The Ripper

by Carmelo Anaya

- 'We're recording.

  - Has anyone talked to him?'

  - 'No one,' says Soler.

  - 'How do we know it's not just another phony?'

  Soler gestures at something. The officers behind me move back. On the table are several objects in see-through plastic pouches.

  - The victims' belongings. 'The scarf belonged to Diana Carolina Mieles. Her husband has confirmed it.'

  The scarf is brightly coloured and bloodstained. A gold bracelet. A hair jaw clip. A sandal. An African-style bracelet. A woman's Patek Philippe watch. All in numbered evidence bags.

  - 'It's him. No doubt about it,' says Lizana.

  I turn to look through the mirror again and Malasana comes to stand next to me.

  - 'Don't you recognise him, Commssioner?'

  I stare, speechless, stupefied.

  - The man at the conference El Dandy gave. Who asked all the weird questions. He's also the man shouting about the Apocalypse from his car, next to the market.

  Just then it all comes rushing back: the man jogging down the stairs on his way to freedom, El Dandy in front of him, and another man, staring at me. The image of the man now sitting in the interview room is blurry. But the man who stared at me from the stairs... his eyes are etched into my memory.

  - 'What are you two talking about?' interrupts Soler.

  We ignore him.

  - 'You're the only one he'll talk to, Commissioner,' he says again anxiously. All he wants me to do is get in there and have the man confess that he is the killer.

  I remember the conference. People mesmerized by the speakers. The indignation I felt at the absurd idea that evil is deeply rooted in each of our brains and we are powerless to overcome urges to do evil. But I don't remember the perfectly ordinary-looking man sitting and waiting behind the mirror, humming a tune.

  He's tall and thin. His head is small, his posture stooped, shoulders hunched. He's wearing thich grey trousers and a blue shirt under a black leather jacket. His hair is short and uncombed, an ashy colour, starting to bald at the crown.

  - 'Do we know who he is?'

  Diaz hands me a case record.

  - 'Ask Sebastian Rodriguez who this guy is,' I whisper to Malasana.

  - 'What did you say, Commissioner?" barks Soler.

  - 'Nothing important.'

  - 'The Commissioner refuses to share his information,' broods Galan.

  I ignore her and read.

  - Abdón Pascua Abellán…

  - Pues sí que nos ha hecho la pascua –suelta alguien, pero nadie ríe el chiste.

  Born 6 October 1975. Degree in Ancient History. Apparently unemployed, but with a number of e-books on the occult, spiritism, alchemy and spirituality to his name. One is Hidden History. Another, The Hidden Soul. Criminal record: indecent exposure and sexually assaulting a minor. Diagnosed with schizophrenia. Hospitalized on different occasions for a total of over three years. No known treatment since his parents passed away.

  - The profile reminds me of Aaron Kominski, who is said to be Jack the Ripper.

  - 'This is a load of bullshit,' I say.

  I look up and stare at Abdon Pascua. For some strange reason, he looks up and directly back at me, as if he could see me through the mirror. He smiles with dead eyes.

  - 'It's not him,' I snap before I go in.

  I don't know if I said it to aannoy myself or piss the rest of them off.

  - 'I've been told you'll only talk to me.'

  Up close, Abdon Pascua doesn't look like much. He has a small face, as if it had stopped developing when he was a young teen. Greying, thin skin, shining with oil. Not sweat, just grease. It's repulsive. His eyes are tiny and set very far apart, making him look wall-eyed until he focuses on something. That concentrated, slightly mocking look, makes you think there are two gears cranking in that small skull. The rest of his facial features are equally small. They look drawn on. Barely any facial hair. He looks like an ancient baby bird. He doesn't blink.

  - 'I know you didn't do it. You're just like the rest of the impostors we've had in here. Craving your fifteen minutes of fame. I know you're not the killer,' I provoke her.

  - 'My fingerprints are on the van battery. You're so incompetent you didn't even see them. I've been waiting for you.'

