The Invisible Guardian

by Redondo, Dolores

  ‘I don’t think it, I know it. My husband, my husband has killed my little girl.’

  ‘Why do you think that? Did he tell you so?’

  ‘He didn’t need to tell me, I know, I’ve known it the whole time but I didn’t want to believe it.

  ‘I was a widow when Johana was born, I came to Spain with nothing and I met him here. We got married and he brought my daughter up as if she were his own … But everything changed a while ago. Johana rejected him. I thought she was just being a teenager, if you know what I mean? Johana became pretty, as you’ve seen, and her father started telling me that I needed to keep her on a tighter rein because everyone knows they get silly at that age and all that nonsense about boys starts, and I … Well, Johana was always a very good girl, she never gave me any kind of trouble, she was doing well at school and her teachers were pleased with her, they always told me so, you can ask them if you like.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ Amaia assured her.

  ‘She wasn’t one of those teenage girls who become antisocial. She helped at home, looked after her little sister, but he was always on her case, what hours she kept, her comings and goings. She complained, and I … I let it be, because I thought he was very worried about her, although sometimes I felt things were going so far that he wanted to control her. I did used to tell him so from time to time, and he would say to me, “If you let her run wild she’ll go with boys and come back to you pregnant.” I was afraid. But other times I saw how he looked at her, and I didn’t like it, no, I didn’t like it one bit. But I didn’t say anything, except for one time. Johana was wearing a short skirt and she bent down to play with her little sister and I saw how he was looking at her, and it made me sick, and I had a go at him and do you know what he said? He said, “That’s the way men look at your daughter if she goes round flaunting herself.” Because she wasn’t his daughter anymore; she was before, but now he talked to me about “your” daughter. And the only thing I did was send her to change her clothes.’

  Amaia looked at Padua before asking, ‘Alright … Your husband was very worried about Johana, perhaps too worried, but why do you think he had anything to do with her death?’

  ‘You didn’t see him, Inspector, he was obsessed, he even put one of those tracking devices on her phone in order to know where she was every moment of the day. And as soon as she disappeared I told him, “Look for her with the tracker,” and he replied, “I got rid of that service. I ended the contract, it’s not necessary anymore, your daughter went because she’s a waste of space, you encouraged her, and she won’t come back, she doesn’t want to be found and that’s the best thing for everyone.” That’s what he told me.’

  Amaia opened the folder offered to her by Lieutenant Padua, who seemed resolved to remain silent for the most part.

  ‘Let’s see, Johana disappeared on a Saturday, and you filed the missing persons report the following day, Sunday. However, you called the barracks to say that Johana had returned home on Wednesday while you were at work to collect her things, her ID card, clothes and some money, and to say that she had gone away with a boy. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, I called because he told me to. I arrived home, he told me she had come and had gone again and that she had taken her things with her. Why wouldn’t I believe him? Johana had gone to stay at a friend’s house twice before when he’d yelled at her. But I always knew that she was going to come back and I would say as much to him, “She’ll come back.” And do you know why? Because she didn’t take her little mouse. A little cuddly toy she’s had since she was tiny; she still keeps it on her bed. And I knew that if my daughter went back to my house one day she would take her Toothy, which was what she called him, with her. So I went into her room, saw that he was missing and my heart fell. I believed him.’

  ‘What changed to make you go back to the barracks the next day to ask them to keep looking for her?’

  ‘Her clothes. I don’t know if you know what teenage girls are like when it comes to clothes, but I knew her very well, and when I saw which clothes were missing I knew my daughter hadn’t been there. She left her favourite jeans behind and some of her outfits were only half missing. I don’t know if you understand me; she had a specific t-shirt she would wear with a certain skirt or pair of trousers and she had only taken one half of the outfit, summer clothes that you can’t wear at the moment, a jersey that was too small for her … Even her newest clothes were still there, things that she had nagged me for like crazy until I bought them for her only a week ago.’

  ‘Where’s your husband now?’

  ‘When the Guardia Civil came round this morning to tell us that they’d found her body he turned white as a sheet and was so ill he could hardly stand up. He had to go to bed, but I think he’s ill because he knows what he’s done, and he knows that they’re going to go after him. They will, won’t they?’

  Amaia stood up.

  ‘Stay here, I’ll arrange a car to take you home.’ The woman started to protest, but Amaia interrupted her. ‘Your daughter’s body will remain here for the moment, and now I need your help, I need you to go home. I want to put an end to this so that Johana and those who love her can be at peace, but you’ll have to do what I ask of you.’

  Inés looked up until she met Amaia’s eyes.

  ‘I’ll do as you say.’ And she started to cry.

  They could see Inés from the office across the hallway, doubled over and pressing an already-damp white handkerchief she had taken out of her bag against her face, and the little girl standing a couple of steps away from her mother, looking at her in desolation without daring to touch her.

  ‘What’s the husband called?’

  Padua, who had remained silent until that point, cleared his throat to strengthen his voice, which despite this came out huskily and too quietly .

  ‘Jasón, Jasón Medina,’ he said, literally collapsing into a chair.

