El Dandy stops abruptly, smiling toothily at his audience, everyone hanging on every word.
- 'I'm sorry to be so harsh.'
He shrugs, raises his hands, smiles again and goes on:
- The rise of neoliberalism can be equated to our fall from Paradise. By the sweat of your brow you will eat. This has made men into beasts. And the true apple in Paradise, the true forbidden fruit, is human flesh. You will not eat your neighbour: that's the real first, essential commandment. But what exactly are we doing every day? What do we see on the news, in the papers, outside our front door? Isn't the solitude, the abandonment, the hopelessness people are sinking into every day without anyone lending a hand - isn't that eating your neighbour? Isn't exploiting people at work eating your neighbour? Isn't wheeling and dealing eating your neighbour? Isn't abusing or lying to your loved ones eating your neighbour?
- 'Shyster, philosopher and priest. He's the whole package,' whispers Lopez.
El Dandy gives the floor back to Don Silverio Carranza, who says as he nods:
- Recently, several horrific crimes have been committed in this city and the outskirts. Everyone has heard of them. I'd like you to cast your minds back to the original Ripper, which some madman is now imitating. What exact context did Jack the Ripper operate in? Well, in London, a city with a population that suddenly swelled to great numbers in the space of only a few years. Its population was made up of the extreme poor, people with no work or future, in poor areas. Homelessness, alcoholism, prostitution and poverty were their daily life, in which unfettered capitalism devoured anyone fit to work in inhuman living conditions. Human life has lost its value. The identity of the murderer, hiding behind that famous nickname, is unknown. But it's plain to see his crimes were savage, disproportionate, insane. And he was the first modern serial killer. Jack the Ripper pioneered modern crime in the context of the society I've just described. And what happened after that? His attitude was copied over and over again. The victims of serial killers have almost always been people who were less able to defend themselves - women especially. The example has born fruit, the genesis Gerard mentioned. Our compulsive society's scapegoat has finally come to light: the figure of the victim. Especially woman. Brutal, deliberate femicide.'
El Dandy takes the floor again, looking at the audience and saying pleadingly:
- 'What happened later didn't help matters. In the twentieth century, there was a deep crisis of meaning, with radical skepticism about all the principles that up until then had inspired and driven society. Let's not forget that in 1968 the slogan of this new, budding society was 'All power to the imagination'. What did that mean? It meant that reason had been abolished. The reason driving society and its values was killed: people felt those values, society as it had been up until then, had run dry, that it was oppressive and reactionary. And society has continued to rebel against the myths of reason and progress. Based on the theories of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, humankind today is considered as a necessary derivaton of irrational forces, allegedly the only forces behind any human manifestation. This postmodern stance leads to the loss of any real consistency of the subject. Currently, there are even scientists - Eagleton, for instance - whom, after having conducted experiments on the human mind - consider than we are merely products of biology, with no responsibility for our actions, and that we might even have to review punishments for crimes because we are not rational beings working towards a goal, perverse as it may be, but rather a hodgepodge of irrational impulses. This supposes than humankind can no longer distinguish good and evil. That everything is relative. And the obvious conclusion to this line of thought is that evil as such has ceased to exist. It's been abolished.'
When El Dandy finishes the room is silent. He finished so abruptly that no one realised his speech was over.
Sebastian Rodriguez starts applauding and most of the audience joinds in shyly. He opens the floor to the audience and asks for questions.
Immediately, a dishevelled man of indeterminate age stands up, his jeans and plaid shirt wrinkled, head bobbing up and down with every word.
- 'Please, go ahead,' says Sebastian.
- 'I would like to ask the lawyer whether he considers that the spirit of our time is the spiritual profundity Jung wrote about.'
El Dandy folds his hands like a condescending priest.
- 'Well. Spiritual profundity is a concept specific to Jung. I don't think it can be extrapolated. One concept that could apply is our collective subconscious, which in my opinion is highly permissive when it comes to crime. If not, how is it possible that so many serial killers have not been arrested over the past few decades? Our investigation techniques are now more sophisticated than ever, but we've never had more unidentified murderers. As I said, Jack the Ripper pioneered modern crime. The imitator is, in turn, the height of postmodernity.
The man in the audience insists.
- 'Could - could it be said that, as Jung wrote, we are all murderers and victims?'
El Dandy won't give him a straight answer.
- 'Well, in an abstract sense...'
Lopez whispers in my ear:
- 'These guys are all mental! That Carranza is going to end up making us believe that the murderer isn't guilty.
- Who's the guy asking questions?'
- 'I don't know. I can't see his face.'
No one else has any questionds, so Sebastian Rodriguez looks up towards us.
- 'And what does the Chief of Police make of these assertions?'
A roomful of heads swivels round to look. I can't not answer.
- 'I think, after dealing with many crimes, that there is one obvious conclusions: killing is an individual decision. No one can claim they're not responsible for a crime they've committed.'