  He's not wrong. I stare at him. Too long, because he knows he's thrown me off, and the mocking look twists into something darker.

  - 'Why did you leave those fingerprints?'

  He shrugs.

  - 'So you'd catch me.'

  - 'Why?'

  He laughs.

  - 'You think I did all that just not to be found out?'

  - 'Why do you expect the world to care what you do? No one cares what you do. You're just a miserable wanker.'

  That wipes the insolent look off his face. He sits up, a hard look in his eyes, and now I start to believe he might be capable of what he claims to have done. Schizophrenics are capable of anything.

  - 'The world cares about people who've got something to say. Not like you.'

  - 'If I've got nothing to say, why did you choose me? I'm the only person you've said you'll talk to.

  - 'I had to pick one.'

  - 'Like fuck you did. You picked me because you believe I'm your equal. You wouldn't have picked a nobody.'

  - 'You're just a commssioner. That's all.'

  - 'You've turned your murders into a battle with me. You're lying.'

  He laughs - a sudden, shrieking laugh that comes out of nowhere.

  - 'I wanted someone to play with. Like a cat toying with a mouse.'

  - 'Were you the one who went back to the scenes of the crime? Who assaulted an officer our Rita Oehlen's house?'

  - 'Uh-huh.'

  - 'What did she do to you? Why Rita Oehlen?'

  - 'I played with you. I played with her. I was playing for time.'

  - 'Why?'

  - 'The deader they were, the more alive I felt. The fifth one was the best. I had to choose the best one.'

  - 'Best one how?'

  - 'Best in every way. Didn't you see the outrage it caused when I killed her? She was worth all four of those whores put together. So I spent the same amount of time on her I spent with the others.'

  - 'Were there more?'

  He laughs loudly, shoulders shaking. As if his body were laughing, not his face, which remains fixed on mine, wearing an expression of delirious cunning.

  - 'Of course. You know that.'

  - 'Who?'

  - 'The Almerimar prossie, Chief. Death is everywhere.'

  - 'No one else?'

  - 'The other one doesn't count, Chief.'

  - 'That's why you didn't go back to the scene of the crime?'

  Suddenly, his face grows serious, and he starts breathing deeply as if trying to calm himself, though he didn't look especially agitated.

  - 'Wouldn't happen to have a fag, would you, Chief?'

  I think about it, but finally extract two cigrettes from my packet of Marlboro. We both smoke.

  - 'The other...'

  - 'Ah, yes. Well,' he waves it away scornfully, 'who really cares about that? Just an impostor.'

  - 'I thought it was a masterpiece. Making a statue of the body.' 'Fantastic. Isn't it? What inspired you?'

  - 'Inspiration is in the air we breathe, like death.'

  He's changed from hardly moving and blinking at all to blinking almost non-stop. As if he'd lost some of his focus and was feeling tense after his initial colness. He smokes compulsively. I read somewhere it's common in schizophrenics.

  - 'Tell me about the murders.'

  - 'Death is everywhere. But did you know the dead come back at night and ask about God? Tee hee. Funny, innit? Ha ha. God isn't dead, because he's not with them.' 'Where is he, then?' 'He's not with the living, either. Hee hee.'

  - 'Why did you kill?'

  He rolls his eyes for a split second, then looks
at me again as if from very far away.

  - 'It's the sacred coupling. Love and its death. The brightest light of day and the deepest night. Their bodies were the Tree of Life. But men are weak and fear diversity and difference. That's why I killed women of every race and social background.'

  - 'You lie. You kill women because you can't fuck them. That's all there is to it.'

  He tries to get up, more horror than indignation in his eyes, but the handcuffs hold fast and his brutal attempts to break free bear no fruit.

  - 'My sex is miserable, but his sexuality is spiritual. My spirituality is immense and his is earthly. We wrote an equation and my knife is the equal sign.'

  - 'You really want me to believe all that claptrap?'

