The Invisible Guardian

Amaia walked up the nave, avoiding the main altar and stopping in front of some of the carvings that occupied the side altars, thinking all the while about those young girls and their washed faces, devoid of make-up and life, that someone had taken it upon himself to present as beautiful works of macabre imagery, beautiful even in that state. She gazed up at the saints and the archangels and the mourning virgins, their tense, pale faces bereft of colour, expressing purity and the ecstasy achieved through agony, a slow torture, desired and feared in equal measure, and accepted with an overwhelming submission and surrender.

‘That’s what you’ll never achieve,’ whispered Amaia.

No, they weren’t saints, they wouldn’t surrender themselves in a submissive and selfless manner; he would have to snatch their lives from them and steal their souls.

Leaving the Church of Santiago she walked slowly, taking advantage of the fact that the darkness and the intense cold had left the streets empty in spite of the early hour. She crossed the church gardens and admired the beauty of the enormous trees that surrounded the building, their height competing with that of the church spires, conscious of the strange sensation that came over her in those almost deserted streets. The urban centre of Elizondo was spread across the plain at the bottom of the valley and its layout was heavily influenced by the course of the River Baztán. It had three main streets which ran parallel to one another and constituted the town’s historic centre, where the grand buildings and other houses built in the typical local style still stood.

Calle Braulio Iriarte ran along the northern bank of the River Baztán and was linked to Calle Jaime Urrutia by two bridges. The latter was the old main street until the construction of Calle Santiago, and it ran along the southern bank of the River Baztán. Crammed with spacious town houses, Calle Santiago was the starting point of the area’s urban expansion, along with the construction of the main road from Pamplona to France at the start of the twentieth century.

Amaia arrived at the main square feeling the wind between the folds of her scarf as she looked at the brightly lit esplanade, which no longer possessed half the charm it must have had in the previous century when it had mostly been used for playing pelota. She went over to the town hall, a noble building dating from the end of the eighteenth century which had taken Juan de Arozamena, a famous local stone mason, two years to build. On its façade was the familiar chequered coat of arms with an inscription reading ‘Baztán Valley and University’, and in front of the building, at the bottom left of the façade, was a stone known as a botil harri which was used for the type of pelota known as laxoa in which the players wore gloves.

She reached out and touched the stone almost ceremonially, feeling how the cold spread up through her hand. Amaia tried to imagine how the square would have been. The two teams of four pelotaris would have lined up facing each other, a little like a game of tennis with too many players and no net, each with a laxoa, or glove, instead of a racket to pass the ball amongst themselves. In the nineteenth century this game had fallen into decline. Even so, she remembered her father once telling them that one of his grandfathers had been a great fan of the game and ended up gaining a reputation as a glove maker thanks to the quality of the gloves he sewed himself, using leather that he also treated and tanned.

This was her hometown, the place in which she had lived for most of her life. It was a part of her, like a genetic trace, it was where she returned to in her dreams, when she wasn’t dreaming about the dead bodies, assailants, killers and suicides which mingled obscenely in her nightmares. But when her sleep was calm, she went back to those streets and squares, to those stones, to the place she had always wanted to leave. A place she didn’t know if she loved or not. A place that no longer existed, because what she was starting to miss now was the Elizondo of her childhood. However, now that she had returned almost sure there would be signs of definite change, she found things hadn’t changed that much. Yes, perhaps there were more cars in the streets, more streetlights, flower beds and little gardens which painted the face of the town like fresh make-up. But not so much that it prevented her from seeing that its essence hadn’t changed, that everything was still the same underneath.

She wondered whether the Alimentación Adela grocery shop or Pedro Galarregui’s shop in Calle Santiago were still open, or the shops like Belzunegui or Mari Carmen where her mother used to buy their clothes, the Baztanesa bakery, Virgilio’s shoe shop, or Garmendia’s junk shop on Calle Jaime Urrutia. And she knew that it wasn’t even this Elizondo that she missed, but rather the older and more visceral one, the place that formed part of her being and that would die in her only when she breathed her last. The Elizondo of harvests ruined by plagues, of children dying in the whooping cough epidemic of 1440. The Elizondo whose people had changed their customs to adapt themselves to a land that was initially hostile, a people determined to stay in that place near the church which had been the origin of the town. The Elizondo of sailors recruited in the square to travel to Venezuela in the employ of the traders belonging to the Royal Gipuzkoan Company of Caracas. The Elizondo of elizondarras who rebuilt the town after the River Baztán’s terrible floods and the times when it burst its banks. In her mind she recreated the image of the altar from one of the side chapels floating down the street along with the bodies of livestock. And of the residents lifting it over their heads, convinced that its presence in the middle of that quagmire could only be a heavenly sign, a sign that God hadn’t abandoned them and that they should endure. Brave men and women, forged thus by necessity, interpreters of signs from nature who always looked to the heavens hoping for pity from a sky that was more threatening than protective.

