“He wasn’t meddling in the investigation, Carlos. It’s his job,” Aguirre looked at him sadly before continuing. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take you off the case.”
“What?” asked Carlos, in surprise. “You can’t do that to me. I’m so close to catching him.”
“You’ve been telling me that for weeks, and we haven’t got anything. If at least there had been some result, I could have overlooked all of this, but the way it is... Understand this, Carlos. I have trusted in you a lot, but I don’t have any other way out of this.”
Natalia fixed an injured look on Aguirre. She could not allow this injustice to be committed; they could not betray Carlos like this after so many years of working there.
“There has to be another solution,” she mediated. “You know that Carlos is a great professional. I’ll take full responsibility. If necessary, I’ll leave the station, but give him one more opportunity.”
“I’m sorry. This order is not mine; my hands are tied. I know that Carlos is a good investigator, one of the best, and we have great expectations riding on you as well. That’s why I don’t want to lose either one of you,” the look in Aguirre’s eyes seemed sincere. “I’ve really fought for them not to open a file on the two of you. I can’t do anything else.”
Carlos stood up to leave the office. Natalia did the same, looking at him in concern. His fists were clenched and his jaw was shut tight. She needed to get him out of there before he said anything that could make the situation even worse. She followed him to the door, but he turned around one more time:
“This is not fair, and you know it. And I’m going to say one more thing to you. I have worked well; I have given everything to this case. And so has she, despite the fact it wasn’t even her job. And if we haven’t been able to catch him, nobody will.”
“I know how important it is for the two of you, Carlos. That is one of the reasons why you both should leave the case.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s just another case, Carlos. The two of you have taken it as something personal. Don’t you realise what it’s doing to you? Look at her, and take a look at yourself as well.”
“Think whatever you like,” replied Carlos. “But I’m convinced that within a few weeks you’ll all come asking us to return to the case. And the worst thing of all is that we’ll say yes, because nobody else in the world knows that son of a bitch like we do, and because nobody else is so hell-bent on catching him. To you people, ‘it’s just another case’.”
Aguirre remained quiet, as if he did not know what else to say to him. Carlos went back towards the door and opened it. Natalia followed him down the long corridors, almost running in order to keep up with him.
Once they got outside, they set off walking towards their cars. Natalia followed him, allowing him to think. She looked up towards the sky, trying to see the stars, but all she found were dense grey clouds. She felt insignificant, lost in a world that felt big to her. They stopped in front of Carlos’s car and looked at each other for a few seconds in silence.
“We can carry on,” she said, unable to stay quiet one second longer. “We can’t give up now.”
Carlos turned towards the car and struck the roof with both fists. He remained motionless, his eyes closed, trying to control his breathing and his rage. Natalia looked at him, afraid, not knowing what to say to him. He opened his eyes again and looked at her, shaking his head.
“Not now, Natalia,” he opened the car door and got in. “I don’t want to talk about this now.”
He closed the door hard and pulled away. Natalia stood still, feeling more alone and lost than ever before in her life, whilst the car progressively disappeared into the distance, merging into the black of the night.
III. THE RESULTS
CHAPTER ONE
Natalia stood still, indecisive, with her finger one centimetre away from Carlos’s doorbell. She did not know whether she was doing the right thing, nor how he would take her showing up there and asking him for explanations, but neither did she know what else she could do. She had spent two weeks waiting for Carlos to overcome his depression. She was aware that he would be hurt and furious about not having been able to catch Charon. They all were. It had seemed that this time it was certain, that nothing was going to fail, that he would fall into their hands and the nightmare would be over forever. But it had not been that way.
It was painful and distressing, but they could not allow the thing to defeat them. She did not want to think that she might well have to walk towards some abandoned setting either, to lift another sheet beneath the bright lights of a police cordon. That same image had continually repeated itself in her dreams ever since she had realised that everything would still be the same as it was before, and that Charon would go back to being as inaccessible as he had always been: a shadow, a ghost... Ever since that night, they had not seen him return to the Internet, and that gave them hope that perhaps the whole thing had finished, but she knew that she must not allow herself to be swept along by that wishful thinking. Until they were sure that they had put an end to him, they had to continue working with all their strength. And therein lay the problem: she got the feeling that Carlos had none left.
Natalia had understood his behaviour straight away. The investigation was testing their resistance, their ability to keep fighting in spite of not getting anywhere, and of the pain entailed by every defeat... But the days had gone by, and Carlos was still the same. He had not been over to her flat, he avoided her at work, and he gave her the run-around whenever she called him on the phone to ask him to meet up with them... All she received were confused excuses about how busy he was, and in his voice Natalia could tell that he was sinking into a bottomless pit of alcohol and depression.
