Charon's Net

by Gemma Herrero Virto

  Now all I had to do was wait for their replies to see whether the relationship continued to be the same as before the press release. I had to make sure that everything was going well, that nobody suspected. I could not run the risk of arranging a date with any one of them, just in case I found myself facing a police patrol waiting for me when I got there. I could not allow this thing to stop. They were guilty, and they had to pay.

  I remembered the press release they had broadcast on the television. It seemed a right mess had been made, for the police to be putting all of their determination into solving the case. I struck the table in frustration. Why did they have to go interfering? After all, those girls deserved it; they were asking for it from the start. Nobody was forcing them to fall into my hands; nobody was forcing them to fall in love with me and agree to a date. They had the ability to choose between life and death. If they chose death, nobody was guiltier than they themselves.

  I began thinking about the recommendations that had been given on the television: no meeting up in real life with anybody off the Internet whom you did not trust very much; always tell someone about the person you are going to be meeting with, giving all the information you had available to you; committing to making a phone call during the date to say that everything was fine... I wondered up to what point that could interfere with my objectives. I smiled in satisfaction. It would not have the slightest influence. The girls were very young, their parents did not allow many of them to go out with anybody, and, therefore, they would not even know of their existence. Besides, a large part of the joy of their relationship consisted in it being secret, in the prohibition... And, on the other hand, it was one thing to think that there was a killer searching for prey on the Internet, and another very different one to suspect ‘their Alex’, the boy who was so sweet, and who made them feel so good.

  I finished sending the emails. I had now done everything in my power; now I could relax. I thought again about the police. I had not expected them to discover so soon how I contacted the girls, but neither was it a big problem. I had already given it some thought, and had established a sufficient number of safeguards on the Internet to keep them busy for a fair amount of time. I should now be thinking about what I should do if they were to get too close. If they wanted to present it as a challenge, I had no intention of backing down. And besides, I was winning.

  ***

  Natalia was trying to relax and concentrate on following Carlos's car through the centre of Sam Sebastián. They were moving slowly amongst the traffic, through the straight and tidily kept streets. It was a lovely city; it seemed to have been well designed, with its well laid out streets, its wide avenues, and its elegant buildings that had a touch of antiquity. They finally arrived in the neighbourhood where Alex had lived. Natalia parked, got out of the car, and went up to Carlos, who was checking that the address was the same as the one he had noted down on a card.

  "Do you remember what I told you when we went to question Bianca's father?"

  "Yes, I know. For me to be nice and quiet, and to listen," replied Natalia, in annoyance.

  "Good, well you can forget about that; I want you to ask the questions."

  Natalia looked at him, taken aback. Where had this come from? Had he gone mad or something? As much as it may have annoyed her that he had not considered her to be qualified to question anyone, in reality the fact was that she would not know where to begin.

  "Look, this time I don't want a police questioning," Carlos began to explain. "This woman has already answered the questions of many police officers, and it’s got us nowhere. It's a hunch, but I think you have a different sensitivity about you; that you’ll be able to think of the right questions, that you’ll make her feel comfortable and tell us things about her son that she hasn't done before. Do you think you'll be able to do it?"

  Natalia nodded, and followed him into the foyer, feeling that her throat had closed up, making it impossible for her to swallow. How was she going to be able to talk in this condition? When he rang the bell, a short woman of around fifty opened the door for them. After Carlos identified both himself and Natalia to her, she invited them in to a small living room and to sit down on the sofa. She sat down in an enormous armchair that was off to the side, and looked at them with a frightened air, shrinking down so much that it seemed as though the chair were devouring her. Finally, she spoke in the faintest voice:

  "I've prepared you some coffee. I hope you will accept a cup.”

  They nodded, and the woman made her way to the kitchen. Natalia took in the details of the room. It was decorated in an overly feminine style, all painted in pink and cluttered with pots and jars of artificial flowers. A cabinet overwhelmed with books occupied the entire wall, and in it the television, with the sound muted, was playing a morning programme about celebrities. She and Carlos remained quiet until the woman returned from the kitchen carrying a tray, on which they could see two cups of steaming coffee:

  “All right, here you are,” she went along placing the cups in front of them, and next she sat down, and looked at them, smiling nervously. “How I can help you? Is it that you have some new information?”

  “We’re actually from the Biscay Headquarters of the Ertzaintza. We’re investigating certain crimes that could be related to the death of your son, and for that reason we would be very grateful if you could answer a few questions for us.”

  “Of course, it’s no trouble,” offered the woman, intrigued.

  Carlos made a gesture with his head to Natalia for her to start talking. She mentally went over the report of Alex's murder that Carlos had given her the night before. The thoughts began swirling around in her head. He had not rendered him unconscious; the door had not been forced; he had allowed him into his kitchen... Had it been a formal visitor, he would have brought him through to this very orderly living room, but most likely his killer had come whilst he was having breakfast, and Alex had not had any problem with him joining him. It had to be somebody very close; they should not be looking for an enemy, but rather an intimate friend, somebody whom he trusted completely. She opened her mouth, fearing that no sound would come out, but once she began, the anxiety disappeared and she felt calm, as if she had been doing this her whole life.

