The Ripper

by Carmelo Anaya

  - It might be him. Malasana lolls in the armchair, reading Interpol's report on Radu Ribokas. He's a got a record for homicide, a prostitute in Bucarest. He stabbed her. Slit her open in one go.

  - That doesn't match up... I say slowly, voicing my doubts. He slit her open in one go. Though I suppose... I stop and light a cigarette. He's a smart guy. He might have had a motive for killing Cristiana Stoicescu and...

  - What motive? Those women are terrified.

  - Cristiana was too pretty, too attractive to work on the street. We know she wanted to get out of it. Maybe she had ambitions. Maybe she wanted to stop the sex work, even report on the pimps, to be free. She was a sex slave, at the end of the day.

  - He wouldn't have killed her like that. He would have got rid of her quietly.

  - He left that pimp's head on a table, didn't he?

  - To make an example of him. But why would he kill her out in the open? It's too much of a risk. Malasana plays devil's advocate. And how would he have known she wanted out?

  - I've been told. She asked a client to buy her out.

  - Who?

  - No one of interest to us. He disappeared as soon as he found out who he was dealing with.

  He looks at me thoughtfully for a minute, but doesn't say anything. Then he looks at the places on the map where Bogdan pointed out the meeting spots with Radu and starts to count and join them up.

  - Do you think he can live like an impoverished nomad, with the money he's got rolling in?

  - No. He doesn't look up from the map.

  - Me neither. What if the different meeting spots are just a strategy to throw the men off?

  - They are.

  - Onto the next question: Where would he hide? In a place with lots of other Romanians or far out of town where they'd be invisible?

  - Out of town. For sure. He's got a lot of money to hide. He can't do that in the midst of other Romanian immigrants out of work or sick of breaking their backs for a crappy minimum wage job. Sooner or later they'd find out about the money and they'd be in danger. The would suspect him and his wife.

  We talk it over, thinking out loud.

  - He's close, boss. For sure, he says again, looking up this time. He's been seen with his pimps near Baria more times than in any other location. Since Bogdan started working for him, eight times around Baria and ten in Almeria, Roquetas de Mar and El Ejido. He's hiding here.

  His deep-set, sharp eyes glimmer. I read his mind. He's started to sniff out his prey. I don't have to issue any orders. He'll do it humself.

  - There are almost no Romanians in this area. Lots more in Poniente. It's here. He's hiding here.

  - Where?

  - In the mountains. I'm sure of it.

  - Why?

  - Because he's an animal. Because I know him. I know how he thinks. Hiding away to enjoy the spoils on his own. All the rest, this nomad nonsense and the poverty, that's just a front.

  He gets up and opens the door.

  - I'll be back once I've found him.

  The body of Diana Carolina Mieles suffered the same wounds and mutilation as the body of Annie Chapman. The cause of death were two parallel cuts to the neck, left to right, barely half an inch apart. The abdomen was completely cut open. The murderer cut no corners. The intestines were placed on the shoulder of the body, and the pelvis, uterus and ovaries, with the upper section of the vagina and the two-thirds of the bladder were removed. The killer took them with him. Other details include the symbol carved into her thigh and the cigarette butt placed in her nostril.

  I contain my rage and put the report to one side. It's not going to get us any nearer to the murderer. We already know what he does and what he'll do. His modus operandi is like a play. You always know what's coming next. But you can never skip ahead. My feeling of powerlessness and frustration grows. He's damnedly smart. Devilishly sharp. Intelligence dedicated to the service of Evil. And I feel so tiny and inconsequential next to him that I feel like crying.

  I get up abruptly and splash water on my face and hands in the men's. The lukewarm water washes away my useless tears. I feel fury burning inside me. I tell myself I have to go on, that I'll be as persevering as he is, so tenacious that nothing will ever be able to stop me. And I convince myself that sooner or later he'll make a mistake and I'll be waiting for him.

