The Ripper

by Carmelo Anaya

  - 'But nothing to see here, eh?'

  I update him and tell him the COU is still busy with Hunt and the sex parties the distinguished members of the community have been throwing.

  - 'You'll let me work with them, won't you, boss?'

  He's sucking up to me now, revelling in just the thought of beating up the perverts.

  - 'Of course.'

  Seeing his enthusiasm, I set him to work on the complaint Lazaro Asuncion's sex worker lodged. I need evidence to request a search warrant.

  Hours later, Martin comes in. He's white as a sheet, paler than I've ever seen him. He's worked just as hard or harder than us, on leads that led nowhere. He stopped investigating the dog disembowelments. The stupid idea of the pig disembowelments has gone nowhere. He looked through the records, sexual assaults in the whole province. Another dead end. He contacted Interpol. They sent records for two dozen individuals from every country. Not one of them was in the area when the crimes were committed. Later, we looked through lists of surgeons, butchers and slaughters. As useless as it proved to be a hundred and twenty-five years ago. Later, Martin suggested we research the victims again, more thoroughly. Nothing. He immersed himself in the world of Jack the Ripper fansites and serial killer boards and forums. Nothing. He even went round several travel agencies to check whether anyone had booked trips to London with tours of Whitechapel (where the 1888 crimes took places) in the past few years. Nothing.

  He opens up a laptop and leaves it on the table.

  - 'I was on the verge of smashing that old pervert's face in. He screamed blue murder, but I stuck the search warrant under his nose. You should've seen the state his wife was in. El escándalo para él no hay quien lo pare, comisario. And when he sees this it'll be even worse.' He gestures to the screen.

  He takes a step back so Lopez and I can sit in front of the laptop, then leans over and clicks on a folder.

  - 'There's nothing relevant in the other videos, like the ones Lopez has seen. But this one is special.'

  A stage shrouded in shadow. The lights come up slowly. A naked woman lies on her back on a rectangular table. The camera zooms in on the bonds tying her to it. A man appears, his back to us. Practically naked apart from a pair of boxer shorts and a black leather mask. He's pushing a cart that holds instruments of torture.

  - 'A snuff film ?' exclaims Lopez, scared.

  The woman turns and twists slowly on the table, as if drugged. The masked man runs his hand over her naked body, over and over. She moans and wriggles submissively. A few whistles ring out and someone shushes them, 'We're filming.' A few smothered giggles from an invisible audience.

  The masked man spreads the woman's legs delicately and slips his fingers inside her. The camera pans in, focusing on the details. Then he lifts his fingers to his mouth. Whistles and more shushing.

  He leans over abruptly and bites her on the mouth. Then she breathes agitatedly, still seeming very far away. She turns her head from side to side like a bad actress, and we see her face.

  - 'I still don't know who the woman is,' says Martin.

  The masked man penetrates her with a dildo. More fake-sounding moans: 'No! No! Please!' The audience is clamouring for more, egging him on: 'She's asking for it! Go on!'

  The man selects a few knives from the cart. He holds up his hand, showing them to the camera. He runs the blade over the woman's body and a trickle of blood wells up in the shape of the '8' he's carving into her flank. Pleading. Then more noes, slower and slower, simulating agony. Until the masked man flicks his hand theatrically and slits her throat in one clean swipe. A geiser of blood shoots up and splatters his chest. He runs his bloody hand over his own torso, down to his groin.

  A sepulchral silence rings out for a moment. Then the audience bursts into applause and more whistles.

  - 'Woooooooow,' someone shouts.

  The camera pans out from the grisly scene and over the attendees. Our dear Vicente Lapuerta, the three others we've had on our radar, and another man Lopez identifies as Andres Rodenas.

  Marcos Atienza is much more nervous than he seemed through the one-way mirror. Despite his wealth, he hasn't been able to buy anything other than ignorance. Money can't buy class, after all. He proudly displays his expensive designer clothing but has as much class as a lawn flamingo.

  - 'I want to see my lawyer,' he demands haughtily.

  - 'You've been watching too much telly,' I shoot back. 'I'm the one you'll be talking to first.'

