They all nodded.
‘We’ll get him,’ said Zabalza.
‘We’ll get him,’ repeated the others.
Encouraging the officers working on the investigation was one of the steps they had taught her in Quantico. Mixing your demands with encouragement was fundamental when an investigation was dragging on without positive results and spirits were starting to flag. She looked at her reflection, drawn on the window of the now empty meeting room like a ghost, and asked herself who out of the whole team was most demoralised. To whom had she really directed those words, to her men or to herself? She turned to the door and bolted it; she picked up her mobile just as it started ringing.
James kept her on the phone for five minutes during which he questioned her about whether she had slept, whether she had eaten breakfast and whether she was OK. She lied, telling him that since Jonan had driven she had slept for the whole journey. Her impatience to hang up must have been evident to James, who dragged a promise out of her that she would be home for supper before he finally put the phone down, more worried than ever, leaving her conscience burdened by the fact that she had behaved badly towards the person who loved her most in the world.
She looked in her phone’s address book. Aloisius Dupree. She glanced at her watch to work out what time it would be in the state of Louisiana. It was half past nine in Elizondo, and half past two in New Orleans. With a bit of luck, and if Special Agent Dupree had kept the same habits, he wouldn’t have gone to bed yet. She pressed the call button and waited. Agent Dupree’s hoarse voice travelled down the line to her before the second ring, bringing with it all the southern charm typical of Louisiana.
‘Mon Dieu! To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, Inspector Salazar?’
‘Hello Aloisius,’ she replied, smiling with surprise at being so pleased to hear his voice.
‘Hello Amaia, everything going well?’
‘Well no, mon ami, nothing’s going well at all.’
‘I’m listening.’
She spoke non-stop for more than half an hour, trying to summarise everything without forgetting anything, suggesting and discarding theories as she went along. When she finished, the silence at the other end of the line seemed so absolute that she was afraid the call had been cut off. Then she heard Aloisius breathe.
‘Inspector Salazar, you are undoubtedly the best investigator I’ve ever met, and I know a lot of them, and what makes you so good is not the flawless application of police techniques, we spoke about that a lot when you were here, if you remember? What makes you an exceptional investigator, the reason your boss put you in charge of this investigation, is that you possess the pure instincts of a tracker, and that, mon amie, is what distinguishes exceptional detectives from normal police officers. You’ve given me a mountain of information, you’ve produced a suspect profile worthy of any FBI agent and you’ve moved forward with the investigation step by step. But I haven’t heard you tell me what you feel in your gut, Inspector, what your instinct tells you. What do you feel about him? Is he nearby? Is he sick? Is he afraid? Where does he live? How does he dress? What does he eat? Does he believe in God? Does he have a healthy digestive system? Does he have sex often? And, most importantly, how did all this begin? If you stopped to think about it you could answer all those questions and many more, but first you have to answer the most important one: what the hell is blocking the course of the investigation? And don’t you tell me it’s that jealous police officer, because you’re above all that, Inspector Salazar.’
‘I know,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Remember what you learnt at Quantico: if you get stuck, reset and start again. Sometimes it’s the only way to unblock a brain, be it human or cybernetic. Reset, Inspector. Switch off and on again, and start from the beginning.’
When she went out into the corridor she managed to catch sight of the leather jacket belonging to Inspector Montes, who was heading towards the lift. She lingered for a few moments and when she heard the unmistakable hiss of the lift doors closing, she went into Deputy Inspector Zabalza’s office.
‘Has Inspector Montes been up here?’
‘Yes, he’s just left. Do you want me to try and catch up with him?’ he asked, standing up.
‘No, that won’t be necessary. Can you tell me what you were talking about?’
Zabalza shrugged.
‘Nothing in particular: the case, the news, I filled him in on the meeting and not much else … Well, we discussed yesterday’s match between Barcelona and Real Madrid …’
She stared at him and noticed his discomfort.
‘Have I done something wrong? Montes is part of the team, isn’t he?’
Amaia looked at him in silence. The voice of Special Agent Aloisius Dupree resounded in her head.
‘No, don’t worry, everything’s fine …’
As she was going down in the lift, where the traces of Montes’s aftershave still lingered, she wondered to what degree her statement was a lie: yes they needed to worry, because nothing was fine.