  - 'Spirituality and sexuality are powerful demons. The gods made manifest. I made them goddesses. Hatred? No! Love! Love! Breaking their bodies made me godly and I saw the ignis fatuus rising from their open bodies, still warm. And I could breathe in the ignis fatuus, breathing it into me til I touched ecstasy. The whole world entering me.'

  I take a deep breath. I've got so many questions... but I fear the reaction of this madman.

  - 'Why copy the Ripper's crimes? Why not your own modus operandi?'

  He smiles slightly. Then, condescendingly:

  - 'Because there is nothing between humankind and God. Because all that's left are legends. And which is the greatest of these legends? Jack. Now I'm Jack!'

  - 'He's a legend because we don't know who he was. Now the whole world will know that this time round the killer's just an unhappy bastard.'

  - 'Mimesis, Chief, do you know what that is? What do people want? What they can't have. What is the world's primordial force? Desire! Desire! Desire! We don't desire what we think is good. We desire what others desire. I've made it come true. The sacrificial violence we all commit every day, made flesh by me.'

  - 'What do you want? To redeem the world?'

  - 'I want to show the world as it is, Chief. As it truly is. Hee hee.'

  That sinister chuckle sends shivers down my spine. Pathetic shivers, now he's sitting in front of me. Nothing could be further from the icy fear when his message popped up on my phone. I'm about to go on, but he cuts me off.

  - 'I will say no more. My lips are sealed.'

  He gestures theatrically as if to seal his lips and throw away the key and sits up straight, mouth pressed into a narrow line, a gash across his face.

  - 'Now all I want is to go to my cell, which must be made of stones sharper than any sword, my bed of cutting spikes. The scapegoat must retire with the dignity John bestowed upon the Horseman of Death. Apocalypse!'

  Before he's escorted out of the room, he turns and says,

  - 'Chief. Si los polis llevan chapa, ¿son chaperos?

  He lets out a sharp, brutal laugh.

  Several hours later, the arrest of the world's most wanted murderer is on the front page of every national international paper.

  I haven't been home yet. I can't sleep. I sit in the dark in my office, looking out through the window at the empty night. My brain is screaming but I can't make it out what it's trying to say. I can't let go of my frustration at not catching him. It won't leave me alone, like a ghost in chains shrieking at me. I was so close! Within reach!

  When it's already past midnight, Malasana comes in, complaining about my sitting there in the dark and telling me Sebastian Rodriguez knows Pascua very well. 'Pascua's an only child and his mother died at the beginning of the year. His father had died some years before. So he's got no one left. His parents never acknowleged that their son was mentally ill and refused to declare him legally incapacitated, so once they passed away he had no one to take care of him. He had been steadily getting worse since April or May, so Sebastian Rodriguez himself spoke to social services and tried to have him sectioned. He found a psychiatrist for him and drove him there on several occasions. He also looked for a lawyer to deal with the incapacitation. But they hadn't found one yet, there hadn't been time, so Abdon Pascua was alone and getting crazier every day.'

  - 'What did Rodriguez say when he found out Pascua's the killer?'

  - 'He froze. He says he can't believe it. He knows Pascua'salways been unwell, but he's never showed signs of being violent. He knows he's got a record and some of his neighbours were afraid of him.'

  - 'Anything else?'

  - 'I can believe it. He was obsessed with the Apocalypse and the occult, all that. Getting worse every day. Ranting and raving, saying society was so bad everyone should die so that a new world could be born. Reading weird books, totally obsessed. The psychiatrist told Rodriguez he didn't know how Pascua was going to end up. And this is the worst bit - he said he hated women. Even his own mother. He couldn't stand women being near him.'

  - 'Do you know why?'

  - 'He started being scared of them after he was reported for assault, according to Sebastian. But God only knows if that's the real reason.'

  A while later the report comes in: the search of Abdon Pascua's house has been successful. They've found several of the victims' belongings. Books on Jack the Ripper and other serial killers. And the motrobike. The fingerprints on the vaan battery. The DNA on the cigarette end in the ashtray is a match with Pascua's.

