The Invisible Guardian

‘I … I’m sorry. From the way he was talking I assumed that you’d agreed to it.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him later.’

She wasn’t at all tired in spite of not sleeping. The faces of the three girls stared into the void from the surface of the table. Three very different faces, but made equal in death. She carefully studied the enlargements of the pictures of Carla and Ainhoa she had requested.

Montes came in silently with two coffees, placed one in front of Amaia and sat down a short distance away. She looked up from the photos for a moment and gave him a penetrating stare until he dropped his gaze. Another five officers from her team were also in the room. She took the photos and slid them towards the centre of the table.

‘Well, gentlemen, what do you see in these photos?’

They all leaned over the table expectantly.

‘I’m going to give you a clue.’

She added Anne’s picture to the other two.

‘This is Anne Arbizu, the girl who was found last night. Do you see the pinkish marks that extend from her mouth almost as far as her ear? Well, they’re from lip gloss, a pink, greasy lip gloss that makes the lips look wet. Take another look at the photos.’

‘The other girls aren’t wearing any,’ observed Iriarte.

‘Exactly, the other girls aren’t wearing any, and I want to know why. They were very pretty and trendy, they had high heels, handbags, mobile phones and perfume. Isn’t it strange that they weren’t wearing even a trace of make-up? Almost all girls their age start wearing it, at least mascara and lip gloss.’

She looked at her colleagues who were regarding her with confused expressions.

‘The stuff for your eyelashes and the one for your lips that’s somewhere between lipstick and lip balm,’ Jonan translated.

‘I think that he removed Anne’s make-up, which would explain the traces of lip gloss, and that he had to use make-up remover and a tissue to do it, or, more likely, facial wipes; they’re like the ones used to wipe babies’ bottoms, but with a different solution on them, although you could use the ones designed for babies. I also think it highly likely that he did it by the river; there was next to no light down there and even if he had a torch with him it wasn’t enough, because he didn’t finish the job on Anne. Jonan and Montes, I want you to go back to the river bank and look for the wipes; if he used them and didn’t take them with him, we might be able to find them somewhere round there.’ She didn’t miss the look on Montes’s face as he looked down at his shoes, a different style, brown this time, and clearly expensive. ‘Deputy Inspector Zabalza, please speak to Ainhoa’s friends and find out whether she was wearing make-up the night she was killed; don’t bother her parents with this, especially since she was quite young and it’s quite possible that even if she did wear make-up, her parents wouldn’t have known … Lots of teenage girls put it on once they’ve left the house and take it off again before they get back. As for Carla, I’m sure she would have been wearing more make-up than a clown wears face-paint. She’s got it on in all the photos we have of her alive and, furthermore, it was New Year’s Eve. Even my Aunt Engrasi wears lipstick on New Year’s Eve. Let’s see if we can find anything by this afternoon. I want everyone back here at four.’

Spring 1989

There were some good days, almost always Sundays, the only day her parents didn’t work. Her mother would bake crisp croissants and raisin bread at home, which would fill the whole house with a rich, sweet fragrance that lasted for hours. Her father would come slowly into the room, open the blinds on the windows facing the mountain and go out without saying anything, leaving the sun to wake them with its caresses, unusually warm for winter mornings. Once awake, they would stay in bed, listening to their parents’ light chatter in the kitchen, savouring the feeling of their clean bedding, the sun warming the bedclothes, its rays drawing capricious paths through the dust in the air. Sometimes, before breakfast, their mother would even put one of her old records on the record player, and the house would resonate with the voice of Machín or Nat King Cole and their boleros and cha-cha-chas. Then their father would put his arms around their mother’s waist and they would dance together, their faces very close and their hands entwined, going round and round the whole living room, skirting the heavy, hand-finished furniture and the rugs woven by someone in Baghdad. The little girls would get out of bed, barefoot and sleepy, and sit on the sofa to watch them dance while the adults smiled rather sheepishly, as if, instead of seeing them dance, their daughters had surprised them in a more intimate act. Ros was always the first to clasp her father’s legs to join in the dance; then Flora would attach herself to their mother, and Amaia would smile from the sofa, amused by the clumsiness of the group of dancers singing boleros under their breaths as they turned. She didn’t dance, because she wanted to keep watching them, because she wanted that ritual to last a bit longer, and because she knew that if she got up and joined the group the dance would end immediately as soon as she brushed against her mother, who would leave them with a ridiculous excuse, like she was tired already, she didn’t feel like dancing anymore or she had to go and check on the bread cooking in the oven. Whenever that happened, her father would give her a desolate look and carry on dancing with the little girl a while longer, trying to make up for the insult, until her mother came back into the living room five minutes later and turned off the record player, claiming that she had a headache.

