The Ripper

by Carmelo Anaya

  - 'What have you got so far?'

  He squirms in his seat at the big test question.

  - 'Well. All the talk going round. I thought that...'

  - 'You thought wrong.'

  - 'I have information on that scene. A few ideas to explore.'

  - 'Which ideas.'

  My flat tone throws him off. And suddenly something strikes me as very serious. I stare him in the eyes. 'What I see is someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

  - I'm waiting for you to give me a suggestion.'

  - 'I didn't intend to bother you. Maybe... it could be some sort of fanatic, or...'

  I ask for his ID and take down his details: Lorenzo Vilar Alonso, licenced private detective based in Madrid. I jot down his mobile number too.

  I don't want to lose track of him completely, so I try to be encouraging.

  - 'We might give you a call to see if you can help out with the case. Where are you staying?'

  - 'At the City Hotel.'

  He pockets his ID. Before leaving, he turns.

  - 'I think we could work together. Unofficially, you see what I mean.'

  He's finally said what he came to say.

  - 'Maybe,' I say. 'Thanks for the offer.'

  When he's gone, I phone Lazaro Asuncion. He says he's not in on it. Since I no longer trust him, I give him a warning. He promises to ask around.

  Then I phone Lila.

  He shows up a while later, stoned and slightly out of it. I offer him a cigarette.

  - 'I don't smoke, boss. Terrible for your health, you know.'

  - 'All those joints are terrible for your brain too. That's why you're all messed up in the head.'

  - 'Don't be funny, boss, you know I'm in tip-top shape.'

  - 'I can see that.'

  Lila is short and looks at least fifteen years older than his age. He's only about forty. Ruined by too much beer and weed. He's slight and would fit into a kitchen cupboard if you dared him to squeeze in, that's how skinny he is. He looks like a street dog to most people. Today he's wearing a pair of bermuda shorts - probably the same ones he's been wearing since May - stiff with grime, and a heavy metal T-shirt.

  - 'You working now?'

  - 'No work now, boss. Things are bad. No one's working.'

  - 'I'm sure you spent lots of time looking for a job. What are you living off of?'

  - 'Pshaw. This and that. Every day finding something to eat is a new adventure, that says it all.'

  - 'I can guarantee you food and weed for a week if you do a job for me.'

  - 'For the pigs?' He gets all high and mighty. 'Not looked kindly upon in my circles, boss.'

  - 'Your circles mean shit. You know that. And it wouldn't be the first time. So don't turn your nose up.'

  - 'You paid me fuck all last time.'

  - 'You've got a slap coming, Lila.'

  He laughs, half his teeth missing. He knows I won't really hit him. He keeps us up to speed on gossip from the streets. If it weren't for him we'd always be the last ones to find out, like a cuckold. And we protect him because he's incapable of protecting himself.

  - 'You still have that big motorbike?'

  - 'What d'you want with my bike?'

  - 'I'm asking if you still have it.'

  - 'Course. She takes me...'

  - 'Nowhere decent.'

  - 'There we go again with the insults, boss. Bloody pigs, always...'

  - 'I want you to follow someone.'

  - 'Like last time?'

  - 'Like last time.'

  - 'Go on, then,' he says decidedly, like a bounty hunter in a B-movie.

  - 'The target,' I play into his game, 'is staying at the City Hotel...'

  - He whistles. 'Swanky!'

  - 'Looks like a gay gym rat. Slicked back wavy hair, dressed like an arsehole toff. Six foot. He drives a small Merc, a coupe.' Garcia saw it and told me.

  - 'Sevilla boy on his way to the big party?'

  - 'That's it.

  - I want to know where he goes, what he does, who he sees.'

  - 'Like his shadow.'

  - 'Exactly.'

  - 'On his trail.'

  - 'Yes.'

  - 'You want to know the colour of his piss.'

  - 'Yes.'

  - 'I'll need help. I'll call Pavo.'

