Every day I'm a little bit less of this man you see, Chief
Every day I become more at one with my knife
35
The whole conversation floats unmoored through my mind, like the scrambled images after you wake from a nightmare. I have to convince myself I'm awake. I'm at the beach with a bottle of gin. I swig from it as I step around the dead fish the sea is starting to wash in. Dusk rises, blood-coloured, reflected in the black-laminated waters. The seagulls screech like witches picking at human bodies. As night rushes in, it's filled with an incomprehensible, blood-curdling horror.
A thick fog rolls in, sweeping me up with it like an army of shadows. All the lights dim and hazy like a dream. The humidity swallows me up, swaddling me as if in a shroud. I hear the waves roaring and the underwater screams of the gulls. I let the horror wash over me, submerge me, so deep I know I'll never be free of it, I'll never be the same man. The faces of the murdered women, of Damián, of Javier Macías, flash through my mind, screaming from a bottomless place of infinite darkness. I can't hear what they're screaming for. Maybe justice. Maybe revenge. I won't be able to live with this burden.
I light a cigarette to burn my body, freezing in the cold. I listen to the conversation I recorded on a second phone. Once again, I hear the voice of the Beast denying it, then revelling in it, the glee in his voice, playing with me, knowing the truth and pretending it's useless. Tormenting me, as he has done from the very start. Torment I cannot bear. I can't arrest him. I don't have an iota of proof. I'd be a laughingstock. Barely a couple of cobbled-together clues and a confusing conversation in which he admitted to nothing. More taunting. More mockery. Even doubt about his cover wouldn’t mean I could hurt him. Maybe... he couldn't let anyone know. Now I start to see. His arrogance. His pride. He couldn't let his criminal masterpiece die with him. He needed someone to know. He needed me to know. So that, every day, I could die a little more insde - of powerlessness, rage, pain.
Not understanding what drives someone to this gratuitous, unnecessary, grotesque, savage evil plagues me. Is it perversion, madness, hatred? It's a mystery, veiled to me, dark, deep, that I cam't fathom. All I know is that it frightens me even more than the crimes themselves, because I can't make sense of it. It's too far out, lightyears from anything I could ever understand, making it seem primitive, primal, something as distant as another galaxy. I shudder and look up at the sky, black clouds scudding across it ominously. Clouds fat as sin. Heavy as a leaden conscience.
What did Abberline do? Maybe the real Jack the Ripper was John Druitt. No one can really believe the crimes stopped due to the killer's own free will. A killer like that doesn't just stop. Ever. Just as he won't. He's already taking pleasure in planning which terrible murderer to imitate next. Men, women, children. Any human being he wants to kill, he'll kill. John Druitt, the young lawyer who was found drowned in the Thames, wallet stuffed with notes and a letter. Who knows? Perhaps it would be for the best if this ended the same way. In silence. A silent death. An innocent man convicted, happily so, because this way the world will hear his rantings and ravings, his lunatic message. And the world will sit tight, content, knowing the killer isn't an upstanding citizen but a madman acting out his terrible madness. The world will breathe easy, thinking the madman is no part of society, but an outlier, a rotten anomaly. The world will be able to carry on looking itself in the eye. How could knowing the truth possibly affect them? It couldn't.
I lob the bottle into the sea. The dampness sinks into my bones, turns me to ice. It interrupts my thoughts. But I have to get ready. Conquer the terror. End the terror. Kill the terror. And then... Then?
What will become of me then?
Smoking into the wee hours. Watching the sea though all I see is darkness. Hearing the driving rain, pelting the earth like the fury of the capricious gods.
I dress silently, all in black, and riffe through the chest of drawers for the balaclava from those other dark times I don't want to recall. I've checked the Glock and bring an extra magazine. A knife. A recorder. An electric pistol. The thiopental. What am I trying to do? Get a confession out of him? It couldn't be used in court. But even so, I need to hear him say it.
