The Invisible Guardian

by Redondo, Dolores

  ‘All the tombs here are elevated to prevent the seasonal floods from disinterring the dead,’ explained Dupree. ‘It’s not the first time we’ve been visited by evil; the last time it was known as Katrina, but it’s come many times before under different names.’

  Amaia looked at him, perplexed.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be surprised to hear an FBI agent talking this way, but, believe me, this is the curse of my city; the dead can’t be buried here because we’re six feet below sea level, so the bodies are piled up in stone tombs that can hold several generations or entire families, and I think that’s the reason the dead don’t rest in New Orleans, because they don’t receive a Christian burial. It’s the only place in the United States where cemeteries aren’t called cemeteries but cities of the dead, as if the deceased somehow live on here.’

  Amaia stared at him before speaking.

  ‘In Basque the word for cemetery is hilherria. Literally “the town of the dead.’’’

  He looked at her with a smile. ‘We’ve already got several things in common: our close relationship with the French, our bull running festivals on the seventh of July and what we call our cemeteries.’

  Amaia came back to the present. Perhaps it was the idea of avoiding floods that had inspired the townspeople of Elizondo to design their new cemetery like this. In accordance with tradition, the original cemetery had surrounded the church, which at that time was just next to the town hall in the main square until eventually it was transported brick by brick and rebuilt on the site it currently occupied. The same was done with the cemetery, which moved to the Camino de los Alduides up in Anzanborda. There was only one entry in the town archives that referred to the relocation of the graveyard for ‘reasons of public health’, but it was easy to assume that if a great flood had knocked down the church, washing the stones from one of its towers so far away they couldn’t be recovered, it could also wash the surrounding tombs away.

  A skull stood guard above the cemetery gates like the shield above a city wall, its empty eye sockets keeping watch over the visitors, warning them who ruled over the city of the dead. There was a lone cypress just to the right of the entrance, a weeping willow a little beyond it and a beech tree at the far end. A stone cross stood majestically in the middle of the graveyard, with four paved paths diverging from its foot, dividing the cemetery into four perfect quarters amongst which the graves were distributed. The Arbizu family tomb was right at the start of one of the paths. On top of the pantheon rested an angel with an expression of indolence and boredom. Indifferent to human sadness, he seemed to be watching the grave diggers who had used some iron bars to roll the stone aside. Amaia went and stood next to Jonan, who seemed absorbed by the base of the stone cross.

  ‘I always thought you only found stone crosses at crossroads,’ she commented.

  ‘Well, you’re mistaken, chief, the origin of those stone crosses is as old as it is uncertain. In spite of their undeniable link to Christianity, the fact that they’re found at crossroads seems instead to be linked to a system of superstitions and beliefs that are more concerned with the underworld than with life on earth.’

  ‘But wasn’t it the Church who put them there?’

  ‘Not necessarily; it’s more likely the Church christianised them to absorb a pagan custom that was difficult to eradicate. The place where two roads cross has been considered a place of uncertainty since the olden days. You have to decide which road to follow without knowing who you might cross paths with or who might come along the other path. Imagine it’s the middle of the night with no light available and no signs to indicate which road to choose. The fear became so great that on reaching a crossroads, people would stop and wait for some time on the path along which they had come, listening, sharpening their senses, trying to discern the malign presence of a lost soul. There was a deep-rooted belief that those who had died a violent death and those who had killed them didn’t rest in peace but wandered the roads looking for the right place to go, either to be avenged or where they could find someone to help them carry their burden. And a meeting with one of these beings could make you ill or even mad.’

  ‘OK, I understand what you mean about crossroads, but why here, in the cemetery?’

  ‘Don’t look at this place as it is now. Perhaps before the cemetery was moved here this was a place of uncertainty, perhaps three or four roads met here; two of them are obvious, the ones to Elizondo and Beartzun, but perhaps another led down the hill to Etxaide, but has completely disappeared now that we have motorways. Perhaps there was some need to sanctify the place.’

  ‘Jonan, it’s a graveyard, it’s all hallowed ground.’

  ‘Maybe I’m referring to an event that took place before the existence of the cemetery … They also used to erect crosses in places where a horrific act had been committed to purify them: a violent death, a rape, or also in places where witches would meet; there are lots of them around here. The cross has the double function of sanctifying a place and warning you that you’re on uncertain ground. Or it may be that it was put in the cemetery because of its layout. Four paths,’ he said, pointing out how the place had been arranged, ‘perfectly laid out so they meet in the middle of the cemetery, but also, beneath it, in the underworld, which might be swarming with murderers and their victims.’

  Amaia looked at the young deputy inspector with admiration. ‘But would they have buried murderers in a graveyard? I thought they excommunicated them and they had to be buried outside holy ground.’

