The Invisible Guardian

by Redondo, Dolores

  ‘Engrasi, you’re an adult woman. If you don’t want them to come, they won’t come.’ And he had continued reading his book as if the conversation were about nothing more important than choosing between a lemon tart and a chocolate one.

  Life couldn’t have been more generous to her. She lived in the most beautiful city in the world, in a university environment. Her mind was stimulated and her heart was full of that absurd security born of wanting for nothing, except children, who didn’t arrive during the five years the dream lasted … right up until the day Jean died of a heart attack while walking in the gardens in front of his office in Paris.

  She had no memories of those days, she assumed she had spent them in shock, although she remembered that she had appeared serene and in control of herself, with the self-control born of incredulity in the face of events. Week after week passed between sleeping pills and tearful visits from her sisters-in-law, who insisted on protecting her from the rest of the world, as if that were possible, as if her heart weren’t buried in a Paris cemetery, as cold and dead as Jean’s. Until one night she woke up covered in sweat and sobbing, and realised why she didn’t weep during the day. She got out of bed and walked disconsolately around the enormous apartment looking for a trace of Jean’s presence. Although his glasses were there, his book still open at the page he had marked, his slippers were there and his cramped handwriting filled the boxes on the calendar in the kitchen, she could no longer find him and this realisation left her desolate and made the apartment feel freezing. She could no longer bear to live in Paris.

  Then she returned to Elizondo. Jean had left her enough money that she never had to worry again. She bought a house in that place she thought she didn’t love and she hadn’t left the Baztan Valley since.

  35

  The wind was blowing hard in Aínsa. Jonan had not stopped talking for a single moment of the three hours it had taken them to get there, but Amaia’s taciturn silence seemed to infect him for the last few kilometres, during which he first grew quiet and then turned on the radio and sang along with the choruses of the latest hits. The streets of Aínsa were deserted. Even the warm orange light of the street lamps didn’t manage to diminish the freezing impression of the medieval town swept, as it was by the nocturnal cold, and gusts of Siberian wind caused frost to form on the car windows. Jonan followed the bear experts’ four-by-four as the car’s tyres jolted over the centuries-old cobbled streets until they arrived at a wide square that opened up in front of the entrance to what appeared to be a fortress. The scientists stopped their car next to the wall and Jonan parked beside them. The cold hurt Amaia’s forehead like an invisible hand driving a nail into it. She pulled up the hood of her anorak in an attempt to cover her head as they followed the scientists into the fortress. Apart from the lack of wind, it was not much better inside. They led Amaia and Jonan along narrow grey stone corridors until they arrived in a more open space in which stood a number of gigantic aviaries containing enormous sleeping birds which Amaia was unable to identify in the shadows.

  ‘This is the rehabilitation area for birds which are brought to us injured, with gunshot wounds, after being hit by vehicles, following accidental collisions with high-tension cables, wind turbines …’

  They set off down a different narrow corridor and went up a flight of about ten stairs before Dr Takchenko stopped in front of a fairly average looking white door, which was, however, adorned with a number of security locks. The laboratory consisted of three light, ordered and very spacious rooms, so modern that Amaia thought that if she’d been led there blindfolded she would never have guessed where she was. Nobody would have expected to find such a well-appointed laboratory in the heart of a medieval fortress.

  The scientists hung their anoraks on some hooks and Dr Takchenko put on a strange fitted laboratory coat that opened into a full, pleated skirt and buttoned at the side.

  ‘My mother was a dentist in Russia,’ she explained. ‘Her lab coats and a healthy set of teeth were all she left me when she died.’

  They went to the far end of the laboratory, where various machines stood grouped on a stainless steel workbench. Amaia recognised the DNA amplifier because she had seen them before. Similar to a futuristic yogurt maker, its cheap plastic appearance belied the ingenuity of one of the most sophisticated analytical machines around. A box beside the machine contained Eppendorf tubes, which looked a bit like small, hollow, plastic bullets, in which the material for genetic analysis was placed.

