The Ripper

by Carmelo Anaya

  - 'What, you don't work in exchange for money?' asks Lopez.

  - 'Not anymore.'

  That's as far as you can get in a personal conversation with Mike.

  - ¿Cómo lleváis a mi paisano? And how's Mr Hunt?

  - 'Are you from London?' Lopez straightens up in his chair.

  - 'Among other places.'

  We carry on drinking, Muddy keeping us company. I tell him I like it and he nods.

  - 'I knew you would,' he says.

  Lopez isn't interested in the music.

  - 'What do you know about Jack the Ripper?'

  - 'The old one or the new one?' asks Mike.

  - 'Both.'

  - 'The old one,' he shrugs, 'the same as everyone else, I suppose. Never taken too much of an interest. He was a lowlife who got lucky in a place where going unnoticed was easy because of how crowded it was, and because of the poverty. And the new one... well, he's clever, and you won't catch him easily.'

  I look at him with interest and he goes on.

  - 'If you still haven't caught him and you've got no leads, that is, which I'm guessing based on the fact that you're here drinking like desperate men, then that means he's planned it all out very carefully. He's an imitator, but he's not leaving any traces new police techniques could detect. He's planned everything very deliberately.'

  - 'What if we lock up all the prostitutes in the county for next time?' Lopez is throughtful, searching for a solution.

  - 'Then he'll attack the first woman that crosses his path,' says Mike resolutely.

  We don't say anything, knowing he's right.

  - 'He might make a mistake.' A lacklustre attempt to cheer us up. 'But it won't be easy.'

  - 'He leaves strange clues. Esoteric clues, as if they were signals,' I say, surprising myself.

  Mike thinks it over but doesn't buy it.

  - 'I don't think they mean anything. Maybe he's harking back to Victorian times. The occult and spiritism were all the rage then. Don't you remember Arthur Conan Doyle? He was a doctor and even he believed in it. He tried to speak to his dead son through a medium.'

  Mike explains who Conan Doyle was to Lopez. Lopez seems thoughtful. A sad expression steals over his face:

  - 'But why does he kill?'

  - 'Ever since humankind evolved from irrational animals, we've been killing for any little thing.'

  Lopez insists and shakes his head, looking at Mike.

  - 'I just don't get it. Why does he kill them like that?'

  - 'It's gratuitous, senseless, absurd, no logical explanation,' says Mike. 'It's just about him satisfying an urge. Killing for the sake of it, nothing else to it.'

  - 'I watch Criminal Minds,' says Lopez. 'And all I see on there are whack jobs.' 'They're all whack jobs.

  - You have to be, to do this.'

  - ''Don't be so sure. There are killers out there who are very intelligent. But they feel no affection for anyone or anything. Not even their kids. To them, a person is like an object. An object they can toy with or destroy any way they like. They're completely indifferent to people.'

  Lopez's eyes mist over. It's too much for his gentle nature. He can understand the rage borne of passion, or the fury of greed, or the brutality of ignorance. But he cannot comprehend killing for the sake of it.

  The table at the back call for the bill. They leave with happy faces, talking and laughing loudly. The real, live woman meets my eyes as she walks out of the door and I feel a stab of melancholy. I know where I'll end up tonight.

  Mike comes and sits down with us and tells us to listen to the music. Lopez closes his eyes and leans back in the armchair. I try to pay attention but I can't. 'Thelonius Monk,' Mike announces. But the first few bars make me even sadder and I stand up to leave. Lopez leans forward, drains his drink and gets up.

  - 'Put it on my tab,' I say to Mike.

  - 'It's a mile long.'

  - 'I'll pay it off with my poker earnings.'

  - 'You always lose.'

  Our old joke - I owe him a debt he never asks me to pay back. Sometimes we play poker with a few other policemen in the back room. He always wins, that way I kind of pay up.

  A bin lorry has been past and cleaned the street. The cobblestones shine with the light from the street lamps and a fresh, improbable breeze blows across the street like a soul in torment. Lit up by street lamps, the city looks prettier than it is, the same way a body half in shadow is more graceful. The soft light smooths out imperfections like a layer of makeup.

  I drop Lopez off at home. He heaves himself laboriously out of the car like an elephant in a corset and I clap him on his massive shoulder. Neither of us needs to say a word.

  Then I drive through the narrow streets and emerge on a broad avenue lined with eight-storey tiered buildings, built up out of speculation a decade earlier. In this area of the city, unlike where the Romanian prostitutes live, most buildings are inhabited by people living sparkling lives of fake prosperity. I park the car in front of a block designed to look like the deck of an ocean liner at night. I don't buzz - I've got a key. But when I get up to the top floor I ring the doorbell. I can't quite bring myself to walk in unannounced, although I have the key in my hand and she's told me to let myself in countless times.

  Natalia opens the door a minute later. She doesn't bother looking through the peephole - at this time of night, there's only one person it can be. Someone wounded.

