‘The hotel advertises itself as a quiet and discreet place. I don’t think it would suit them if a rumour started circulating about how, every now and then, there are police raids. And regarding the couple, I don’t think they’re interested either in making public what happened to them.’
‘You’ve been lucky this time, but I will not tolerate a single blunder more. I want you to inform me of every step you are about to take in the investigation. I want to know what you suspect, what you’re planning... I even want to know what you eat. Is that clear?’
Gus surveyed his friends and saw as Sebas and Natalia nodded obediently. Carlos went back to looking at the ceiling, as if that conversation was nothing to do with him.
‘Was that clear, Carlos?’
‘I would like to promise you that, but as you know, I’m very much about improvising...’
‘Well if you don’t want an improvised, unpaid holiday, you’d better start changing that.’
The telephone on Aguirre’s desk began to ring, giving them a breather for a few seconds. Gus looked at Natalia and nodded towards the door to indicate that it could be a good moment to leave. He did not fancy enduring being in that office a second longer. He had not even been in that hotel, so he did not know why he had to withstand that scolding. Besides, he detested being given orders and getting shouted at. If he had known that Aguirre had such a bad temper, he would never have accepted the job.
Natalia shook her head and made a gesture with her hands to tell him to wait. They were all looking at Aguirre, who continued talking on the phone. His expression had changed, and he no longer seemed furious. He had gone pale, and sat down in silence as he took notes on a pad of paper.
‘All right. The medical examiner and investigation team will be on their way there immediately,’ he said to the person on the other end of the line.
When he hung up the phone, the office was plunged into an absolute silence. All of them waited whilst Aguirre re-read the notes he had taken, and repeatedly tapped his notebook with the ballpoint pen.
‘They’ve found another body in the Artxarte quarry... Young woman, naked, and painted white... It’s your man, and he’s attacked again.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
The access to the quarry was virtually impassable. The asphalt was cracked and raised in many places, and the vegetation on both sides of the road had grown so much that, on occasions, he had to carry on without knowing whether there was much road left ahead. Carlos drove very slowly, in silence, concentrating, until at last he found himself inside the quarry.
It was a grey and horrifying place, even on such a bright day as that. Carlos got out of the car and stared at the forgotten machinery, the abandoned buildings, the drops that surrounded the hollow and threatened to fall down... He turned towards Natalia, who had just got out of the car with her medical examiner workbag in her hands.
‘What do you think?’
‘The type of place fits. Maybe we should put surveillance on all the abandoned quarries in Biscay,’ she said.
‘I thought about that, but it’s impossible. There are almost eighty thousand abandoned quarries in the Basque Country: seven hundred in Biscay alone. We don’t have the cash to keep watch over all of them.’
‘Okay, we’ll thing of something else later.’ Natalia pointed to the police cordon that could be seen a few metres further ahead, surrounded by several police cars with their lights on. ‘Let’s go over there.’
They walked in silence before arriving at the cordon. An ertzaina, a Basque police officer, lifted it up as soon as he recognised them, so that they could pass through. In the centre of the circle formed by the cordon could be seen an enormous greyish rock. It must have weighed over half a ton, and it was covered in moss. Carlos thought that it must have broken away from the steep quarry walls many years ago now. The killer had used it as a kind of altar. Lying face up on top of it was the naked body of a woman. The corpse was totally covered in white body paint, and rested with the legs together and the arms in a cross. Over her face, she was wearing a white mask on which the letter L was written clearly on the right cheek, and the letter V on the left one. The body was totally naked, with the exception of the watch, also white, that she was wearing on her wrist.
‘It’s him. There’s no doubt about it,’ said Natalia in a whisper, before bending over the body to begin work.
‘Damn. It can’t be. We were monitoring the hotel...’
‘Yes, and while we were playing the idiot there, he managed to capture this woman somewhere else.’
‘Shit! Shit! Shit!” Carlos kicked at one rock so hard that it bounced all the way out of the police cordon.
‘Getting worked up like that isn’t going to achieve anything. Relax, and stop wrecking my crime scene, please.’
‘Did you know that when you get all professional like that, you’re insufferable?’
‘Whatever you say... Don’t you have some witness to question?’
Carlos bit his tongue and left the circle. A few metres away, a couple of hikers were waiting. Whilst she was siting on a rock, with her body shaking from the sobs, the man was looking towards the inside of the cordon as if he were hypnotised. Carlos went up to them and showed them his badge.
‘Inspector Vega. Homicide,’ he introduced himself. ‘Are you the one’s who found the body?’
‘Yes, that was us.’ The man continued looking towards the place where the body was until Carlos stood in the way in order to get his attention. ‘It’s horrible... What kind of monster could have done something like that?’
‘He’s not a monster. He’s a man, and we’ll catch him soon, but for that we need your cooperation. What were you both doing around here?’
‘Hiking. We come through this area everyday because we’re preparing for the Camino de Santiago.’
‘Did you pass through here yesterday?’
‘Yes, and she wasn’t here.’
‘Did either of you see anything strange on your way here? Did you cross paths with anyone suspicious?’
‘We didn’t cross paths with anyone. This road isn’t very well-known and, furthermore, they say it’s dangerous because of the landslides.’
‘Even so, you came,’ commented Carlos.
‘Yes, it’s a very demanding route, with very steep inclines, sharp declines with gravel, lots of out-of-control vegetation... It’s considered a milestone for expert hikers. If we get used to doing this route, there won’t be any stage of the Camino to hold us back.’
‘Thank you very much. An officer will be coming now to take down your details just in case we need to ask you any more questions. Then you’ll be able to leave.’
Carlos returned to the inside of the cordon. Natalia was kneeling down on the ground, concentrating on her work.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Fairly well. Were they able to tell you anything interesting?’
‘Only that her death must be recent, because they passed through here yesterday and there was nothing, so he must have killed her last night.’
‘Yes, I was thinking that same thing myself, judging by the temperature and rigidity of the body. I estimate that she’ll have been dead for between eight and twelve hours.’
‘And have you found anything else?’
‘Not at first sight, no. It seems our killer still continues to be just as much of a perfectionist.’ Natalia remained silent for a few seconds, with her gaze riveted on the ground, before whispering. ‘But we’ll find something. We have to.’
‘Don’t worry, Natalia.’ Carlos crouched down alongside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Catching Charon seemed impossible too, but we did it. At any moment, he’ll let slip a clue, a small trail... He’ll stop being a ghost and, when that happens, we will be ready to catch him.’
*****
Natalia came closer to the corpse in order to observe her left hand more carefully. She had no fingernails. She took a look at the other hand and ascertained that they were missing t
oo. She paused the recorder and went over to her desk, where she had the forensic reports about the two previous victims. After reading for a few minutes, it confirmed what she was thinking. He hadn’t pulled out their nails. Why with this woman? Could it have been a new form of torture? Could it be that the killer was becoming more sadistic with each crime?
She filled a receptacle with water, picked up a sponge, and removed the white paint from the body’s fingers. There was no clotting on the fingers, which meant that the woman was already dead when he pulled out her nails. That invalidated the idea that he had done it to cause her suffering. So then, what was the reason?
One idea forged its way in her mind only a few seconds later. The killer had done it in order to eliminate any possible evidence. If the woman had put up resistance and had fought, she could have broken nails, and even retained a skin sample from the killer on them. That was why he had removed them: to completely eliminate that possibility.
She continued cleaning the paint off the woman’s left hand and, upon reaching the wrist, she had to stop in order to take off the watch. She put it in an evidence bag, whilst she went back to wondering for the umpteenth time what significance it could have. It was obvious that it meant something to the murderer, that it was a message that to him made complete sense, but it was written in a code that so far they were not able to decipher.
As she went along removing the paint from her arm, she began exposing multiple injuries and scratches. They were very superficial, which eliminated the hypothesis that they could have been inflicted with any weapon. They looked like grazes, very likely caused by shrubs or brambles. That could mean that the woman had tried to flee cross-country. Natalia paused and, without being all that aware of what she was doing, ran her fingers over that injured skin. She could imagine herself fleeing in terror, trying to escape her killer... She knew that they would catch him in the end, but for this woman it was already too late. Her work could provide her with justice, but it would not be able to return her life to her. She felt her eyes stinging, so she let go of the woman’s arm, leant on the table, and took a few deep breaths. This victim did not need her compassion, but her professionalism.
She spent the following two hours removing paint, noting down each observation... In reality, she did not find anything new that could help them. There were still no hairs, skin remains, or fluids that could belong to the killer. She tried to console herself with the thought that this woman had been on the verge of escaping; she had managed to evade the total control and obsessive perfection of this man. That demonstrated that he was not infallible; that he made mistakes. One of them would have to be his downfall.
Once she finished cleaning the whole body, she went over to the head in order to remove the mask. She could have done it much earlier, but she had preferred to leave it until last. She knew what she would find: a face without features, utterly disfigured by the sulphuric acid. One could think that the killer only did it to make the identification of the victim more difficult, and to hold up the investigation, but Natalia suspected that there was something else. She thought that, in that final act of extreme cruelty, the killer was trying to erase the woman’s features, to eliminate her identity, to turn her into a nameless ghost... It was not enough for him to kill her: he wanted to erase her.
Upon removing the mask, she focussed once more on the letters that were written in black marker on the cheeks: an L on the right, and a V on the left. Carlos was still of the opinion that they could be her initials, but they did not fit in the case of Andrea. It would imply that maybe she had given him a false name, or that he could have been mistaken. Natalia did not think the same thing. If, as she suspected, the killer was trying to completely destroy the identity of those women, why would he go and leave their initials? Those letters had to mean something else. She went back to looking at the reports on the previous victims, in search of a pattern: “Ex” on Andrea’s mask, “1 Cor” on Carmen’s, “Lv” on the latest victim’s... What could that be?
