Offering to the Storm

‘She never mentioned you,’ said the daughter, surprised.

‘I didn’t know her well. I came here a couple of times to ask her about my mother, Rosario; they were friends in their youth,’ she explained. ‘During my last visit, she seemed agitated. Had you noticed anything strange about your mother’s behaviour in the last few days?’

‘My mother has always suffered with her nerves. She became depressed after my father passed away. She never really got over it. I was seven at the time. She had good days and bad, but she was always fragile. It’s true that, in the last month or so, she was beginning to show signs of paranoia. On the other occasions when that happened, the doctor advised me to be firm, not to feed her fears. But this time I could tell she was genuinely terrified.’

‘You know her better than anyone. Do you think your mother was capable of taking her own life?’

‘You mean, did she kill herself? Never, not in a million years. She was a practising Catholic. Surely you don’t think … My mother died of internal bleeding. She complained of stomach pains when I spoke to her on the phone yesterday. She said she’d taken an antacid and some painkillers, and was going to try drinking camomile tea. I offered to drive up and see her after work. I’ve been living in Pamplona with Luis for a year,’ she said, indicating the young man. ‘We come up most weekends and stay the night. Anyway, she told me not to bother, that it was just a bit of heartburn. Last night, I called her again at bedtime and she told me the camomile tea had helped. But when I called early this morning she didn’t answer …’

‘Elena, the doctor found shards of walnut shell in her vomit – too many for her to have swallowed them accidentally. He also suggests that the internal bleeding was caused by her vomiting them up.’

‘But that’s impossible,’ the young woman replied. ‘My mother hated walnuts, the very sight of them sent her into a panic. She refused to have them in the house – I know, because I did all her shopping. She would rather have dropped dead than touch one. When I was little, a woman came up to me in the street once and gave me a handful of walnuts. When I got home, my mother acted like I’d brought poison into the house. She made me throw them outside, and searched my things to make sure I hadn’t kept any. Then she scrubbed me from head to foot and incinerated my clothes while I cried my eyes out, terrified. She made me swear never to accept walnuts from anyone – obviously, after that, I didn’t. Although, oddly enough, the same woman offered me walnuts several times over the following years. So, you see, my mother would never have eaten them knowingly. There must be some other explanation.’

‘I’ve seen many suicides like this,’ said Dr San Martín, ‘often among the prison population. They’re always gruesome. Remember Quiralte, the fellow who swallowed rat poison? And I’ve seen cases of people ingesting crushed glass, ammoniac, metal shavings … It’s the serene deaths like Dr Berasategui’s that are exceptional, not the horrific ones.’

‘Doctor, could she have swallowed the walnut shavings accidentally, perhaps mixed into food?’ asked Iriarte.

‘I’ll be able to tell you more when I’ve examined the stomach contents, though, judging from the quantity of shavings present in her vomit, I’d say that’s unlikely, if not impossible.’ He turned to Markina: ‘If you have no further questions, your honour, I’d like to get the autopsy under way as soon as possible.’

Markina nodded his approval and the pathologist turned to Amaia. ‘Will you be attending the autopsy, Inspector Salazar?’

‘I’ll be going,’ broke in Iriarte. ‘The victim was known to the inspector’s family.’

Dr San Martín murmured his condolences and set off briskly towards his car. A moment later, Amaia hurried after him, tapped on the window, and leaned in to speak to him.

‘Doctor, about the little Esparza girl: we’ve been looking at recent cases of cot death in the area and there were a couple that caught our attention. In both cases, the pathologist recommended that social services look into the victim’s family.’

‘How long ago was this?’

‘About five years.’

‘Then it must have been Maite Hernández – she was the other resident pathologist at the time. I try to avoid carrying out autopsies on small children, so she must have handled the cases you’re talking about.’ Amaia recalled San Martín’s sorrow as he contemplated the little Esparza girl’s body; how he had looked away, as if shamed by his natural feeling of revulsion. If anything, that display of humanity had made him go up in her estimation, though she’d always admired his professionalism and his ability to juggle work and, his great passion, teaching.

‘Dr Hernández was awarded a post at Universidad del País Vasco,’ he went on. ‘I’ll call her when I get back to my office. I’m sure she won’t object to speaking to you.’