She turned back along Calle Santiago and went down as far as Plaza Javier Ziga, where she set off across the bridge and stopped in the middle. Leaning on the low wall, she murmured as she ran her fingers over the rough stone where its name, Muniartea, was engraved. She stared into the blackness of the water that carried its mineral aroma down from the peaks. There was still a commemorative plaque in Calle Jaime Urrutia on the house that had belonged to the Serora, the woman who had been responsible for looking after the church and the rectory, which marked the point reached by the flood waters on 2 June 1913. That same river was now witness to a new horror, one that had nothing to do with the forces of nature, but rather with the most absolute human depravity, which turned men into animals, predators who mingled with the righteous in order to be able to approach them, to be able to commit the most deplorable act, giving free rein to desire, anger, pride and the insatiable appetite of the most disgusting gluttony.

A shudder ran down her back, she snatched her hands from the cold stone and put them in her pockets with a shiver. She took one last look at the river and set off home as it started to rain again.

13 (#ulink_27dee947-7dee-5406-bd37-424164e3a056)

Amaia could hear James and Jonan’s voices mingling with the omnipresent murmur of the television as they chatted in Aunt Engrasi’s little living room. It sounded like they were sitting separately from the six old ladies who were making a real din as they played poker at a hexagonal table covered with green baize that wouldn’t be out of place in a casino. Her aunt had had it brought all the way from Bordeaux so that honour and a few euros could be gambled on it each afternoon. When they saw her in the doorway, the two men moved away from the gaming table and came over to her. James gave her a quick kiss as he took her hand and led her to the kitchen.

‘Jonan’s waiting for you, he needs to talk to you. I’ll leave you alone.’

The deputy inspector came forward and handed her a brown envelope.

‘Chief, the report on the samples has arrived from Zaragoza, I thought you’d want to see it as soon as possible,’ he said, looking round Engrasi’s enormous kitchen. ‘I thought places like this didn’t exist anymore.’

‘You’re right, they don’t, believe me,’ she replied, pulling a sheet of paper out of the envelope. ‘This is … enlightening. Listen, Jonan, the hairs we found on the bodies come from wild boar, sheep, foxes and, although they’re still waiting for confirmation on this, possibly a bear, although that’s not conclusive; furthermore, the epithelial fragments we found on the string are, wait for it, goatskin.’

‘Goatskin?’

‘Yes, Jonan, yes, we’ve got Noah’s fucking ark here, I’m almost surprised they haven’t found elephant snot and whale sperm …’

‘Any human traces?’

‘Nothing human; no hair or fluids, nothing. What do you think our friends the forest rangers would say if they could see this?’

‘They would say there’s nothing human because it isn’t a human. It’s a basajaun.’

‘In my opinion, that guy’s an idiot. As he himself explained, basajauns are supposed to be peaceful creatures, protectors of the life of the forest … He said himself that a basajaun saved his life, so you tell me how that fits in with our story so far.’

Jonan looked at her, weighing up her comment.

‘Just because the basajaun was there doesn’t mean he killed the girls, it’s more likely the opposite: as the protector of the forest, it’s logical that he would feel responsible, insulted and provoked by the presence of this predator.’

Amaia looked at him in surprise.

‘Logical? … You’re just having a laugh about all this, aren’t you?’ Jonan smiled. ‘You love all this rubbish about the basajaun, don’t deny it.’

‘Only the bits that don’t involve dead girls. But you know better than anybody that it’s not rubbish, chief, and I speak with authority, since I’m an archaeologist and anthropologist as well as a police officer.’

‘That’s rich. OK then, let’s hear your explanation: why do I know better than anybody?’

‘Because you were born and grew up here. Surely you’re not going to tell me you weren’t brought up on these stories? They’re not nonsense, they form part of the culture and history of the Basque Country and Navarra, and we mustn’t forget that what is now considered mythology was originally a religion.’

‘Well don’t forget that in 1610 in this very valley, in the name of the most extreme forms of religion, dozens of women were persecuted and condemned and died on the fires of the auto-da-fé as a result of beliefs as ridiculous as this one, which have, fortunately, been left behind by evolution.’

He shook his head, giving Amaia a glimpse of the knowledge hidden behind his deceptively modest title of deputy inspector.