36
The fine rain that had been falling for hours had left the valley so sodden that it seemed impossible that it would ever dry out again. Every surface was damp and shiny and a hesitant sun filtered through the clouds, raising scraps of mist from the crowns of the leafless trees. Agent Dupree’s question was still stuck in her head: what was blocking the course of the investigation? As always, she was overwhelmed by the brilliance of his prodigious mind; not for nothing was he one of the FBI’s top analysts even in spite of his outlandish methods. In barely thirty minutes of telephone conversation, Aloisius Dupree had dissected the case, and Amaia herself, and, with the skill of a surgeon, had indicated the problem with the same certainty with which he might stick a pin in a map. Here. And what was certain was that she had known it too, had known it before she dialled Dupree’s number, had known it before he answered from the banks of the Mississippi. Yes, Special Agent Dupree, there was something blocking the course of the investigation, but she was not sure she wanted to look at the point marked by the drawing pin.
She got in her car and closed the door, but did not start the engine. It was cold inside and the windows, clouded by microscopic drops of rain, contributed to its damp and melancholic air.
‘The thing that’s blocking the course of the investigation,’ Amaia whispered to herself.
An immense fury grew inside her, coming up from deep within like a burning mouthful of fire, accompanied by a fear beyond all logic, which urged her to flee immediately, to escape from all that, to go somewhere, somewhere she could feel safe, where danger did not grip her as it did now. Evil no longer lay in wait for her, it stalked her with its hostile presence, wrapping itself round her body like fog, breathing down her neck and mocking the terror it provoked in her. She was aware of its watchful, silent, inevitable presence in the same way that people are aware of illness and death. The alarms were wailing inside her, begging her to flee, to make herself safe, and she wanted to, but she didn’t know where to go. She leant her head against the steering wheel and stayed there for several minutes, feeling the fear and the rage take over her body. A rapping on the window made her jump. She was about to wind it down when she realised that she had not turned the engine on yet. She opened the door and a young, female uniformed officer leant down to speak to her.
‘Are you alright, Inspector?’
‘Yes, perfectly alright, it’s just fatigue. You know how it is.’
The young woman nodded as if she knew what Amaia was talking about and added, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t drive if you’re very tired. Do you want me to find someone to take you home?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said, trying to appear more alert. ‘Thank you.’
She started the engine and headed out of the car park under the police officer’s watchful gaze. She drove around Elizondo for a good while. Down Calle Santiago and then along Calle Francisco Joaquín Iriarte to the market, along Calle Giltxaurdi as far as Mendi
turri, back onto Calle Santiago, along Calle Alduides to the cemetery. She stopped the car at the entrance and, still sitting inside it, watched a couple of horses from the neighbouring estate who had come to the edge of the field and were poking their imposing heads into the road.
As always, the grilled iron gate seemed closed between its stone gateposts, although while she was there a man came out of the graveyard carrying an open umbrella in one hand, in spite of the fact that it was no longer raining, and a firmly wrapped parcel in the other. She thought about that custom typical of men who lived in the country or by the coast of never carrying bags, instead making neat bundles of whatever they needed to carry, be it clothes, tools or a snack. They would roll it up into a compact bundle which they then wrapped in a cloth or their own work clothes and tied it up with string, making it impossible to tell what was being carried inside. The man set off down the road towards Elizondo and she looked at the cemetery gate again, which hadn’t been fully closed after all. She got out of the car, went over to the fence and shut it while taking a quick look into the town of the dead. She got back into her car and turned the ignition.
Whatever she was looking for, it wasn’t there.
A mixture of annoyance, sadness and anger were bubbling inside her, making her heart beat so hard she felt like she was suffocating. She wound down the windows and drove like that, sighing in confusion and splattering the inside of the car with the drops of water that had been clinging to its exterior. The sound of her telephone, lying on the front passenger seat, interrupted a dark train of thought. She looked at it in irritation and slowed down a bit before picking it up. It was James. ‘For fuck’s sake, are you never going to give me a minute’s peace?’ she said without answering the call. She turned the ringtone to silent, now furious with him, and threw the phone onto the back seat. She felt so angry with James she could have hit him. Why did the whole world think they were so clever? Why did they all think they knew what she needed? Her aunt, Ros, James, Dupree, and that policewoman guarding the gate.
‘Go fuck yourselves,’ she murmured. ‘Go to hell the lot of you, and leave me in peace.’
She drove to the mountain. The winding road made her pay attention to her driving, so that little by little her nerves began to relax. She remembered how years before, when she was studying and the pressure of her tests and exams drove her to the point where she couldn’t remember a single word, she had got into the habit of driving around the suburbs of Pamplona. Sometimes she would head for Javier, or Eunate, and when she got back her nerves would have disappeared and she would be able to settle down to study again.