Amaia thanked him and stood watching as he drove off. The street was now empty of vehicles; and the neighbours had returned to their houses for lunch, driven inside by the rain. As she gazed along the row of houses, Amaia glimpsed shadows moving behind the shutters, even the odd window cracked open despite the increasingly heavy downpour: clearly the neighbours were keeping an eye on proceedings.

Markina put up his umbrella, holding it over her.

‘I’ve been to your village more times in the past few days than in my entire life. Not that I mind.’ He grinned at her. ‘In fact, I’ve been thinking of coming here, though I’d hoped for different reasons.’

Eager to get away from the indiscreet windows overlooking Calle Giltxaurdi, she didn’t reply but set off down the street, confident that he would follow.

‘You never called me back, and yet you knew I was worried about you. Why won’t you tell me how you are? So much has been going on these past few days.’

Omitting any mention of her visit with Sarasola, she briefed him on her conclusions about Berasategui’s death, how they thought he’d obtained the drug he’d used to end his life.

‘We’ve looked into the missing prison guard. He wasn’t one of the two who were present during my interview with Berasategui; they had already been suspended. He lives with his parents, who didn’t object to showing us his room. In it, we found a plastic bag from a chemist’s on the other side of town. When we showed the pharmacist a photograph of the guard, he remembered him instantly, because he wasn’t often asked to supply that particular sedative in liquid form. He checked the prescription, as well as Berasategui’s name – which hadn’t been struck off the medical register. And since everything appeared to be in order, he had no choice but to dispense the drug. CCTV footage from the prison clearly shows the guard outside the cell, doubtless waiting for Berasategui to take the drug so that he could retrieve the empty vial. We’ve put out a search warrant on him, and have checked that he isn’t with any of his relatives. No news on that front for the moment.’

They had reached the old covered market. All at once, Markina stopped dead in his tracks, obliging her to do the same in order to remain under the shelter of his umbrella. He moved forward a couple of steps and then stopped again, grinning. She couldn’t decide if he was teasing her or incredibly happy to see her; he gazed at her in silence for a few seconds, until, finally overwhelmed, she lowered her eyes, only long enough to collect herself, and said:

‘What is it?’

‘When I complained just now that you hadn’t been in touch, I wasn’t referring to how the investigation was going.’

She lowered her gaze once more, smiling this time. When she looked up again she was back in control.

‘Well, that’s all the news you’ll get from me,’ she retorted.

His smile faded. ‘Do you remember what I told you when we left Berasategui’s apartment that night?’

Amaia didn’t reply.

‘My feelings haven’t changed, and they aren’t going to.’

He was standing very close. His nearness aroused her; his voice, merging with the vivid memory of her dream the night before, instantly evoked the warmth of his lips, his mouth, his embrace …

When a large cultural foundation chose to sponsor an artist’s work, their decision was based on advice from their art and finance consultants, who would take into account the artist’s talent and the quality of their work, as well as their likely future success, and the long-term cost effectiveness of the investment. Thanks to glowing reviews of James’s exhibition at the Guggenheim in the prestigious journals Art News and Art in America, the prices his work could command had risen. Now he was on his way to a meeting in Pamplona with representatives of the Banque National de Paris Foundation, hopeful that the outcome would be a major commission.

Adjusting the rear-view mirror, James grinned at his reflection in the glass. Heading for the motorway, his route took him through Txokoto towards Giltxaurdi Bridge. As he drove down the street near the old market, he saw Amaia sheltering under an umbrella held aloft by a man, the two of them in conversation. Slowing down, he lowered the window to call out to her. But something at once imperceptible and obvious made his voice freeze on his lips. The man was leaning in towards her as he spoke, oblivious to everything around him, while she listened, eyes lowered. It was raining and they were huddled beneath the umbrella, inches apart, and yet it wasn’t their proximity that troubled him, but rather the expression in her eyes when she looked up: they were shining with defiance, the challenge of a contest. James knew that was the one thing Amaia couldn’t resist, because she was a warrior governed by the goddess Palas: Amaia Salazar never surrendered without a fight.

James closed the car window, and drove on without stopping. The smile had vanished from his face.

16 (#ulink_b1544168-8905-5763-a15c-1601e0070145)

She swallowed a mouthful of cold coffee, screwing up her face in disgust as she banished the cup to the edge of her desk. She had eaten nothing since breakfast; the vision of Elena Ochoa, slumped over in a pool of her own blood, had taken away her appetite, as well as something else: the slim hope that Elena might have eventually overcome her fears and talked. If only she had told her where the sect’s house was located … She sensed it played a vital role.

