- 'But maybe he's hiding it from himself.'
My mind tells me the evidence against Pascua is irrefutable.
But my gut says otherwise.
Atienza also wonders whether Pascua has a split personality, but says he has seen no other cases of schizophrenia and split personality in the same patient. Schizophrenia causes disorganised thoughts, a messy mental landscape, but schizophrenics tend to be reclusive and they're very seldom violent. When they are, it's usually directed at themselves. It's true that if they do attack other people it tends to be violent, but it's very, very rare. Abdon suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, according to Atienza. That's why he associates natural phenomena with the Apocalypse. His terror is rooted in delusion. He observed no symptoms of split personality disorder in the months he was seeing him, though sometimes the first symptoms of split personality disorder can overlap with symptoms of schizophrenia.
He wants an interview with him, and to keep studying the case. I suggest he requests an interview with his lawyer. He'll need a psychiatric report for his defence.
Sitting in the car, I gradually surface, after half an hour lost in thought. My mind is full of confusion, doubt, insidious questions, and a woeful lack of answers. I wish it could be as easy for me as it is for my officers to simply accept the facts and let go of this.
But I can't.
I mull over who to phone and settle on Sebastian Rodriguez.
He's as polite and attentive as ever, but seems thrown by my question - which I don't bother explaining - about retired doctors in the city. He gives me three names and addresses. 'There were a lot more, but they're passed away or moved away now.'
I drive to the station and walk through several deserted rooms. Everyone's on their lunch break. I print a few photographs and drive out to
my first destination, the old Jewish quarter, next to the Barrio Alto, all steep, narrow streets and a wide square in front of an ancient synagogue that's nothing but ruins now. Whitewashed houses. Balconies. Pot plants. Empty streets, but neatly swept, well taken care of. On the ruins of the synagogue stands a shrine to Our Lady of Sorrows, fittingly enough for a place where sorrow has coloured most of history.
Eusebio Fardas's house stands at the very top of the quarter, tucked away between the other homes until you reach a narrow set of impossible steep steps and realise you're almost out on the open mountain, just this one house standing between the main road and the graveyard. A nurse comes to the door. I tell her I want to speak to Mr Fardas and she says he's sleeping. I show her my badge and tell her it's urgent.
Eusebio Fardas is old and gaunt, his shrunken frame tucked up in an old chair, a blanket over his bony legs and an IV in his arm. The nurse tells me he's sometimes lucid, though less and less so.
I try to talk to him, but his eyes are only half-open. He mumbles. I ask the nurse to leave. Alone with him, I show him the pictures and ask him if he recognises any of the men, but though he takes a closer look at them, his spotted, ancient hands trembling, he can't focus on them properly. Finally he shakes his head. I don't know if he's saying he doesn't recognise them, or if he doesn't remember any major incidents in Baria thirty years back - rape, assault, anything else. Maybe he just doesn't understand.
Desperately, I thank him and the nurse and leave.
I drive out to Garrucha and locate the villa on the beach after asking a few locals. It must be worth more than all my possesions - and house - put together. I knock at a door with a knocker and wait for a long time. Finally, a man answers the door: he's old, but still all there. Ramon Ayala seems completely at ease with himself, unashamed of his beer belly, standing proud like the prow of a ship. He's wearing thick corduroy trousers and his double chin hides his neck. His face is sinking into fat, his eyes like a slow, slothful animal. His grey hair is messy; he didn't bother running a comb through it before opening the door to whoever was stupid enough to interrupt his siesta.
But when he recognises me, the scathing tones die on his lips.
- 'What are you doing here?'
- 'Can I have a word?'
He's wondering if I'm really that guy from the telly, the one he'll have been gossiping about with his neighbours, no doubt. He decides to be polite, probably out of curiosity more than anything else, and leads me through a dark entrance hall to a living room stuffed with sofas and armchairs, the heating turned up high enough to lull a rhino to sleep.
I explain why I'm here: to pick his brain, more specifically his memory. I ask him to keep my visit to himself. Otherwise I won't talk to him. A woman's voice shouts from inside and Ramon Ayala cuts her off immeditately, quashing any urges to come and have a nosy at the guest. He heaves himself back up, panting, and closes the door.
- 'Who did you talk to before coming here?'
I give him Eusebio Fardas's name and a look of sadness crosses his face, sorry at the state he's in. No longer the man he once was, he says. I tell him I've got a third name, but he says not to bother. The other man is abroad, visiting his son, who lives God knows where.
- 'So it's just me,' he says with satisfaction.
- 'I need you to cast your mind back.'
Visibly enjoying the attention, Ayala gets into it and lets his sense of melodrama and heretoforth unsuspected importance take over. He gets up again and fetches a cigar from a drawer, offering it to me. I shake my head and pull out a cigarette.
- 'My name won't be mentioned at all?'
- 'Absolutely not.'
To put him at ease, I add:
- 'I don't care what you did or didn't report back then. I just want to know if anything happened, and if so, who was involved.'