  She opens the door without saying a word. Inside, I shrink from the face she's putting on, her resolute teacher's face. I prefer the imperfect woman I've known for so long who used to work nights at a brothel, who I turned to for comfort when life got to be too much. When she told me she was packing up and leaving Almerimar to move to Baria I didn't realise why. But later I found out. She wanted to be close to me, when I don't know how to get close to anyone. Despite my rejecting her, which is just cowardice, she still puts up with me. Putting up with my long absences, the calls I don't make when I can't or I don't feel like it. And then I come crawling back and cry in her arms when I'm desperate. There's no other woman in the world for me. And if there are other men for her there's nothing I can say, because she deserves it and I don't deserve even a minute of her time. But there she still is, opening the door.

  - 'Have you got any Thelonius Monk?

  - Anything.'

  She types something on her computer and a moment later the same slow beats that made me sad at Baria City Blues ring out.

  - 'Something to drink?'

  I shake my head. Then she understands what I need. I pick her up and carry her into the bedroom. Natalia knows that placing my hands on her skin is enough to calm the beast raging inside me. So a while later, she asks me what's wrong. I can't express it in words, but I ask her not to put anything on, to lie still and quiet and close her eyes. I caress the skin of her belly, so soft, so smooth, containing her, keeping her whole. That's all I need. She asks what I'm doing every once in a while but I don't say a word. I kiss her and she lets me stroke her skin. It's not desire. I just want to touch her belly, untouched, whole, containing her entrails, containing her, as smooth and flawless as those other ruined and rent bellies before the knife ripped them apart. I say nothing. I don't want to scare her. She gradually falls asleep sweetly in my arms. It takes a long time for sleep to find me, sobered up and sad, my hand still on her stomach.

  I'm a murderer with sense of humour

  She was an invisible victim

  I finished off her stupid dreams

  Are they allowed to dream their miserable, tiny dreams?

  And the cigarette butt in her nostril

  Quite the surprise, eh?

  You really thought you had got your hands on my DNA, Chief?

  It was just your fag-end

  The Chief's fag-end

  Ha hahahahahahahahaha

  7

  - 'Lieutenant Ferrer. At your service.'

  I motio
n to a chair and he sits.

  - 'I don't want to you to think of our presence here as a lack of consideration. On the contrary, we're here to help.'

  He's been working on it.

  I'm not buying it, so he gets to the point. I'm surprised to see how young he is. I know he must be very good at his job, or he wouldn't have been sent down here.

  - 'We're at your service.'

  He's not in uniform, but he did drive here in a Guardia Civil car. He's wearing jeans and a T-shirt - a bit young for someone in his mid-thirties. His black hair is cropped short, as regulation dictates, and he's good-looking. Next to Lopez, he looks young, thin, removed from the world of violence and crime we move through every day.

  But he walked into the station in full view of the journos.

  - We've been granted access to all his reports. I congratulate him.

  Since I don't say anything else, he goes on.

  - 'And our experts have put together a profile. Approved by the FBI.'

  - 'What, by the Criminal Minds team?'

  A look of disbelief appears in his eyes before he can compose himself and plaster a fake smile across his face. He says condescendingly:

  - 'Something rather more serious than that, xxx.'

  My bad temper prevents me from being polite. I open a drawer, take out an ashtray and light up. He doesn't smoke of course, out of character for a sporty young trendy. I don't ask if he minds; the look on his face is enough.

  - I'm worse than they said I'd be.

  - I can understand the situation he's in.

  - 'Well then, you should know that we'll be offering all the support and help you may need,' I force myself to say, and see the relief on his face after his shocked expression at my rudeness. 'But I demand, demand I said, it be mutual.'

  - 'Of course.'

  - 'No, not of course. I know how these cases go. Your lot have everything, every tool at your disposal, and you don't share information. I'll share if your team does. If not, you can go running to your superiors and tell them all about our little talk.'

  - I promise him we'll work together.

  - But he's taking his time sending me the psychological profile the Criminal Minds team has put together.

  - 'I'll send it on right away.'

  - 'If you've read my reports, you know about the same as me: nothing.'

  - 'There's always some information, boss.'

  - 'Right now even Lopez is a suspect. We know sweet fuck all.'

  Lieutenant Ferrer is unsure whether to go on with the conversation.

  - 'Accompany the lieutenant and show him what we've got so far.'

  Lopez stands up abruptly and Ferrer eyes me for a second before they leave.

  - 'We'll be in touch.'

  - 'Of course.'

  When they've left, I send Lopez a WhatsApp message telling him not to go down to the chamber of horrors.

  That piece of hell is all mine.

  The profile: white man. Organised killer. A psychopath who attacks women he doesn't know. He leaves the bodies where the murders were committed and taunts the police by committing crimes in busy areas.

  He acts alone and is under thirty-five. A killer who has worked on his methods for a considerable amount of time, choosing a set pattern because he wants fame and validation.

  He's methodical and controlling. He plans his crimes and bears with the long waits between the chosen dates. He shows total control of the scene of the crime and demonstrates extremely consistent expressive and instrumental violence, meaning he is very probably able to keep the violence at low levels in his daily life. This emphasizes his diagnosis as a psychopath, as he can murder with no thought to the consequences, fearlessly and remorselessly, without it affecting his ordinary life.

