The Invisible Guardian

8

As she walked home, Amaia was surprised to realise how quickly the light had faded that February afternoon and she had a strange sense of being cheated. The early nights during winter made her feel uneasy. As if the darkness carried an ominous charge, the cold made her shiver beneath the leather of her jacket and yearn for the warmth of the quilted anorak James had tried so hard to persuade her to wear, and which she had rejected because it made her look like the Michelin man.

The warm atmosphere of Aunt Engrasi’s house dispersed the unwelcome remnants of winter that clung to her. The scent of the wood in the hearth, the huge rugs that covered the wooden floor and the incessant chatter from the television, which was permanently on even though nobody ever watched it, welcomed her back again. There were much more interesting things to do there than listen to the TV and yet it was always on in the background like a poltergeist, ignored as an absurdity and tolerated out of habit. She had once asked her aunt why and she had replied, ‘It’s an echo of the world. Do you know what an echo is? It’s a voice you can still hear once the real one has died away.’

Back in the present, James took her by the hand and led her over to the fire.

‘You’re frozen, my love.’

She smiled, nuzzling her nose into his jersey and inhaling the scent of his skin. Ros and Aunt Engrasi came out of the kitchen carrying glasses, dishes, bread and a tureen of soup.

‘I hope you’re hungry, Amaia, because your aunt’s made enough food to feed an army.’

Aunt Engrasi’s footsteps may have been slightly slower than they were at Christmas, but her mind was as clear as ever. Amaia smiled tenderly as she noticed this detail and her aunt snapped at her, ‘Don’t look at me like that, I’m not slow, it’s these damn shoes your sister gave me that are two sizes too big. If I pick my feet up I’m likely to go flying so I have to walk as if I’m wearing a dirty nappy.’

They chatted while they ate, with James telling jokes in his American accent and Aunt Engrasi sharing the local gossip, but Amaia couldn’t help noticing the deep sadness that lay behind the smile with which Ros tried to follow the conversation and the way she tried to avoid eye contact with her sister.

While James and her aunt took the plates through to the kitchen, Amaia caught her sister’s attention with just a few words.

‘I was at the workshop today.’

Ros looked at her as she sat down again with an expression that revealed both her disappointment and relief at being found out.

‘What did she tell you? Or rather, how did she tell you?’

‘In her own way. As she does everything. She told me that they’re going to bring out her second book, that they’ve brought up the possibility of a television show, that she is the backbone of the family, a paragon of virtue and the only person in the whole world who knows the meaning of the word responsibility,’ she recited the litany in an exaggerated sing-song voice until she managed to make Ros smile.

‘… And she also told me that you don’t work at the workshop anymore and that you have serious problems with your husband.’

‘Amaia … I’m sorry that you found out that way, perhaps I should have told you sooner, but it’s something that I’m working through bit by bit, something that I have to do by myself, that I should have done a long time ago. Anyway, I didn’t want to worry you.’

‘Don’t be daft, you know worrying is part of my job description and I’m good at my job. As for the rest, I agree with you, I don’t know how you managed to work with her for so long.’

‘I suppose it was all there was. I didn’t have any other options.’

‘What are you trying to say? We all have more than one option, Ros.’

‘We’re not all like you, Amaia. I suppose it was what was expected, that we would continue to run the workshop.’

‘Are you trying to reproach me for something? Because if that’s the case …’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but when you went it was as if I didn’t have any choice.’

‘That’s not true, you have a choice now and you had a choice then.’

‘When Aita died, Ama started behaving very strangely, I suppose it was the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s, and I suddenly found myself trapped between the responsibility Flora demanded of me, Ama’s episodes and Freddy … I suppose at that point Freddy seemed like an escape route.’

‘And what’s changed now? Because there’s something you mustn’t forget, and that’s that although Flora might act like the owner and boss of the workshop, it’s as much yours as it is hers, and I gave up my share to you two on that condition. You’re as capable of running the company as she is.’

‘That may be so, but it’s more than just Flora and work at the moment, it’s not only because of her, although she has played her part. I suddenly felt like I was drowning there, listening to her and her litany of complaints every day. On top of the problems in my personal life it was just unbearable. Having to go there every morning and listen to the same old story made me so anxious I felt physically ill and emotionally drained. But somehow I also felt as calm and clear-headed as ever. Determined, that’s the word. And all of a sudden, as if the heavens had opened and sent me a sign, it all became clear: I wasn’t going to go back, I didn’t go back, and I won’t go back, at least not for the time being.’

Amaia brought her hands up to head height and began to clap slowly and rhythmically.