  ‘This is the DNA amplifier you were talking about; it normally takes between three and eight hours to carry out the analysis and then you have to carry out an electrophoresis using agar gel in order to see the results; that would take us at least another two hours. And what we have here,’ continued Dr Takchenko, ‘is the HPLC, the machine we’ll be using to break down the different types of flour from the samples, because the DNA amplifier will only be of any use if the flour is mixed with some kind of biological material.’

  She took some delicate plastic syringes, similar to those that used to be used to administer insulin, from a shelf.

  ‘These are the syringes we’ll use to transfer the samples once we’ve dissolved them in liquid; one injection per sample and we’ll have the results in little more than an hour. We don’t need to do an electrophoresis like we would with the DNA amplifier, but we will have to use a processor with software that analyses the peaks that appear in the samples; each peak corresponds to a specific substance, so we can find hydrocarbons, minerals, residue from the water, wheat, biological substances that we will then have to identify using another analysis, and so on … Because of this, the most complicated part of the process is programming the software with the specific patterns we’re looking for; the more different substances we find the easier it will be to establish the origin of each type of flour. The whole process will take us four or five hours.’

  Amaia was fascinated. ‘I don’t know what surprises me more, the fact that you have such a laboratory here or that a genius like you has dedicated herself to searching for bear traces,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘We’re very fortunate to have Dr Takchenko working with us,’ agreed Dr González. ‘She did exactly this kind of work for years in her own country, but she sent us her CV two years ago and decided to join us. We feel very lucky.’

  Dr Takchenko smiled.

  ‘Why don’t you make some coffee for our guests, Dr González?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, smiling. ‘Dr Takchenko can’t stand compliments. I’ll be a little while, I have to go over to the other side of the building,’ he apologised.

  ‘Go with him please, Jonan. I think one of us being present is enough.’

  ‘Dr González is very pleasant,’ said Amaia when the men had left the room.

  ‘I think so,’ replied Dr Takchenko in her strong accent, ‘a really lovely man.’

  Amaia raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Do you like him?’

  ‘Oh, naturally I hope so. He’s my husband. It’s best that I should like him, isn’t it?’

  ‘But you call him doctor and he calls you …’

  ‘Doctor, yes.’ She shrugged and smiled. ‘What can I say? I take my work seriously and he finds it amusing.’

  ‘For God’s sake, I really need to work on my powers of observation, I had no idea.’

  The scientist worked at the computer for at least an hour, entering the patterns for the analysis; she dissolved the samples that Jonan had brought from Elizondo and some crumbs from the txantxigorri found on Anne’s body with the utmost care. She injected the samples into the machine one by one with an expert hand.

  ‘You might want to pull up a chair, this will take some time.’

  Amaia pulled a wheeled stool over and sat down behind her.

  ‘I know from your husband that you don’t like compliments or praise, but I really must thank you; the results of this analysis could kick-start an investigation that has more or less ground to a halt.’


  ‘It’s nothing, believe me, I’m delighted to do this.’

  ‘At two in the morning?’ laughed Amaia.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to help you; what’s happening in the Baztan Valley is terrifying. If I can do anything that might help you, then I will.’

  Amaia maintained a rather awkward silence while the machine gave off a gentle hum.

  ‘You don’t think there’s a bear, do you?’

  Dr Takchenko stopped what she was doing and turned right round on her chair to face Amaia.

  ‘No, I don’t … and yet there is something.’

  ‘What sort of something? Because the hairs we found at the scene of the crime match all kinds of different animals, they’ve even found kid skin there.’

  ‘What if all the hair belonged to the same creature?’

  ‘Creature? What are you trying to tell me? That there really is a basajaun?’

  ‘I’m not trying to tell you anything, Inspector,’ she said holding out her hands, ‘just that perhaps you need to be a bit more open-minded.’

  ‘It’s strange to hear that from a scientist.’

  ‘Don’t be so surprised, I’m a scientist, but I’m also very bright.’ She smiled and turned back to her work without saying anything more.

  The hours passed slowly, watching Dr Takchenko’s precise movements and listening to the incessant chatter of Jonan and Dr González in the background as they stood talking on the other side of the room. From time to time, Dr Takchenko would lean towards the screen, observe the graphs that kept appearing there and then return to her perusal of what looked like a thick technical manual, which hardly looked gripping but kept her entirely absorbed.

  Finally, at four in the morning, Dr Takchenko sat down in front of the computer again and a few minutes later the printer spat out a sheet of paper. She took it and sighed deeply as she handed it to Amaia.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, there aren’t any matches.’

  Amaia studied the paper for a long moment; she didn’t need to be an expert to spot the difference between the peaks and valleys printed on the sheet and the ones which represented the sample from the txantxigorri. Silently, without taking her eyes off the printed sheet, she contemplated the consequences of those results.

  ‘I’ve been extremely careful, Inspector,’ said Nadia, visibly anxious.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, this is nothing to do with you, you’ve stayed up all night to help me, but I was almost certain I’d find some kind of match.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I’m sorry too.’

  She drove in silence without even putting music on the radio, letting Jonan sleep for the whole journey back. She felt grumpy and frustrated, and for the first time since she had begun investigating the case she was starting to have doubts about whether they would ever solve it. The flour had not led them anywhere and if the suspect had not bought the txantxigorris locally, where did that leave them? Flora had told her that they were definitely baked in a stone oven, but that wasn’t much help either, almost all the restaurants and rotisseries from Pamplona to Zugarramurdi had one, and that was without counting those that were still found at bakeries and the older farmhouses, albeit sometimes unused.

  The motorway from Jaca was new and in good condition, so she thought they would be in Elizondo in about three hours. The loneliness of the early morning wasn’t doing much to lift her spirits; she looked over at the relaxed expression on Jonan’s face as he slept with his head on his balled-up anorak. She almost wished he was awake so she would not feel so alone. What was she doing driving along the motorway from Jaca at six-thirty in the morning? Why wasn’t she at home, in bed with her husband? Perhaps Fermín Montes was right and this case was too big for her. Thinking of Fermín reminded her of what she had seen through the restaurant window, which she had repressed for a few hours until she had almost forgotten it. Montes and Flora. There was something about that partnership that struck her as jarring; she asked herself whether deep down it might be a kind of familial instinct, a strange kind of loyalty that made her maintain the link with Víctor. Jonan had already told her that he had seen the two of them together. She thought about the conversation she had had with Flora at the workshop and remembered that she had already made it clear that she found Montes charming. At the time she had thought it was one of those malicious comments so typical of her sister, but what she had seen at the hotel left no room for doubt: her sister was pulling out all the stops for Montes and he seemed happy. But Víctor, with his freshly ironed shirt and his bunch of roses, had also seemed happy. She pursed her lips and shook her head without realising it. The same old shit, the same old shit, the same old shit.

  The sun had risen when they arrived in Elizondo. She parked opposite the Casa Galarza in Calle Santiago and woke Jonan. The café smelled of coffee and warm croissants. She carried their cups to the table herself while she waited for Jonan to finish in the bathroom. When he came back his hair was wet and he looked much more alert.

  ‘You can go and sleep for a couple of hours,’ she said, sipping her coffee.

  ‘That’s alright, I managed to have a bit of a snooze at least. You’re the one who ought to be tired.’

  The idea of sleeping alone again did not appeal to Amaia at all: besides, she felt as though staying awake would somehow prevent things from getting worse.

  ‘I’m going back to the station, I need to go over the data; I guess we ought to be getting the results from the other girls’ computers today, too,’ she said, suppressing a yawn.

  Strong gusts of damp wind were blowing up the street when they left the bar, and some large, dense, clouds drifted high above their heads. Amaia looked up and was surprised to see a falcon in flight, hovering motionless a hundred or so metres above the ground, displaying its disdain and majesty, watching her from the sky as if studying her soul. Seeing the stillness of that hunter, hovering impassively on the wind, made her feel like a fragile leaf in comparison, whirling wherever the capricious breeze blew her, and left her very uneasy.

  ‘Are you alright, chief?’

  She looked at Jonan, surprised to realise that she had stopped in the middle of the street.

  ‘Let’s go back to the station,’ she said, getting into the car.

  Explaining the hunch that had taken her to Huesca was fairly pointless given the results. In spite of that, Iriarte agreed that it had been a good idea.

  ‘An idea that doesn’t get us anywhere,’ she declared. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Deputy Inspector Zabalza and I have been focusing on the girls’ computers. At first glance there was nothing to suggest that they were members of the same social media forums or had friends in common. Ainhoa Elizasu’s was untouched, but Carla’s younger sister inherited hers following her death and has deleted almost everything. Even so, the hard drive still has the browser history and record of sites she’s visited; the only thing we know for certain is that all three visited blogs related to fashion and style, but they weren’t even the same ones. They were quite active in social forums, in particular on Tuenti, but the groups are quite closed. There’s no sign of stalkers, paedophiles or cybercriminals of any description.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Not much; the laboratory in Zaragoza called. It looks like the skin that was stuck to the cord, which turned out to be from a goat, has the remains of an unidentified substance encrusted on it. They’re going to analyse it further but I’ve nothing more to tell you for now.’

  Amaia sighed deeply.

  ‘A substance encrusted on goatskin,’ she repeated.

  Iriarte opened his hands in a gesture of annoyance.

  ‘It’s fine, Inspector. I want you to visit all the workshops on the list and question the owners about any current or former employees who know how to make txantxigorris. It doesn’t matter if the employees in question haven’t worked there for a few years, we’ll go and visit those people one by one. He had to learn to make them that well somewhere
. I want you to talk to the girls’ friends again, check again in case any of them have remembered anything, like someone who was watching them too closely, someone who offered them a lift, anyone pleasant who approached them under any pretext. I also want you to talk to their classmates and school teachers again, I want to know whether anyone seems friendlier than normal towards the girls. I’ve noticed that at least two teachers taught all three girls at different stages. I’ve underlined their names. Zabalza, check them out: anything that’s put them on our radar previously, but also any rumours; a small scandal is often hushed up out of solidarity.’

  She looked at the men in front of her. They wore worried frowns and looked at her expectantly as they listened carefully to her instructions.

  ‘Guys, we’re part of the team that has to chase down perhaps the most complex murderer of the last few years; I know that it’s a big effort for all of us, but now is the time to make that effort. There has to be something that’s escaped us, a detail, a little clue. In this type of crime, where the criminal develops such an intimate relationship with the victim, and I don’t mean a sexual relationship but rather all the paraphernalia and effort put into the setting up the crime scene before, during and after the death, it’s almost impossible that he hasn’t left anything behind. He kills them, he takes their bodies to the river bank, sometimes to places that are difficult to reach, and then he prepares them, he arranges them, like actresses in his production. Too much work, too much effort, an excessively close relationship with the bodies. We know what his work is like, but if we don’t get anything in the next few days the case might stagnate. What with the fears of the local population and the increase in patrols throughout the valley, it’s quite unlikely he’ll try anything until things have calmed down. There’s no doubt that the pace seems to have picked up, the amount of time between the crimes has been getting shorter, but I don’t feel like we’re going to find ourselves facing a nutcase going into a spin, I think he simply saw an opportunity and acted. He’s not stupid; if he thinks he’s running a risk he’ll stop and go back to his normal life. Therefore our only chance lies in carrying out an impeccable investigation and leaving no stone unturned.’