10 (#ulink_d4c7bded-82c2-5c0d-8810-c607f5631988)

After a brief siesta, from which she woke disorientated and confused, Amaia felt worse than she had in the morning. She took a shower and read the note that James had left her, a bit annoyed that he wasn’t at home. Although she would never tell him, she secretly preferred him to be nearby while she slept, as if his presence could soothe her. She would feel ridiculous if she ever had to put into words what waking up in an empty house did to her and her wish that he had been there while she was asleep. She didn’t need him to lie down beside her, she didn’t want him to hold her hand; but it wasn’t enough for him to be there when she woke up. She needed his presence while she was asleep. If she had to work at night and sleep in the morning she would often do it on the sofa if James wasn’t at home. She didn’t manage to sleep so deeply there as when she was in bed, but she preferred it, because she knew that if she got into bed it would be impossible. And it didn’t make a difference if he went out once she had fallen asleep: although she might not hear the door, she would immediately notice his absence, as if there wasn’t enough air, and on waking up she would know for certain that he was not in the house. I want you to be at home while I sleep. The thought was obviously and rationally absurd, which was why she couldn’t say it, couldn’t tell him that she woke up when he went out, that she felt his presence in the house as if she detected it with a sonar system and that she secretly felt abandoned when she woke up and found he had left his place at her side to go out and buy bread.

Back at the police station and three coffees later, she wasn’t feeling much better. Seated behind Iriarte’s desk, she was heartened to observe the evidence of his domestic life. The blond children, the young wife, the calendars with pictures of the Virgin, the well-tended plants that grew near the windows … he even had saucers under the pots to collect the excess water.

‘Have you got a moment, chief? Jonan said you wanted to see me.’

‘Come in, Montes, and don’t call me chief. Please take a seat.’

He made himself comfortable in the chair opposite and looked at her, his mouth forming a slight pout.

‘Montes, I was disappointed that you didn’t attend the autopsy. I was concerned that I didn’t know the reason why you weren’t there and it made me very angry that I had to find out from someone else that you weren’t coming because you were going out for dinner. I think you could at least have saved me the embarrassment of spending the whole night asking after you, wasting my time on phone calls you didn’t answer, only for Zabalza to tell me what was going on.’

Montes looked at her impassively. She continued.

‘Fermín, we’re a team, I need absolutely everyone in place all the time. If you wanted to go I wouldn’t have stopped you; I’m just saying that with what we’ve got on our plates I think you could have at least called me or told Jonan or something, but you certainly can’t disappear without giving any explanation. Right now, with another murdered girl, I need you at my side constantly. Well, anyway, I hope it was worth it,’ she smiled and looked at him in silence waiting for a response, but he continued to stare straight through her with an expression that had twisted from the childish pout to disdain. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything, Fermín?’

‘Montes,’ he said suddenly, ‘Inspector Montes to you. Don’t forget that although you might be in charge of this investigation for the moment, you’re speaking to an equal. I don’t have to explain myself to Jonan, who’s my subordinate, and I let Deputy Inspector Zabalza know. My responsibility stops there.’ His eyes half closed with indignation. ‘Of course you wouldn’t have stopped me going out for dinner, that’s not up to you, even if you have begun to think so lately. I had already been working on the homicide team for six years when you started at the academy, chief, and what’s pissing you off is looking incompetent in front of Zabalza.’ He settled back in the seat and gave her a challenging look. Amaia looked at him with a feeling of sadness.

‘The only one who looked incompetent is you, incompetent and a poor policeman. For God’s sake! We’d just found the third body in a series, we still don’t have anything and you go off out for dinner. I think you resent me because the Commissioner assigned the case to me, but you have to understand that I had nothing to do with that decision and what we ought to be worried about now is solving this case as soon as possible.’ She softened her tone and looked Montes in the eye, trying to gain his support, ‘I thought we were friends, Fermín. I would have been happy if it were you. I thought you respected me, I thought I’d have every possible help from you …’

‘Well, keep thinking that,’ he muttered.

‘Don’t you have anything else to say to me?’ He remained silent. ‘Alright, Montes, have it your way, I’ll see you at the meeting.’