I wonder what it'll be like. Will the terror be terrified? Will he feel the same fear he's made me feel? Will he resist? Try to kill me?
My old reluctance drives the car for me. I stop the car in front of the cathedral. At night, the lights illuminate it in beauty, the hushed history of ages, hope. The lights sparkle on the stained glass, lighting up this darkest of nights. The rain patters softly on the gravel. A ray of light spills from a side door as I move forward through the rain. Letting it soak through my clothes. I hesitate on the threshold. Maybe I'm here out of cowardice. Maybe my will will be broken here.
I enter in silence. Candles flickering in the dark. Purple sanctuary lamps lighting the way to the sacristy. The Mozarabic ceiling looms high overhead, inspiring lofty sentiments, the ones I left behind long ago. Side chapels shrouded in darkness, the walls lined with images and sculptures of solemn virgins and saints, the same ones I've seen a thousand times in the Holy Week processions every year.
I'm stricken with the strange feeling that I no longer belong here.
I'm a man of violence.
This is the house of the Father, the one I will have to return to.
But not tonight.
Will I be able to come back after the crime?
I don't touch the holy water. It would be improper for a killer. Blasphemy.
I sit down on a hard wooden pew. A hiss sounds behind me. Only darkness.
I look at the altar. Christ on the cross. He suffered, too. So why shouldn't the killer? The man carrying that mark: the perfect corruption of the Devil, the one I remember from my childhood, when the teachings of the Church scared us as much as we learned from them.
‘What if everyone did away with one of the evil beings on earth? Would that go against God?’
I remember the question. The difficult, impossible question the monk asked us.
‘Diana Carolina Mieles would say heaven quiets all.’
That one little line, carrying the promise of infinite compassion.
‘There was a time of crime. And there is a time of punishment, as I recall.’
I turn around abruptly and see a face in the darkness behind me. Just a face. Blue, ashen in the half-light around it. Stealthily, he stole in and took a seat several rows behind. My blood runs cold, turning to ice in my veins. Just as his will, hours from now. When I'll have to finish the task I've decided is mine.
'What do you need, son?'
The voice of the old man behind me. I keep my eyes on the altar. The only light in this vast cathedral. So far away we barely cast a shadow.
'There is a connection between good and evil in us, symmetrical with good and evil in society, I say, speaking thoughts I didn't even know were racing through my mind.
'“Its desire is for you,”' says the monk under his breath.
An ashen face in the dark. His dark habit seems to melt into the surroundings, making him seem ghostlike, a ghost I know will haunt me when I, too, become a killer.
'Its desire is for you, drawing in evil. Evil is the absence of good. Wherever there is no goodness, evil reigns. Do good, son. There is always a way to do good.'
'Humankind has no solution to this,' I say, as if I can't hear him. 'It will never get better. No one can make it better. If religion hasn't managed to, no one will.'
I get up and don't look back.
When I get back to the car, I'm not sure whether what's just happened is real. It's hazy in my mind. Was I really inside the church, or just looking at the light spilling from its doors onto the street? Did I really go inside, sit on a pew, speak to a ghost?
All I know is I'm soaked from the rain, my body trembling with cold. The sound of the engine reminds me I have an appointment with an iniquitous mystery that has to die for the light to sh
ine again.
As the rain pelts the windscreen noisily, a gusty wind buffets the car.
Did he believe me when I threatened him? Will he be waiting for me? Expecting me to come for him this very night?
Will he face death down or beg for his life? Feel remorse for what he's done in his final moments?
Do I have what it takes to do it? Will I have the guts to torture him?
I leave the car in a narrow lane leading onto other houses, hidden behind a cluster of prickly pears and eucalyptus, overlooking a muddy stream. Night-time. Darkness. Rain and wind. Solitude. A final-seeming solitude. The white splotches of the village houses, up on the hill, like a faraway castle standing empty, somewhere from another world.
I walk through the fields. The rain streams down, pelting me in the face. So much rain I have to wipe it out of my eyes with each step. I cross plots of earth submerged in water, patches of pines and palm trees.
