A few minutes later, they arrived at the residential area where Bianca had lived: a group of two-storey houses, with small interior gardens, all of which were surrounded by a fence. A small quiet place in the big city; a place of illusion in which one would think they could raise their children without anybody stabbing them in the heart with a knife; a refuge to hide oneself from the nightmare that the real world entailed.
“Come on, we’re here,” Carlos got out of the car and went around it, stopping in front of her. “Now listen carefully to me. We’re both going to go in there, but the one doing the talking is going to be me; the one asking the questions is going to be me; and the one giving commands is going to be me. You’re going to be nice and quiet, listen, and observe in case I forget or overlook anything, but nothing more. Understood?”
“I don’t know where that thing about ordering me to be quiet comes from,” replied Natalia, hurt by the comment. “Do you not think I’m qualified?”
“What I’m thinking is that we are about to go and speak with a family who have just lost their daughter, and I do not wish for you to let out any unfortunate comments. You know a lot about gutting people, and I know very well how to behave in these situations because, unfortunately, I’ve had to go through them many times, so I would beg you not to meddle in my work, and I promise not to go and steal the spleen out of your next ‘client’. Deal?”
“All right, but I would very much like to see you trying to find a spleen,” she replied, laughing.
He ignored that last comment and went to the door. Natalia felt the nerves compressing her stomach. As much as Carlos’s lack of trust may have hurt her, the truth is that she did not know whether she was prepared for what she was going to find inside there; a much closer and more painful vision of death than the one she was accustomed to. She tried to put aside that insecurity and concentrate. They had only gone there to look for leads and facts, and that was something that she would be able to control.
***
“Believe me when I say how sorry we are to have to bother you at this time, but as you will understand, it is necessary. We will try to be as brief as possible,” began Carlos in a gentle tone.
“Don’t worry, I understand. My wife won’t be able to help you today: she’s sleeping. Sedatives, you know...”
Sitting in front of them was a man of around forty, tall and slim, whose hair was beginning to thin. Behind his small glasses, notable rings could be seen, and his eyes, red from so much crying, reflected an infinite anguish and sorrow.
“That’s no problem at all. I think you’ll be able to answer our questions.” The man nodded slowly, with his gaze fixed on the floor, vacant. “We’d like it if you could tell us about Bianca’s friendships. Any detail you might be able to remember about any friend or person she knew could be important. I know that they already asked you this when you both reported the disappearance, but maybe now you might be able to remember something else.”
“Bianca didn’t have friends; she never went out at the weekends or brought back girl friends to the house. She was a very shy girl, always reading, playing on the computer, watching the TV... We didn’t give it any importance. She never caused problems, and always got good grades. She was such a good girl...” the man’s voice broke into a sob, and for a second he seemed as though he was going to break down, but he managed to recover and carry on talking. “Lately, her mother and I were insisting to her that she went out a little. She was fourteen now, and it wasn’t normal for her to be so alone, so we were so happy when that Sunday afternoon she told us that she was going to go to the cinema with a few girls from her class,” the man fell quiet once more, and this time he could not hold back the tears. He buried his head in his hands whilst his entire body convulsed with the sobs. “But where did she go? What happened to her? Why my little girl?”
“We know that she really did go to the cinema. We found a ticket in her pocket,” Natalia had been sitting to the side of the man, and was resting a hand on his back, trying to calm him. Carlos looked at her, reminding her of her promise to stay quiet.
The sobbing let up little by little, and the man was able to continue talking:
“When night began to fall and Bianca wasn’t back, we began to get alarmed, so we looked for her diary where she kept phone numbers and called all the girls who appeared in it, but she hadn’t been with any of them. At twelve, we called the police, but you people told us that we’d have to wait before you could do anything. Well, the rest you already know...” he began sobbing again in desperation. “To wait... While you lot were waiting, they’d already killed her. Why didn’t you have more urgency? Perhaps you might have been able to prevent it; perhaps my girl would be alive if it weren’t for you...”
He was quiet again, allowing himself to be swept along by the anguish. It was normal to go through that anger, to try to find people to blame, to rebel... Anything to avoid having to face the numbing pain of the loss. Natalia put her arm back around his shoulders again, whilst she whispered words of consolation. Carlos waited a few minutes for him to calm down, to ask him whether he could check Bianca’s bedroom. The man nodded, without looking up.
They made their way to the landing, searching for the girl’s bedroom. On opening the door, they were met with a small bedroom, painted pink. It was arranged as if its owner were about to turn up any second to carry on with her life. Carlos went in, and Natalia closed the door behind them, and she stood still in the middle of the room for a few seconds, trying to ignore the feeling of discomfort that was compelling her to leave that house which was so full of pain.
When she had calmed down a little, she began to search the room. After all, the sooner they finished, the sooner they would be able to leave that oppressive atmosphere. The room could have belonged to any fourteen-year-old girl: a desk, books, a computer, cuddly toys, bottles of perfume... On the bedside table they could see several photographs of Bianca, a small girl with a weak appearance, who did not look fourteen. She had very long straight hair, and a very pretty smile. Behind the glasses sparkled enormous brown eyes. She seemed very sweet, and had a certain defenceless air that aroused an urge to take care of her. How could anybody hurt a girl like this?