  ‘Yes, if they were known to be murderers. But if there are murderers who go unpunished today, imagine what it must have been like in the fifteenth century. A serial killer would have been in heaven, in all probability his crimes would have been attributed to some illiterate half-wit or other. The crosses were erected just in case, more in defence against the occult than as a result of what was known to have happened. There’s another argument that loses force in this case, since this one is inside a graveyard, which is that people weren’t allowed to bury aborted babies, still-born babies or children who had died before being baptised in holy ground until well into the twentieth century. This presented a serious problem for the families who wanted to give their souls some kind of protection but were prevented from doing so by the law. In many cases, if the mother died in childbirth along with the baby, the family would hide the child between her legs in order to bury them together. Since burials weren’t recorded, the families would go out in the middle of the night and bury their little ones at the foot of a cross, then carve their initials or a little cross on the base. And that was what I was looking for, but there’s nothing here.’

  ‘Well, I can give you an anthropology lesson on that, if you’ll let me. In the Baztan Valley, children who died before they were baptised used to be buried near their own home.’

  Amaia leant forwards and, on looking towards the entrance, thought she saw someone among the bushes that formed the boundary of the cemetery. She stood up, sure she’d recognised certain familiar features.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Jonan from behind her.

  ‘Freddy, my brother-in-law.’

  His gaunt face was dominated by the deep bags surrounding his red-rimmed eyes. Amaia took a step towards the hedge but the face disappeared amongst the foliage. And then it began to rain. The countless umbrellas and the mourners’ desire to hide themselves beneath them made the attempt to film the funeral much more difficult. Amaia spotted Montes positioned near Anne’s parents. He acknowledged her with a nod and looked as if he was about to say something, but she gestured him to keep quiet.

  Anne Arbizu’s parents were old enough to be her grandparents. Anne had come to them when it seemed that there was no longer any hope of adoption and she had been the centre of their lives since then. The mother, who had clearly taken something, stood upright and was almost holding another woman, who might have been her sister-in-law, upright. Amaia had known them since she was a little girl, although she wasn’t certain what the rel
ationship between them was. Anne’s mother held her arm protectively around the woman while she stared into space, her gaze falling somewhere between her daughter’s coffin and the open grave in the ground. Anne’s father was really crying. A few steps in front of his wife, he leaned forwards, relentlessly caressing the coffin as if he was afraid to break the only connection that linked him to his daughter and brusquely rejecting the hands that tried to help him or the umbrellas that tried in vain to shelter him from the rain that was wetting his face and mingling with his tears. When they started to lower the coffin and he lost contact with the damp wood he collapsed like a tree that has been cut down at its base, lying unconscious among the puddles that had formed on the gravel path.

  It was his gesture that touched her soul, that father’s refusal to let go of the coffin that was the last physical link to his daughter. This show of such intense love was enough to sweep aside the walls which, as a homicide detective, she should have used to protect her personal feelings. And it was the father’s hand, in that gesture which made her secretly envy other parents she saw, that broke the dyke holding back her emotions and an ocean of fear, anxiety and unfulfilled desire to be a mother flooded through the deep breach it opened. Assailed by the wave of emotions, Amaia stepped back a few paces and headed towards the stone cross, trying to disguise her uneasiness. The hand. That was the link. Although she had spent years trying to fall pregnant, she didn’t feel that special fascination for small babies she had seen in her friends or even in her own sisters; she didn’t find her eyes drawn to babies held in their mothers’ arms. But she was aware of the privilege she was missing out on when she saw a mother walking next to her child and holding them by the hand. The protection and confidence embodied by this intimate gesture was greater than any other that could exist between two human beings. Each small hand nestled into a larger one symbolised for her the love, devotion and trust that she imagined were at the heart of being a mother, a role she had yet to play, that she might never play, depriving her forever of the honour of holding a child by the hand. Being a mother would allow her, through another being, blood of her blood, to make up for the happy childhood she had never had, the absence of love she had always felt from a deeply unhappy woman. Her own mother.

  18

  When the burial was over, the rain and the mourners seemed to evaporate, to be replaced by a dense fog that extended throughout the valley along the River Baztan, spreading through the streets, and making them seem, if possible, even sadder. Frozen stiff, Amaia waited opposite the workshop for some time until she saw her sister arrive.

  ‘Wow, the Lady Inspector! What an honour!’ Flora joked. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be out there looking for a murderer?’

  Amaia smiled and wagged her finger at her. ‘That’s what I’m doing.’

  Flora stopped with the key in her hand, suddenly interested and perhaps a bit alarmed. ‘Here in Elizondo?’

  ‘Yes, here, in a case like this the murderer is often someone close to the victim. If only we had one case … but there are three already. It’s got to be someone from here or somewhere very nearby.’

  They went into the workshop and were welcomed by the familiar aroma Amaia had been breathing since her childhood and which lived on in her memory. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see her father in his white trousers and vest rolling out the sheets of puff pastry with an enormous steel rolling pin while her mother weighed out the ingredients in a measuring jug, her hands covered in flour and giving off the smell of aniseed which Amaia would always associate with her. She looked at the kneading trough and a shiver ran up her back and an intense feeling of nausea turned her stomach. She was suddenly stunned by an overwhelming wave of dark memories, and the echoes of the past made her freeze up completely. She squeezed her eyes tight shut, trying to fight down the horror she felt on seeing it again.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Flora, surprised by her sister’s expression.