He lights his cigar, drawing a glass ashtray over, places a blanket comfortably over his tree trunk legs and looks at me. Bluntly, he says:
- 'Those were different times, you know? We had just started the transition into democracy after Franco... back then, you had a problem with someone, with someone's family, you would work it out, no police officers or any of that.'
- 'You don't have to justify any of that.'
- 'Yeah, well. I can see you're on the edge of your seat, Commissioner.'
He takes a deep draw of his cigar and seems to draw in all the air in the room with it.
- 'Yes. There is a case I remember, like the one you're looking for. Three bullies, young lads, beating up another kid. They went too far. I'm not sure they raped him, but they beat him up properly. The youngest one, and then the two biggest bullies turned on the other bully who was with them.'
- 'How did it happen?'
- 'The two bigger boys wanted the third one to prove himself, beating up the youngest. Apparently the third one, his parents paid off the youngest one's family so they'd keep it quiet. Beaten up and the parents made to pay.'
- 'What happened to him? The third bully.'
- 'A while after that the whole family moved. But they came back again ten or twenty years later. Now that third kid is a real character.'
I ask if he thinks any of the boys was mentally ill.
- 'No way. They were just rough.'
- 'Not the third kid either?'
- 'He wasn't as rough as them, but he was the cleverest of the three and they were always together. Getting up to mischief. He was the smartest one as I say, he had the imagination. The other two were just rough. He came up with the schemes, they went along with it. Until they got sick of it and the youngest kid got involved.'
- 'How do you know all this?'
- 'They all came to see me, didn't want me to contact the authorities. And told me everything.'
- 'Do you think it could have had... lasting effects on any of the boys?
- PTSD?'
He laughs hard and his whole belly shakes, wobbling like a colossal mound of jelly.
- 'Nah. PTSD's just an excuse sometimes. None of those three boys was weak-minded.'
- 'What about the other one?' 'The minor they beat up?
'
- 'You could already tell with that one. Now he's a big fairy.'
- 'Does the date 13/06/1984 mean anything to you?'
- 'It happened around that time.'
I fish the photos out of my jacket pocket. I show him the picture of Robot.
He nods and laughs.
- 'Bully number one.'
I show him the picture of Javier Macias.
He nods again.
- 'Bully number two.'
I show him the last picture.
He nods.
- 'Always been the same,' he says scornfully.
He lives in a housing estate set far out from Mojacar, near where we found her that night, not far from Macenas Castle. Now it's winter, the housing estate looks desolate, abandoned. I look out from the car, wondering if I could live out here in this remote place, dead all year except for summer. He must bring a lot of his clients back here.
I drive up the hill and park comfortably on the side of the road. Only two or three other cars around. I pray one is Sisi's and when I spot a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle with a huge flower painted on it I think I might be in luck. Only a girl in her teens
or an ubashashed gay man would have a car like that. When I finally locate the flat and the outdoor staircase leading up to it, I notice that it has views over Macenas Castle and the sea. A funny feeling. Robot was hiding so close...
Malasana suspected Sisi. And Malasana's got good instincts. But, if my instincts are anything to go by, Sisi's not the killer. He's the boy who was bullied by the other three.
He opens the door in a silk kimono that shouldn't look so good on him. But he's used to surprising people that way. Sisi's been surprising people all his life and he's grown a thick skin as a result. He's had to fight just to be himself every step of the way.
- 'Ooooooooh! Commissioner! So you've finally made up your mind?'
- 'Don't be so optimistic, Sisi.'
- 'Ooh, why the long face? Just when I was getting excited...'
I follow him down a hall with a window stretching along one wall, with the same views as the staircase. We go into the living room, overflowing with knick-knacks, leopardskin rugs and paper chains.
- 'Very feminine,' I say by way of a compliment.
- 'Isn't it just? Fabulous! My mother couldn't have done a better job, if I do say so myself.'
- 'Of course.'
He sways his hips so much when he walks I fear one of them is going to pop out. When he sits down opposite me on one of the overstuffed sofas he crosses his legs like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, making sure I catch a glimpse of what he wants me to see.
- 'Cover yourself or I'll get the cuffs out' I warn him.
- 'Ooh, what a man!'
I laugh for the first time in what feels like a long time. Cackle open-mouthed, hungry for laughter. It takes me a long time to stop. Sisi gets up and fetches me a glass of water, then offers to lick away my tears. I politely decline and ask him to have a seat. Since he's a lost cause, he crosses his legs again, making it more than obviours he's not wearing a scrap of clothing under his kimono.
- 'Sisi. June thirteenth, 1984. Ring any bells?
He narrows his eyes. I see his jaw clench, his whole face tensing up.
- 'I'm going to show you some photos. I want the whole truth and nothing but the whole. No fucking jokes on this. You can confirm the date later.'
He lifts a hand half-mockingly, as if swearing on the Bible, and nods.
I show him the photo of Robot.
He recognises him immediately and goes pale. 'Brings it all back. Not happy memories either.' He sighs.