  "We'd like it if you could tell us about your son's friendships," she leaned towards the woman and smiled at her. "You know, who he went out with at the weekends; who he went on holiday with; if he ever brought anyone home..."

  The woman stood up and headed towards the cabinet, and took out a photo album. She flipped through several pages before she found what she was looking for, and showed it to her. In the photos appeared Alex, smiling, at various moments in his life. She even showed them the same photo they had found on the Internet. In all of them, Alex emitted an air of charm, of charisma. Finally, she stopped on one of the pictures and showed it to her. On it, there appeared a group of five young men in swimming trunks, with the beach in the background, all of them with their arms around each other’s shoulders and smiling at the camera.

  “These were my son’s four best friends: Iñigo, Sergio, Eneko, and Gorka,” she went along pointing them out as she named them. “They were all from this neighbourhood, and had known each other since nursery school. They were all deeply upset when it happened. They were very supportive towards us... At first, when they saw me in the street, they would ask me how we were, but as time went by we lost contact. I think I still have their phone numbers. Just a moment.”

  The woman stood up again in order to fetch a diary. She spent a few seconds searching on different pages, and went along reading out to them the names and numbers of the four young men.

  “And did he ever fight with any one of them? Over, I don’t know, a girlfriend...?” suggested Natalia.

  “A girlfriend?” the woman laughed, remembering. “As you’ve seen, my son was very attractive; ever since he was little, he was an incredibly cute boy, and when he grew up...” she sighed as she caressed with her finger the face
that appeared in one of the photographs. “They would go crazy for him; he had tons of girls all around him, but he was never serious with any of them. He even got it wrong once, and had arranged to meet with more than one girl on the same day. I used to scold him for it, but he would laugh and say that it was nothing serious, that he was only playing... But a serious girlfriend... No, it was never something he ever fought over with any of his friends...”

  “All right, but with such a long-standing relationship, small fights must have arisen,” insisted Natalia.

  “Of course, but never anything of significance,” the woman went quiet for a few seconds, thinking. “I remember that, two weeks before it happened, he was angry with Eneko, and they weren’t speaking, I don’t know why.”

  “Could you tell me anything more about this young man?”

  “Yes, a wonderful lad. He would come on holiday with us, and on a few occasions Alex also went away with him and his parents for a few days. They were inseparable; there were even people who thought they were brothers because they would always be seen together. They even said how incredibly alike they were... Look, I have a photo here of the two of them together.”

  The woman showed Natalia a photograph in which she could see Alex on the same beach with his arm around the shoulders of another young man. There was great similarity between them: tanned skin, the square jaw line, the dazzling smile, the dark hair and eyes. Natalia thought that a girl who had only ever seen Alex in a photograph on the computer could easily confuse the two of them. She passed the photo album to Carlos so that he could take a look. He looked at them for a few seconds and nodded, encouraging her to continue.

  "So the two of them had a fight that was so big they didn't speak to each other again?" Natalia asked her.

  "Well, we could say that," replied the woman in a sad voice. "It was a shame. That day, Eneko had arranged with him to stop by here in order to make amends... The poor boy was held up in traffic, and when he arrived at the house, it was already too late. He found Alex sprawled on the kitchen floor, and he was the one who told the police. The poor boy spent a week saying that it was his fault."

  Natalia looked at Carlos again, searching in his eyes for the same enthusiasm that she was feeling. A perfect suspect: someone whom Alex would have trusted; someone with whom he had even agreed to meet up with; the first person to attend the scene of the crime; plus an enormous physical similarity that would allow him to pass himself off as Alex with his subsequent victims. She wished that they could leave the flat right there and then so that Carlos could go and request an arrest warrant, but she felt that they needed to stay a little longer and get through all of the questions.

  "Did your son have a computer?"

  "Yes, he was a very smart boy. He was a whizz at computers. I've never understood much about those sorts of things, but he got on very well with them. He wanted to study Computer Science at university."

  "Do you know if your son had access to the Internet?"

  "Yes, of course... You should have seen the phone bills we used to get. I would spend the day telling him off, poor thing," the woman sighed again, with her gaze lost on the photographs.

  "Could we see his computer?" asked Natalia, feeling impatient. Maybe they would be able to find conversations with Eneko. The fact that they hadn't spoken in person during that time would not have stopped the young man from sending him messages which could reflect veiled threats, reasons for having killed him.

  "No, I'm sorry," replied the woman. "I tried to preserve his things and leave the room as he kept it, but everybody was telling me that that wasn’t good, so, when Eneko insisted several times on buying it from me because his was much worse, and that the wanted to have something of Alex’s, I gifted it to him.”

  That statement started all of the alarm bells ringing in Natalia’s mind. The look that Carlos shot her confirmed for her that he was also thinking they had found something important.

  ***

  I was awoken by a ray of sun that was shining straight in my eyes. I turned over in my bed, covering myself completely with the blankets, trying get back to sleep, in spite of knowing that it was going to be impossible. A few minutes later, I brought my head back up and looked out of the window. Outside, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. I got up, stretching, cursing myself for not being able to sleep with the blind down.