‘It’s well known that religious fervour and fear fed by legends and ignorant peasants did a great deal of damage, but you can’t deny that it constituted one of the most overwhelming belief systems in recent history, chief. A hundred years ago, or one hundred and fifty at the most, it was unusual to find someone who claimed they didn’t believe in witches, sorgiñas, belagiles, basajauns, the tartalo and, most importantly, in Mari, the goddess, genius, mother, guardian of the harvests and livestock, whose whims could make the sky thunder and cause hailstorms that left the town suffering the most awful famines. It reached a point where more people believed in witches than in the Holy Trinity, and this didn’t escape the notice of the Church, which saw how its faithful would leave after Mass only to continue observing the ancient rituals that had formed part of their families’ lives since time immemorial. And the ones who waged all-out war on the old beliefs were the half-crazed obsessives like Pier de Lancré, the Inquisitor of Bayonne, who managed to reverse the balance of belief through their madness. What had always formed part of the people’s beliefs suddenly became something damned, to be persecuted, the object of absurd denunciations which, in most cases, were made in the hope that anyone who collaborated with the Inquisition would be free of suspicion themselves. But before this madness, the old religion had been an integral part of the inhabitants of the Pyrenees for hundreds of years without causing the slightest problem. It even coexisted with Christianity without significant issues, until intolerance and madness made their appearance. I think that our society could do with reclaiming some of the old values.’

Impressed by these words from the normally rather introvert deputy inspector, Amaia said, ‘Jonan, madness and intolerance always make their appearance in every society, and you seem like you’ve just been talking with my Aunt Engrasi …’

‘No, I haven’t, but I’d love to. Your husband told me that she reads cards and that sort of thing.’

‘Yes … and that sort of thing. You stay away from my aunt,’ said Amaia with a smile, ‘your head’s buzzing as it is.’

Jonan laughed without taking his eyes off the roast that was sitting next to the oven waiting for its final browning before dinner.

‘Speaking of buzzing heads, do you have any idea where Montes is?’

The deputy inspector was about to reply when he was overcome by a fit of discretion and bit his lip and dropped his gaze. His expression did not escape Amaia’s notice.

‘Jonan, we’re conducting the most important investigation of our lives here, there’s a lot riding on this case. Reputation, honour, and, most importantly, getting that rat off the streets and making sure he doesn’t do what he’s already done to those girls to anybody else. I appreciate your sense of solidarity, but Montes is a bit of a loose cannon and his behaviour could seriously interfere with the investigation. I know how you feel, because I feel the same. I still don’t know what to do about it, and of course I haven’t reported him, but much as it hurts me, much as I respect Fermín Montes, I won’t allow his flaky behaviour to prejudice the work of so many professionals who are slogging their guts out, ruining their eyesight and losing sleep over this. Now, Jonan, tell me: what do you know about Montes?’

‘Well, chief, I agree with you, and you already know my loyalty lies with you; if I haven’t said anything before it’s because it seemed to me to be something of a personal nature …’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

‘At lunch time today I saw him eating at the Antxitonea restaurant … with one of your sisters,’ he finished in a mumbled rush.

‘With his sister?’ she said in surprise.

‘No, with your sister.’

‘My sister? My sister Rosaura?’

‘No, the other one, with your sister Flora.’

‘With Flora? Did they see you?’

‘No; you know it has a semi-circular bar that runs from the entrance and goes back towards the entrance to the pelota court; I was by the window with Iriarte, but I saw them come in. I was going over to say hello but then they went into the dining room and it didn’t seem appropriate for me to follow them. When we left half an hour later I saw through the window into the bar that they had ordered and were about to eat.’

Jonan Etxaide had never let rain intimidate him. In fact, walking in a downpour without an umbrella was one of his favourite things and, in Pamplona, he would go for a walk with his anorak hood pulled up whenever he could, the only one walking slowly as everyone else hurriedly fled to the nearest cafés or lined up under buildings’ treacherous eaves which dripped huge drops on them, making them even wetter. He walked the streets of Elizondo admiring the smooth curtain of water that seemed to fall across the roads, producing a curious effect like a slanting wedding veil. The car headlights pierced the darkness, drawing watery ghosts in front of them, and the red light of the traffic lights seemed to spill out as if it were a solid, forming a pool of red water at his feet. In contrast with the deserted pavements, there was a steady flow of traffic at that hour, when it seemed like everyone was in a rush to get somewhere, like lovers on their way to a tryst. Jonan walked along Calle Santiago to the square, fleeing the noise with rapid steps, which slowed as soon as he drew near enough to make out the clean outlines of the buildings that immediately transported him to another era.