‘Well done, Ros, well done.’

Ros smiled and gave a mock curtsey.

‘And now what?’

‘I’m working at an aluminium factory, keeping the accounts. I manage the payroll and organise the weekly diary, arrange the meetings. Eight hours a day, Monday to Friday, and when I leave the office I forget all about it. It’s nothing to get too excited about, but it’s just what I need right now.’

‘And what about Freddy?’

‘It’s bad, really bad,’ she said, biting her lip and shaking her head.

‘Is that why you’re here, staying with Aunt Engrasi?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Why don’t you tell him to leave? When all’s said and done, it’s your house.’

‘I’ve already told him, but he refuses to even consider moving out. Since I left he spends all day going from the bed to the sofa and the sofa to the bed, drinking beer, playing on the PlayStation and smoking joints,’ said Ros with disgust.

‘That’s what Flora called him, “The PlayStation champion”. Where’s he getting the money from? Surely you’re not …?’

‘No, that’s all stopped, his mother gives him money and his friends keep him well supplied.’

‘I can pay him a visit if you want. You know what Aunt Engrasi says, a man with plenty to eat and drink can go a long time without working,’ said Amaia, laughing.

‘Yes,’ replied Ros with a smile, ‘she’s absolutely right, but no. This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. Let me sort things out, I will sort them out, I promise.’

‘You’re not going to go back to him, are you?’ said Amaia, looking her in the eye.

‘No, I’m not going back.’

For a moment Amaia wasn’t convinced. Then she realised her doubt must be showing on her face and was reminded of Flora and her lack of faith in other people. She made herself smile openly.

‘I’m glad for you, Ros,’ she said with all the conviction she could muster.

‘That part of my life is behind me now, and that’s something that neither Flora nor Freddy can understand. Me changing jobs at this point is incomprehensible to Flora, but at thirty-five years of age, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life working under my older sister’s yoke. Putting up with the same reproaches every day, the same snide comments and malicious remarks, as she shares her poison with the whole world. And Freddy … I suppose it’s not his fault. For a long time I thought that he was the answer to all my questions, that he’d have the magic formula, a kind of revelation that would give me a new way of living. So opposite to everyone else, so rebellious, a non-conformist, and most of all, so different to Ama and Flora, and with that ability to really irritate her,’ she smiled mischievously.

‘That’s true. The guy does have the ability to get on Flora’s nerves, and I like him just for that,’ replied Amaia.

‘Until I realised that Freddy isn’t so different after all. That his rebellion and his refusal to accept the rules are nothing more than a cloak to hide a coward, a good-for-nothing capable of giving forth like Che against the evils of consumer society while spending the money that he wheedles out of his mother or me on getting stoned. I think it’s the only thing on which I agree with Flora: he is the PlayStation champion; if he was paid money for it, he’d be one of the richest men in the country.’

Amaia looked at her with tenderness.

‘At a certain point, I found myself on a different path to the one we’d been on together. I knew I wanted a different way of life and that there had to be something more to life than spending every weekend drinking beer at Xanti’s bar. That, and having children. Perhaps that’s the real issue, because as soon as I decided to change my way of living, having a child suddenly became really important to me, an urgent need, my role in life. I’m not an idiot, Amaia, I didn’t want to have a child only to bring it up in a cloud of smoke from all the joints, but even so, I stopped taking the pills and hoped, as if everything would just happen according to a plan drawn up by destiny.’ Her face darkened, and her eyes seemed to lose their sparkle. ‘But it wasn’t to be, Amaia; it looks like I can’t have children either,’ she said in a whisper. ‘I got more and more desperate as the months passed without my falling pregnant. Freddy told me that perhaps it was for the best, that we were fine as we were. I didn’t answer him, but the rest of the night while he was asleep, snoring at my side, a voice was thundering inside me saying, “No, absolutely not, I am not fine like this.” And the voice kept thundering in my head while I got dressed to go to the workshop, while I dealt with the telephone orders, while I listened to Flora’s tireless litany of reproaches. And that day, when I hung my white overall in my locker, I already knew I wouldn’t go back. While Freddy was moving onto the next level of Resident Evil and I was warming the soup for supper, I also realised that my life with him was over. Just like that, without shouting or tears.’

‘You shouldn’t be embarrassed, tears are necessary sometimes.’