  Minutes later, with a coffee in my hand, I headed for the computer and turned it on. I had still not received a response to the email I had sent to all of the girls the previous day, and I needed to know how many were still trusting and how many of them had been forbidden from chatting by their parents, frightened by the news on the television. I logged on to the Internet and checked my mail. I had a new email from Patricia. It took me aback. I had spoken with her the previous afternoon, finalising the details for our date on Saturday. We were not due to speak again until six. Maybe she was so nervous about the date that she had not been able to help writing to me before leaving for school. I opened the email and began reading it as I smoked the first cigarette of the morning:

  Hello Alex,

  I don’t have much time to write this, I’m leaving for Zamora in fifteen minutes. An uncle of mine has died. They told us last night, and we have to go to the funeral. I won’t be back until either Sunday night or Monday morning. You don’t know how sorry I am about our date. I spent the whole night crying, but I hope you don’t get angry, and that we can see each other next weekend. We’ll talk on Monday, okay? I really am so sorry; I’m dying for us to be able to be together. I love you.

  Patricia

  P.S. Write me a message if you can, saying you forgive me. I might find some Internet connection in Zamora and be able to log in for a moment to see how you are. I don’t know how I’m going to survive three days without you. X

  With every word I read, I felt my rage increasing. When I finished the email, I got up from the chair and threw the coffee cup against the opposite wall. How could she do this to me? The sacrifice could not be postponed. Besides, how could I be sure that this was not proof of Patricia having been scared by the police statements the previous day, and that she did not want to talk with me anymore? That would mean a delay of weeks; I could not afford it... Patricia was mocking my feelings, my anguish, my rage... Without realizing what I was doing, I began striking the walls, hurling everything within reach whilst a torrent of tears surfaced in my eyes. I felt as the distress grew more and more inside me. There wasn’t any more time now to search for another person; I would not be able to carry out the necessary sacrifice... No, it could not be... Who was going to pay for my sin? How was I going to be able to calm my conscience without anybody paying for my sin?

  I had spent the last three days feeling as the guilt grew inside me, knowing that the moment was coming in which to discharge all of that hate, if I did not want it to turn against me. What could I do now? Nothing, nothing, nothing... There was nothing I could do, everything was lost...

  It was my fault; I didn’t know how to do anything right. I deserved to die instead of them, like I had deserved to die right from the very start, from that very time when I failed... If only I had not gone wrong... I was not even capable of killing myself; I did not even have the bravery to do that... For that reason, their blood had to run instead of mine; for that reason, I needed to kill them even though I did not want to do it... But they chose it, they committed my same sin; for that reason, they needed to pay, it was their moral duty, it was not fair that they should get out of it... Why were they doing this to me? What could I do now? Nothing, nothing, nothing...

  I felt as my breathing sped up, but, in spite of that, the air did not seem to be reaching my lungs. The room began spinning around me and I had to sit down in order to avoid falling over. My heart was beating insanely, beating hard in my chest, threatening to burst... I was going to die... It would all be over. Goodbye to the nightmare, goodbye to the pain; no more hurt, no more blood...

  I leaned back in the chair w
aiting for the arrival of death, but after a few seconds I noticed that my heart rate was returning to normal. It had passed. Death had slipped by my side and refused to put an end to my suffering. Perhaps I did not deserve it; perhaps I had still not paid enough... I did not know; my only certainty was that I was in a living hell, and not finding the way to get out of it. The only way I knew how to keep living was to exchange my sin for hers, but she had escaped.

  The whirlwind of my mind began to speed up again. How was I going to sort it out? I needed to find a solution, there had to be one... I wanted to scream and destroy everything, but I didn't even feel I had the strength for that.

  I ran a hand over my face in order to wipe away the tears, and I discovered that it was covered in blood. I looked at my surroundings. The floor was covered in clothes, papers, and bits of broken glass... It looked as though the tornado in my head had come out to destroy the entire room. I went back to feeling an acute pain in my chest, and I sat down on the floor amongst all of that disorder, whilst I emitted stifled sobs. Nothing was going well in my life, nothing... If only I could find a way out of all this pain, a light at the end of the tunnel...

  And then I saw it... A ray of sunlight was coming in through the window. I smiled through the tears. Maybe it was the same ray that had woke me up; maybe it was trying to tell me something. It was being reflected in one of the shards of glass on the floor, causing it to shine in a magical way. There was my light at the end of the tunnel, the way out of this hell... This time I would do it; it would be easy... To sleep without pain, perhaps forever.

  I picked up the shard and looked at it with fascination as I gently ran it across my wrists. I had not been wrong; it barely hurt. I lay down on the floor and closed my eyes. This time it would work out. The Grim Reaper would not be able to avoid paying me a visit this time. Whilst the tears fell from my eyes and a love song played in my head, I thought about how I wished for there not to be a heaven or a hell; how I wished for there not to be anything... Only oblivion, forgiveness, and the consolation of a sleep that would last forever...