A heavy silence settles on the room until a woman gets up and says:
- 'The way things are going we're going to end up saying our minds are no use, thinking is no use and it doesn't make a difference what anybody does.'
She stalks out into the corridor and walks away indignantly, her heels clicking sharply.
Finally the talk comes to an end. Sebastian Rodriguez thanks the audience, there's another round of applause for the speakers and the crowd starts trickling out. Sebastian looks at me and asks me inside.
- 'Have you been to the Soler Medina Palace before?' he asks me in the palacete lobby, before a fanned staircase with whiter than white marble steps.
- 'Another time, don Sebastian.'
- 'We've kept you waiting a long time. My apologies,' he says as he extends his arm, inviting don Silverio Carranza to come and say hello.
El Dandy brushes past, hurriedly saying goodbye.
Rodriguez ushers us into a small library, its walls covered in glass bookshelves.
- 'Mr Carranza is an expert, Chief.'
- 'Just an amateur,' Carranza corrects him.
Sebastian Rodriguez leaves us alone.
- 'I'm afraid I won't be of much help to you, Chief,' says Carranza as soon as we're alone. 'For several reasons: Firstly, what we are seeing is beyond any shadow of a doubt a man who is seriously mentally ill, committing horrible crimes, and as such, he can choose to make use of any number of symbols, attributing his own specific meaning to them. Mandalas have no one specific meaning. They have been recurrent symbols in many different cultures and each of these has assigned them a different meaning. To top it all off, the meaning has varied depending on the period in history within each of these cultures. Broadly speaking, mandalas symbolize the totality of the world, its finiteness, and - it's contradictory but logical - its infinity. Without more concrete context it's impossible to make sense of it as a direct message. I'm very sorry, Chief.'
I ask him about the symbol carved into Diana Carolina Mieles's skin. If I hang about waiting for the Madrid report it'll be days before I find anything out.
- 'Well... it resembles an Allah's tear, but it symboizes pea
ce; today, it's ubiquitous. I'd say it's the All-Seeing Eye, an oval inside a triangle, the symbol of the trinity, uniting the spiritual and the material, the unity of which has a logical consequence: power.'
He takes a breath and goes on:
- 'Without going too far, I'd say the murderer is almost being ironic. The All-Seeing Eye, him, the killer: the union of the flesh he slays and the spirit fleeing from the body which he perhaps aims to appropriate. He most certainly believes that this makes him stronger. And the spiritual and material united grant him his one true wish: power. Power over life and death.'
He takes another deep breath.
- 'I think what he may be trying to say is that he grows stronger with every murder. This suggests he's keeping an eye on you and becoming more decided as he kills more victims.'
I thank him and ask for complete discretion.
- 'Of course, Chief. I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help.'
He can see us. And although we look and look, although he's there, we do not see him. Why? The pentagram. The oval inside the triangle. Satanic rites. The flesh and the spirit uniting, power. Power over life and power over death. Every crime making him stronger. More powerful. The All-Seeing Eye. He can see us. And although we look and look, although he's there, we do not see him.
I curse myself for not understanding the hieroglyph. I rack my brains, thinking about who might be able to help us. But I don't know.
- 'Thinking about those symbols gives me the creeps, boss.' Lopez comes clean.
- Fucking madness.
With no conclusion. The lack of leads and fanciful suggestions leading us to unlikely explanations leave me feeling more lost than ever. So I decide to focus on what we've got: the information Yusida gave us, in exchange for her immunity.
- 'Boss, aren't you going to give the Yusida info to...?'
I know the doubt and fear must be eating him up inside.
- 'Not my priority for now.'
- 'But when they find out...'
- 'Let them get on with it.'
- 'But...
- What if she really did lie to us? How can we be sure she lied to COU and told us the truth?'
Lopez falls silent and looks at me.
- 'That woman would sell her own mother down the river. Let the COU use the hard tactics on Hunt and then we'll really know whether he's guilty or not. In the meantime, we've got work to be getting on with.'
Apprehensive - fearing I'm going to make him work in the chamber of horrors - Lopez breathes a sigh of relief when we go upstairs and into my office, back at the station.
I look through my drawer for the list of names, descriptions and aliases Yusida gave us for the regular attendees of the parties she described: morbid scenes recreated, orgies, hard sex, rape, BDSM, bestiality. She was one of the first women they hire. They were handsomely paid. But they want more. Younger girls: fresh meat. Though not all of them are good for it. She said she had been afraid.
- 'Why should I give a shit about these parties?' I asked her.
She looked at me like I was an innocent ten-year-old.
- 'Because where there's theatre there are disguises. And knives. And capes. And blood.'
At the last party she was hired for, one of the younger girls refused to go on in one of their perverse scenes and she was beaten.
- 'You should be investigating anything to do with women being paid for sex, don't you think?'
She looked up, staring at me with her huge dark eyes, and placed a cigarette between her lips, frowning. I knew then I was really going to get what I was after.