  Case closed!

  - 'Good evening, Commissioner. I'm Abdon Pascua's lawyer.'

  - 'Had to be you, didn't it,' says Malasana rudely.

  Gonzalo Santana smiles understandingly. He knows my officers don't like him. Much less since he took me to court on behalf of Vicente Lapuerta.

  Smug to be working on such a high-profile case, El Dandy comes into my office.

  - 'You know I'm the best lawyer in town,' he says, smiling in self-satisfaction. 'But I won't have seen it all til you hire me,' he jokes.

  - 'I don't need to.'

  - 'You never know.'

  He's enjoying himself. He's drooling just thinking about tomorrow's press conference, broadcast live everywhere there's television. 'You'll say his client is mentally ill and was powerless against his urges. He deserves a fair trial where he'll be sent to a psychiatric hospital, not prison. Never that.'

  - 'You read my mind, Commissioner,' he says, laughing.

  Lopez and Malasana make no effort to hide their dislike. It's plain to see they want him to leave.

  - 'I just thought I'd pop in to say congratulations.'

  - 'I didn't arrest him.'

  - 'Doesn't make a difference. It's a success all round. And I know you've worked harder than anyone.'

  - 'Wasn't much use.'

  He excuses himself, saying he needs to on his client now the nurse has been in to check on him. He'll be back in the morning.

  When he leaves the room, Malasana holds up the flash drive where one of the officers has made a copy of what they found on Pascua's computer.

  There aren't many files, which I wasn't expecting. It's as if he'd erased his life up until the last three months. We don't find any emails, either, as if he never communicated with anyone. But in his browser history we see millions of visits to Jack the Ripper pages, and websites for other serial and mass killers. There's also a long list of websites on knives, most of them lethal-looking. Jung, the occult, spiritism and the Bible passages on the Apolcalypse, John and Peter also make an appearance.

  - 'This is the link to the website on the foreign server where he posted the pictures, boss.' Malasana points at the screen.

  There's no way for us to access that external link from here, and we don't have the resources to vet it thoroughly, so we leave it. What we can't ignore are the photographs. When I click on the icon, Lopez gets up.

  - 'Coffee.'

  The photos are the chamber of horrors all over again. There aren't a lot of them, because he would have needed to use the flash and that would have drawn attention, but there's enough. We see the bodies of the first four women after the crimes. Close-up shots, just a few, to picture t
he horror. But the Rita Oehlen murder, which took longer, is captured down to the last detail in what feels like an endless reel of horror. I count thirty photos. He took them as he worked on the body. In the first, all that's shown is the deep gash in the neck. Then he started to carve up her face. The pictures of the knife on her face are chilling, despite the fact that she was already dead when he started. We grit our teeth.

  - 'Please, not this, Commissioner. I can't stand it,' says Malasana.

  But I can't just skip past them. I tell him to get up and turn around. I have to look at the photographs. I know I need to look. Even if it's carved into my brain for the rest of my days. The cuts on the face, the nose. The ears. He slices the cheeks down to the bone. When he's finished with that, he slashes open the eyes and eyelids. Then the stomach rent open. The intestines bleeding all over one hand while he took the photograph. I see the killers hand, encased in a latex glove, and my eyes are glued to it. It's the first time I'm really seeing the killer, as if the man downstairs were less real than the hand in the photo destroying the woman's body and using her entrails like a plaything or trophy. He cuts open her vagina and extracts the uterus. I wonder why he photographed it and didn't tape it. He moves down to the thighs and starts to flay her, as the original Ripper did to Mary Kelly. I see her femur, the bone peeking through the ruined flesh. Then pictures of how he removed her heart. The heart itself is still nowhere to be found. Then how he carved the symbols on her skin.

  Lopez comes back in with the coffee and I finish up the photo viewing from hell. I realise my mouth is dry as cotton batting. I'm having trouble swallowing.

  - 'Finished?' asks Malasana, gesturing to Lopez.