‘That’s true, but the time for tears had passed, my eyes had run dry from crying so much while he snored away beside me. From crying with shame and understanding that I was ashamed of him, that I could never be proud of the man at my side. Something broke inside me, and what had, until that point, been pure desperation to save our relationship became a war-cry from somewhere very deep inside me, and it condemned him. Most people are mistaken; they believe you can go from love to hate in a moment, that love suddenly breaks down, as if your heart had imploded. But, that’s not how it was for me. The love didn’t suddenly break down, but I had a sudden realisation that I had wasted myself in a relentless sanding-down process, scritch, scratch, scritch, scratch, day after day. And that was the day when I realised that there was nothing left. It was more like suddenly seeing something that has been there all along. Making those decisions made me feel free for the first time in a long time, and that’s made things straightforward for me, but neither your sister nor my husband were prepared to let me go that easily. You’d be surprised by how similar their arguments, their reproaches, their tricks were … because the two of them played tricks, you know, and they used the very same words.’ She smiled bitterly as she remembered them. ‘Where are you going to go? Do you think you’ll find something better? And, finally: who will love you? They’d never believe it, but although their tricks were designed to undermine my conviction, they had just the opposite effect: I saw how small and cowardly they were, so inept, and anything seemed possible, easier without them dragging me down. I wasn’t sure about everything, but at least I had an answer to the last question: I am; I’m going to love myself and take care of myself.’

‘I’m proud of you,’ said Amaia, hugging her. ‘Don’t forget you can count on me, I’ve always loved you.’

‘I know you have, and James, Aunt Engrasi, Aita and even Ama, in her own way. The only one who didn’t really value me was me.’

‘Then love yourself, Ros Salazar.’

‘There’s been a change there, too: I prefer people to call me Rosaura.’

‘Flora told me, but why? It took you years to get everyone to call you Ros.’

‘If I do have children one day, I don’t want them to know me as Ros, it’s a stoner’s name,’ she declared.

‘You could say that about any name,’ said Amaia. ‘And tell me something, when are you planning to make me an aunt?’

‘As soon as I find the perfect man.’

‘I should warn you that it’s rumoured he doesn’t exist.’

‘You can talk, you’ve already got one.’

Amaia forced a smile.

‘We’ve tried, too. And we can’t, at the moment …’

‘But have you seen a doctor?’

‘Yes. At first I was afraid I had blocked tubes like Flora, but they told me everything appears to be in order. They recommended one of those fertility treatments.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Ros’s voice trembled a bit, ‘have you started yet?’

‘We haven’t been to the clinic, the very thought of having to undergo one of those painful treatments makes me feel ill. Do you remember how bad it was for Flora, and all for nothing?’

‘Of course, but you shouldn’t think like that, you said yourself that you don’t have the same problem as her, perhaps it will work for you …’

‘It’s not just that, I feel a sort of aversion to having to conceive a child that way. I know I’m being stupid, but I don’t believe it should happen like that …’

James came in carrying Amaia’s mobile.

‘It’s Deputy Inspector Zabalza,’ he said, covering the mouthpiece with his hand. Amaia took the phone.

‘Inspector, a patrol has found a pair of girl’s shoes left on the hard shoulder and positioned facing the motorway. They let us know just now. I’ll send a car over and meet you there.’

‘What about the body?’ asked Amaia, lowering her voice and partially covering the phone.

‘We haven’t found it yet, the area’s difficult to access, quite different from the previous cases; the vegetation’s very thick, the river isn’t visible from the road. If there’s a girl down there it’s going to be a challenge to get to her. I keep asking myself why he’s chosen a place like that; perhaps he didn’t want us to find her as easily as the others.’

Amaia weighed up the idea.

‘No. He wants us to find her, that’s why he’s left the shoes to indicate the location. But by choosing a place that isn’t visible from the road he can guarantee that no one will disturb him until he’s got everything in place to show his work to the world. Simply put, it avoids interruptions and hitches.’

They were a pair of white patent Mustang court shoes with quite high heels. A police officer was taking photos of them from different angles under Jonan’s direction. The camera flash made the plastic glimmer and shine, making them look even more strange and out of place, positioned there in the middle of nowhere; they almost seemed enchanted, like the shoes belonging to a princess in a fairy tale, or like the shocking and absurd work of a conceptual artist. Amaia imagined the effect of a long line of party shoes lined up in that remote wilderness. Zabalza’s voice brought her back to reality.

‘It’s disturbing … the thing with the shoes, I mean. Why does he do it?’

‘He marks his territory like a wild animal, like the predator he is, and he provokes us. He leaves them here to draw us in: “Look what I’ve left you, Olentzero has been and left you a little something.”’

‘What a bastard!’

With a concerted effort she managed to tear her gaze from the princess’s enchanting shoes and turn towards the dense woodland. A metallic sound reverberated from the walkie-talkie in Zabalza’s hand.

