The Ripper

by Carmelo Anaya

  And what of the so-called elite in our society? Soon we'll have irrefutable proof of their little games, which would horrify even the most hardened citizen. Should the upper class be setting an example? Or does success necessarily result in disdain as an inherent guarantee of status? We are sure that the most admired circles in Baria include decent people, but the spectacle we are seeing quashes any hope.

  What then of our politicians? In the aftermath of the crimes they expressed their horror and confidence in the police force. Later, we were subject to a new shameful spectacle. The mayor and his city councillors now blame the police without reserve. They even vaunt their request to the Ministry of Home Affairs for reinforcement and their demand that Chief Carrillo resign.

  Malasana looks up, scanning my face. I half-close my eyes again and let my head lean back against the wall. He goes on.

  - 'What about the opposition? Can we expect anything constructuve from those who use these crimes to criticize municipal management, as if one thing were the natural outcome of the other? We know through experience that politicians have no shame in using the dead and betraying victims for their own ends. If not, why did the leader of the opposition have his picture taken with the widower of the second victim and denounce their living conditions despite never mentioning them before or putting forward a proposal for their improvement? The mayor made an appearance too. He wasted no time. And he patted the widower on the shoulder. If they could, they would be lining up for a photo on either side of the criminal, if they ever manage to catch him.

  Does anyone truly believe that once the horror is past these opportunists will take any serious action to change the living conditions of people like Cristiana Stoicescu or Diana Carolina Mieles? Even in Victorian England, attempts were made to improve their lives. But all we have here are empty words. And anxiety. The anxiety of despairing and hoping the murderer is caught so everything can go back to normal - bottom-of-the-barrel policies and corruption no one is brave enough to draw attention to. God forbid the status quo be revoked.'

  - 'Amen,' I say.

  - 'Our friend Whiskey Moran,' says Malasana.

  - 'What happened to him?' asks Lopez.

  - 'He's trying to give up drinking. He's forbidden me from serving him anything higher than zero percent proof. He comes in to say hello every once in a while and drinks coffee and juice,' says Mike.

  We fall silent, gratified to hear a good man is doing his best to crawl out of a dark place.

  I glance at my watch again. The night is still unspooling slowly, many hours to go.

  - 'I can be your bodyguard,' says Mike with a wink.

  There's nothing I like more than laughing at those fools

  All uptight at the merest provocation

  What's wrong with disembowelling a few common whores?

  Ha hahahahahahaha

  My confidence excites me

  I fucked my whore

  After I slit open the whore before her

  Ha hahahahahaha

  10

  Malasana drives along roads bright with blue moonlight, the moon swelling like a ripe plum. We drive past Rancho Grande and start up a slope along a winding path. To either side we glimpse sudden drops and gorges shrouded in darkness. We leave a cloud of dust in our wake. Bare mountains with shadowy trees dotted across the landscape. Finally Malasana drives off the path through a tiny pine wood surrounded by thorny thickets, tall as a house.

  The bloody Romanian is hiding not two hours from my office.

  We put on our bulletproof vests and grab the weapons. Two handguns and a rifle each. Malasana rummages under a tarp in the boot and hands Mike another rifle.

  'This is taking years off me.' he says sarcastically.

  The glimmer of light before sunrise leads us along a path that hugs the side of the mountain and crosses through sloping scrubland. After about twenty minutes we see the dark shadow of a wood rising up. In a few minutes we'll have a clear view. Huddled down behind a bramble patch, Malasana points to the outline of a house.

  - 'Over there.'

  There's a raised terrace on a stone wall, next to a house and pool, surrounded by black poplars. The shutters are firmly shut on every window.

  Mike stays behind the bramble patch, keeping watch over the house. Lopez stays halfway between our patch and the house and Malasana and I make our way forward towards the stone wall. I stay there for a long time. Morning in the mountains is cool and fresh. It smells of earth and dew. Birds trill wildly.

  A while later, a door slams and someone shouts from inside the house in a foreign language. Then a metal lock squeaks and someone yawns. We hear another voice, a woman's this time, and laughter. The front door opens. Someone clears their throat and coughs. A few steps across the stones. I see a short, stocky man in boxers from the back. He stops to take a piss against a pine tree.

  Before he can finish, the barrel of Malasana's rifle is pointing at his head. Neither of us says a word.

  I move forward until I'm up against the side of the house.

  A woman's voice calls out:

  - 'Radu! Radu!'

  She comes outside and shouts. She covers her mouth with her hands but when she tries to turn around she looks straight down the barrel of my rifle. Her greasy, tangled mop of hair hasn't been brushed. Her face is oily. She wears a thin nightgown over her ugly, obese body, her enormous belly sticking out.

  She moves to push the barrel away and I hit her full-force in the chest with the butt of the gun. She wobbles and falls to the ground, landing on her arse. Her nightgown rides up and I see her fat thighs, varicose veins snaking up her legs.

  Radu hasn't moved a muscle. He just stares blankly into the distance.

  Lopez appears from the brush.

