The GPS told him to take the next detour. He entered onto a dirt track that led to a house with a red gable roof and whitewashed walls. On the front part there was a small orchard with fruit trees, and several rows of vegetables that Carlos was unable to identify. Agriculture had never been his thing. He only knew how to differentiate vegetables if they came wrapped in polystyrene and with a label indicating what they were.
An enormous mastiff awoke from its sleep upon hearing the sound of the engine. It jumped up and began barking in a deep and powerful tone. Even though it was tied up with a thick chain, Carlos did not dare to get out of the car until a couple of elderly people came out of the house. The woman ordered the dog to be quiet, the latter of which lay back down again and placed its head over one of its front paws, to look at him with an air of boredom.
Carlos opened the car door and went over with a smile and his hand outstretched. The man shook it, although he carried on looking at him with a suspicious air.
‘Mr and Mrs Azkarraga, am I right?’ asked Carlos
‘Yes. And who would you be?’
He allowed himself a moment of hesitation. He did not know whether Roberto might have ever spoken to them about him when they were partners. If so, he would not be well received in that house. He went back to smiling and decided to lie, whilst he prayed that they would not ask him to show them his badge.
‘Sebastián Casado, homicide inspector for the Ertzaintza. I’m in charge of the investigation about your son.’
‘What more do you want us to tell you people? How much more shit are you hoping to throw on his memory?’ protested the woman.
‘Maite, quiet down a bit...’ the man asked her. ‘We have already answered all of your questions. We didn’t know anything about those murders. We never suspected anything of our son. In fact, to this very day we still don’t believe that he could have committed those atrocities they’re accusing him of.’
‘I understand you, and believe me when I say I am sorry about the death of your son,’ said Carlos, lowering his gaze. ‘The problem is that I’m trying to close the case, and there are some points that aren’t tallying for me...’
‘Of course they’re not tallying for you,’ the mother intervened again. ‘My son was innocent. They’ve looked for someone to heap the blame on, and they don’t care whether it tallies or not. My son was always such a good boy...’
‘That’s why I’m here, madam. I can promise you that, for as long as I am not totally convinced of Roberto’s culpability, I will not close the case.’ Carlos placed a hand on his chest, as if he were making an oath.
‘Good. Come inside.’ The man pointed to the door. ‘This cold isn’t good for my rheumatism.’
The dog sat back up again and directed him with a soft growl that arose from the centre of its chest. For a moment, Carlos contemplated whether it had realised that he was lying and would tear open his neck at the slightest opportunity. He passed alongside it with his gaze firmly on the ground, trying to seem harmless.
The couple led him to a small, very-well lit kitchen. They sat down at a table and, whilst the woman served coffee for everybody, Carlos gazed through the window at the smooth hills surrounding the valley, coloured golden by the sun.
‘This is a beautiful place. Very peaceful,’ commented Carlos when the woman sat down with them at the table.
‘You really think so? Well, Roberto never liked it. He was always a city boy. He said that he got really bored here,’ she responded.
‘Seriously? I would love to live in a place like this... It isn’t very far from the city, and you can enjoy all the good things the countryside has to offer: bike riding, hiking...’
‘Roberto hated all of those things,’ said the father. ‘He never wanted to come fishing with me or look for mushrooms or take the dog out for a walk.’
‘He didn’t like hiking? How strange! He looked in good shape...’
‘He really liked going to the gym. He’d spend the day lifting weights,’ the man commented. ‘But he hated nature. I think that, somehow, he was ashamed of having been born in a small town, of being the son and grandson of country folk, and he tried to cut ties with everything to do with his roots. Is that what you wanted to talk to us about?’
‘No, I wanted to ask you about Roberto’s health. Did he have any kind of chronic illness?’
‘No, none. He was always a strong and healthy boy,’ replied the mother.
‘Wow, I wasn’t expecting that.’ Carlos took out his notebook and consulted his notes. ‘Does he have any close relative who suffers from epilepsy, or any history of epilepsy in the family?’
The man and woman looked at each other, puzzled, as they both shook their heads in unison. Then they turned their faces back towards him and looked at him with an identical expression of confusion. The coordination was so exact that Carlos had to repress a laugh.
‘Did Roberto, or anyone in your family, or close friends, take a medication named Luminal?’
‘No, that doesn’t ring any kind of bell. What is that medication?’
‘Phenobarbital...’ Carlos read from his notebook. ‘It’s a medication used for the treatment of epilepsy.’
‘No, we’ve already told you no. We don’t know of any case of it, either in the family or amongst his friends. And it’s an illness that he would have told us about.’
‘Let’s move onto the next point then,’ suggested Carlos. ‘Do you know whether Roberto was a very religious person?’
‘Not at all,’ replied his father. ‘Aside from attending weddings, christenings or funerals, I think the last time he set foot in a church of his own free will was the day of his First Communion.’
‘So then he didn’t have deep-rooted religious beliefs?’
‘No, in fact he didn’t believe in anything,’ said his mother. ‘At some point we spoke about the topic, and he mentioned that he sometimes thought that there had to be something more, but that he wasn’t remotely sure.’
