She's thinking out loud. I let her go on, talking, supposing, suspecting, imagining. She may stumble across something good.
- 'Around forty. Older, even. He's educated, you can tell from the chosen locations and the symbols he uses.'
- 'Yeah, but anyone could look that up online in five minutes.'
She ignores me and goes on.
- 'I'm convinced that he's a loner.'
- 'Why?'
- 'Because preparing these crimes has taken a great deal of patience. He couldn't have done that with someone hovering at home.'
- Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer, killed fifty women and he'd go home to his family and think nothing of it. And he was ignorant.'
She doesn't disagree, but she doesn't change her mind, either.
- 'He's from here, no doubt about it. He knows the area very well. I can't be sure, but I'd swear he's comfortably off and has a large, isolated place where he works and plans the crimes.'
- 'It wouldn't be strictly necessary.'
She looks at me warily. Then turns to look at the rain again.
- 'It is, actually. He kidnaps and hides the women for some time before he kills them.'
- 'All he'd need is a van.'
- 'He's too painstaking to work alone in a van. I can't see it.'
She pauses and sighs deeply. Her whole chest moves with the breath in. She exhales slowly.
- 'He's well-known around here. He knows you.' She turns and stares a me.
His taunt sing-songs through my mind: 'You can seek, but you won't find.'
- 'Everyone knows me. It's a small town.'
- 'There's got to be something else. You're the one he's chosen to communicate with.'
- 'Yeah, and the media.'
- 'But the private messages go to your phone. You're the only person he reveals his true self to. He must have met you, Inspector.'
She turns and faces me, standing so close I can smell her perfume, her hair, her breath. I like her. But I don't like what she's saying.
'Think about it. Because he's playing a game of chess and you're his opponent. He chose you for a reason.'
The phone Lapuerta rang in the car is on. We wait for the coordinates. Robot's in town.
It's still raining when we drive out of the carpark in the Golf. But not with the same savage violence. The storm has left its mark. Muddy water sprays up in arcs from every puddle. It smells of ozone and dirt, as if the raging storm had stripped the city bare and uncovered its true smell. As the rain slows to a steady patter it feels like the dawning calm after a hard battle. People start to trickle out into the streets. We see groups of people in Wellingtons trying to scoop water from their courtyards, their gardens, their basements. A current of mud oozes across every road, running into the gutters. When we leave the city we see sad-looking, muddy fields. Some look like pools filled with dirty water. Unexpected wellsprings in every pothole. We see broken branches, bushes uprooted, canes, pieces of furniture, of fences, dragged along by the current. From time to time, dogs, sheeps and gots surface, rocked placidly in death. We see flooded cars and houses whose roofs have caved in under the deluge. Far off, the thunder is still roaring, and the lightning crackles, but more faintly, as if a huge beast were making off after having its fill. The world seems to be awakening after a catastrophe.
Slowly, the traffic gets moving. We reach the motorway and head south. I drive slowly for a few minutes, as if scared to reach my destination. But this time Malasana says nothing, as if a confusing omen were looming for him too. Inspector Galan has trampled any hope we had of Robot being the thread leading us to a murderer capable of acting a part and then taking ownership of it fully several weeks later.
We take a detour and drive over an asphalt road that leads us to the cluster of prefab houses and trailers. Sheet-metal houses that must be boiling in summer and freezing in winter. Water drips off their flat roofs. People amble here and there, all their movements strangely purposeless, as if they know that whatever they do to get rid of the water won't be much help.
The camp stretches through muddy fields. Dirt streets once overlaid with cement that bad weather and time have eroded away. We leave the car outside the caravan - the local police has informed us which is his.
Night falls. I have one hand on my holster and a torch in the other one. Malasana does a quick spot check round the perimeter to make sure there's no other exit. He knocks at the door. I stay a couple of yards back, trying to see movement inside, but the lights are off and the curtains are still. Malasana pounds on the door again. Seconds tick by and all we hear is the wind.
Suddenly, the door opens. We move quickly to draw our guns, but the man holds up his empty hands. Exactly as in the police files. 1m70 (5'7), a gym-sculpted chest and wide arms. All he's wearing is a pair of shorts.
- 'What's going on?'
- 'Police. Come here,' orders Malasana.
Robot doesn't move.
- 'What do you want?'
- 'We want to talk to you.'
- 'About what?'
- 'What Lapuerta told you.'
He sighs and steps down from the doorway, standing barefoot on the muddy ground.
- 'This is some bullshit,' he sighs, accepting the situation.
'You were expecting us.' My desengano grows at his visible lack of fear. Inspector Galan is right. I got my hopes up when Robot was unreachable. If he knew who the Ripper was he wouldn't be sitting at home waiting for us.
He snakes a hand back into the trailer and pulls out a rollie and a lighter. Then sits down on the front step.
- 'What's going on? All this fuss over a whore who made some good money?'
He lights the rollie. It's not just tobacco. Malsana makes to kick it out of his mouth but I stop him.
- 'It wasn't a normal service. She was raped.'
- 'Fuck that!'
- 'And kidnapped.'
- 'Get real!'