  - 'I'll watch them. Search the house.'

  We leave them handcuffed under the tree Radu watered just minutes ago. They start to talk in low, urgent Romanian. Lopez is recording everything on his phone.

  Malasana digs through his rucksack for a baggie of white powder. 'Two kilos. From the last raid. I hope I don't have to use it this time because I won't be able to perform the miracle of the loaves and the fishes again.' The inspector hasn't reported seeing anyone else in the house on his watch, unless you count the gardener. Not one pimp.

  Radu shouts. The woman falls silent.

  A spacious living room with picture windows. At the end of the room a door opens onto the kitchen. Malasana comes out, shaking his head. On my left, a corridor. Bathroom and two bedrooms on either side. Empty. We move up to the first floor. A landing with a window overlooking the front of the house and a small balcony over the front door. Their bedroom. An unmade queen-size bed, bedside tables, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. Another bathroom. Women's toiletries. The last room is locked.

  We load up our weapons and kick the door in. It falls off its hinges. An unmade camp bed. Dirty sheets. A chair. A window with bars over it, a steel bar nailed to the wall.

  And handcuffed to it, a girl, naked except for a pair of knickers.

  She's sitting on the bed, her arm stretched out, held up by the handcuffs. An unfocused stare, her eyes shining with alarm and terror. Her face and body ravaged by imprisonment.

  - 'We're not going to be needing that baggie,' I say to Malasana.

  He runs out. Since I can't catch up, I step out onto the balcony.

  - 'Don't let him!' I shout to Lopez.

  But Malasana's too quick and before Lopez can hold him he smashes a kick into Radu's face. Punching, kicking, yelling. He throws himself on top of him to beat him to a pulp, but Lopez grabs him by the waist and holds him in midair.

  - 'Leave him!' I shout.

  Then I see Mike appearing from behind the trees, only to draw back again like a ghost when he's checked that Lopez has Malasana under control.

  I go back into the room with the girl.

  - 'Do you speak Spanish?'

  She can't be
older than twenty. A teenager's stomach and white knickers. Covered in bruises. So, unlike what his men think, Radu does keep women for his own use.

  - 'Police. Don't be scared.' I try to calm her down, showing her my badge.

  I still don't know whether she can understand what I'm saying. Malasana finds a clean sheet to cover her with.

  We call for an ambulance and two cars to take Radu and his wife down to the station.

  We're greeted with applause back at the office. I gesture to Malasana and everyone claps him on the back. They take the Romanians down to the basement.

  Ilie appears - a Romanian who's lived here for some time and who gets by on odd jobs. I bring him into my office, door closed, and we play him the recording of the conversation between Radu and his wife. In his early thirties, thin and bony, with a buzzcut and bulging eyes, he listens attentively and then interprets.

  - 'She's asking him how this could happen, someone must have talked. Then he tells her to shut up. She says they're going to find the girl.'

  Ilie looks up at us. 'Go on.'

  - 'We should have killed her or taken her to Almeria, says the woman. I told you so. But you just wanted to fuck her. Then the man shouts at her to shut up. He says he's going to kill the policemen. He's got to kill them all. The woman goes to say something but he shouts at her to shut up again. That's all, Chief.'

  He refuses to be paid for his work. We make a copy of the recording and request a certified translation. News from the hospital. The girl is in shock. She's been tortured and raped.

  - 'Boss. The son of a bitch has sent a copy of the letter to the press.'

  - 'Probably a contingency plan in case we decided not to publish it,' I say.

  He places a white envelope on my desk. 'For the Baria Chief of Police'. It's written in thick red permanent marker, the handwriting disguised.

  We were expecting this. It was found in a letterbox in Almeria. No security cameras nearby.

  I lift the flap of the envelope and see a photograph of Diana Carolina Mieles cut open, her entrails on her shoulder and throat slit.

  The letter is modelled on the one the original Ripper sent to Commissioner Sir Charles Warron, with a few new jokes all his own.

  'Dear Boss,

  Now you're saying I'm Romanian. Don't you learn, Chief? You and I know the truth. You can look for me for all eternity and you'll never find me, but I'm just in front of you all the time. Watching you look for me gives me real fits, ha ha ha. I love my work and I I shan't quit till I do get buckled. What ridiculous pigs you are. Watch out for your little partner in crime Jacky.

  Catch me if you can, stupid.'

  The letter rips through the Internet like a virus. The murderer must be having a whale of a time. 'Murderer Mocks Police Force', 'Killer Keeps Challenging Police', read the headlines. Online, things are worse: 'incompetent', 'lazy', 'inexperienced', 'cretins with badges' and 'country bumpkin sheriffs'.

  My mood improves when the Chief Commissioner phones. Radu Florentin's arrest barely warrants a passing remark.

  - 'We're being lambasted in the press for not catching the Ripper yet, Commissioner. Focus on that. A Behavioural Assessment Unit is being sent down from Madrid to lead the enquiry. And this time I want you to cooperate for real.'

  He's practically shouting now.

  - 'We've already got the profile. What we need is something different,' I shoot back.