‘So he was agnostic,’ suggested Carlos.
‘No, he did drink. Not much,’ commented the father. ‘A little drink of wine with meals and a little bit of liquor afterwards... When he went out partying, he would drink more.’
‘No, no... Agnostic, not abstemious,’ Carlos corrected him. Faced with the man’s bewildered expression, he decided to change the subject. ‘Roberto was single, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, he never married,’ replied his mother.
‘Did he have any especially tempestuous relationship? You know, any woman that caused him a lot of pain... Maybe at some point he was on the verge of getting married and he found out that she was unfaithful.’
‘Not that we know of,’ replied the mother. ‘I don’t think so. He was an attractive young man and was very successful with women, but I think he never considered settling down and starting a family. He was still young, although now he’ll never be able to do that...’
The woman averted her gaze and stood up to collect the cups. After leaving them in the sink, she surreptitiously wiped away a couple of furtive tears with the fabric of her apron. Carlos felt guilty about being there, lying to them and poking around in wounds that were still too fresh, but he decided to persevere a little more.
‘What opinion do you think Roberto had of women? For him, were they only an amusement, an object, a possession?’
The woman turned around again towards the table and planted both hands on the surface with a sharp bang. Her eyes had become filled with tears again, and her entire body was trembling with the contained rage.
‘Listen carefully to me... My son wasn’t any of those things they’ve been saying in the news. He was not an abuser of women, or a madman, or a killer. He was a good boy: attractive, intelligent, hardworking, a winner... The problem is that bully of a partner he had a couple of years ago, that Carlos Vega. Because of him, they took him away from the important cases, and, even so, the man hasn’t stopped until he’s accused my son of a set of crimes that he hasn’t com
mitted.’
‘Well... I don’t think Inspector Vega is how you think he is...’ Carlos tried to calm her down whilst congratulating himself for having introduced himself with a false name. ‘I’m only asking you in order to confirm or disprove our evidence.’
‘My son was no psychopathic woman killer. He was a sensitive soul. The fact he didn’t have a steady girlfriend does not mean that he did not have feeling, but rather the right girl had not turned up yet.’ The woman fell silent for a moment, as if reconsidering an idea. ‘Wait a second.’
She left the kitchen as fast as she could. Carlos and her husband sat in an uncomfortable silence, listening to the tapping of the woman’s slippers as she climbed the stairs. A couple of minutes later, she reappeared, carrying in her hands an old notebook.
‘Look, they’re written by Roberto.’ The woman placed the notebook in front of him. ‘They’re love poems he wrote during his adolescence. He wanted to be loved; he wanted to meet the right woman. Read them and tell me whether they look to you as though they could have been written by a murderer.’
‘Could I take them with me?’ asked Carlos.
The woman closed the book and squeezed it against her chest, as if wanting to protect it. Carlos gave her a reassuring smile and held out his hand.
‘I promise to return them this very day. I’ll go into town, photocopy it, and bring it back. I would like our psychologists to study it so that they can realise that Roberto doesn’t fit with the psychopath profile we’re looking for.’
The woman hesitated, but ended up nodding and handing over the book to him. Carlos smiled again, grateful, stood up, and headed for the front door.
‘I shan’t bother you any further. You have both been a great help.’ Carlos opened his car door, waved the book and got inside. ‘I’ll bring it back in half an hour. Don’t worry.’
He put the book on the passenger seat and left the property. Once he had travelled half a kilometre, he stopped on the kerb and opened it. He could not believe the amount of information he had obtained in that interview: Roberto was not a hiker, he was not epileptic, and he was not a religious fanatic... All of the hypotheses that seemed to point towards him tumbled down like a house of cards. And, nevertheless, that was not the most important thing that he had got that afternoon.
He had spent hours looking at the symbols drawn on the victims’ masks and the latest biblical reference that Roberto had left as a suicide note. He knew those pointed, heavy-handed and angular letters to at T.
The poems that he had in front of him, written in Roberto’s handwriting, showed a style that was small, rounded, and attentive to detail. He was certain that they were not written by the same person. Now all he had to do was prove it.
*****
Natalia smiled upon hearing Carlos opening the front door. The truth was that she was wondering where he had been, because that day they were supposed to be leaving headquarters at the same time, but, by the time that she herself left, there was no trace of him, and nobody had been able to tell her where he was. She could have phoned him on his mobile to ask him, but she had preferred not to pester him and to have everything ready for when he got back.
She remained seated on the living room rug, waiting for him to finish greeting Art and to come in. When Carlos appeared in the entrance to the living room, she smiled at him and held out her hand, inviting him to sit on the floor beside her. He hesitated for a few seconds, and then carefully advanced, trying not to step on the papers that were taking over the rug.
‘What’s all this?’ he asked, confused.
‘Information for the wedding. Brochures for restaurants and honeymoons, invitation samples...’
‘Is this seriously all necessary for putting on a wedding?’
‘Of course. It’s the most important day of your life. You only get married once...’