She sat down behind the desk and unblocked her laptop. She opened the browser and typed in the letters: Ex, 1 Cor, Lv. In less than a second, Google gave her the answer:
BIBLIA.net: List of abbreviations of books
They were the abbreviations of the books of the Bible: “Ex” was Exodus; “1 Cor” was the first book of the Corinthians; “Lv” corresponded to Leviticus... How had she not thought of this before? It was so typical... There was no need to have even studied forensic psychology to realise it. It was enough to have seen a few bad films about serial killers.
She looked up those books on the Internet. Each one of them was enormous. How would she ever find, amongst all of that information, what the killer was telling them? It was going to be a ton of work. Luckily, she knew a young man who, in that moment, was being paid for doing practically nothing. She grabbed her mobile and dialled Gus’s number, whilst containing a giggle upon imagining how un-amused he was going to be about it.
CHAPTER NINE
Carlos came into the police station feeling shattered. He had spent over six hours inspecting the surrounding areas of the quarry along with half a dozen other officers. They had had to climb up rocky paths, go down dirt tracks, get into the thicket... To top it all off, the weather had become significantly worse since that morning, and he had had to take that lovely stroll through the countryside beneath a cold and persistent rain. And all for nothing. The woman’s car had not turned up. Very likely the killer had taken it away and hidden it in some abandoned location. They would have to hope that some rambler would find it in the days to come and tell them of the discovery. He decided to forget about it for now. The only thing he wanted was to finish his shift, go home, and take a long hot shower that would get that cold out of his bones.
He thought about going to look for Natalia and Gus to see whether they had any news about the investigation, anything else that would indicate that they were on the right track and that would give him hope. However, when the lift opened, he found himself face to face with Natalia’s father.
‘Good afternoon, Inspector Vega,’ he greeted him. ‘What a pleasant coincidence! You’re precisely the person I was looking for...’
In spite of the fact that the words were friendly, the cold tone in which he had uttered them caused Carlos to shudder. Speaking with that man was like speaking with one of those human-looking robots that appeared every so often on the news. They seemed perfect and friendly, but you knew that inside their chest there did not beat a human heart.
‘And what were you looking for me for?’
‘I would like to have a conversation with you. About Natalia, as you know...’
‘I don’t think we have anything to discuss about Natalia. You already insulted me enough in our previous conversation.’
‘I know that I was highly inconsiderate with you and that we did not get off to the best possible start, but we both love Natalia and wish the best for her. Don’t you think it would be best for us to get on well?’
The man gave him a smile that was totally devoid of emotion and joy. Carlos felt another shudder. There was something in this man that elicited genuine repulsion in him, but he had to admit that he was right in what he was saying. If he could do something to improve the relationship between Natalia and her father so that she would be happier, it was his duty to try.
‘All right. I’m listening.’
‘I’d prefer not to talk here. It would be best if we converse in a more peaceful place, and where there is no risk of running into Natalia. As you know, she is very prone to dramatic scenes.’
‘I can’t leave yet. My shift isn’t over.’
‘That is not problem. I have just come from Aguirre’s office, to sign the new collaboration contract for the facial reconstruction of the latest victim, and I mentioned to the sergeant that I would like to speak with you to try and improve the atmosphere in the work team. He was in complete agreement, so you can come with me.’
Carlos felt the urge t
o say to him that he did not belong to his work team and that he never would, but he preferred to get along with him.
‘Okay. Where do you want us to talk?’
‘Let’s go to my house. You can follow me in your car.’
They went out to the car park. Carlos ran through the rain before getting into his car. From his seat, he studied how Natalia’s father was walking, as if the rain was not touching him, up to an impressive Audi, which seemed rather more like an ocean liner than a car. It was not the best moment for making a good impression on that man. His own car, as much as he himself, went around covered in mud from top to bottom. Alongside that Audi, his car looked like an old banger more than ever, and compared to that man, he could not consider himself to even be of the same species.
*****
‘So your awesome idea is that I spend the days to come sitting here reading the Bible? Is that what you mean?’ asked Gus, leaning back in his chair and making it swing.
‘Yes, that’s right. I know it’s a very tiresome job and that it’s not exactly what we hired you for, but I think there could be something important in it...’
‘You must be joking, Natalia,’ replied Gus. ‘I’m a devoted atheist. One could even say that atheism is my religion, okay? I’ve spent my whole life trying to escape from this society that imposes a set of Judeo-Christian beliefs, traditions, and way of life on you. Do you know how hard it was for me to convince my mother that I didn’t want to go to catechesis, or take bloody communion? And now you’re expecting me send all my convictions to the four winds and for me to spend days letting that book bother me... No, no, no, and a thousand times no.’
‘Gus, please. I’m not asking you to let yourself be convinced or for you to convert to Catholicism now. You just have to read that book as if it were any other.’
‘But the thing is that it isn’t just any other book. Do you know how many atrocities have been committed throughout history in the name of that book?’
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