  - 'What do you mean you've already got it?'

  - 'We know he's a bloody son of a bitch.'

  He bites back a retort, but I hear him take a deep breath down the phone.

  - 'Not one foot out of line, Commissioner. I heard about your little antics with COU.'

  - 'They shouldn't be so stuck-up. I should remind them of the Rocio Wanninkhof case, maybe that'll...'

  - 'Enough messing about, Commissioner! Focus on the enquiry. Wrap up the bloody Romanian case and get down to work on the murderer. He's ridiculing you. And all of us.'

  He slams the phone rather than just putting it down.

  Online, people who aren't busy insulting us have their own ideas: the murders are being committed by the same elite that organises brutal orgies. Or a psychopath on the loose who's not on his meds. Or maybe a woman, killing young, fertile women because she can't have children. Or a police officer well-versed in criminology who's gone over to the dark side. Or a fanatical Puritan. Or it's part of a role play. Or a doctor, as was suspected of the original Ripper, because very few people have the know-how to slit open and disembowel a body in a few minutes.

  My insightful ponderings are interrupted by Lopez and Malasana.

  They look so satisfied I almost don't recognize them. As if we'd gone back in time and no one had ever heard of the Ripper. Since then, smiles and laughter have been thin on the ground.

  Lopez slaps a file of documents down on my desk.

  - 'It's all there, boss,' says Malasana, and they both sit down facing me.

  - 'All translated by our friend and it's exactly as we expected. The court's ordered a certified translation but it's all already here.'

  - 'Where were they?

  - 'We searched the house and there was nothing there. 'We searched it again and yep, nothing there,' says Malasana. 'Searched the pool in case there was a deposit or box or hole, nothing.'

  - 'So...?'

  - 'Underneath a tree. The gardener, boss. If you want your secrets to stay secret, never hire a gardener. He showed us a tree when he saw us carrying out the search. And suddenly says: the boss told me not to water that one. Al final se va a perder. And there it was.'

  Lopez picks up the notebooks.

  - 'Payments, boss. What Radu pays his men.' 'Here,' he picks up another, 'his income. What the pimps paid in, in cold hard cash. A fortune.'

  - 'And here,' Malasana points at a blue notebook with a grubby finger like a kid, 'The names of his pimps. Remarks on them, trustworthy, untrustworthy... Speaking of which, he suspected Bogdan of skimming cash. The names of the girls are here too. And the flats where he keeps them, all over the province.'

  I start to lick my chops like a greedy cat.

  - 'And these are the extra fees he charged for 'protection', boss. In almost every brother in the province.' Lopez pulls out a few sheets of paper.

  - 'Now we've taken him off their hands, we should be getting freebies for a good long time. Don't you think, boss?' says Malasana ironically.

  - 'And special clients, boss. A list of people paying high prices. And you know who's on the list?'

  - 'Shall I have a guess?'

  - 'Our friend Vicente Lapuerta.'

  I've waited for a few hours to go by. Until they confirmed they've got the rest of his cronies. I watch Radu through the one-way mirror. He's been in the interview room for twelve hours. His well-built body is starting to slump in his chair. The hours crawl by when you're locked up. But he's shown no sign of weakness. No insults. No shouting. No punching the table. He waits patiently. He knows what's coming.

  His short, stocky legs are stretched straight out under the table, which is bolted to the floor.

  When I enter the room, I've got his notebooks and looseleaf accounts. I throw them on the table. Radu looks at them, feigning disinterest, but the quick glint in his eyes gives him away.

  - 'We've had your conversation with your wife from when you were arrested translated.'

  He lifts his eyes to mine and looks directly at me. His eyes are hard, dark brown, under a small forehead that seems to be made of stone.

  - 'You said you were going to kill my officers.'

  He doesn't budge.

  - 'If you threaten my men again, I'll see to it personally that the years you spend in jail will be as difficult as possible. You'll have an accident when you're inside and you'll be in a wheelchair. I'll make sure each and every one of your teeth is broken. You'll be the best little bottom in the nick. And I'll make sure your wife always lends
a shoulder to cry on to every dyke in the jail she'll be sent to, very, very far away from yours.'

  He thumbs his nose and stares at me insolently. A mocking smile. But his silent menace shows me his Achilles' heel. 'She's three cells down, having a shit time of it for twelve hours now, in a dark, dirty cell that smells of piss and sewage with no light to see by.

  - I know you understand what I'm saying. And I'm not here for a statement I know you're not going to make. I don't care what you have to say. Just with the girl you kidnapped and raped that's fifteen years, no bother. You'll be growing old with us, Radu.'

  He takes a deep breath. If he wasn't handcuffed in an interview room I know he'd be on me in a minute. The tough skin on his face, his five o'clock shadow showing, crinkles over his cheeks. His eyes narrow and he stares down at the table. Sits up slightly.

  - 'All the men you had left have been taken in. And your whores too. Your business is gone, Radu. And you know how shit that is for a Romanian nobody in jail. Your dough's run out. And your luck too.'