She did not want to think about the possibility of the whole thing having ended, of them all going their separate ways and giving up the fight. She could not allow Charon to defeat them. And most of all, she could not allow herself to lose Carlos, to never see him again, or for there to come a day when they only greeted each other as they crossed paths in the corridors, like two acquaintances who had never shared anything of significance. Even though he may not have known it, he had taken on an agreement upon promising her his friendship. It had been important to her, and she was not going to allow it to fall by the wayside. That thought gave her strength, so she rang the doorbell with insistence. A few seconds later, she heard the sound of some footsteps on the other side. The door opened, and Carlos appeared, leaning on the lintel, with a half-empty glass in his hand and an expression that was somewhere between surprise and anger in his eyes.
She did not know what to say to him. She limited herself to looking at him, waiting to be invited in. Carlos turned around and headed towards the sofa, leaving the door open so that she could come in. Natalia noted his shaky and uncertain gait, the untidiness of the room, the empty bottles on top of the table... She sighed, slowly closed the door, and went up to him until she was behind him. Carlos sat down on the sofa and hung his head, to bury it in his hands, as if he did not dare meet her gaze. Natalia sat down next to him in silence, concerned. She had spend days rehearsing speeches about the responsibility that obliged them to continue on with the case, about their chances of success, about the satisfaction they would get from knowing that they were still doing the right thing, but now it seemed to her that none of that would have any value for a person who no longer cared about anything. Or who perhaps cared too much to be able to continue living with it.
“Why have you come?” he asked her, looking up. His tone did not reflect aggression, only genuine curiosity.
Natalia did not answer. Nothing had prepared her for such a defeated Carlos; for the person who had always encouraged her and made her see hope in the darkest of moments, to have become this grey spectre. She wanted to help him, to bring him back, to take joy in his smile again and the mischievous glint in his eyes, but she did not know how to do it. She sat looking at him,
feeling as a single solitary tear slipped down her cheek.
“You have to come back,” she pleaded in a whisper.
“For what? It’s been no use, we’ll never catch him...” he replied in a tired voice.
She had expected him to show anger towards Charon, towards Aguirre or Roberto, towards the world in general... She had planned on using that rebellion, that force that he had always had, to make him come back. But she did not know what to do against this living death that he had imposed upon himself. Even so, she decided to try it, even though Carlos’s sadness was turning out to be contagious and pulling her towards the bitterness like a black hole, making all of her arguments seem ridiculous to her and lacking in sense.
“Of course it’s been of some use,” she insisted. “We’re much closer than we were to start with. We’ll catch him this time.”
“We’ve spent almost two months saying that, and it’s not true. We’re just being idiots,” he faced her as, little by little, his voice began to rise in volume. “He’s laughing at us. Do you not realise that, or something?”
The explosion of rage gave Natalia the urge to smile. He was still alive; he could still get angry. Fury; now that was something she could fight.
“I already warned you from the beginning that it was not easy catching a serial killer. It requires a strong and persistent personality...” she said.
“...which I don’t have. I’m not the person you both need, and nor am I the right person to take this case. I give up. I’m going to give free rein to Roberto.”
“You can’t do that. Roberto won’t feel it like we do... You know that nobody else could solve it,” Natalia lowered the tone of her voice. “And, besides, what about Gus and me? You can’t leave us this way.”
“Neither can I allow myself the burden of another victim,” he looked imploringly at her. “Do you not see the damage this is doing to me?”
Carlos went back to burying his head in his arms whilst he tried to recover his composure. She felt guilty for continuing to insist. She was feeling the same pain; she could understand him better than anybody else in the world. But she knew that Carlos would not be able to carry on going forward if he gave up, if he continued destroying himself like he had been doing the last two weeks. She put her arm around his shoulders, so that he could feel her close by, so that she could transmit her support to him...
“I believe in you...” Natalia waited a few seconds in case he wanted to reply, but she did not receive any response. “And I think that you can’t leave the case.”
“Of course I can leave it. It’s going to be the best thing for everyone...”
“No, you can’t. No matter how much you insist on thinking that we’ve failed, right now there’s a young girl who’s lying in her bed instead of on a table in the post-mortem room, and that is thanks to our work. And I don’t think that anybody else would have achieved that.”
“I think they could,” he insisted, moving away from her.
“Well I think that if you leave the case, and then another victim turns up, you’re going to spend the rest of your life blaming yourself for not having tried, thinking that maybe you could have been able to save her. And you’ll begin torturing yourself when you realise just how close we were, about how many leads we had...”
“All I see are false leads and closed off roads.”
“That is not true. We have the psychiatric reports; we have Gus and his Internet friends to make life harder for him; we know where the murders began... We can carry on investigating,” her enthusiasm was more authentic now.
“And what if those roads are also closed?”
“We’ll find others. But it has to be the three of us together,” she smiled tenderly at him. “You’re not going to leave us without the third musketeer, are you?”
“And what about d’Artagnan?” retorted Carlos, cracking a half-smile.
“Ah, well I don’t know about that...” that one threw her off. A joke, a smile. She was on the verge of bringing him back. “We’ll search for one yet, don’t you worry about that.”