They checked the bedroom in silence. There were no letters, nor a personal journal. In her diary, the only things noted down were exam days and handing-in deadlines: no dates with anybody. One hour later they gave up, defeated. Carlos picked up a photograph which he had been looking at. They would need it to ask at the cinema whether anybody had seen who had been with the young girl.
Natalia was in the other corner of the room, stroking one of the little cuddly teddy bears with a distracted air. Carlos went up to her and placed a hand on her arm. She looked at him, lost, as if she had just emerged from a dream, trying to contain the tears that were building up in her eyes.
“I know what you’re feeling,” he told her, as if he were talking with himself. “This bedroom is like a mirror that suddenly fell to the floor. The only thing left is a broken present, and the reflections of a past that only cause pain. Come on, there’s nothing left for us to do here.”
Natalia was surprised at his words. She had not expected a sensitive remark from him. She had thought that, after so many years working on homicides, he would be going around with an anaesthetised soul, hearing sorrow like a very distant voice that did not die entirely, but which had to remain hidden in order to allow him to continue going forward. She wondered if she herself wanted to stop feeling pain: whether she was ready to become somebody who could live with that, without it mattering to her. She tried to find the answer in his eyes, but he averted his gaze, as if he were embarrassed by what he had just expressed, and left the room.
She followed him out of the house in silence, leaving its inhabitants to the hard task of surviving in the presence of death.
CHAPTER THREE
Vanessa got out of bed and turned on the lamp on her bedside table. She tried not to make any sound, put on her
boots, and did her hair in the mirror. She had slept in her clothes so as not to spend too much time in getting ready. She looked at her watch. Within half an hour, she would be meeting with him. On thinking about it, she felt a jab of nerves in her stomach, and went back to look at herself in the mirror. Was he really going to like her? She had very long black hair and a pair of blue eyes that were the envy of many girls at her school but, on looking at herself, she went back to hating her little girl face. She decided to stop thinking about that; he told her that he loved her, and that he did not care how old she was. Besides, he had seen her photo and had told her that she was very pretty. But, what if he was laughing at her? And what if he didn’t even show up? She banished those thoughts from her mind with a feeling of shame. She had to trust him; he did not deserve those doubts.
She opened her bedroom window, to exit through it. Perhaps she ought to leave a note for her mother. She had told her at nine o’clock that she was going to bed because she had a headache, so she wouldn’t be coming in to bother her. She hoped to be back before anybody realised, but she would not like for anyone to worry too much if they found her not there. The best thing would be to leave a note and, if she was back before anybody read it, she would tear it up and it would have all turned out perfectly. She grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from her desk and wrote a few sentences. She reread them, trying to decide whether they were suitable:
I’ve arranged to meet up with a friend at the beach. Don’t worry; nothing’s going to happen to me. I know him really well and he’s a great guy. I know you won’t understand, and most likely punish me for years. I’m not writing you this note so that you’ll forgive me. I just don’t want you to worry. I’ll be back in an hour or two.
Vanne
XXX
She left the piece of paper on a visible part of her desk and went out through the window. Hiding herself in the shadows of the trees in the garden, she sneaked like a fugitive towards the road, feeling her heart beating so hard that she thought the whole neighbourhood was going to hear it. Once her house fell into the distance behind her, she felt liberated. Now all she had to do was get to the beach so that all of her dreams could begin to come true. An enormous smile lit up her face. It was going to be a fantastic night.
***
He collected their coffees and sat back down at the small table at the back, as they had been doing all week. It was ten o’clock at night, and there were not many people in Capri; only three other people having a drink at the bar. Carlos took out his notebook and began to speak:
“As I assumed, asking at the cinema was no use. Hundreds of kids pass through there every day, so nobody took any notice of Bianca.”
“Let’s take as valid the hypothesis that they knew each other and had met up. Perhaps Bianca only went to the cinema to kill time, to throw her parents off,” suggested Natalia. “Then, once the time for the date came, Bianca went to the agreed place, most likely a solitary one, where nobody was able to see her getting into the car.”
“Well you’re not making it very easy for me, although the truth is that it has logic to it. If she already knew him, he could have made her agree to somewhere more convenient for him,” Carlos began to make notes in his notebook as he was talking. “But then the blow to the head doesn’t fit with me. If Bianca had met up with him, and was trusting, why did he knock her out?”
“I don’t know, maybe she didn’t trust him enough to go with him to a forest, maybe she discovered something in the killer that alarmed her... We’ll have to keep investigating. How’s the comparison of the police files turning out?”
Carlos shook his head as he lit a cigarette.
“Frustrating, we still haven’t found anything. Until we have more facts allowing us to reduce the number of suspects, it’s not going to yield any result. You would be surprised at the number of degenerates we have walking free.”
“I’ll take a look tomorrow to see whether I can reduce the list a little, by comparing their past crimes with the modus operandi of our killer,” offered Natalia.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday: aren’t you off?”