Damian Albor Lachas, natural de Baria, age forty, antiguo legionario. Con antecedentes policiales por tráfico de hachís, por contrabando de mercancías robadas y por agresión sexual. However, your only criminal record is a conviction for domestic violent in 2005.. You own an Opel van and an old house in the city's old town in danger of collapse, inherited from your parents.
- If you tell us about the parties, we might be able to do a deal with you,' I say.
He looks up at me. Malasana shines the torch in his face. He hasn't aged well. His lined face and sunburnt features speak volumes.Too much partying. It doesn't look like a healthy lifestyle is his priority. Buzzcut, like a soldier. He has a big, square head with a prominent skull. He looks like a raging beast, not a man, ready to strike.
- 'You've got the videos, Vicente told me. You've got the information. I've got nothing to say to you. I'm not a rat.'
- 'Rats inform on their friends. If they're not your friends, you're not a rat.'
- 'Who says so?'
His casual air, cool as a cucumber, is starting to get on my nerves.
- 'Let me spell it out for you. You'll charged with rape and kidnapping if I don't get the name of the Ripper actor.'
- 'No clue, mate.'
I see Malasana looking around discreetly. I know what's going to happen next. And I don't do anything to stop it. Robot can't scream because the punch has hit him square in the throat. He nearly swallows the joint, which burns his lip. His silence and scarlet face leave no room for doubt. The veins in his throat swell grotesquely and his teeth grind like a blunt saw. His eyes bulge out of their sockets, watering. Finally he lifts both hands to his neck and he sputters and wheezes like a sump being unblocked. Before he can grasp what's happening, I have the Glock in my hand. So he keeps sputtering quietly, trying to recover.
- 'You've got to show more respect. We're the police,' I say.
Then, to Malasana:
'Have you got the miracle baggie?'
Malasana
holds up a baggie filled with white powder.
- 'You can't...' he manages to get the words out, then starts wheezing and moaning again.
- 'Yes we can. Just ask Lapuerta. The Ripper actor. Now.'
He stays silent for a few moments, getting his breath. We step back in case he decides to attack, but then he says:
- 'I had a guy in Almeria. He works in theatre. I'd tell him what I needed and he'd send me a guy or two for the videos. I don't have a fucking clue who the Ripper guy was.'
Malasana hits him again before he even sees it coming.
We leave Robot at the station with Martin, who shoots us looks of avid curiosity.
- 'Do you think we'll get a lead out of him?
- 'No!'
Malasana's got a sofa in his office and he flops down on it disconsolately. He doesn't want to go home. Day is dawning now and we're all on edge.
On our drive to the station, the only thing Robot said was that he'd taken off the minute he found out about Stoicescu's murder for fear he'd be linked to it.
- I’m the fucking perfect man to take the rap –se justifica.
He came back when Lapuerta convinced him that we were only after him for the videos.
- 'I don't give a fuck about the videos.'
I can't sleep, so I go down to the chamber of horrors and lock myself in for a while, surrounded by the victims' accusing looks and the horrific photographs of their mutilated bodies
Mary Ann Nichols- Cristiana Stoicescu.
Annie Chapman- Diana Carolina Mieles.
Elizabeth Stride- ¿???
Caterine Eddows- ¿???
Mary Kelly- ¿???
I pore over the pictures from 1888. I compare them to the photographs of the current spate of crimes. I face the horror.
I want to take them in even more, have them lodged in my mind like an illness. Though I know I'm already possessed. I can't look without seeing them, feeling them at my side, hearing their sobs and moans, the echoes of their souls from the Great Beyond, demanding justice. Justice and revenge.
I still hope Robot is lying. He said he didn't know who he was. Just another guy sent over from Almeria. He didn't pay attention to him. He knew what he had to do, it was all waiting for him. He came by motorbike, helmet on, and left the same way. Without a word.
The Almeria force will find out who the actors are and whether anyone from the company was sent out to Baria the day of the video.
I've ordered all the security cameras in the area be checked on that night. We want film of someone on a motorbike in a fifty-kilometre radius.
I walk through the basement corridors until I come to the corner cell, the smallest one, dark, damp and dirty, the worst one. The one we put Radu's wife in. And Bogdan. I stand in front of the metal door and let the feel of the cell take me over. But all I hear is a hoarse whistling sound and snoring. Evil sleeps peacefully. No remorse, guilt or anguish to be found. How easy, how simple evil is! And doing good is so hard.
Suddenly, the whistling noises and snoring stop. I feel Robot on alert, like me. Then the laughter starts up. A sinister laugh, heh heh heh, on the other side of the door. I feel a burst of rage and indignation. I picture myself dragging him out, taking him very far away and playing Russian Roulette, shooting him in the head the minute he spits out a name. And then throwing his body into the fast-slowing current, to take him straight to hell.
I wonder why I hate him so much. Then I understand: I know he's lying. I smell the real reason he's come back. He has to know who the masked actor is. Otherwise, nothing makes sense.
I punch the door and the laughter intensifies. I go back to the chamber of horrors. Surrounded by the women. Looking for some kind of peace after pacing the corridor where we've locked up the heartless Robot.