Elena’s death, coming on the heels of Berasategui’s, had confounded her. She felt that events were slipping through her fingers, as if she were trying to hold back the River Baztán. In front of her on the desk was a pile of papers: Deputy Inspector Etxaide’s report on cot deaths in the area; a transcript of her conversation with Valentín Esparza in his cell; Berasategui’s autopsy report; a few sheets of A4 filled with her scribbled notes. Unfortunately, after digesting the contents she was left with the impression that nothing stacked up: she was at an impasse, rudderless. She skimmed through the sheets of paper, frustrated.

She checked the time on her watch: coming up to four o’clock. San Martín had called her an hour earlier to give her the number of the pathologist who had carried out the autopsies on the babies mentioned in Jonan’s report. He had briefed the woman and arranged that Amaia would call her at four o’clock. She picked up the telephone, waiting until the last second before dialling the number.

If the doctor was surprised by her punctuality, she didn’t mention it.

‘Dr San Martín told me you are interested in two particular cases. I remember them well, but I’ve dug out my notes, to be on the safe side. Two healthy female babies, with nothing in their autopsies to suggest they died from anything other than natural causes – if we consider death from SIDS to be a natural cause. Both the doctors who signed the respective death certificates entered SIDS as the cause. One of the babies was sleeping on her front, the other on her back. In both cases, my misgivings were caused by the parents’ behaviour.’

‘Their behaviour?’

‘I met with one couple at the request of the father. He became threatening, told me that he’d read about pathologists holding on to people’s organs, and that his daughter had better be intact after the autopsy. I tried to reassure him that organs were only removed in cases where the family had given their consent, or if a person left their body to research. But what shocked me most was when he declared that he knew how much a dead child’s organs could fetch on the black market. I told him that if he meant donor organs then he was mistaken; they would need to be removed under strict medical conditions immediately post-mortem. He insisted he wasn’t referring to the black market in donor organs, but in dead bodies. His wife tried to shut him up, she kept apologising to me, and blaming his outburst on the trauma they were going through. But I believed he was serious; despite being an ignorant oaf, he knew what he was talking about. The reason why I contacted social services was primarily because I felt sorry for their other child, the baby’s older brother, sitting in the waiting room, listening to his father mouth off like that. I didn’t think it would do any harm if they took a look at the family.

‘The other couple’s behaviour was also shocking, but in a completely different way. When I walked into the waiting room at the Institute of Forensic Medicine to tell them we would soon be releasing their daughter’s body, far from grieving they looked positively euphoric. I’ve seen many responses in my time, ranging from sorrow through to utter indifference, but when I left that room and heard the husband assure his wife that from then on their fortunes would improve, I confess I was shocked. I thought they might be words of reassurance, but when I turned to look at them, they were smiling. Not in a forced way, as if they were trying to be strong, but because they were happy.’ The doctor paused as she remembered. ‘I’ve seen deeply religious people respond to the death of their loved ones in a similar way, because they believe they are going to heaven, but in those cases, the dominant emotion is resignation. This couple weren’t resigned, they were joyous.

‘I alerted social services because they had two other young children, aged two and three, and the family were living in a relative’s basement apartment with no central heating. The husband had been on benefits his whole life. According to the social worker, despite the hardships they clearly suffered, the surviving children were well looked after, as was the brother of the other deceased baby. So, no further action was taken.’

Amaia was about to speak when the pathologist added: ‘When Dr San Martín called me today, I remembered a third case, back in March 1997, towards the end of the Easter holidays. The date stuck in my mind because a train derailed in Huarte Arakil killing eighteen people, so we were inundated, and then a case of cot death came in. On this occasion too, the parents asked to see me, refusing to leave until they had spoken to me. It was pitiful. The wife was dying of cancer. They begged me to speed up the process so that they could take the body. Again, they appeared less grief-stricken than one would expect under the circumstances. Indeed, the contrast between that couple and the distraught relatives of the train-crash victims couldn’t have been starker. They might as well have been waiting to pick up their car from the garage. I checked at the time, and they had no other children so there was no cause for social services to be involved.

‘Give me an address, and I’ll send you my notes, together with the number of the social worker who dealt with the other two cases, in case you want to speak to her.’

‘One other thing, Doctor,’ Amaia said.