  ‘Did you notice that she didn’t say his name a single time?’

  Padua seemed to think about that.

  ‘How do you want to take this forward? I want to question Jasón Medina. You tell me whether I should do it at the barracks or the police station.’

  Lieutenant Padua sat up a bit straighter and turned to look at a point on the wall before answering.

  ‘The correct thing would be for it to happen at the barracks, after all, it’s our case and we found the body, and if you rule it out as being a crime committed by the basajaun … I’ll call right now and tell them to arrest him and take him to the barracks. I’ll be sure to make your cooperation known in any case.’

  Padua got up, recovering his composure as he did so, rifled through his jacket until he pulled out a mobile, dialled and left the office, excusing himself awkwardly.

  ‘I’ll be sure to make your cooperation known in any case,’ Jonan imitated him. ‘He’ll look a right idiot.’

  ‘What do you three think?’ Amaia asked.

  ‘He’s an imitator, like I said before; he doesn’t match my idea of the basajaun, although the fact that the husband isn’t the girl’s father is something we’ll have to keep in mind. Lots of sexual assaults are perpetrated by the partner of the victim’s mother. The fact that he no longer refers to Johana as his daughter helps him to distance himself and to see her as just another woman and not as a member of his family. And it’s still strange that he lied about the girl being at home on Wednesday.’

  ‘Perhaps he did it to calm the mother down,’ suggested Jonan.

  ‘Or perhaps because he had raped and killed her and he knew that the girl wouldn’t come home, so his obsession immediately stopped and he even went as far as cancelling the phone tracking service.’

  Amaia frowned, unconvinced, as she looked from one to the other.

  ‘I don’t know, I’m almost certain the father had something to do with this, but there are details that just don’t add up. Of course he’s not the basajaun; the killer in this case is a bungling copy-cat who read the papers and decide
d to disguise his crime with all the details he remembered. On the one hand there’s the marked sexual element in the early aggression, which led him to hit her in a rage, tear her clothes off her, rape her, strangle her.… And at the same time there’s a beauty verging on adoration in this crime. It leaves me with two such opposing profiles that I would even hazard a guess that there are two killers, who, on the other hand, are so different in their modi operandi and in the representation of their fantasy that it would be impossible for them to bring themselves to collaborate on the same crime. It’s like a kind of cruel, bestial, bloody Mr Hyde and a methodical, scrupulous and remorseful Dr Jekyll who had no qualms about taking the girl’s forearm, but still wanted to preserve the body so much that he poured perfume on it, perhaps to prolong the sensation of life, perhaps to extend his own fantasy.’

  Padua burst into the small office, his mobile in his hand.

  ‘Jasón Medina has fled, a patrol just went to his house to bring him to the barracks and they found the house empty; he left so fast he even forgot to close the door. The drawers and wardrobes are in a mess as if he’d gathered the essentials for his escape and the car’s missing.’

  ‘Take his wife back as soon as you can, get them to see if there’s any money missing and whether he’s taken his passport. It’s possible he’ll try to leave the country. Don’t leave her alone, station someone at the house. And send out an arrest warrant for Jasón Medina.’

  ‘I know how to do my job,’ said Padua coldly.

  30

  The rain, which had not let up all day, became even heavier as they neared Elizondo. The evening light had fled rapidly towards the west which was typical of winter evenings. Nonetheless, it still put Amaia in a bad mood every day due to her sense of feeling cheated and the sense of disappointment which accompanied it. A thick fog was coming down off the hillsides, slow and heavy, moving across the ground metre by metre and reinforcing the impression of a boat in the middle of the sea, which had been her first thought on seeing the new police station.

  Amaia uploaded the photos she had taken in the hut that morning onto the computer and gave herself over to a painstaking observation of the images for the next hour. The place which Johana’s killer had chosen was a message in itself, a message so different from the one sent by the other crimes that it had to hold some information. Why had he chosen that particular place? Padua had said that hunters and day-trippers often visited it, but it wasn’t the hunting season and the hikers didn’t make their first appearance until the spring. Whoever took Johana there must have known this and must have been very certain that he wouldn’t be interrupted while he carried out his crime. She went back to a photo that had been taken just at the point where the dirt track began and from which the hut was invisible. She picked up the phone and dialled Lieutenant Padua’s number.

  ‘Inspector Salazar, I was just about to call you. We accompanied Inés to the bank and she discovered that, according to the cashier, her husband had cleared out their account; it looks like he did it as soon as she left the house. His passport is also missing and we’ve sent a warning out to the stations and airports.’

  ‘Good, but I’m calling you about something else …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What did Jasón Medina do for a living?’

  ‘He’s a car mechanic, he works at a garage in the town … his job is basically to change people’s oil and tyres … we’ve asked for a warrant to search the garage as well …’

  The police station was silent. After the tense day in Pamplona she had sent Jonan and Iriarte to get something to eat as soon as they arrived back in Elizondo.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to eat anything,’ Jonan had said.

  ‘Go anyway; you’d be surprised what a calamari sandwich and a beer can do for you.’