  When I come out of the men's, I don't wait. I snatch up my phone and call Sebastian Rodriguez. I need someone who can help me decipher the symbol. I scan the photograph Braulio took in the autopsy and send it over to him, asking him to be discreet.

  When I hang up I'm alone with my frustration again. The assassin's all-pervasive presence, in the limelight, in all the papers and news broadcasts, the eyes of the world on him, terrifies me more than if he were acting alone in the darkness. I know his next moves and there's nothing I can do to stop him.

  So close to her spirit that I can almost feel it on my skin, like thousands of fingertips caressing my face. In the darkness, synesthesia blooms even brighter. I feel the world turning around me, containing me in its rich, voluptuous violence. I'm just another element in the firmament, another star in the sky, a drop in the ocean. But my smallness is so full and rich because my spirit has lifted, turning in the eternal spinning of the world, and my spirit and her spirit merge until we are one. Life and death intermingled. Death and life in one infinite atom. The spirit of depth is in you, in your mutilated and bleeding flesh. The spirit of time is in the knife that parts the flesh like the Word of the Prophet parts the Red Sea. We will be lifted above the taunting of mutilated flesh, the taunting of death. Death which is the destiny of the spirit of time guiding the blade of the knife through the flesh, to finish this dead life and rescuscitate our Infinite New Life, the life that lives in the atom and the spirit, springing eternal. I am the murderer and the victim. All of you are murderers too. We will all slay our demons and end up in Hell. The hell we feel when we feel alien flesh, the alien soul, the alien spirit. Hell made sublime when you listen to a Bach sonata as the knife parts the flesh and the flesh expires as the spirit rises. Nonsense is there, observing us, while every mouth cries out silently in atonement and rebirth.

  I feel so fulfilled that my eyes fill with tears. I can feel the body, still warm, lying where time has not been able to erase the bloodstain. I see the body split open, the legs splayed out to offer her belly to celebration, give her entrails over in offering.

  The sound of a car interrupts my vision. Breaks the spell. It brings me back down to this harsh brutal earth where Diana Carolina Mieles breathed her last breath, like Cristiana Stoicescu before her. Now both of them are infinity, infinity and spirit.

  But some want to break the vision. A voice from the car calls out my name. I turn around, but to them I'm just a shadow in the darkness. He stops the car and moves towards me. It's Hell itself, Hell incarnate, trying to catch me, drag me through the mud and pull me back down to Earth with its teeming misery and sullied longing.

  I run and turn the corner and now I'm nothing to him, just shadow and darkness, and he is nothing to me, just the brutal cry of beings mired in poverty with no spirit.

  Shouts. People running. Someone yells my name with urgency. I rush downstairs three, four steps at a time. Half a dozen officers round the corner of the old market. A few journos holding out under the colonnade are running too, dragging their cameras and mics.

  - 'I couldn't catch up with him, Chief! He had a motorbike round the corner and just fucking sped off!'

  Garcia's never run as fast as tonight. He can barely get the words out. I head other officers shouting as they sprint through the streets.

  - 'I was on my way home. I drove up out of the basement and saw a guy just standing here, like he was studying the scene. Looked suspicious. I called out to him. But as soon as I got out of the car he disappeared and then got on the bike. It was impossible to stop him.'

  He bends forward, hands on his knees, gasping for b
reath.

  - We alert everyone. 'I want road checks in a 10km radius.'

  Garcia buries himself in his phone and I inspect the crime scene, pacing back and forth. He returned to the scene of the crime! It's got to be him! It's got to be! But that means he's so close... Under our noses. The rage bubbles up in me and gets me sweating more than the chase.

  - Where's he gone?

  Garcia gestures towards one of the streets. The same he took with Diana Carolina Mieles and fled down after killing her. He must already be on the motorway. By the time we get the road checks up it'll be too late.