She recognised the area where she had met up with the forest rangers, turned onto the forest trail and drove for a couple more kilometres, avoiding the puddles that had formed from the previous days’ rain and which remained on that clayey ground like ponds. She stopped the car in an area free of mud, got out and slammed the door behind her when she heard her phone vibrate again.
She walked along the trail for a few metres, but the flat soles of her shoes stuck to the fine layer of mud making each step difficult. She rubbed the soles on the grass and, feeling more and more angry, entered the dense forest as if summoned by a mystical call. The rain from earlier in the day had not penetrated the canopy and beneath the crowns of the trees the ground was clean and dry, as if it had been swept recently by the mountain’s lamias, those fairies of the forest and the river who wore gold and silver combs in their hair, who slept buried under the ground during the day and only came out at nightfall to try and seduce travellers. They rewarded the men who lay with them and punished the ones who tried to steal their combs, causing them to suffer horrible deformities.
On entering the vault formed by the tree branches she felt the same way she did when she entered a cathedral, the same sense of peace, and she was aware of the presence of God. She lifted her eyes in awe as she felt the rage abandon her body like a fierce haemorrhage that left her both free of evil but also without strength. She began to cry. The first tears welled up, trickling down her face, loud sobs from the depths of her soul that further weakened her body and made her lose her balance. She threw her arms around a tree like a crazed druid, like her forefathers may have done, and cried against its trunk, wetting it with her tears. Exhausted, she slid down until she was sitting on the ground, never letting go of the tree. Her weeping subsided and she stayed there, desolate. She felt like a house on a cliff left open to the mercy of a storm, and now an unholy rage was sweeping through her, blowing everything away, destroying all sense of order. The anger was all that was left, growing in the dark corners of her soul, filling the spaces that desolation had left empty. The anger had no object, no name, it was blind and deaf, and she felt it taking possession of her like a fire fanned by the wind.
The whistle was so loud that it instantly blocked out everything else. She turned briskly, searching for the source of the sound and moving her hand to her pistol. It had sounded forceful, like a train guard’s. She listened carefully. Nothing. She heard the whistle again clearly, this time behind her. A long note followed by another shorter one. She stood up and peered carefully among the trees, sure she had noticed a presence. She couldn’t see anybody.
Another short whistle, like a call for attention, sounded behind her back; she turned, surprised, and had time to catch sight of a tall, dark silhouette among the trees which hid itself behind a large oak. She went to draw her pistol but thought better of it because deep down she felt that there was no threat. She stayed still, looking at the place where it had disappeared, perhaps a hundred metres from where she stood. She saw some low hanging branches rustle about three metres to the right of the large oak and the upright figure with its long brown and grey pelt appeared from behind them, walking slowly, as if executing an ancient dance among the trees, avoiding looking in her direction, but letting itself be seen clearly enough to leave no room for doubt. Then it went back behind the oak and disappeared. For a while she was so quiet that she could hardly hear her own breathing. Her visitor’s departure left her with a sense of peace that she did not think possible, a profound calm and the feeling that she had observed something marvellous, which manifested itself in a smile that spread across her cheeks and was still shining on her face when she looked at herself in the car’s rear-view mirror out of habit. She closed the flap of her holster, which she had opened instinctively but from which she had not drawn the Glock. She thought about the bizarre sensation that had enveloped her on observing him and how her initial fear had immediately turned into a deep sigh, a childish and boundless happiness that moved her in the same way that Christmas morning did.
Amaia sat in the car and checked her phone. Six missed calls, all from James. She looked for Dr Takchenko’s number in the phone’s contacts and dialled. The phone started to sound the dialling tone but it immediately cut off. She started the engine and drove carefully until she was off the track. She looked for a safe place, stopped the car on a clear corner and dialled again. Dr Takchenko’s strong accent greeted her on the other end of the line.
‘Where have you got to, Inspector? I can’t hear you well at all.’
‘Dr Takchenko, you told me you’d left some strategically positioned cameras in the woods, is that right?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘I’ve just been to a place near to where we first met, do you remember it?’
‘Yes, we’ve got one of the cameras there …’
‘Dr Takchenko … I think I saw … a bear.’
‘Do you?’
‘… I think so, yes.’
‘Inspector, I’m not doubting you, but if you really had seen a bear you would be sure; believe me, there’d be no doubt about it.’
Amaia remained silent.
‘Or perhaps you don’t know what you saw.’
‘Yes, I do know,’ whispered Amaia.
‘… Alright, Inspector,’ it sounded like Inspectorr. ