No Resurrection

by Martínez Guzmán, Roberto; Christina Hopkinson, Rachel;

  “Can we be sure that Samuel isn’t in danger?”

  “Yes, don’t worry,” Antón confirmed, convinced. “The first thing that he told me was that he didn’t really know Miguel’s friends because they never went out together. They moved in different circles. Mostly because Samuel is that bit older. He didn’t even know Javi or Sebas. He did know Marc, however, but in the same sense as with Isaac; only very slightly.”

  “I hope we’re not making a mistake, like with Miguel.”

  “No, I’m sure of it. When I asked his brother’s friends from around that time, I was able to find out whether he was a part of that group without having to ask him directly,” he said, satisfied.

  Eva smiled before she responded.

  “But it’s obvious that all of the victims seem to lead lives that we wouldn’t suspect were in danger, when in reality, it ought to be the opposite.”

  “Something embarrassing or illegal, you said yesterday,” noted Antón.

  Eva continued with her reasoning:

  “Miguel was so afraid that as soon as Marc died, he immediately called Míguez asking if he could also have that day off. I suspect that he went directly back to his flat and locked himself in there, with his gun in hand. And do you realise that he can’t possibly have seen the photo Lago sent us?”

  “Yes, because had he seen it, he would certainly never have trusted an innocent woman arriving at his house laden down with travel brochures,” Antón completed the reasoning, at the same time that the phone began ringing on the desk. “And it’s even possible for him to have arrested her,” he added, as he answered it.

  “What we should be worrying about now is that today is Friday and, by force of logic, we ought to be expecting a new victim. We trust that this Isaac has not arrived in Ourense.”

  “It’s not him!” shrieked Míguez, coming in through the door.

  Eva looked at him, surprised. The superintendent continued to shout from the centre of the office, on the verge of rage:

  “The victim today was a woman, one of the Atendos from the station. They’ve just made the announcement. She threw herself in front of a train with a golf ball in her hand. She made her throw herself,” he corrected himself, “and the worst thing is that her son was there,” he added, his voice emotional.

  He then took a breath and began to fire out orders, not caring that Antón was still on the phone.

  “Get up! Both of you; find out why the boy was at the station, why the victim today was a woman, why nobody’s intercepted her yet...”

  “Because for that we would have to have been looking for a blonde woman with a child,” Antón interrupted.

  A silence fell over the three of them, only broken by the little click from when the phone was hung up.

  “She went to collect the little one from the nursery,” explained Antón, “with the badge in her hand. But one of the carers was suspicious; I had him on the phone just now. He was on the same train as her coming in from Vigo. On Sunday she was dark-haired, and now today she’s blonde. This threw him at first, and then he remembered.”

  “Where’s the child now?” asked Eva, looking at Míguez.

  “He’s still at the station, with his father,” answered the superintendent, now more composed. “At first they thought it had been an accident, and they informed the husband immediately.

  “How did you get on with the carer?” he asked Antón.

  “I’ve sent him to the station, to ask him some questions.”

  “Perfect.”

  The body was covered with a blanket, and guarded by two uniformed officers, who were standing around it. To the side of it, Eva remained on the platform, observing the scene from above. When the inspection was finished, she went down and approached the body, lifting one end of the blanket. In that instant, the two officers looked away. She exclaimed, without looking at them:

  “Have you still not got used to seeing a dead body?”

  “Yes, but not like this,” replied one of the officers.

  “It’s completely destroyed,,” the other justified.

  Eva covered the body back up and looked once more at her surroundings, trying to imagine the scene.

  “She threw herself,” noted the first officer.

  “Don’t be naïve, she didn’t throw herself.”

  “Yes, she committed suicide, nobody pushed her,” insisted the young man, convinced that he was right. “Two eye-witnesses said so, they were right next to her when it happened.”

  “There are many ways of pushing a woman to suicide,” declared Eva.

  Then she murmured, whilst already walking towards the building:

  “A mother, most of all.”

  In the foyer, one of the police psychologists had been interviewing Toni and now seemed to just be waiting for Eva to return from her visit to the tracks. When Eva arrived, the woman immediately approached her, offering a file.

  “Inspector, I’ve already finished with the boy and I’ve sent him home with the father,” she said. “At this time, it’s best for them to be together, and away from here.”

  Eva accepted the file and set to glancing through it as the psychologist continued speaking.

  “Whilst the child is very affected by the experience, it is much less than one would think,” she explained. “The murderer kidnapped him to use him as bait, but she didn’t mistreat him whilst he was in her power. Furthermore, there’s the fact that he avoided being present at his mother’s death. That’s always an advantage.”

  “He saw his mother from the platform, whilst holding a golf ball that the woman had given him,” said Eva, repeating what she was reading.

  “Yes.”

  “And then she sent him to the waiting room to say the Our Father...?”

  “Yes, it kept him occupied.”

  “And afterwards, it was still a while before he heard the people screaming,” she continued reading.

  “Exactly.”

  Eva furrowed her brow, closed the file in one go, and stared vacantly at the floor for a moment, thoughtful. Then she returned to reality:

  “Well, I suppose that the element of showing her that she had her son in her power was enough for Sandra to become aware that there was no escape.”

  “I came to the same conclusion,” noted the psychologist.

  Eva took a few steps across the foyer, holding on to the file. She paused halfway.

  “One more thing,” she said to the psychologist. “The woman didn’t tell the boy her name at any point,” she had also read that in the report. “On a psychological level, what’s your interpretation of that?”

  The psychologist thought for a moment. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed that yet.

  “Initially,” she answered, slowly, “we would have to understand it as an intention to avoid the child creating any links with her.”

  “Thank you.”

  Antón was waiting impatiently in front of the waiting room. He had been given the task of speaking with Alberto, who was asking insistently how Toni was. He waited until Eva finished speaking with the psychologist, and then he approached her.

  “She needed the boy as bait, and went to find him at the nursery, wielding Miguel’s badge. The young man,” he said, pointing to Alberto, “remembered her from the train.”

  Then he asked, perplexed:

  “Doesn’t Emma have a car?”

  “No, she brought the boy on foot,” Eva declared. “Driving would be stupid: the entire police force in Ourense is looking for her, and so she passes through the city unnoticed simply because she’s walking hand in hand with a little boy.”

  “And because she’s dyed her hair blonde,” added Anton, so as to remind her.

  “That too.”

  The two inspectors made their way towards the exit.

  “Besides, this time the victim is a woman,” observed Antón.

  “Yes, but there’s no reason for that to be relevant. A woman can give you the same reasons to kill her as a man.”

 
; Then she continued, whilst they stopped walking and turned back.

  “Have you noticed this?” she murmured towards her partner. “Yesterday she killed in a way that would allow her to get the badge to avoid us and, at the same time, access today’s victim. I wonder what she got from Sandra in order to be able to kill tomorrow.”

  Eva looked around for the psychologist, and signalled for her to come over.

  “We’re going to go to Toni’s house,” she told her as soon as she drew level with them. “We need you to come with us.”

  “Okay.”

  Barely seven minutes later, the three of them were already waiting in front of Javier’s front door. Eva pressed the intercom button.

  “It’s the police; can we come in?” she called into the speaker.

  The door immediately opened. Upstairs, the door to their apartment was also waiting open for them. Eva went in first, followed by the psychologist and, finally, by Antón. Javier held open the door, out of courtesy. At the end of their hall, in the living room, they could just see Toni’s head, as he appeared to be sitting on a large sofa. Javier moved forward and, seeing the psychologist was there, walked them to where the child was.

  “Are you here to talk with Toni again?” he asked, entering the living room. “Please, I’m begging you not to overwhelm him. He’s very little, and he’s just lost his mother.”

  “I’m Inspector Santiago,” Eva interjected assertively. “I believe you’ve already met my colleagues. And don’t worry, it’s you I want to talk to.”

  Then she leaned forward to address Toni, who was still sitting.

  “Hi there sweetie, do you want to go and play for a moment with the young lady you were talking with before?”

  It was with some difficulty that the boy said yes, albeit unconvinced and without making any moves to get up. Eva brought her mouth to the boy’s ear, so that nobody could hear what she was telling him. After a few seconds, Toni broke into a smile and walked out hand in hand with the psychologist.

  “Please, sit down,” she told the father.

  She also sat. Antón, after closing the door, sat down next to her.

  “I’m so sorry about the death of your wife,” Eva started by saying. “Do you know of any possible motivation for your wife to kill herself?”

  The man appeared to think for a second, more on the question he had just heard than the reply he was inevitably obliged to give.

  “But she didn’t commit suicide,” he said.

  “Why do you think it wasn’t suicide?” she insisted, as she glanced through the pages in her file. “Two solid eye-witnesses maintain that she threw herself onto the track, without anybody pushing her.”

  “No, no. The Golf Ball Assassin pushed her to jump in front of the train. She made her do it,” said the man, on the verge of anger. “It was a murder, you need to investigate it. You can’t close the case as a suicide.”

  “In that case then, should we suppose that you were conscious of the fact that your wife was in danger?”

  Javier bowed his head, without responding. Eva decided to phrase the question another way:

  “Do you know the reason why Sandra was killed? Because, without a reason, your case can’t be any more than a simple suicide.”

  The man raised his eyes to meet Eva’s, regretful for a brief second. Then he shrugged and gazed aimlessly at the floor.

  “Yes, yes I do know,” he finally stuttered.

  His affirmation sounded like a confession. Eva and Antón remained silent, giving him time. As soon as the man felt ready, the words spilled out as he continued to stare at the floor:

  “Yesterday, when the news came out in the paper, with all of the names inside, Sandra became very edgy. She went back to work, all irritable; she was dropping things all the time, and seemed unable to concentrate on anything. I noticed the change and asked her what was going on. You see; she was never one to keep secrets. If anything was bothering her, she’d say so right away, whether it was something good or bad. After dinner, she confessed that on that night something happened that should never have happened.”

  “What night?” asked Eva.

  “The night of Saturday to Sunday, in the early hours, during Holy Week six years ago.”

  Javier passed his hand over his face, and then the back of his neck before he continued:

  “That night, loaded with drugs and alcohol, they veered of the road in Cea. They always went out in two cars and, in those days, road races were the norm with that crowd. During the fiestas they’d often go out on that road in the very early morning, to avoid being monitored by the Guardia Civil, and at dawn there wasn’t usually any traffic there. Remember that today it’s all fixed up, but back then it was a maze of curves amongst drops with no railings, which was scary on nights when it was raining. But for them, they liked the risk; I suppose that, in some sick way, it turned them on. What happened was, that night the race was in full swing, with the two cars running level with each other, when they found themselves face to face with another vehicle. They didn’t put the brakes on, or even slow at all. The other car had to swerve off the road to avoid impact, but the other two cars stayed on the road. When they reached the agreed finish line, amongst shouts of joy and joking around, they decided to retrace their steps. The car should have fallen down into the roadside ditch, but they found a tree in the way. That’s where the car was when they arrived, with smoke coming out of it, embedded into a pine tree, with a fifty-metre drop next to it. Inside, a baby was crying in its seat, the father was unconscious over the steering wheel and the mother, in the back, was badly injured, with her face all crushed.”

  The man shook his head from side to side, with a tremendous sense of fatalism. Then he sighed, breathed in, and continued:

  “Last night, Sandra confessed to me that she’d never been able to forget how that disfigured face looked at them, with her eyes bathed in blood. That image was forever ingrained on her mind. The group had parked off to the side. They all got out, but nobody could think clearly, and nerves took over. In that situation, the most arrogant ones took the lead. That event was not a part of their plans, and should never have happened, but it was clear that if they told the Guardia Civil, one way or another they would be implicated in the accident. Then they made a bad decision: they each took hold of the car, and pushed it over the edge of the drop below. Just imagine, falling fifty-metres, spinning the whole time. Impossible to survive, and very difficult to locate. They basically thought that nobody had seen them, there were no tyre tracks because they hadn’t even braked... and the dead don’t talk.”

  Javier heaved another sigh, without looking up. Still in the same position, he continued his story:

  “I suppose that nothing was the same between them since that day. Sandra thought that, on reading the news, the Golf Ball Assassin was the girl from inside the car. She was right. For some reason, she was saved. According to what she told me, yesterday afternoon she was at the library consulting newspapers from that day, and they all confirmed that the woman had made it out alive. The man and the baby didn’t. Miraculously, by pure chance, they were found the next day. It’s strange,” he reasoned, with a tone of conclusion, “but I don’t think that any one of them was bothered to find out if the car had been found, or what fate had befallen the people inside it. At least Sandra didn’t know until yesterday. So you see what sort of woman my wife was,” he murmured at the end.

  After that, the man stopped speaking and the room was silent: a heavy, dense, and sepulchral silence that was difficult to break. After a moment, Eva was the one to finally speak:

  “Do you know who the occupants of those two cars were?”

  “Not exactly,” he said, opening out his hands as a means of excuse. “Basically, they’re the ones she’s been going around killing. Sandra was only worried about that woman.”

  “Why a golf ball? What significance does that have for them?”

  “I asked her the same thing myself. It’s a golf ball because
the car they pushed over was a Golf, a Volkswagen Golf.”

  The man, now himself, let out a smile before continuing:

  “It’ll seem stupid to you,” he added. “It does to me, at least. But I assure you it was very effective. When Sandra read the names of the dead along with the whole thing with the golf ball, she no longer had any doubt about it. I suppose if it was just the young men’s bodies that appeared and nothing else, it could have been for some other reason that something bad had happened to them, but, each one of them being found with a golf ball next to them? Sandra was certain that she’d be coming for her too.”

  Eva looked at him for a long while, as she appeared to be thinking of her next question.

  “Does the name Isaac mean anything to you?” she came out with, suddenly.

  “Yes. Isaac...”

  Javier paused, as if going over in his mind the words he was about to say.

  “He was the driver of one of the cars,” he said, finally. “He’s the father of my child.”

  Eva’s eyebrows rose upon hearing that statement. The man’s words did not come out easily; it was noticeable that the topic of Isaac was not one that he enjoyed discussing, but he immediately realised the incongruity of what he had just said, and felt the need to clarify:

  “Toni isn’t my biological son,” he said. “Back then, Sandra and Isaac used to go out, and she fell pregnant. What happened next, from what I was able to find out, was that he never wanted to take care of the child; he didn’t even want him in the first place. He put up with Sandra for a while, but once his university course came to an end, he left her with a baby in her arms and went off to work in Barcelona. I suppose that he had very ambitious plans for his life, and neither Sandra nor Toni figured anywhere in those plans. I met her much later on, when Toni was already two years old. We married only a few months after.”

  The man now raised his gaze up from the floor, as if wanting to check they had understood.

  “As you can see, my aspirations in life were much more modest,” he said afterwards.

  “I’m really sorry that you’ve got caught up in all this, and believe me when I say that I don’t want to ask you this, but it’s my duty,” said Eva.