  Holding a cup of coffee so hot she could only take small sips, she studied the photos of the crime scene, sure that there was something more to them. All she could hear behind her was the rustling of pages coming from Zabalza’s desk.

  ‘Have you been here all day, Deputy Inspector?’

  He stiffened, as if he suddenly felt uncomfortable.

  ‘I was here all morning, but I went out for a while this afternoon.’

  ‘I suppose there’s no news.’

  ‘Nothing major. Freddy is still stable in spite of the seriousness of his condition, and there’s no news from the forensics laboratory. The bear experts rang, they said something about having a meeting with you that you didn’t attend and I explained that you weren’t available today. They left some telephone numbers and their address; they’re staying at the Hotel Baztán, about five kilometres or so from here.’

  ‘I know where it is.’

  ‘It’s true, I always forget you’re from here.’

  Amaia thought that she had never felt more of an outsider than in that moment.

  ‘I’ll call them later …’

  She thought for a moment about whether or not to ask after Montes and finally made up her mind.

  ‘Zabalza, do you know whether Inspector Montes has been in at all today?’

  ‘He came in first thing this afternoon. Since the warrant for the flour samples from the workshops had just arrived he came with me to one of them at Bera and then we went to five other workshops around the valley. When we finished we came back and sent the samples to the laboratory in line with procedure.’

  Zabalza seemed a bit nervous as he explained his actions, almost as if he was being examined. Amaia remembered the incident at the hospital and decided that perhaps Deputy Inspector Zabalza was the kind of person who took everything as a personal criticism.

  ‘… Inspector?’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’

  ‘I was saying that I hope everything’s OK, that you agree with the steps we’ve taken.’

  ‘Oh, yes, everything’s OK, very good, now we just have to wait for the results.’

  Zabalza didn’t answer. He continued checking data at his desk, while observing Amaia when she bent over the computer again. He didn’t like her; he’d heard of her, the star inspector who had spent time with the FBI in the United States, and now that he’d met her he thought she was an arrogant bitch who seemed to expect everyone to kowtow whenever she walked past. He felt uncomfortable because he knew deep down that he had put his foot in it with the thing about her sister, but since she had been around even Iriarte seemed to give greater importance to things like that, which weren’t that significant in the grand scheme of things. And now this fixation with Montes, an old-school guy who he did like, in part, he supposed because he had enough guts to face up to the star inspector. And as for him, he felt frustrated at times by this investigation that wasn’t going anywhere and by having to put up with the bursts of brilliance from Inspector Salazar, who, in his opinion, had made mistakes the whole way through. He wondered how long it would take the general commissioner to assign the case to one of the good detectives instead of continuing to encourage that show-off American crime series investigator. His mobile vibrated in his pocket, silently indicating that he had a new message. He recognised the number before he opened it; although he had deleted the name months ago, the messages kept coming and he kept opening them. There, covered in droplets of sweat, was a male torso he recognised instantly, plunging him into an ecstasy of desire and making him run his tongue involuntarily over his lips. He immediately became aware of where he was and bashfully hid the phone with his hands and looked behind him as if afraid that someone might be standing there. He hid the photo, but he didn’t delete it. He knew all too well what would happen next. His mood would get worse and worse over the next few days as his sense of guilt increased. He wanted to stay with Marisa, they’d been together eight months, he loved her, she was pretty, kind, they got on well together, but … the presence of that photo would torture him for the whole week, just because he wasn’t able to screw up his courage to delete it. He would try, as he had done with the previous ones, but he k
new that that night, when he was on his own after Marisa went home, he would take one last look at those photos, and not only would he fail to delete them, he would have to make a serious effort not to dial Santy’s number, not to ask him to come over, to conquer the intense desire running through his body. He had met him at a gym a year ago. Santy had been in a two-year relationship with a girl at that point and Zabalza had been single. They arranged to go out running together, to go for a drink, Zabalza had even introduced him to a couple of girls with whom he’d had a bit of fun a few times. Then one morning the previous summer after their run Santy had had a shower at his house, which was closer to the route they ran, and when he’d got out of the shower, damp and naked, they had looked each other in the eye for a moment and fallen into bed together. They had met at his house every morning for a week, and every morning desire had conquered his confusion and his firm decision that it wouldn’t happen again. A week later, he went back to work. And things got serious with Marisa. He told Santy they wouldn’t be seeing each other anymore and asked him not to call him. They had both kept their word, but Santy employed this kind of passive resistance in which he didn’t call him, but sent him photos of his naked body that drove him so crazy he couldn’t think of anything but the man and having sex with him. Those images would come to mind at any moment, causing him indescribable anxiety, especially when sex with Marisa became an endless marathon of feline mewling that turned him off completely and made him think of his passionate, vertiginous, febrile encounters with Santy. He felt irritable and impatient like someone waiting for something to happen, for a wave or a gale to blow everything away, to put a definite end to his confusion, bringing a new dawn in which he could erase the last eight months. Asking himself how much longer he could stand the pressure, he looked over at the inspector again. She was working at her computer going over the photos they had already looked at a hundred times, and he hated everything about her.