  ‘Aita and Ama, how hard they used to work here and how happy they seemed,’ she lied.

  ‘It’s true, they did work hard,’ said Flora while she washed her hands. ‘But there were two of them and now I have to do much more, but on my own … Although you don’t seem too worried about that, do you?’

  ‘I know it’s a lot of work, Flora, but you didn’t listen to the second part: how happy they seemed doing it. There’s no doubt that was the key to their success, as it is for yours.’

  ‘Oh, really? What would you know? Do you think I’m happy doing this?’ she said, turning to her sister as she lowered the office blinds.

  ‘Well, you’re doing very well from where I’m standing! You’ve written books, you’re going to make a television programme, Mantecadas Salazar is mentioned in the media throughout Europe and you’re rich. You’re not exactly the embodiment of failure.’

  Her sister’s face seemed attentive, weighing up Amaia’s words and doubtless trying to find a double meaning in them.

  ‘I don’t think you would have been so successful if your heart wasn’t in your work,’ Amaia continued. ‘You’ve got good reason to be very satisfied and satisfaction and happiness aren’t so very different.’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted her sister, raising her eyebrows, ‘perhaps now, but in order to get here …’

  ‘Flora, we all have to make our own way.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, indignantly. ‘Well I’d like to know what way you’ve had to make?’

  ‘I can assure you that I haven’t got to where I am now without making an effort,’ replied Amaia, maintaining the calm, low tone of voice that so annoyed her sister.

  ‘Fine, but you chose to make your effort, mine was imposed on me, I had no help, everyone failed me, you moved away, Víctor was propping up the bar and as for your sister …’

  Amaia remained silent for a moment weighing up the reproach she had heard from both her sisters in the space of twenty-four hours.

  ‘You could have chosen too, if this wasn’t what you wanted.’

  ‘And who asked me what it was that I wanted?’

  ‘Flora …’

  ‘No, tell me, who asked me if I wanted to stay here rolling out puff pastry?’

  ‘Flora, you could have chosen, just like everybody else, but you chose not to choose … Nobody asked me either. I made my decision and chose the path I wanted to take.’

  ‘Not giving a damn about anyone else.’

  ‘That’s not true, Flora, and nor was anybody hurt by it. Unlike you and Ros, I never liked the workshop, not even when I was little … I always ran off as soon as I could and I only used to come here because I was made to, and you know that as well as I do. I didn’t want to work here, I studied and the aitas were fine with that.’

  ‘Ama wasn’t really, but in any case, they were happy enough: they already had me and Ros to continue the family tradition.’

  ‘You had a choice.’

  Flora exploded.

  ‘You have no idea what responsibility is,’ she said, turning and pointing an accusatory finger.

  ‘Oh, please …’ begged Amaia, disgusted.

  ‘No please nor anything else … Neither you nor your sister nor that loser Víctor know what the word means …’

  ‘I can see you’ve got it in for everyone,’ Amaia gave a tired smile and kept her voice level. ‘Flora, you don’t know me anymore, I’m not that little nine-year-old girl who used to run off out of the workshop. I can assure you that in my job, every day …’

  ‘Your job?’ Flora interrupted her. ‘Who’s talking about your job? Only you, little sister. I’m talking about the family, the fact that someone had to look after the business.’

  ‘For God’s sake, you sound like Michael Corleone … The business, the family, the Mafia.’ Amaia pretended to seal her lips, and this irritated her sister even more. Flora looked at her furiously and slammed the cloth she was holding onto the table before sitting down, making the lamp that lit the desk shake. ‘Flora, you and Ros spent your whole l
ives here, the two of you started showing an interest in pastry-making when you were little, you loved spending hours here, Ros already knew how to make doughnuts and madeleines by the age of three …’

  ‘Your sister,’ Flora murmured dismissively, ‘didn’t stay passionate about it for long, not after she saw that it was real work. Or do you think the business would have lasted long the way our parents were running it? I renovated this workshop from the foundations to the roof, I modernised it, I made it competitive. Do you have any idea what sort of standards you have to meet in order to sell in Europe? The only thing that hasn’t changed is the name, Mantecadas Salazar, and the plaque from when our great-great-grandparents founded it.’

  ‘Don’t you see that I’m right, Flora? Only you were capable of this vision of the future, because you adored this company.’

  Her last words had made an impression on Flora. She saw how the lines of her face, which had fixed themselves in an expression of intolerant disdain, rearranged themselves into an expression of self-satisfied pride. She looked around, sitting up straight in her chair.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘but it wasn’t a question of adoring it or, as you say, that it made me happy. Someone had to do it, and, as usual, it fell to me, since, moreover, I’m the only one with the capacity to make it work. It required my good sense and responsible nature, but it was still an obligation and a burden. It was necessary to maintain the family heritage, the business that they worked so hard to pass on to us. To maintain the good name and the tradition. With pride, with strength.’