I know now that the man in the cape is the Ripper. The masked man. I know he's more intelligent and perverse than anyone I've ever met. I know he's cleverer than me. I know the only way I'll catch him is by wanting it and fighting for it. I know he'll soon be testing us again and I shiver at the thought of a new failure. The whole city will be under surveillance, but he won't be fooled. He'll use the map of crimes, twisting it for his own purposes, so he can kill wherever he can escape.
Since the first night, there have been patrols in the areas where prostitutes usually set up shop. But no one can stop him finding them elsewhere. Maybe he already has his string of victims in his power. No one thing seems enough to stop him and everything feels like too much because I know nothing can prevent him from striking again.
I stand in front of the Whitechapel and Baria maps. One next to the other. Both crisscrossed with red lines and numbers labelling where the original crimes took places and where we expect our Ripper to strike next. I see the same lines, the same numbers, and suddenly it's meaningless. A desperate, adolescent attempt to feign control. Plus, he moved from the third to the fourth crime by chance, because he was interrupted in the third and couldn't finish the job. Angry, he looked for a fourth woman, any woman, anywhere.
I turn off the light. Total darkness. But I can still see them. Their black and white presence, opaque eyes and faces eaten up by a meaningless, horrific death. The sleeping, mutilated faces of Cristiana Stoicescu and Diana Carolina Mieles. I let the fear run through me. Terror and exhaustion cloud my mind. I can't think. But it's then, when I'm about to fall into a dark, lonely place, that Pincus's words suddenly light up in my mind: child abuse, linked to brain damage and mental illness. I curse myself for not looking for crimes children were involved in twenty-five or thirty years ago.
I let my head drop and ask for the victims' forgiveness. Ask all of them. And I tell myself we're not going about things the right way. It's not in case records and police files we should be looking. Maybe it's in the minds and memories of those who lived through those times.
I have to make a change, Chief
Your city is so small
And my crimes gloriously grand
Ha hahahahahahahahaha
I think of you, Chief
As I slit their throats
As I slit them open
As I disembowel them
Aaaaaaarrrggghhhhhhhhhh
SEPTEMBER 30
13
We've got over two hundred officers on patrol. Y se ha unido a la vigilancia una avalancha de agentes en la reserva. Every next person wants to participate.
We kick off the operation at ten P.M. In under four hours, the killer will strike.
We order the citizen patrols to stay at home tonight.
We've looked for missing women cases in a hundred-mile radius. There are none reported so far, which we take to be a good sign.
We've focused our surveillance efforts in the Angel area, which matches up with our imaginary superimposition of Baria over the location where Elizabeth Stride was attacked. It's a downtrodden, sordid area, overcrowded with the dirt poor, illegal immigrants, drug addicts, homeless people, who try and make homes out of filmsy huts, four walls with windows covered in cardboard. We have officers hiding in some of the empty houses. Others putting up with the damp and grime in huts that not ten days ago were still underwater. The streets are paved only with mud. The surroduning fields, barren and desolute, are overgrown with canaverals, prickly pear and cactus plants.
We take cover on a hill from which the whole area is clearly visible, keeping our night vision goggles trained on the two policewomen working the streets. Another thirty policewomen have volunteered to be the bait, working the same beat spread throughout the city.
- 'He'll be following the plan,' whispers Inspector Galan, crouched down next to Malasana and me.
I think her boss lets her work more closely with me because he knows she's the one I find it easiest to opne up to. A woman's charms and all that.
- 'Not one missing woman in the whole province. I can't believe it.' Malasana's eyes flicker over his phone over and over, in case anything comes in.<
br />
- 'He's got the women already,' I say flatly.
- 'What makes you say that?' Galan turns to look at me, surprise on her face.
- 'He's not going to wait til the last minute and walk into a trap or risk not finding them. Whoever she is or they are, they've probably just not been reported missing yet. He'll have picked out some poor innocent who no one will notice is gone for a good long time.'
The minutes crawl by. Just after midnight our phones light up in a frenzy: a man disguised as Jack the Ripper has been arrested. A moment later, several women in period dress are sent home. Later, another ten men dressed as the Ripper leave a party, causing a ruckus in the surrounding streets. An hour on, we've got the scoop: three 'Jack the Ripper' parties with a mandatory Ripper disguise for the men and Polly Nichols for the women. In the old town. In the city centre. In the Albaizin. Two hours of chaos and disturbances. Ten men arrested in their stupid costumes. Shouts, complaints, car racing. A mess. The disguises have caused panic in the streets. Many officers have had to leave their hiding places to restore order and empty the streets.
The tension in the car mounts. Galan can't stand cigarette smoke and gets out. I see her fold her arms to ward off the cold.
Another arrest. An idiot trying to hire a prostitute outside the Baria Hotel. Later, there's a roughhouse between three officer surveilling the Puerto Rey area and a few locals ignoring the order to stay at home.
I confirm everything is fine in the city centre now the party's been broken up. Baria City, as the town centre is known, could be the location the killer chooses tonight. Catherine Eddows was murdered in the City of London after the Ripper fled Whitechapel, where someone almost caught him in the act of killing Elizabeth Stride.
The Ripper Page 25