‘Have they found her?’

‘Not yet, but, as I said, the river runs through the vegetation in a kind of natural canyon with steep walls around here.’

The beams of light from powerful lanterns threw ghostly glimmers through the bare trees, which grew so close together that they produced the effect of an inverse dawn, as if the sun was emerging from the earth instead of in the sky. Amaia pulled on her boots while she considered the effect that the landscape had on her thoughts. Inspector Iriarte appeared from the thick vegetation with an agitated gasp.

‘We’ve found her.’

Amaia went down the slope behind Jonan and Deputy Inspector Zabalza. She noticed how the earth gave way beneath her feet, softened by the recent rain, which, in spite of all the thick foliage, had managed to penetrate deep into the ground, turning the fragments of leaves that coated the floor of the woods into a slimy and slippery carpet. The trees grew so close together that they were obliged to take a zig-zag route down, but the branches did provide useful hand-holds. She could not help feeling a certain malicious satisfaction when she heard Montes’s incoherent mutterings a few steps behind her as he found himself having to come down in his expensive Italian shoes and leather jacket.

The woods stopped abruptly at the edge of a near-vertical rock face on either side of the river, which opened out forming a narrow ‘v’ like a natural funnel. They went down as far as a dark, low-lying area which the police officers were trying to illuminate with portable spotlights. The current and flow of the river were faster there, and there was less than a metre and a half of dry gravel between the steep walls and the river bank on either side. Amaia looked at the girl’s hands, which lay open at the sides of her despoiled body, stretched out in an ominous gesture of entreaty; the left one was almost touching the water, her long blonde hair reached nearly to her waist and her green eyes were covered by a whitish steam-like film. Her beauty in death and the almost mystical scene that the monster had come up with achieved the intended effect. For a moment he had managed to draw Amaia into his fantasy, distracting her from protocol, and it was the princess’s eyes that brought her back, those eyes crying out for justice from the bed of the River Baztán in spite of being clouded by the mist, which sometimes filled her dreams during her darkest nights. She took a couple of steps back to murmur a brief prayer and put on the gloves that Montes was holding out to her. Acutely sensitive to other people’s distress, she looked at Iriarte who had covered his mouth with his hands and brought them almost brusquely down to his sides when he felt he was being observed.

‘I know her … I knew her, I know her family, she’s Arbizu’s daughter,’ he said, looking at Zabalza as if seeking confirmation. ‘I don’t know what she’s called, but she’s Arbizu’s daughter, there’s no doubt about it.’

‘She’s called Anne, Anne Arbizu,’ confirmed Jonan holding out a library card. ‘Her bag was a few metres upstream,’ he said, gesturing to an area that was now dark again.

Amaia knelt down next to the girl, observing the frozen grimace on her face, almost a parody of a smile.

‘Do you know how old she was?’ she asked.

‘Fifteen, I don’t think she’d turned sixteen yet,’ replied Iriarte, coming over. He looked at the body and then started running. About ten metres downstream he doubled over and vomited. Nobody said anything, not then nor when he came back, wiping the front of his shirt with a tissue and murmuring his apologies.

Anne’s skin had been very white; but not washed-out, almost transparent, plagued by freckles and red patches. It had been white, clean and creamy, completely hairless. Covered as it was by droplets from the river’s mist it was like the marble of a statue on a tombstone. In contrast to Carla and Ainhoa, this girl had fought. At least two of her nails seemed to be torn down to the quick. There seemed to be no fragments of skin beneath the rest. No doubt she had taken longer to die than the others; the burst blood vessels that indicated death by asphyxiation and the suffering caused by oxygen deprivation were visible in spite of the clouding that covered her eyes. Furthermore, the killer had faithfully reproduced the details of the previous murders: the thin cord buried in her neck, the clothes torn and pulled open to the sides, the jeans pulled down to her knees, the shaved pubic area and the fragrant, sticky cake placed on her pubic mound.

Jonan was taking photographs of the hair scattered on the ground near the girl’s feet.

‘It’s all the same, chief, it’s like looking at the other girls all over again.’

‘Fuck!’ a restrained yell was heard from several metres downstream, together with the unmistakable thunder of a shot which bounced off the rock walls producing a deafening echo that stunned them all for a moment. Then they drew their weapons and pointed them towards where the river narrowed.

‘False alarm! It’s nothing,’ shouted a voice from the direction of a torch that was moving towards them along the river bank. A smiling uniformed officer came walking over with Montes, who was visibly upset as he looked at his gun.

‘What happened, Fermín?’ asked Amaia, alarmed.