“All right, but, if that means another paid collaborator, you’re in charge of that yourself.”
“Does that mean you’re coming back?”
“I’ll try,” replied Carlos after hesitating for a couple of seconds. “If that’s going to be the only way of getting you to leave my house...”
“You don’t think I’m going to go away and leave you like this just because you’ve conceded that I’m right, do you?”
“Well to tell the truth, I did think it.”
“No. We need you to be in good shape. Right now you’re going to take a shower whilst I tidy all of this up. And then you’re going to go to bed. And I don’t plan on going home until you’re under the covers.”
Carlos stood up without protest and headed for the bathroom. Once Natalia heard the sound of running water, she began to tidy up the room, starting off by getting rid of all the vodka bottles. A few minutes later, she heard him get out and head for the bedroom. She continued trying to impose a bit of order. When she finished, she walked to the bedroom to tell him that she was leaving. She softly knocked on the door but did not get a response. She slowly opened it and went in. He was in a deep sleep, breathing peacefully. She sat down on a nearby armchair and watched him. He seemed calm, as if at least in sleep the sadness could not reach him. She smiled as she gazed at him, feeling how the anguish of the last few days disappeared. She was not alone anymore; she had something to live for. She observed him, illuminated by the gentle light from the bedside table, taking notice of all the details that she thought she would never be able to appreciate so close up again: his dark and unruly hair, the curvature of his eyebrows, his features in shadow... She felt the desire to reach out her hand and caress his face, but did not dare. She did not want to wake him. She wanted to enjoy a few more seconds of contemplating him, without explanations or fears, feeling the satisfaction of having restored him, of loving him in silence. She was surprised by that thought, and terrified upon realising something that she must have been hiding from herself for a long time. Did she really love him? Or was it fear of going back to being alone again?”
She got even more comfortable in the armchair, feeling very tired now that the nerves had passed. The best thing would be to look after him that night so that he would not be able to regret the idea of returning to the investigation the following day. She closed her eyes and, within a few seconds, she was asleep.
***
Natalia blinked several times, opened her eyes, and saw Carlos, who was watching her from the bed. She looked at him, momentarily disorientated, and smiled at him.
“Good morning,” she greeted him, still sleepy. “Have you been awake for long?”
“No, hardly at all. I was still trying to work out what you were doing here.”
“It got very late and, as I wanted to be sure that you weren’t going to get back up again to rescue your bottles, I decided to stay. Does that bother you?”
“No, not at all,” Carlos smiled, appreciative. “But you must be wrecked; you shouldn’t have slept in that armchair.”
“It’s because you don’t have any more beds.”
“Sure, but this one is very big,” Carlos shot her a mischievous smile.
“Thanks but, what with the state you were in last night, you wouldn’t have been able to guarantee to me that you were going to behave like a gentleman.”
“There was no need for me to. This is the second time now that we’ve spent the night together, woman. We’ll have to start loosening up about it, eh?”
Natalia got up out of the armchair, laughing, and threw a cushion at him.
“I’m going to go and make you a strong cup of coffee. I think the alcohol is still affecting your brain,” she looked at her watch as she headed for the door. “And hurry up and get dressed, otherwise we’re going to be late.”
She left the bedroom and went into the kitchen. She was feeling full of hope, fu
ll of renewed strength. One doubt struck her. Would Carlos have been sober enough the previous night to remember the promise he had made to her? She turned on the coffee machine and returned to the bedroom. Carlos was still lying down, with his hands behind his head, and he was looking at the ceiling with a sleepy air.
“Breakfast will be ready shortly. Listen, haven’t I just told you to get up or we’ll be late?”
“I’m coming. It’ll only take me a minute to get dressed.”
“You do remember what you said yesterday, don’t you? About your coming back to the investigation?”
“Of course. As soon as I leave work, I’ll stop by your place.”
She smiled and returned to the kitchen. She continued preparing the breakfast whilst she listened to the noises he made as he got ready. She banished from her mind the fear of fresh failures. She did not care what happened in the future. That morning, she was feeling happy.
***
Carlos entered Natalia's flat and cast a surprised glance at the two new computers that Gus was working on.
"Where’s all this come from?" he asked in astonishment.
"It's my contribution to the cause. Remember we had to return the ones belonging to the girls,” replied Natalia with a smile.
“Are you crazy?” asked Carlos, incredulous. “Do you know what all this costs?”
“Better than you do. Remember who’s paid for them.”
“I also told her that there was no need to buy anything. I could have brought my own and we would have managed,” said Gus. “Anyway, we have a copy of the hard disks of all the girls so that, unfortunately for me, I’ve been able to spend these last two weeks going over more chat threads.”
“And have you found anything?” asked Carlos, sitting down beside him.
“Just one new hypothesis,” replied Gus. "In spite of the fact that all of the girls had asked him for it, Charon always refused to talk on the phone with them."
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