  - 'Whatever works. But if anyone finds out, I'll throw you in the basement for three days. No weed.'

  - 'Who's paying?'

  - 'I am.'

  - 'How much?'

  - 'Depends on what we get.'

  I slip him two fifties.

  - 'Consider this a golden retainer.'

  Why punish the innocent?

  Cannon fodder. Genes multiplied for the void.

  Atonement for the sin of being born

  My knife frees them from the Burden of Life

  Perverse beauty murdering the undeserving

  They all deserve my little knife

  Aaaaaargghhhh mmm mmmmmmm

  11

  - I couldn't wait any looooooooooongeeeeeeeeeer. Tee hee.

  I don't see it til almost nine, when I wake up with a start from the deep chemical sleep I've achieved by inhaling a Valium. I'm in no better mood for being rested and I get up feeling the same heavy burden on my shoulders.

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, I check my phone, relieved to see I have no missed calls. But a moment letter I see the WhatsApp message and my blood runs cold.

  Disconcerted, I check today's date. It's not today. The next crime isn't supposed to happened for another few days. 22 September doesn't match up with any of the 1888 crimes. I read the message again. The intent is clear. He's struck again. How? Why? Where?

  I take a quick, icy shower and get in my car.

  The station lobby looks like a train station.

  - 'Commissioner Carrillo. Pleased to meet you. I'm Inspector Diaz, from the General Intelligence Commission.'

  He stretches out a firm, manicured hand. His dark hair is slicked back into a side parting, giving him a youthful look, though he must be in his mid-fifties. He's of medium height and build and wears a spotless navy blue suit, white shirt and sky-blue tie.

  - I introduce him to Inspector Galan and Deputy Inspector Menendez, from the Deputy Analysis Unit. 'I believe you were notified about our joining the team.'

  Galan is surprisingly young for an inspector and a member of the recently founded Unit. She's a psychologist and criminal expert, like Menendez, her colleague. She's slim, with short blonde hair and a pretty face, dressed in a nude-coloured blouse under a bright blue jacket a jeans. Menendez, by contrast, is Diaz's age. Bald and overweight, he wears a cheap grey suit that's seen better days and a limp tie. He has a bland face, with droopy eyes and deep circles, as if he hasn't slept for a week.

  - 'You're late.'

  Diaz doesn't bother to hide a scowl. He must have been informed of my exquisite manners.

  - Cuando nos lo ordenan.

  - I cut the crap and show them the WhatsApp message. 'He's struck again.'

  They pass the phone rounf without saying a word.

  - 'And it wasn't supposed to be today,' I add.

  - 'You're wrong about that,' interrumpts Inspector Galan. 'Today might in fact be one of the Ripper's dates.'

  Diaz requests we go somewhere more private to talk.

  We go up to my office.

  - I don't beat around the bush and ask Inspector Galan outright. 'What do you mean today might be one of the Ripper's chosen dates?' She

  looks back at me steadily. She has honey-coloured eyes. Her skin looks soft. She opens her mouth to speak, her lips finely shaped.

  - 'On September 22 1888 a woman was murdered in County Durham. Her name was Joan Boatmoor. She was a twenty-six year old female, married. She was much younger than the Ripper's previous victims.

  She pauses for effect. But I don't need any dramatic silences.r />
  - 'Go on.'

  - 'She died of blood loss from a slit throat, like the others. A very deep cut in the neck that nearly decapitated her. And her entrails poked out from a cut on the stomach. It was rumoured she

  - 'And?'

  - 'That's all. The police never found any leads. There were no suspects, much less arrests.'

  She's so clear and precise she sounds like a professor and not a police officer. Everyone stays quiet.

  - 'It's still unclear whether the Ripper committed the murder, since it was clearly his modus operandi, or whether it was an imitator.'

  - 'Maybe her husband thought he might as well...' says Diaz sarcastically.

  - 'We'll never know,' says the inspector shortly.

  Díaz keeps sneaking peeks at the speedometer, which doesn't drop below 110mph. No one says a word. No one feels like talking. I look at Malasana out of the corner of my eye. He's clenching his jaw. In the rearview mirror, the inspectors' faces are serious. Their jaws drop as we whizz through the sea of plastic surrounding the motorway.

  - 'They say it's one of the few things that can be made out from space,' says the inspector, awed at the vast stretches of land covered in plastic glittering in the sun. 'Like the Great Wall of China and the Thames quays.'

  In under an hour we're in Almerimar. They guide us to a glut of buildings the colour of snow. The 'For Sale'and 'For Rent' signs give way to tightly shut blinds, waiting for next summer to roll around, with the irresistible sadness of abandoned dogs that empty houses have.

  The boats rock slowly in the marina under a warm sky, the waters so calm it the scene looks like a painting. The Mediterranean reflects the bright light like a perfect mirror. We see restaurants closed up for winter, tourist shops under lock and key til the tourists start trickling back. The feeling of intense melancholy pervading the scene stops abruptly when we round a corner and see a crowd of people stopping up traffic. I honk my horn. The crowds part like the Red Sea. A Guardia Civil officer is waiting at the end of the road, stopping traffic and keeping the crowds away from the scene.

  - 'We have to photograph the crowds,' says Galan.

  She pulls out a phone and starts snapping away.

  We park the car behind a green and white Guardia Civil patrol car.

  The distance the police choose to keep from the bodies is starting to become familiar. They usually get up close and surround the bodies out of a mixture of professional interest and morbid fascination. But no one wants to get too close to these bodies. As if they were sullied, infected with some kind of contagious plague. The cruelty of the wounds is too much for even the most experienced officer.

  I shake the hands of our El Ejido colleagues.

  - 'Our turn now,' says one sorrowfully.

  - 'Don't worry. This was just a little distraction before he heads back to our turf.'

  Four Forensics colleagues, dressed in white oversuits from head to foot, are hard at work in a flurry of activity around the body.

  - 'It's him. No doubt about it,' remarks Galan.

  Behind us, Diaz fishes out a handkerchief and covers his mouth with it. He holds back a retch and moves further off.

  The victim is blonde, her hair soaked in the blood that's spurted out of brutal, deep slit to the throat. He hasn't played with the intestines this time. Just cut open her belly so we can see them, as if we were in an anatomy class.

  - 'He's following the pattern,' she whispers.

  I look at her, her face clean of makeup, serious but not downcast, resolute and not daunted, and I feel a twinge of envy at her fortitude. I wonder how she can be so ready to face this.

  - 'I don't think about it, Commissioner. I just get on with it.'

  She's read my mind. I half-turn. There's nothing else to see. The Forensics team will carry on their work and find nothing.

  This case is giving me grey hairs.

  - 'I want to flay him alive.'

  Malasana speaks in a low tone, sublimating his rage into hatred.

  We stand in an airy square ringed with trees and empty, silent buildings. He knew where to strike. An unnecessary attack. I wonder if his compulsion is becoming unbearable. If he can no longer wait. Maybe he'll make a mistake then.

  - 'When we catch him, we'll put him in a wheelchair, so he can enjoy the rest of his days to the fullest,'I promise Malasana. 'He'll be the spectacle then.'

  Galan looks at me so reproachfully that I immediately regret what I've said. And my indiscretion.

  While we wait for the forensics report at the station, Lila calls. I tell him to meet me in a crappy cafe that smells of the sewers. I order a coffee and take it outside onto a quiet terrace in a bend in the street.

  Lila shows up with a smug expression on his rodent-like face, making him look more alive than usual. When he's not smiling, his face is grey, forgettable, but it lights up as soon as he smiles.

  - 'This guy is here, there and everywhere, boss. Busier than a jet-setting millionaire. Can I order a beer?

  - Two, tops.'

  He goes in and comes back out with two ice-cold pints. He sits down with that decisive air working for me has given him. His surprising self-confidence is so grotesque it makes me smile.