I climb up the garden wall next to the house. A light on in one of the windows. The rest bathed in darkness.
I jump down, falling next to the sacrificial stones. I kneel next to them. Touch them. As if I were touching the murdered bodies. Cristiana Stoicescu. Diana Carolina Mieles. Naima Medari. Sandra Okeke. Rita Oehlen. Rosario Mínguez. Damián Albor. Javier Macías. As I touch the stones I'm flooded with their memory. Even that of those who deserved punishment.
The sound of the rain muffles my steps. I turn the corner of the house. Only one light, in one window. An empty room. And Gonzalo Santana's Range Rover parked nearby. I go back round to the back to scale the courtyard wall up to the roof.
When I'm about to reach up a terrible strength pulls me back. My spine twists like rubber. A whimper. A half-moan. Deep pain. A hand covers my mouth, muffling a shout. I fight. Try to turn, push away the body holding me back. I can't breathe. The hand over my mouth is suffocating me. All I see is a pair of dark eyes under a black hood as an implacable hand sinks something sharp into me.
36
That strange sensation - drowned bodies, floating facedown like a weightless doll, rocked in the water. I don't recognise him. Facedown, as if looking for something at the bottom of the pool. Square blue and white tiles, distorted by the water refracting the sun's rays as it starts to peer out from banks of cloud.
My mouth is so dry I can't even remember the taste of water. Trying to work up saliva and swallow is torture. Only now does my stunned brain start to wake up, though I've been up for an hour, emerging from a sleep so deep all my memories seem hidden behind a near-solid fog. Tartini's Devil's Trill races manically through my mind on repeat, the sonata the killer dedicated to me not once but twice. The memories start to rush in, piling up, coming together. Night-time. Damp and dark. Fear and then...
I don't look at my officers, standing beside me. The same men who came to my house this morning to get me out of bed, manhandle me into the shower, because the chemical thickness of the sleep I fell into, almost a coma, seemed to have dull my senses forever. They've brought me here to see the killer and his unexpected end. El Dandy shouldn't be there, floating facedown in the water, arms and legs flung out. Wearing the same clothes as when I saw him last. El Dandy should have died by my hand. I've been deprived of my first crime. And I don't know whether to feel relief or disappointment. There will be no confession. There will be no redemption. There will be no freedom. I will always be a prisoner of his crimes. Would I have been free if I had killed him myself?
'The perfect suicide,' says Malasaña, coming to stand beside me.
The officers move through the house. They haven't found a single thing. Not one note. Not an iota of proof. But they survey it all with curiosity. The triumphant lawyer is now just a lifeless body, floating in the calm water of the pool. They feel no terror before his body. They felt terror before the bodies of the women. Before Robot's body, become a monstrous insect.
'He got off too lightly, after what he did,' says López.
The legal commission and pathologist arrive. This time, they leave out the drama from the Ripper murders. Though they look at the lawyer's body suspiciously, this man they knew so well, the one they envied and scorned. The big-shot lawyer living the high life in Baria, exhibiting all the markers of his success: luxury whores, lucury cars, luxury outfits, luxury connections. And now he looks so small.
They're wondering how a man like him, so confident, so brazen, could have committed suicide. A man who never exhibited even the tiniest symptom of depression. A man at the height of his powers.
'It shouldn't have ended like this,' I say to Malasaña and López, moving away from the SOCO team that's pulled the body out of the pool after taking the requisite photographs and from the pathologist, now leaning forward to confirm what we all already know: cause of death: suicide.
'Did you two do it?' I ask.
'Us? Boss. We were with you last night. Don't you remember? Did you drink that much?' says Malasaña with a dark chuckle.
I stare at him, but probably I just look like a hungover fool rather than intimdating.
'A local police car even stopped us and saw you sleeping in the back,' he adds.
'Drunk as a lord. Who gets drunk and goes out in the rain, boss?' says López.
It starts to dawn on me. For a moment I wonder who it was.