  His bulgying eyes look at me more cautious than astute.

  - 'About what, exactly?' he says rudely through grotesque, thick lips, his five o'clock shadow already showing despite his morning shave.

  - 'Rape,' I say, cool as a cucumber.

  His cheeks redden, though it's hard to see the rising colour on his da, weatherbeaten face. From the shirt protrudes a thick, bull-like neck, in which a gold chain with a crucifix tangled in a forest of hair that begins to whiten, like the one in his head, is highlighted on the very dark skin, The hard lines of a blunt skull .

  - 'You can't be serious,' he says, relenting.

  - 'I take my work very seriously. Especially when women are raped.'

  - 'I didn't rape anyone!' he protests.

  - 'I have a video of a gang rape. And you're in it.'

  He sighs, and digs out his phone, looking for comfort, but then realises with frustration that there's no signal down here.

  - 'Oh, that,' he says. 'That was nothing.'

  - 'Not to me.'

  - 'It was just a party. They're prostitutes. We pay them, we have a bit of fun and that's that.'

  - 'Do they have fun?'

  Atienza looks away. But then, more confident, he smiles.

  - 'If that's all it is, it's not a crime.'

  - 'Oh, it is, I'm afraid. In the videos I've had the... pleasure of watching, several rapes take place.'

  - 'It's like a show... You don't understand.'

  - 'And how am I to know that's true? What I see are women being tied up. Women being penetrated in an orgy.'

  He clenches his jaw, probably repressing the urge to bite me.

  - 'That's not...'

  - 'The videos are extremely realistic. We'll send them along to the judge...'

  - 'The judge?' –demuda su expresión Atienza.

  - 'Yes. I suppose everyone will hear about it soon enough.'

  - 'But...'

  - 'Unless the girls withdraw their complaints,' I amend.

  He breathes a sigh of relief. But I don't let him breathe too deep.

  - 'But by then word will have got out and everyone will know. I wonder how your families will feel about all this...'

  Atienza sweats as if hard at work in one of his plastic greenhouses.

  - 'Would you do that just to fuck us over?'

  - 'Of course.'

  - 'How? Why?'

  His eyes are popping out of his skull. I stare at him with a slightly mocking expression on my face.

  - 'First the scandal. Then charges for rape.'

  - 'We didn't rape them! We paid them and...! They're whores! How the fuck are they going to take us to court?'

  He insults them, spitting like an animal about to strike.

  - 'There are three reasons, idiot. First, a prostitute can be raped, just like any other woman. Second, in the videos they appear to be drugged, and that qualifies as rape. And third, I don't give a fuck if you drugged them or raped them or not. You all disgust me. And they're going to be reporting you for rape because I'll make them.'

  I watch his Adam's apple bob up and down. Trying to swallow, mouth dry as cement. I also read the anxiety in his bulging, dead eyes, which can not believe what’s happening. And I can hear the cogs in his brain whirring as he thinks about the damage a scandal like this would do to him. He sweats profusely, sweat pouring down his face as if a bucket of water had just been sloshed over his head.

  - 'Unle
ss, that is, you give me what I need.'

  - 'They said you were a bastard son of a bitch.'

  - Se quedaron cortos.

  Atienza reaches into the back pocket of his trousers for a cloth handkerchief and mops his brow and mouth, where terrified drool has started to gather in flecks in the corners.

  - 'And what if I tell you to fuck off?'

  I smile and look him straight in the eyes.

  - 'That's very simple. I'll do as I said and everyone will know how you and your friends get your kicks. As you know, sometimes this kind of evidence falls into the wrong hands and turns up in a paper, or online. And your wife, children and parents will be able to see them. In addition...'

  - 'That's enough.'

  His shoulders slump.

  He shifts in his chair, looking unsure whether the chair and the floor are solid enough to hold him up. I give him an in/out.

  - 'Whose idea was it to film those videos?'

  - 'Which ones?' he asks in a tiny voice.

  'The snuff film pastiche.'

  - 'The masked man, according to Vicente.'