  He is not married and probably lives with a relative who is no hurdle to his criminal activity. Probably an elderly parent. It's very likely he has a boring, run-of-the-mill job he's frustrated in. And tries to relieve that frustration through his crimes.

  His motive is sexual and he gains satisfaction through the total control he can exercise in possessing and killing his victim.

  He is an extreme narcissist, as evidenced by his challenge to the police force in killing in or near busy areas, especially so with his second murder, committed opposite the police station.

  I wonder if that narcissism manifests as arrogance or pride or whether, on the contrary, it's much more perverse, buried in his personality, and in his day-to-day life he's just a nondescript guy, always blending into the crowd, one of those egos that explode after a lifetime of lowgrade humiliation.

  He hates women and has probably been humiliated by a woman at some point. He may have a controlling, oppressive mother. He dones't show his hatred in public, keeps his rage hidden. And for some reason he's found inspiration in the shape of the Ripper's crimes. Jack the Ripper has become a legend, a myth. And myth followers, even the most perverse, number in the thousands.

  We've scoured the Web for blogs and websites on Jack the Ripper in every language and he's got more fans than many a rock band.

  The profile also states that our man's victims differ from those of the original Ripper. They are also prostitutes, but younger. He picks them out at random, indicating that his violence is symbolic.

  Criminal experts say there is no possbility of putting together a (perfil geografico), as only two murders have been committed, but they assume that the killer lives and works in the town or its surroundings.

  I leave a copy of the profile for my team and decide to do something I probably should have done a long time ago. I'm not going to consult a criminal expert. I'm going to consult a criminal.

  Every officer in the city knows his name. Lopez, Malasana and Martin know he is a member of the CSI (Unidentifiable Bastards by its Spanish acromym) gang, which ever so often, when we suggest it, make a move when we can't. It's always surprised me how the criminal and moralistic are curiously intertwined, natural as day, in Jose Luis. Now he goes around acting like your average productive member of society, a businessman working in the underbelly of the city's hotel trade. Those in the know say he's been the only crook in the city to learn from other people's mistakes, specifically those of his former business partner who was shot in the head. Jose Luis has always been a practical man and maybe that's what's kept him far from the madding crowd. But a leopard never changes its spots and I caught him with stolen goods shortly after I was assigned to Baria. He didn't say a word, (ni en los momentos mas duros), he agreed to cooperate with us as long as he didn't have to inform on anyone. So from time to time he offers us his services free of charge: burning cars, beating someone up, strangling a cat and hanging it from the door of our chosen target. Jose Luis and his team are the broom we use to try to sweep the rubbish under the rug.

  I park the Golf in an unlikely spot, a bend in the road as steep as the stairway to heaven, squeezed in between thick old whitewashed walls in the heart of the Barrio Alto. The streets are so narrow and criss-crossed, such a maze, that the air itself still thrums with the Mozarabic feel from when the foundations of the city were laid. An old lady watches me from her doorstep, pretending to sweep the cobblestoned street. She half-nods in my direction and I almost want to say a spell under my breath, since I can't tell whether she's greeting me or casting the evil eye on me.

  I brush aside the old-fashioned rag rugs curtains Jose Luis has put up to keep out the flies and step into a room that never fails to surprise me. It's like stepping forty years into the past. An old wooden bar so worn down it's been polished by the elbows that have leant on it under a Soberano brand mirror, its shelves crowded with bottles. The formica tables with metal legs and plaid oilcloth tablecloths transport me back to my childhood. The bar is crowded with four OAPs hard at work on their game of dominoes, setting themselves up for a thrilling afternoon. Eight eyes boring into me, though without much curiosity. Some have mocking smiles on their faces. They know h
ow it goes.

  - 'This joint just gets classier and classier,' I say lazily as soon as Jose Luis comes out of the kitchen.

  He's carrying a plate of fried fish that he plonks on the corner of the table without saying a word. He makes his way back behind the bar and doesn't look at me. I can see him struggling to think up a good comeback.

  - 'Didn't you see the sign?'

  He points a fat finger at a sign: 'The Management Reserve the Right to Refuse Admission', the glass over it stained with grease and other suspect substances.

  - 'We don't serve just anyone here. So pay attention,' and he points at the sign again.

  - 'Better watch out... if you keep pointing like that, someone might stick your finger up your nose.'

  He throws a tea towel over his shoulder and stands squarely opposite me on the other side of the bar. He puts his huge hands on the worn surface and leans over til I can smell his breath. It smells of fried fish and I wouldn't be surprised if he'd snuck a bite or two before bringing it out. The OAPs laugh. If they had their way, we'd be slugging each other. A nice way to break up the monotony of their domino game.

  - 'Who's going to stick it to who, big man?'

  I lean forward and pray my breath smells worse than his.

  - 'A pig. To a small-time third-rate crook.'

  - 'A pig with a badge or without one? Can't be long now...'

  He turns towards our audience and crows:

  'They've had to send in a team of civilian prissies because the force don't even have the balls to catch a car thief.'

  'That's not what you said when you were begging in the station basement. Crying like a little girl.'

  'Fuck...!'