There's no other possible answer.
'How?'
Neither of them looks at me. They light up, cheerful as schoolboys up to mischief. They must have tailed me all day yesterday and come up with their own conclusions. Though I didn't tell them, they knew what I knew. My steps led them to them. In a way, I killed him. All they had to do was wait for me and get me out of the way. Then he would have got down to work. A completely professional job.
I look at the body for the last time. There is such a thing as human nature. And it wasn’t in him. I refuse to accept it was.
An officer with a baby face and a brand new uniform comes over to us.
'Was he really the Ripper, Commissioner?’
'Fuck off,' I say, throwing my cigarette on the ground. Then we drive away from the hellhouse.
There was nowhere else we could have done. I've spent the day thinking everything over, making sense of it. Trying to get my mind back to a familiar place. After a light lunch and a siesta, I'm almost completely awake now. I don't want to know what they injected me with when I thought I was being stabbed by the killer. It wasn't the bloody, devouring blade of a knife but a soothing needle easing my burden so someone else could carry it for me.
Three men were waiting for me last night in the rain and darkness. Three men who had already plotted their moves. They weren't going to let me act alone. They were going to prevent me from committing a crime. And provide me with an alibi for what was going to happen.
I wonder if I have the right to reproach them for it. Does anyone have friends who would kill for them?
When I walk in, there they are, waiting for me. Even though I made sure to get here early to have some time on my own with Mike. But they're not sure what to expect from me. They're scared I'll fight with Mike, though I'm sure he could do away with me in five seconds flat.
López gets up as soon as he sees me and shuts the door. Baria City Blues is not open to the public tonight.
The three of them look at me watchfully, scanning my face, hardened by the comedown of whatever drug they injected me with, hardened because I don't know how to react, what to say, what to do.
As always, Mike stands up, dressed head-to-toe in impeccable black, and prepares a round of beers and something to eat. As he's bringing it over, he pauses at the stereo and music rings out. I recognise it at once. The Devil's Trill.
'You're breaking with tradition.'
'Today's a special day,' he says.
I eat without saying anything. Drink my beer without saying anything. Now isn't the time. They, too, eat and drink in silence. Not one word.
A while later, Mike clears our table and comes back wit
h the gin and tonics. After my first sip, the words come out.
'What the fuck did you shoot me up with last night? My head's been killing me all day. And one of you, I think I can guess who, nearly snapped my back in two.' I shoot a glance at López through narrowed eyes.
They relax, visibly. Breathe out. And breathe in, relieved. López smiles. He covers his mouth with his hand, face as innocent as an angel, or a fat kid who's been discovered sneaking a slice of cake.
I'm not an enemy anymore.
‘I wonder if killing him would have freed me.’
They all drink and look at each other.
'There was no reason for you to shoulder that responsibility,' says Mike.
'It was my responsibility,' I shoot back, suddenly furious.
Malasaña and López tense up like guitar strings. But Mike relaxes.
'You're a police officer. You did your job. The rest of it - it wasn't yours to take care of.'
'What about them?' I jerk my head at López and Malasaña. 'They were involved.
‘Just making sure their boss didn't do anything rash. You would have been caught. You would have made a mess of it. You're not a killer.'
We stare at each other. How can I tell him I want to embrace him, thank him for relieving me of this terrible burden I'm not sure I knew how to carry? Tell him that my conscience will never be entirely clean again, but I'll never be sure whether it was the right thing to do, until crunch time, when I was incapable doing the wrong thing? Tell him that I know I'll never have a better friend than him, taking responsibility for this, taking on the guilt. Tell him I owe him more than life itself, but something more akin to hope. And freedom.
Mike places a flash drive on the table.
'His confession.'
I stare down at the tiny piece of plastic and metal.
'It's all there, boss,' says López encouragingly, his usual high spirits back. 'Where he hid the evidence. How he put together the proof against Abdón Pascua. How he manipulated him.'
The Ripper Page 52