  - 'When were they filmed?'

  - 'In July, I think.'

  - 'Come on. I haven't got all day.'

  - He looks at me. 'No one will hear about this?'

  - 'Not if I get what I want,' I lie.

  Atienza takes a deep breath as he watches me. At last, he decides to believe me. He wants to believe me, that is. It's not like he's got any other choice.

  - 'Peter Winston knows who all the girls are. He's the one who finds them. I only know a few of them.'

  - 'What about the masked man?'

  - 'Vicente brought him in. Apparently he's a friend of his or knows him from somewhere. His name is Damian but everyone calls him Robot. He keeps himself to himself. Puts his mask on and barely talks to us. Does the show and leaves. That's better, as far as I'm concerned. Because I don't like him, he gives me the creeps.'

  - 'What else can you tell me about him?'

  - 'That he's creepy, like I said, and he lives in the prefab houses next to the motorway. I know, because we picked him up from there once. I don't know what he does or how he makes a living. Vicente knows his last name.

  - 'Did he participate in all the parties?'

  - 'No. Not in the... normal ones. Just when Vicente or one of the others had one of their big ideas.'

  Meanwhile, El Vivales and Carlos Escribano's stories match up. They've been talking to Lopez.

  - 'Did you also threaten them with rape charges?'

  - 'They didn't want to believe me, but they gave in eventually.' Carlos Escribano was told the force would pay a personal visit to his wife. He turned every shade of red, then purple.

  I tell Lopez to put away the recordings of the questionings and while he goes up to my office I head for the garage. Malasana is waiting for me in a Nissan Terrano he's managed to get his hands on. It smells of dust and dirt. But before we can leave, Lopez appears.

  - 'What's going on?'

  His eyes bore into me. I don't want him to come with us, but there's no way I can hide it when he sees the guns piled up in the backseat.

  - 'What is this?'

  - 'We're going to get the Romanian,' says Malasana.

  - 'So you've found him?'

  - 'Did you think we hadn't?'

  He thinks it over for a moment and then shoots me a reproachful look.

  - 'So you were going to leave me out?'

  - 'It's for your own good.'

  - 'You're going alone? Just the two of you? No way.'

  He asks us to wait and a moment later he's back with three bulletproof vests. He chucks them into the back and gets in.

  A second later we're parking across from Baria City Blues. We need to kill time til it's late enough.

  Mike sees us coming in, not exactly dressed for a night out.

  - 'We need to kill a few hours,' I say, by way of explanation.

  He serves up a plate of sandwiches and ice-cold beer. Then pours us something harder.

  - 'Just one tonight,' he warns.

  He comes and sits down with us. Lopez, ever considerate, says if Mike is tired and wants to go home we'll leave too, so he can get some sleep. Mike laughs.

  - 'I'm not tired. Plus,' he opens his arms, ' this is my home.'

  I wonder then what his real house is like, the one I've never been to. The one I've never been invited to. The one I couldn't point out on a map if you asked me.

  Lopez suggests playing a round of cards to kill time, but Malasana and I aren't up for it. We close our eyes, seeking a few moments of calm before the storm.

  - 'Going hunting? Watch yourselves in the mountains,' says Mike.

  Lopez's jaw drops in shock.

  - 'In the mountains, any noise or lights could give you away, from miles off.

  - How...?' he looks at me, wondering if there's anything I told him.

  I shake my head no.

  - 'You brought a 4x4. I heard the engine. Your boots.' 'Two plus two make four,' says Mike.

  We fall silent, just focusing on the Dinah Washington Mike's put on, each of us lost in private thought. I wonder if the monster we're hunting tonight is the same fiend that disembowels women on our city streets. I'm sure it's not. But that doesn't make him any less beastly. He doesn't cut them open or slit their throats if it's not strictly necessary for business, but he exploits them ruthlessly like cheap whores to the last drop of sweat, blood, tears and dignity. He makes slaves of them, brutalizing them to unhuman extremes. 'Yes. He's a monster too. And we're going to get him.'

  - 'Have you seen today's paper?' asks Mike.