“Yes, but it’s useless me being at home turning this over and over in my mind,” she finished her coffee in one gulp and left the cup on the table. “It’s late, I think we ought to go and get some rest.”
She stood up with a tired expression and put on her coat. Her enthusiasm for the case seemed to be diminishing by the day. She had imagined a quick resolution, the satisfaction of a job well done, the congratulations... But she had never considered the feeling of frustration from not getting anywhere, the tiredness, the ever-present fear of a new victim turning up... She did not dare to say any of that to Carlos. She did not know him well enough to bare her fears to him, so she limited herself to leaving the bar in silence and getting into her car.
***
I began walking towards the exit of the beach, not once turning back. There was no value in looking at what I had done. I knew that, if I looked at Vanessa’s remains, now that the rage had subsided and the adrenaline was leaving my body, I would stay there crying for hours, incapable of bearing the sight of that which minutes earlier had been a girl full of life and dreams.
I looked all around, checking that there was nobody about. The beach was deserted. I had been very lucky, but the most likely thing was that, very shortly, somebody would turn up for a walk by the shore.
I hurried my steps towards the place where I had parked. My good fortune continued; I did not cross paths with anybody along the way to the car park. Once there, I opened the boot and deposited the backpack. In spite of the cold night air, I also took off my coat. It was covered in blood and, even though in such little light nobody would notice the stains at this distance, I preferred not to have it on me. I cleaned my hands on it, hard, until it hurt, trying to erase the stains of the whole thing. It was her blood, the blood of that girl... I began to sob as I scrubbed my hands increasingly harder. It felt as though the stains would never disappear.
I heard the echo of some approaching footsteps. I could not stay there. Pretty soon, somebody would discover Vanessa’s body and raise the alarm. I closed the boot and got into the car. The tears were still pouring relentlessly from my eyes. I cleaned them away on the back of my hand, invoking all my force of will to control myself. I needed to calm down. What had happened could seem terrible, but it was not. It had needed to happen that way: Vanessa had chosen it. I started up the car and headed out of the city, trying to convince myself that I had only done what was right, what my destiny had impelled me to do. I knew that, without those moments in which I discharged all of my sin and my rage on the bodies of those girls, I would go mad; I would be condemned to live forever in a world of desperation, the only exit from which would be death. And I still could not die. As painful as it may have been, I had to keep going forward.
***
Natalia got out of the shower and put on some jeans and a T-shirt. She combed the tangles out of her wet hair, trying not to cross eyes too many times with those of the girl in the mirror who looked so tired and sad. She decided not to dry her hair; she did not feel she had the strength to do anything. She left the bathroom and went into the living room. The silence and the weak light made her see it as a dead place, abandoned. She lay down on the sofa and grabbed her papers to look through them but, just the same as the hundred times before it, she could not find anything relevant. She felt frustrated, as if all the hopes she had had on starting the whole thing had fled, leaving her full of fears. What if they were never able to find him? What if that horrific murder went unavenged?
She got up, opened the window, and lit a cigarette, looking at the streets of Bilbao. At those hours the city was silent; the only thing that could be heard every now and then was a distant siren. A gust of air made her shiver, but she decided to stay there a little while longer, trying to clear her head. In that moment the telephone rang:
“Hello?”
“Natalia, it’s Carlos. I expect y
ou to be at Neguri beach in fifteen minutes.”
“In fifteen minutes? Look, I’m not decent. What’s happened?”
“You don’t know how much it hurts me to have to tell you that you were right, but that’s how it is. We’re after a serial killer.”
***
Carlos parked at the entrance to the beach and got out of the car. The next instant he was surrounded by a crowd of journalists armed with flashes and spotlights. Just what he needed: the press bothering him. Carlos walked between them and crossed the police cordon, looking ahead without answering anything, to make his way towards a group of police officers who were watching over the area.
A few minutes later, after having organised the investigation of the scene, he moved away towards the shore. He needed a little peace to put his thoughts in order. The night was tranquil, and in the clear sky the moon shone. Carlos could not avoid thinking about how pleasant that beach must have been in any other situation. The wind was gentle, the sea was calm, and the light from the stars and the moon were reflecting in the water, having been trapped in a thousand puddles before the tide retreated, making him think that he was walking through the sky; that the world had been flipped upside down.
He saw Natalia’s car approaching. She parked and quickly made her way towards the crime scene, nodding a greeting to him as she passed. Carlos preferred not to accompany her, and he moved even further away, walking along the shoreline so as to continue contemplating the sea, allowing the breeze to whip up his hair, and the rhythmical sound of the waves to bring a little peace to his soul. He had already seen the body, he already knew what Natalia was going to encounter. It had happened again, just as she had predicted. He wondered whether it had been his pride that had prevented him from seeing it, or whether in reality it had been the fear of the whole thing never ending; that the nightmares would continue endlessly. He did not think he had the strength to carry on waking up night after night bathed in sweat after running through a dark forest to a clearing in which Bianca was waiting for him, crying, to show him the empty sockets of her eyes. And now the death of this other girl was coming to join his collection of horrifying dreams, and burden his nights with even more guilt.
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