  - 'Sup, boss?'

  - 'Nothing. Did you find him quickly?'

  - Como a una puta en una novena.

  - 'What did he get up to last night?"

  - 'Had a drink at a pavement cafe and went back to the hotel. So Pavo and I followed him. And I was there early this morning, boss, so that he couldn't get away.'

  I finish my coffee and light up.

  - 'First he went to the Civil Guard station. They mustn't have had anything for him, cos he came out again ten minutes later looking pissed off. He got in his Merc and looked through some documents and then went off to where the first prossie was killed. He walked around there, did this.' Lila imitates Rodin's The Thinker sculpture. 'At least half an hour just like that, boss. I thought I was going to go mental. Was on the verge on saying come on pal, get moving...'

  - 'Get on with it.'

  - 'Then he toodled off to where the second one got killed. Same thing. And then he went to the place where the second woman lived, the South American. He looked for her house and stayed there for a bit.'

  - 'Anything else?'

  - 'Nut. He went back to the hotel for lunch.'

  - 'What about now?'

  - 'He's still there.'

  He checks his watch to confirm.

  - 'Pavo's would've told me.'

  I pat him on the back and give him another fifty to keep them going. I see his 'secret agent' satisfaction and head off. It's time to change gears.

  The Forensics report we get that night is as clean as the scene of the crime. They've found nothing. Just identified the victim: Rosario Mínguez. A junkie selling sex in Almeria's most run-down area, next to the harbour.

  Someone mentions her profile lining up with the victims of the Ravine Killer, whom Martin investigated without getting anywhere.

  Word has got round about the new crime and journos are interviewing the Almerimar locals. Everyone is horrified and they decide to put together patrols to watch the housing estates, just like in Baria.

  I take the Madrid agents down to the chamber of horrors. Menendez approves.

  - 'You can't work properly without maps and flow charts like these.'

  They confirm the symmetry of the crimes.

  - 'He's systematic,' says Galan.

  - 'I'm more brawn than brains, but I've got a trick or two up my sleeve.' This time, I'm the one who reads her mind.

  - 'If you think we don't know what we're doing, you're wrong,' says Malasana, offended.

  - 'It's very good,' says Diaz amiably.

  Both he and Galan step back to have a comprehensive look at the murals. I can't help giving in to temptation.

  - 'We're putting together a team for September 30. I've req
uested women officers come forward. On a voluntary basis, of course.'

  - 'A trap?' Menendez looks up.

  - 'I don't think it'll work. He's too quick for that.' 'But we have to try,' says Galan.

  - 'Where will they be stationed?' asks Diaz.

  - 'All over the area. The murderer doesn't stay within the city limits. Too small, and too much security. He committed his first killing in Mojacar. I've put together a comparison of the Whitechapel and Baria area maps.'

  I step forward and pick up a marker. I draw more lines from Club Mandala to the station. Then the line we expect the murderer to follow if the next killing is another copycat of the original.

  - 'What's outside of the city in that direction, Commissioner?' asks Galan.

  - 'Fields.

  - We'll have people there.' 'Are there restaurants, hotels, industrial estates?'

  - 'The city's surrounded by them. But there's nothing to confirm that he'll follow that same line,' I say.

  - 'There's nothing indicating he won't, either. We'll spread the teams out across the region with one special unit in this area.'

  Someone buzzes at the door and Martin comes in.

  - 'Commissioner, they've checked the security cameras for Almerimar and all the roads, but they haven't found anything. They think he took through through the back roads, the greenhouses.'

  - 'What about the victim?' Galan steps forward.

  - 'I've got the information here.' Martin hands me a file. 'What we already knew. They've also checked the area where she worked. Nothing.'

  Martin goes on sadly:

  'We've never had to deal with anything like this.'

  'You're wrong,' says Galan. 'Joaquin Ferrandiz.'

  What no one adds is that Joaquin Ferrandiz murdered five people before he was caught.