‘Well, I don’t want to shatter your illusions, but for me it’s my second...’
‘And last,’ replied Natalia, with a furrowed brow. ‘So you’d better enjoy it.’
Carlos looked at her for a few seconds before bursting out laughing. Then he took her by the waist, brought her towards him, and kissed her on the tip of her nose.
‘At your service, sergeant. Let’s see, what do you want me to choose?’
‘We need to go around looking at all of it. It’s going to take us hours...’ Natalia puffed out whilst she looked around her, wondering where to start. ‘The first thing would be to set a date in order to know which restaurants would be available, and to find a place where we can get married.’
‘Well I can’t tell you a date. We’d agreed that we’d leave it until we closed the case with Azkar.’
‘That case is already closed, Carlos. We just need to finalise a couple of details and we’ll be able to forget about it.’
‘Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Carlos opened a file that he had left beside him and he began spilling papers onto the floor, covering all of Natalia’s brochures. ‘Look, these are the photos of the biblical references that the killer left on his victims.’
‘Carlos, stop!’ Natalia shook her head, looking at the floor as if she could not believe what she was seeing. ‘We’ll talk about that another day. The case is closed. Roberto killed them. The fact that you had a ridiculous dream doesn’t change that.’
‘It’s not just because of the dream. I know it wasn’t Roberto.’
‘And how do you know?’ Natalia closed her eyes and waved both hands either side of her head. ‘And don’t come at me with that thing about how you can feel it in your gut.’
‘But it’s the truth...’
‘I don’t understand it, Carlos. We knew that the killer was someone at headquarters. If they had let you choose anyone to be the culprit, you would have chosen Roberto. I even thought you were happy that it was him.’
‘It isn’t like that. Roberto was a bad partner and a bad person... Well, let’s be honest. He was one genuine, massive son of a bitch... But he wasn’t a killer. I am certain of that. He’s another victim. The real killer framed him, killed him, and is still roaming free at our station. Can you live with that?’
‘God! What am I going to do with you?’ Natalia rubbed her temples, in despair.
‘Help me solve this, and then marry me and put up with me forever.’ Carlos gave her a friendly little punch on the shoulder to make her respond. ‘Come on, I promise you that if you help me with this, I’ll be the most involved man in the organisation of a wedding in the whole history of humanity.’
‘You’d better be.’ Natalia sighed, exasperated, but could not contain a smile. ‘Okay. What do you need?’
‘Didn’t you have a friend who was a specialist in graphology?’
‘Yes. And you both laughed a lot when it messed up our hypotheses about Charon. And now you suddenly think that graphology is a valid science?’
‘Well, I have my doubts,’ replied Carlos, jokingly, ‘but what I am going to ask of you is very easy. I just need to know whether all of these documents have been written by the same person.’
‘Fine.’ Natalia picked up the pieces of paper that Carlos had taken out and put them back into the file. ‘I’m going to scan and email them to her. In exchange, you pick up all of this, put it in that box, and put it away in the hall cupboard until sir feels like getting married.’
‘Honestly, I will choose it all. The music, the flowers, even the colour of the serviettes... You’re going to be blown away by my level of participation.’
‘Yes, of course. Go on, you can start by tidying up.’
Natalia left the room and Carlos began picking up all of the brochures. All of a sudden, he froze with them in his hands, staring at them. Weddings in castles, country houses with waterfalls and woods with deer, trips to Rome, to Paris, to Fiji... Where did Natalia think he was going to get the money to pay for all of that? He understood that she was accustomed to luxury and that she would want the best for their wedding day, but all of that w
as out of the budget whichever way you looked at it. Maybe Natalia’s father was right. He would never be able to give her everything she deserved.
Upon thinking that, he remembered the cheque that he had given him. With all the fuss of the case, he had not had time to go and return it to him. He got up with all haste, went to the entryway closet where they kept their coats, and checked the pockets of the one he had worn that day. He had forgotten to put it in the wash, and it was still covered in mud. It was fortunate that Natalia had not seen it, because she would have thrown it in the wash with the cheque still inside.
He took the cheque out and looked at it for a few seconds. Surely Natalia’s father thought that he had not returned it because he was thinking about whether to cash it or not. He would have to remedy that as soon as possible. He folded the cheque back up and put it in the pocket of his best coat, the one that Natalia had gifted to him for Christmas, and which he had still not debuted. The first day that Natalia had her shift at headquarters and he was free, he would prepare himself; he would put on his best suit, and that very smart coat, and he would take his car to be washed. Then he would drive to Plencia, enter the garden of that elegant mansion and, as soon as he had Natalia’s father in front of him, he would rip that cheque into small pieces and make him eat every last one.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Come on, one joke,’ said Sebas, causing murmurs of protest amongst his coffee companions. ‘Damn it, it’s a good one, this. You’re going to like it. “Does anyone know yet what the motive for the crime was? Stepping on the freshly mopped floor, sir. And has the suspect been detained yet? No, sir. It’s still soaking wet.”’
‘Dear God, Sebas... They’re getting worse by the day,’ protested one of his colleagues.
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