  Garcia hands me the phone and I talk to the Guardia Civil sergeant. Everyone is on the alert. A minute later, I speak to the head of the local police and he says he's set up checks throughout the city. But while we're talking the motorbike will have had time to make it to Hell

  Two officers have brought in Carlos Arribas, the bachelor who took Cristiana Stoicescu to dinner at Noom. He's finally turned up.

  We take him to the same office where we talked to Daniel Albala.

  He's a fussy, prim-looking man. Hair combed back. The face of an aristocrat who's fallen on hard times. Skin wrinkled with age and too much sun from his lengthy southern holidays. He wears a prim little blue jacket with a handkerchief tucked into the pocket, matching belt and loafers, a playboy shirt with the two top buttons undone and grey slacks. He wants it to look like he summers in Marbella and is twenty years younger, but fails on both counts.

  - 'I've been told smoking is permitted at this station,' he says, cigarette already tucked between his index and middle finger.

  - 'That depends.'

  - 'On what?' he smiles.

  - 'How honest you are with us.'

  Lopez comes in and greets Arribas. There's no one he doesn't know.

  - 'Not to worry, Don Carlos, this is just a formality.'

  He sits down in front of the computer to take his statement.

  - 'Chief, Don Carlos will be honest with us. Let him smoke.'

  The heartbreaker gives me a big, toothy smile and I nod my consent. He lights up with a silver lighter. I'm fine with my own cheap plastic one, bought for a euro at the newsagent's. That's life.

  - 'Right... can I get started now?'

  Lopez nods and positions his stubby fingers on the keyboard.

  - 'I saw the girl out on the street one night. At first, I didn't know who she was or what she did. But I'm a great admirer of beauty. So I turned around and drove back. Then I thought: She wouldn't be here at this time if she weren't a prostitute. I saw other women standing around...'

  - 'Where?'

  - 'I had just stopped for petrol at the Palomares station.'

  - 'Go on.'

  - 'Well, two and two make four. A prostitute. My heart skipped a beat. That meant I stood a chance. So I went back and just talked to her. She wanted to service me in the car. There was no way I was accepting that. So while I was negotiating with her, a pimp turned up.'

  Lopez pulls up a photograph of Bogdan on the screen.

  - 'Yes. I think it was him. But it was nighttime. I'm not 100% sure. I didn't really care about the guy, you understand. Anyway, he put the price up. I hired her for the whole night. A grand, no less. But what a night!'

  - 'What date was this?'

  - 'Unforgettable. This happened the night of August 5, and she spent the whole night with me The whole night.'

  - 'Where did you go?'

  - 'Noom, as you already know. I just had to show her off. She was stunning. We had dinner and a drink. Then I took her home, of course. Just next door. The looks we got! Pure envy!'

  - 'What did you do last night?'

  - 'Last night?' he makes a face, taken aback. 'Oh, yes, of course! I was at home.'

  - 'Alone?'

  - 'Completely alone.'

  - 'No plans?'

  - 'Unfortunately not, Chief.'

  - 'Can someone corroborate that?'

  He shrugs.

  - 'No.'

  He smiles, looking at Lopez. Lopez shifts in his chair and finishes taking the statement. He prints it out and Carlos Arribas signs it, an amused smile playing on his lips as he chuckles.

  - 'Well, let's see whether you catch this animal. At this pace, he's going to drive prices up to pre-recession levels...'

  The Golf stops in front of Baria Ciy Blues almost without my realising it, like a tamed beast that knows the way home off by heart. I leave the car half-parked on the pavement between two bollards in the narrow cobblestone street. Lopez slams the door so hard the car shakes. We breathe in the air - the sulphurous smell of the sewers - and stare at the simple white facade of the chapel, its one wooden door with a square window to pray before the statue of theVirgin of the Sea, and its stained glass rose window below a plain white tower with its single bell. Next to it, breaking up the facade of the narrow street with its two-storey houses, wooden doors and simple balconies, an ugly brick block of flats rented out at low prices. On the ground floor is a wooden door as thick as the chapel entrance, with only a small, discreet blue sign above it as if the owner would rather his business go unnoticed. It reads Baria City Blues. We enter the building - the door permanently pulled to, as if screening punters of its own volition - and jog down a narrow flight of stairs through a set of heavy red curtains. We're met with a blast of cool underground air. Scanning the room, we're surprised to see a group of people chatting in a corner at the back. Usually there's only ever one lonely patron enjoying the cool half-dark.

