The Ripper

by Carmelo Anaya

  - It took us a while to get to you, but we did it. 'If there's anything you're not telling us, you won't get off so lightly next time.'

  Half an hour later we drop him off at the industrial unit. He swears he won't be back at his house and we know he means it.

  The information he's given us opens a couple of new doors for us.

  When I get Paco on the phone I give him a good telling-off. He sounds stoned out of his mind. He makes excuses saying Pavo isn't helping him out any more and he can't be following the guy around all day. And I haven't paid him. I tell him I'll pay him when we catch the guy.

  - 'How could you trust Paco with this?' asks Malasana.

  - 'What was I supposed to do? He's helped us out a couple of times. And no one ever notices him.' 'How's a stoner supposed to follow someone around?

  - He's always high.'

  We drove over to the City Hotel and ask to see Lorenzo Vilar. They give us the room number and we go up. I order the receptionist not to tell him we're coming.

  He opens the door to room 312 and doesn't exactly look overjoyed to see us.

  - 'Hey...'

  We push past him into the room. There's a laptop on the desk. Malasana searches the room, turning it upside down while Vilar protests weakly.

  - 'Hotel rooms are considered private homes. You need a warrant. It's a Supreme Court ruling.'

  - 'Bite me,' replied Malasana.

  Vilar stares at me. He's slightly shorter than me, with a slim frame. Not too far off from the man in the cape.

  - 'Don't touch that!' he shouts when Malasana sits down at the laptop.

  - 'Obstructing justice. Concealing evidence. Cooperating with a suspect. Overstepping the limits of your role. You're in for a rough ride, Vilar.'

  - 'What are you talking about?'

  He takes a step towards Malasana, who starts typing blithely away on the keyboard. I push him hard and he falls heavily only the bed.

  - 'Oi!'

  I get the handcuffs out.

  - 'How shall we begin?'

  He calms down immediately, but keeps his eyes trained on Malasana at the laptop.

  - 'We're taking that with us. Either you give us the password or we're sealing off this room. And forensics will be having a look round.'

  - 'There's no reason for this. My lawyer...'

  - 'Come on!'

  I take out my cigarettes and have a seat, facing him. The room smells musty. His feet smell. We crack open the window, but it's not much better. Sounds of the busy midafternoon street drift up from below.

  - 'What do you want?'

  - 'Everything. Or we're taking you to the station. I'll lock you up until I'm bored of waiting and then I'll prove you were cooperating with a suspect without informing the police. The charges I mentioned before? That's the very least you're in for. Bye bye detective licence.'

  - 'You can't do that.'

  - 'Try me.'

  - 'Shall we teach him a lesson, boss?' asks Malasana, peacefully clicking through computer files.

  - 'Maybe. Found anything yet?'

  - 'Nothing important yet. The report for the brothels.'

  - 'That's no use to us. Not much in there about everything you know, Lorenzo .' I emphasise his name.

  I light up.

  - 'This is a no smoking room.'

  I stare at him levelly until he looks away.

  - 'Go.'

  He stares at us, slackjawed.

  - 'Everything I know is in that report. I didn't manage to dig anything else up,' he lies.

  - 'Looks like we're going to need to clear a few things up here.'

  Malasana gets up delicately and punches him in the solar plexus with no prelude.

  Lorenzo Vilar's snobby daddy's boy's face turns magenta and crumples up like crepe paper. He curls up into the foetal position, shaking violently. He doesn't even let out a cry of pain, just goes silent.

  - 'Don't start getting any big ideas now, Lorenzo. Don't go thinking you're a victim. This is what you get for resisting arrest.'

  He keeps rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, jaw clenched, face dripping with sweat. But he's tougher than he looks. He doesn't even moan or complain when he gets his breath back.

  - 'Why are you here, Lorenzo? They didn't get in touch with you. You got in touch with them.'

  He nods muteley.

  - 'Password,' says Malasana in a bored voice.