The girls’ dead faces were there again, their eyes gazing into infinity and veiled by death, and, beside them, as if to emphasise the great loss they represented, were other photos, colourful and bright, showing Carla’s mischievous smile as she posed by a car that undoubtedly belonged to her boyfriend, Ainhoa holding a week-old lamb in her arms and Anne with her school theatre group. A plastic bag contained various wipes that had almost certainly been used to remove the make-up from Anne’s face and there was another that held the ones that had been found at the scene of Ainhoa’s death. No-one had paid them any attention at the time because it had been assumed that they had blown down to the river from the esplanade up by the road where couples often met.

‘You were right, chief. The wipes were there, they’d been dumped a few metres away, in a crack in the river bank. They’ve got pink and black marks on them, from the mascara I suppose. Her friends say she usually wore make-up and I’ve also got the original lipstick, which was in her handbag. It’ll help us confirm whether it’s the same one. And these,’ he said, pointing to the other bag, ‘are the ones found where Ainhoa was killed. They’re the same kind with the same stripy pattern, although these ones have got less make-up on them. Ainhoa’s friends say she only used lip gloss.’

Zabalza got to his feet.

‘We haven’t been able to find anything where Carla was killed, too much time has passed and we have to bear in mind that the body was partially submerged in the river; if the killer left the wipes nearby it’s likely they were washed away by the flood water … We’ve confirmed with her family that she used to wear make-up pretty much every day, though.’

Amaia stood up and started to walk around the room, moving behind her colleagues, who remained seated.

‘Jonan, what do these girls tell us?’

The deputy inspector leant forward and touched the edge of one of the photos with his index finger.

‘He removes their make-up, takes off their shoes, which are high-heels, women’s shoes in all three cases. He arranges their hair so it hangs to either side of their faces, he shaves off their pubic hair, he makes them into little girls again.’

‘Exactly,’ agreed Amaia, vehemently. ‘It seems to this guy that they’re growing up too fast.’

‘A paedophile who likes little girls?’

‘No, no, if he were a paedophile he would choose little girls in the first place, and these are teenagers, more or less young women, at the stage when young girls want to seem older than they are. It’s nothing unusual, it’s part of the adolescent growing up process. But this killer doesn’t like these changes.’

‘What’s most likely is that he knew them when they were smaller and he doesn’t like what he sees now, and that’s why he wants to make them go back to how they were,’ said Zabalza.

‘It’s not enough to take off their shoes and make-up and shave off their pubic hair and leave their sexes like a little girl’s,’ Amaia continued. ‘He slashes their clothes and exposes their bodies, which are not yet those of the women they wished they were, and instead of a body that symbolises sex and the profanation of his concept of childhood, he gets rid of the body hair, which is a sign of maturity, and replaces it with a pastry, a soft little cake, which symbolises past times, the traditions of the valley, the return to childhood, and so on. He disapproves of how they dress, the fact they wear make-up, their adult ways, and he punishes them by using them to represent his idea of purity; that’s why he never violates them sexually, it’s the last thing he’d want to do, he wants to preserve them from corruption, from sin … And the worst of all is that, if I’m right, if this is what torments our killer, we can be sure that he won’t stop. More than a month passed between the murders of Carla and Ainhoa, and barely three days between the murders of Ainhoa and Anne; he feels provoked, confident and like he has a lot of work to do; he’s going to continue recruiting young girls to return to purity … Even the way he arranges their hands facing upwards symbolises surrender and innocence. Where have you seen hands and expressions like these before?’ She looked at Iriarte and pointed at him with her finger.

‘Inspector, can you bring me the calendars from your desk?’

Iriarte was back in barely two minutes. He put a calendar with a picture of the Immaculate Conception and another with a picture of Our Lady of Lourdes on the table. The virgins smiled, full of grace, as they held their open hands at either side of their bodies, generous and without any reserve, showing their palms, from which shone rays of sunlight.

‘There you have it!’ exclaimed Amaia. ‘Like virgins.’

‘This guy is completely crazy,’ said Zabalza, ‘and the worst thing is that if there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that he’s not going to stop until we make him.’

‘Let’s update his profile,’ said Amaia.

‘Male, aged between twenty-five and forty-five,’ said Iriarte.

‘I think we can narrow it down a bit more, I’m inclined to think that he’s older. This resentment he shows towards youth doesn’t really match up with a young man; there’s nothing impetuous about him, he’s very organised, he takes everything he might need with him to the scene, and yet he doesn’t kill them there.’

‘He must have some other place, but where could it be?’ asked Montes.