- 'The best thing that fucker ever did in his pathetic life was die.'
- 'I know that. What else can you tell me?'
- 'Nasty motherfucker.'
- 'And?'
- 'He was into girls but if there weren't any about anything would do. And he wasn't gentle about it. Bad, bad ugly piece of shit. Sex to him - it wasn't pleasure, it was violence.'
- 'Did he do anything to you?'
- 'Who hasn't? It was a long time ago. We were just kids. He hit me cos I wouldn't suck his dick.'
Ramon Ayala's got a good memory.
- 'What about this one?' I show him the photo of Macias.
- 'Not gay, but a bastard. Apparently they were related. Cousins or something. When he was on his own, he was all right... but when they were together he was just as much of a bastard. But not as mean as the other one, I'll give him that.'
He hands me back the picture of Macias and I show him the last one. He stills, and though I watch him for a long time, I can't read his face. Sisi has apparently delicate features under all that makeup, but now his face hardens into something darker, rougher, clenching the photograph. His lips twist with scorn.
- 'He wasn't as bad as the other two. But when we were kids they were always together. Until...'
- 'Until what?'
He stares at me and understanding dawns. What I've been thinking all along.
- 'Until it happened.'
- 'Was it on the day I mentioned?'
- 'That very same day,' he confirms.
- 'Tell me about it.'
Abruptly, he gets up and goes for a packet of cigarettes. He smokes, looking disconcerted.
- 'I don't know what you want me to say. I barely knew him. I was a bit younger than them. But I was what I am, so one day the three of them got me. This one,' he points at the last photo, 'he was in charge, but that day it backfired. He wanted the other two to do things to me, but Damian - that was his name, wasn't it?'
I nod.
- '- Damian, may, he rot in hell, forced me to do it to this guy,' and he points at the last photograph again, cigarette propped between his fingers.
He looks at me curiously.
- 'How did you find out about all this?'
- 'The doctor you saw. Did someone pay your parents not to go to the police?'
He shrugs.
- 'I don't know. I was only twelve. They were about seventeen. Maybe my parents were paid off. It would be like them. Since I was a poofter, the black sheep.'
His eyes fill with tears, but he sniffs sharply and pulls himself together.
- 'Anyway, this one, this little genius here, had the bright idea that I should let them take me up the arse or suck them off or whatever. But Robot, that was his nickname, who was already a big bastard, he said no way, he wasn't a poof...'
He dismisses that with a flick of the hand.
- 'Tough guy, ha. Like I said...'
- 'Go on.'
- 'OK, OK. Robot insisted I suck the other kid instead, the daddy's boy. And I did. Then there was the rest.'
- 'What happened?'
- 'Since he couldn't fuck me because he'd get called gay, Robot beat me up instead. Nearly killed me.'
- 'Your local doctor saw you.'
- 'Yeah, the fat one.'
- 'And no one ever said anything.'
- 'No one ever said anything. Back then there were no openly gay people here. Just the odd poofter on TV. It wasn't Madrid, the movida, all that. Wasn't so easy for them up there, either.'
He shakes his head.
- 'Do you know what happened to him?' I gesture to the photo of the third man.
He looks at me in surprise.
- 'You're asking me? You know him.'
- 'But he left town, didn't he?'
- 'Might have gone off for uni. But he came back after. Now he's a big star here.'
- 'Have you had relations with him since?'
- 'No.'
Suppressed homosexual. The words burn in my mind.
- 'Have you ever seen him around the gay scene?'
- 'You think all these closet gays don't come looking for me?' I've got enough to last me a
lifetime.'
- 'I don't think he's gay, but maybe he goes to the gay bars sometimes.
Nowadays it's not so rare for straight men to go. Open, modern, diverse, bla bla.'
- 'You said it, boss. But I can spot them a mile off. The ones who want it and the ones who don't.'
- 'What about him?'
- 'Hmmm.'
- 'That says it all.'
- 'Not you though.'
- 'Pity. I'd probably have a better social life.'
- 'Just say the word, boss.'
He's about to cross his legs again, but I lift a finger in warning.
- 'Don't even think about it.'
After cracking a few more jokes about my future change in sexual orientation, he sees me to the door.
- 'Boss. How come you're on your own today? The big boss is never on his own. You look more powerful when you're surrounded. And I'd like to have seen that sexy shorty who's always tagging along. You've got to bring him next time. I'm sure he's a demon in the sack.'
- 'I'll tell him you asked after him. Maybe that'll get him interested for next time.'
He waves bye from his front door as I make my way down the stairs. If he knew Malasana suspected him...
When I get to the car, an idea is bumping around my brain. He asked me why I was alone, repeatedly. The big boss is never on his own.
I dial a number on my phone.
There's still time for one little visit.
My knife I would hand over
For her to understand
The strength of my hand
Nowhere to take cover
The being I am
Her being would take over
Ha ha ha ha
No remorse
No torment
Joyful in blood and death
Let my Evil destroy their fucking God
The Ripper Page 47