I go through the list with Lopez.
- 'Andrés Ródenas.'
- 'Daddy's boy living off his trust fund. Never done a day's work in his life. Fifteen years at university in Madrid and nothing to show for it. He came back to Baria when he got tired of people making fun of him for being so old. He lives off his parents' money and they're bitter about it. Piece of shit. Just parties and wasting money. Now there's something he excels at.'
- 'Luis Vivas.'
- 'El vivales. Just like Andres, but at least he owns an estate agency. He made a lot of money in the boom before the crisis hit. Since then he's been living off that (las rentas). Big spender.'
- 'Marcos Atienza.'
- 'Rolling in it. A transportation business that's made him a fortune and on top of that he bought land. Instead of building housing estates, like some others til they lost everything, he went for greenhouses. Money coming out of his ears.'
- 'Carlos Escribano.'
- 'Property promoter?' 'The oldest of the bunch. He was already rich when the real estate boom happened and since then he's been ever richer. He's always been a ladies' man, too. That's his only weakness.'
- 'Vicente Lapuerta.'
- 'The worst of the lot. He's old enough to be your grandfather. But he's a pervert, and a choosy one too. He owns a chemist's in the city centre and a pharmacy near the beach, Pasta gansa. A real nasty son of a bitch.'
- 'Why?'
- 'Rumour has it he likes to play with fire.'
- 'Lopez!'
- 'He likes young girls, I mean. Too young. A pig.'
- 'Have we got anything against him?'
- 'An old report. From a while back. You can tell he's being more careful now.'
- 'Find it.'
- 'It's from a long time ago,' protests Lopez.
- 'You want to see a fucking pig sweat?'
I keep reciting the litany of names and Lopez gives me the lowdown. He knows almost everyone in the county, since he was born and raised here, and has worked and lived here all his life. A police officer knows as many secrets about their community as a priest. He has less information when it comes to the foreign names. They also take part in the feast, according to Yusida. Geoffrey Hunt's name is on the list, to no one's surprise. Lopez sits up when I mention Peter Winston.
- Ese tío no es trigo limpio. 'Years ago, when he first moved out here, he tried to set up a brother, but the mayor at the time, who was an Opus Dei member, didn't let him.'
- 'What does he live on? Is he rich?'
Lopez shakes his head.
- 'I think he does the organising for the others, you know? He lives in a flat at the beach and the only work he seems to have is going here and there, meeting people. I think he sets up the parties for the others, the ones with money. Wheeling and dealing, he must get a cut. He's been living here for thirty years.'
- 'Dig up anything we've got on the chemist and find one of those little baggies with powder in , you know the ones I mean.'
- Let’s put the squeeze on?
- 'Of course.'
- 'At last!
- He's going to be pissed off if we turn up at this time of night,' says Lopez, thinking our first visit would be to Peter Winston.
- 'Exactly.'
I drive through sleepy streets. The fading summer shuts the city down and soon autumn will steal over it, nostalgia taking hold, with thousands of houses standing empty by the sea, empty avenues and the wind slowly sweeping the fallen leaves. Baria lights up in spring and shuts down in winter like a manic depressive. The car makes its way through streets that just days ago heaved with crowds seeking out the fresh air, in the holiday spirit, flocking to the bar, restaurants and pavement cafes. Now, at night, it looks more like a ghost town, abandoned and lonely.
Lapuerta lives in a housing estate on the outskirts of town, in a villa set more than twenty years back from the road, rising behind leafy hedgerows, the door made of metal. The outside lights are still on and we catch a glimpse of a stately living room through a sweeping bay window. A brand-new Mercedes S class is parked by the gate, under a weeping willow. A few scattered palm trees and fruit trees fill the grounds with cool, fresh air, distancing Lapuerta's blue blood and current account from the heat-buckled tarmac.
- 'In his own house. Oh, he'll be a pretty sight to see,' says Lopez w
ith glee as I mash the buzzer.
- 'Who is it?' says a low, hoarse, metallic voice.
- 'Police. Open up.'
- 'What?'
- 'If you make me repeat myself I'll drag you out.'
Vicente Lapuerta is patently not used to being spoken to this way because that shuts him right up.
- 'Either you come out or we go in and speak to you in front of your family.'
The line cuts off and a moment later the front door opens. Coming towards us is a man in denial about his age. He wears a pair of bermuda shorts that are too wide for his skinny legs and a red polo shirt that does nothing for his beer belly.
- 'What the fuck is going on?' he shoots at Lopez.
I don't let him answer and carry on.
- 'Either you talk or we go in and ask you in front of your wife.'
- 'Who the fuck do you think you are?'
- 'The officer who's going to arrest you.'
Now he's standing in front of me, on the other side of the garden gate, I see his wide, red face, his sparse, messy grey hair. His eyes are small and almond-shaped with a haughty expression, though I see my threats are registering.
The Ripper Page 17