  - 'The Ripper,' he says docilely.

  Malasana types it in and a file opens. The first page is an engraving from 1888: the Ripper, his face in shadow, fleeing after a murder, the woman's body lying in a damp, cobblestone street.

  - 'Why did you offer your services?'

  - 'I'm from here,' says Vilar in a tiny voice.

  I let him draw breath and gather his strength.

  - 'I couldn't let the opportunity slide,' he goes on, looking me in the eye.

  His are teary and red.

  - 'Why?'

  - 'I'm a private detective. I thought I might have a chance since I know the city. If I caught the killer I'd be famous. It would give my career a push. Work rolling in. And I'd be making money off articles, books, interviews. Just that. I'm allowed, aren't I'

  - 'No. Private detectives aren't allowed to investigate crimes in Spain.'

  - 'Come on. You're pulling my leg.'

  - 'Maybe we will. What else?'

  Malasana answers for him.

  - 'There's something here about a witness who knows the killer. He tried to extort him. Fifty grand.'

  - 'We knew that.'

  His disbelief only lasts a moment. Then he closes his eyes and accepts the situation. He asks me for a cigarette. I give him one and the three of us smoke, waiting for Vilar to talk. He shakes his head.

  - 'Doesn't matter anymore anyway. He's been killed,' he starts.

  - 'Who killed him?'

  - 'The murderer! Who else could it have been?'

  - 'Go on.'

  - 'I'm from here. Well, my dad is. We used to come here in the summer when I was a kid. I don't know Baria that well, but enough to start to sniff round, suss stuff out. That's why I got in touch with the brothel owners, the association.' 'Who else wanted the murders to end?' 'At first I didn't find anything. I was just reading the papers. I bribed a civil guard to give me information on COU.'

  - 'And a police officer so you could keep tabs on us to, isn't that so?'

  He nods.

  - 'But the information I was getting wasn't getting me anywhere. I thought they'd really got him when COU arrested that Brit, but when they found out it wasn't him I was so relieved. I wanted to be the one to catch him, you know?'

  He smokes and taps ash on the floor. The room fills with smoke, masking the body odour. Lorenzo Vilar isn't exactly a model of personal hygiene. There are clothes strewn on the bed and a chest of drawers in the corner. Shoes lying about on the floor, not lined up. A foul smell emanating from the bathroom.

  - 'I was close. Fucking close!'

  He punches the wall, then folds his fist by his side, a cynical smile on his face, though his eyes are sad.

  - 'I found that guy who you were so curious about. Robot.'

  - 'How?'

  - 'I found out about the tapes. I pay handsomely for good information. And I knew there was something there. Couldn't be a coincidence that a guy was doing Jack the Ripper scenes on tape one minute and the next someone's doing copycat Ripper crimes all over the city the next. And the guy in all those tapes was Robot. You don't need to be a genius to put two and two together. So I offered Robot something you couldn't.'

  - 'What?'

  - 'Cash. And a promise I'd keep quiet. I wasn't interested in him. I was interested in the other guy.'

  He sucks on the cigarette end, then grinds it into the floor and smiles.

  - 'He didn't want anything to do with me at first. Punched me
and fuck off. A while later you guys caught him. But later, when he escaped from the hospital, something must have changed between the killer and him, cos he phoned me. He asked me how much I was willing to stump up.'

  - 'Fifty thousand,' confirms Malasana.

  - 'That's right. But he said that was peanuts. The killer was going to give him much, much more. Then I didn't hear from him for a few days. Til the day he was killed. He phoned me that morning. Said that if I could give him a hundred and twenty grand he'd tell me everything, even evidence. I bargained, got him down to ninety grand.'

  - 'What evidence?'

  - 'He didn't say. He didn't want to tell me until I paid.'

  - 'Where did you arrange to meet?'

  - 'He hadn't told me yet where we were going to meet. I needed two days to get the cash together.'

  - 'What happened?'

