runs off?'
- 'He's ours!'
He says it so forcefully, his jaw clenched, that if I order otherwise I'll lose his trust. He wants his prey. He deserves it. I'd take my hat off to him for his work if I had one - and if I weren't scared of flattering him rather than paying him a genuine compliment.
- 'When?'
- 'Tonight. I'll get the big guns out.'
- 'We'll tell Lopez. He'll cover us.'
- 'Leave poor Lopez out of this.' 'It;s risky.' 'You and me.'
- 'I see my safety is of primary importance to you.'
- 'Not so you'd notice.'
I think for a while, lighting another cigarette. I start to sweat just thinking about it. Radu is a monster. I smell the danger and my adrenaline starts to stink.
- 'Could it be him?' asks Malasana with the anxiety of a kid on Christmas Day.
- 'According to his record, he's done similar things in the past. Even so, I don't think it's him.'
- 'Why not?'
- 'If he'd done it to save his flock, he wouldn't have killed her in such a showy way.'
He nods. He agrees with me, despite his hope.
- 'Either way, this guy is the head honcho when it comes to prostitution in the province. I'm sure he's committed dozens of crimes. Every day he wakes up free is a crime.'
The Ripper Page 18