  We shake our heads and he shuffles off, looking for it. I look at my watch. Still too early. The slow ticking of the hands drives me mad.

  Malasana flicks through the paper and reads:

  - 'Now the rumours suggesting the murderer contacted Baria's Chief of Police via a facetious text message have been confirmed, the new Jack the Ripper has proved to be, at the very least, as arrogant and reckless as his namesake.

  If he killed his first victim directly opposite the busiest haunt in the county, he went even further with his second crime, slaying his victim a scant hundred yards from the police station. It is expected that a string of communications echoing the letters the original Ripper sent to the police in 1888 will soon begin. The police force's inability to find a single lead, coupled with the Guardia Civi's fruitless efforts to move forward with the enquiry - despite the arrest of a potential subject from the UK who was finally released with a slew of excuses when his alibi was confirmed all along, wasting valuable time that could have been spent looking for other suspects - point to greater incompetence in the security forces abive and beyond anything we could have imagined.

  One hundred and twenty-five years ago, in 1888, the London police force's inability to catch the original Ripper partly due to the lack of technology in the budding science of forensics. But in an age of technology, when scientific progress and forensic pathology have made incredible leaps in scarcely four decades, how is it possible that not one solid lead has been unearthed in these horrific murders? Not to mention the cameras on every corner, which so far have failed to record any scenes of relevance to enquiry.

  What, then, is society to expect? Should we expect the murderer to carry on killing women until he grows bored, like Ed Kemper? Or will he go on until he makes a mustake, like the Green River killer, who was only caught after dozens of innocent women had already been murdered?

  These are just a few of the questions we have. And no one seems to have an answer.'

  'If I was in the shoes of whoever wrote this editorial I would have been much harsher.

  - They make it sound like we're not doing anything,' complains Lopez.

  - 'I'd like to see this arsehole in our shoes,' says Malasana accusingly. He looks for the byline and says: 'Gomez, from Baria Today. Isn't h
e a friend of yours, chief?'

  - 'That doesn't mean he's not telling the truth,' I say regretfully.

  - 'It's not all bad. Listen to this.' Mike hands a second paper to Malasana.

  I try to focus on the sweet strains of Dinah Washington, but I can't. Malasana's hoarse voice prevents me from finding peace.

  'Just as the London police did in 1888, we have questioned whether the chosen victims of these crimes have any particular meaning. At the time, the murders drew the attention of the burgeoning middle class to issues to wich the London bourgeoisie had previously turned a blind eye: rampant poverty, huge slices of the population living in dangerously overcrowded slums in inhuman conditions in Whitechapel just streets away from the villas and clean, orderly streets of a middle-class area. Wouldn't it be wise for us to look around now, at what we don't see or choose not to see? If we did so, perhaps we'd see that the Baria Ripper's victims are not so different from the women so brutally murdered over a century ago. Women forced into prostitution. In the first instance, Cristiana Stoicescu was forced into sex work by a prostitution ring our police force has been incapable of dismantling (and we must also ask ourselves whether the crime of exploitation is as cruel as the Ripper murders). And Diana Carolina Mieles, living in poverty and the misery of someone who fled their country specifically to make a better life for themselves, and who ended up mired in the dirt of a society that seemed prosperous but over the past few years has been revealed to be nothing more than a mask over a rotten corpse. What more do we need to look at what the murderer is so ruthlessly trying to show us? Will we look the other way? Or will we allow ourselves to be captivated by the recent rumours on orgies and depraved gatherings in the highest and sophisticated of our society? If these rumours are confimed, are they not the symptom of a moral ill in society that we refuse to acknowledge? An illness whose symptoms are the absence of principles and values, causing a monster to kill with no remorse and disembowel corpses as if it were a game? An illness whose consequence is the denigrating, inhuman treatment of women, treating them like animals or worse. As a society we show solidarity only when we are afraid, like those bands of cvilian men patrolling the streets to protect us from the Ripper, so they say, but who are incapable of fighting back against the exploitation and brutalization of the women they run to to satisfy their most depressing urges after a night of playing the hero like misguided teenagers.