  - 'I think he tried to get more out of the killer, one last time, and the rest is history. Or maybe the killer just found him. Then I heard about the murder on the news and I knew it was him before they even said it. It would have been too easy!'

  This time, I know he's telling the truth. He's got nothing left to lose. Like us. 'I was so close.

  - Now it's back to square one. 'Just my fucking luck!' says Vilar.

  I don't comfort him. We, too, are back to square one.

  Watching your officers is so fun, Chief

  Running around

  Like headless chickens

  Chasing shadows

  While I step on them like cockroaches

  Ha ha ha aha ahahaha

  I dream of a new world

  A world of killers

  Knife in hand

  An orgy of blood

  Hmm hmm hmm

  22

  Once we've checked out the calls from the number for Robot Macias gace us, it's confirmed. Robot spent time in Macenas, and in the house near where the body was found. There's a third location: an abandoned airfield.

  A property developer called Chapman had the bright idea of building an airfield out in the middle of the desert, back in the 70s, thinking half the UK would be coming down in droves for their holidays. The civil guard monitored it for a while, suspecting it was being used by drug traffickers coming in on private planes. But it wouldn't stand up to that now.

  The runway is narrow and uneven, cracked in places.

  The hangar looks like something out of a Lego set, the control tower half in ruins. Four small units are all that's left. Open gable roofs over empty space, no walls, overgrown with weeds. It's only the last unit that's not been completely abandoned. A room is partitioned off at the back, with a metal door and new padlock.

  Martin cuts through it with a pair of wire cutters and we enter a room that smells of dry concrete and paint. Someone's boarded up the only window so no one can look in. One wall is covered with a panel, which can be hoisted up using a pulley to change the scenery: a beach, a luxurious lounge, a terrace with sea views, a doctor's office and a dirty living room, as if in a 'casting call' porn flick. The panels are cheap. Only someone intent on the action could ignore how fake they look. We turn on the lights and they beam out powerfully. There's a huge red sofa in the middle of the room. A director's chair, a few stools, and a camara focused on the tiny stage and panels.

  - 'A porn shoot!' exclaims Martin.

  Two white lab coats hang from a coat hanger.

  - 'Not very imaginative, either.'

  A shelf bracketed to the wall holds porn tapes and books. There's a desk below it with a laptop.

  Malasana goes over it to and pulls up the outtakes.

  Robot, wearing only a skimpy towel around his waist, laughing in front of the camera. Javier Macias, looking smug in the director's chair. A few shots of women in the nude or pulling silly faces. Then - Cristiana Stoicescu, looking into the camera with hatred.

  - 'We shouldn't have been so easy on our pal Macias,' I say.

  - That's all we find on the laptop.

  Malasana rummages in the desk drawer and pulls out a flash drive. He inserts it into the USB drive, but it's encrypted.

  - 'I'll beat him til he gives us the password,' he snarls.

  - 'Well, well. Cousins, eh?

  - Macias knew more than he confessed to.'

  - 'Are you really surprised?'

  - 'Let's fuck him up,' says Martin.

  - 'Shall we get forensics in?'

  I think for a minute. Stretch out my arms and look round the room.

  - 'Robot wasn't hiding here. But he was here for a reason.'

  - 'What do you mean, boss?'

  - 'He came for something. But we're not seeing it.'

  - 'Maybe it's on the flashdrive,' suggests Malasana.

  - 'No. He wouldn't have left it. If he was picking something up, it won't be here. Let's do another search.'

  We start again, going back to the door. Try and look around with fresh eyes. A slow look, taking everything in, deliberately.

  - 'The panels!' says Martin.

  Malasana turns the pulley and hoists the different panels into position. But there's nothing there. Or on the back.

  - 'The floor!'

  Martin pushes the sofa back and pulls up the lino. A date, written in fresh paint: 13-6-1984.

  He sniffs it.

  - 'It's pretty fresh, boss.'