  Mike comes out to greet us and show us to the table we've booked.

  I order something to eat.

  - 'Place is packed tonight,' I joke.

  But there are only about five people here.

  Mike rewards us with a crinkly-eyed smile. He's English, slight build, redheaded, with a dark past and a ghostly present. Just like his presence in the city, which rumours say is nothing more than a doomed love story, Mike waiting for his one true love like a freckly, ginger Penelope. They say the woman he awaits was so beautiful she drove men mad. And the first man who lost her love also lost half his skull to a rifle shot. The weapon was never found and some say Mike got rid of it by throwing it to the bottom of the sea. They say his one true love will never return to avoid the curse, though he waits, patient and wounded, always dressed in black, despite the violent southern light. A few colleagues warned me about Mike's troubled past. But they have a past as troubled as his, not to mention the present, so I didn't pay them much heed. Now Mike is the closest thing I've got to a friend in this town. Too many hours spent in silence, music playing in the background, scaring off his clientele.

  - 'What is this?' I point up to the speakers.

  - 'Muddy Waters.'

  - 'Too upbeat for us.' Lopez settles into the armchair, upholstered in something that in a previous life may have been red velvet. 'My wife's making my life hell. She told me not to show my face til we catch that son of a bitch,' he says.

  - 'She says that with every case. You're going to end up living with me one of these days.'

  He smiles halfheartedly. Scary to see on his big, broad face. His big friendly giant face is much more intimidating when it shows sadness or anger.

  A moment later, Mike brings us a plate of sandwiches and Lopez wolfs two down before I can even take a proper bite of mine.

  - 'Not eating?'

  - 'Not hungry.' I chew listlessly.

  He snatches up the sandwich meant for me without any qualms and sets to work. Before finishing my sandwich I'm already thirsty for a drink. Maybe the alcohol will purge my demons.

  Mike appears with the gin and tonics.

  - 'Is it true he's waiting for a woman?' asks Lopez as soon as Mike moves off.

  - 'Maybe not the best idea to ask him.

  - He's got a temper.'

  I take a long drink of my G&T and reflect once again that the bloody Englishman behind the bar who'll never get r
id of his bloody English accent makes the best drinks in a hundred-mile radius.

  Muddy Waters restores my faith in life while Mike mixes me one G&T after another and I try to forget. But all that does is fill my eyes with the fog around the brutal killer in my imagination, and frustration and desperation steal over me with more force than the gin.

  A while later I go up to the bar to ask Mike for a packet of cigarettes. A woman comes up at the same time and looks at me for too long. Then she turns around and I can read in her body language that she's attuned to me, checking whether I'm looking at her or not. I am, of course. I gauge the possibility of holding her with a mixture of melancholy and sad, wilted desire, even before the fact. Her body is a banner for the consolation I'm longing for. I'm almost surprised to see her body, the body of a live woman, whole and untouched, not rent and ruined by a mysterious killer.

  - 'Everything all right?' asks Lopez when I sit down next to him.

  - 'I saw a ghost.'

  - 'What?'

  - 'A beautiful, live woman, Lopez. Recently all I've seen has been...'

  - 'I know... I know. Say no more. I've been going through the same thing.'

  Mike has a seat with us.

  - 'At this rate you'll be set for the month.'

  - 'Two drinks all night,' he complains.

  - 'That doesn't usually bother you. Usually you're moaning about people coming in. I reckon you opened this bar for your sole enjoyment.

  - And for the pigs.'

  - 'That's as good as having no punters at all.' 'You know we don't pay for our drinks.'