  - 'It's a date,' confirms Malasana.

  - 'I know. Fuck.

  - It's a message. It can only be for his cousin, Javier Macias. He's the only one who came here.

  It's got to mean something. Otherwise, why would Robot have scrawled a date?'

  - 'Take a photo and ask for a sample of Robot's writing, from the notebook. We have to confirm it was him who wrote it.'

  - 'Who else could it be?'

  - 'Just taking precautions?' suggests Martin.

  - 'Or revenge,' I say. 'In case anything happened to him.' 'He didn't want to tell anyone who the Ripper was and risk missing out on the money. But if something happened to him he wanted his cousin to know who it was. That date means something to them.'

  Two hours later, at Malasana's, a hacker who owes us a few favours cracks open the flash drive's code as easy as splitting open a watermelon. We send him away and watch the crappy videos of Robot having sex with women we don't recognise. They're amateur style, no doubt meant to be posted online.

  - 'They were raking it in with this, apparently.

  - Scum!'

  While they keep going through the videos, I get a call from Lorenzo Vilar. He's complaining. COU has arrested him.

  - 'I can't be of any help.

  - But you know I'm...'

  - 'I don't know anything at all.'

  I hang up and a moment later another call comes in, confirming that Vilar's car was spotted travelling to Murcia in the early hours of September 29th And his alibi for the nights of the first two murders, when he was supposedly still in Madrid, aren't 100% confirmed.

  I freeze. Have I been completely blind? Is the detective...

  Martin shouts for me to come and look. On the screen, Cristiana Stoicescu is winding herself around Robot, who stands stock still in a Roman soldier costume. She's in a cheap sheet. The poor man's toga. But not for long. She runs her hands over Robot's back and chest. Kisses him. Looks at him teasingly. Then she kneels down in front of him.

  - 'Skip it. I don't want to see it.'

  Malasana skips ahead and we find more outtakes. Javier Macias shouting cut. It's fantastic. It's going to be the best one yet. Just then, Cristiana starts insulting them loudly. Shouting in Romanian. Macias tries to calm her down but Robot hovers over her menacingly. Macias says they'll pay more. She screams in Spanish that she wants the money now. Macias says once it's online they'll make a lot of money. But she won't back down and Robot grabs her and wrestles her onto the sofa. He gets on top of her and raises a hand. She curls up and screams. Macias cuts off the camera.

&
nbsp; No one says anything. We're just sorry Robot's dead so we can't make him pay for this. We can't bring him back to life. Can't bring Cristiana back from the dead, breathing the life that was snatched away back into her.

  We park in front of Javier Macias's house and ask Adela if he's been bothering her. Not one call or text, she says.

  I show her a photograph of Lorenzo Vilar. She looks at it with curiosity and interest, playing hard to get, but finally admits she doesn't know him. Pity.

  She's looking a bit better than when we saw her at the station. Less bloated, her skin brighter, and she's wearing a figure-hugging dress that shows off her breasts and the sway in her walk. A woman who made a poor choice. But Adela's not out of time. Martin is being extra attentive. He thanks her over and over for letting us look through her husband's things. Macias is going to have more than one thing to worry about in the next few days and weeks. It's the least he deserves after what he's done.

  - 'He usually hides whatever it is he doesn't want me or the kids to find at the office. Safer than at home,' says Adela.

  - 'I'm sure you're right,' says Martin. 'But we might as well have a look.'

  We ask if he has an office at home, but she says he doesn't.

  - 'Any drawers, filing cabinets?'

  - 'Yes, that he does have.'

  She runs up the stairs ahead of us. She's no longer the weepy, frightened woman at the station. Her resilence is showing.

  Malasana elbows Martin mischievously and Martin can't hold back a chuckle.

  - 'I'll show you. It was the kids' playroom, but they don't play in there anymore. They're always in their bedrooms now, so Javier's got a few things on the shelf and in the desk in there. I've never even looked through them.'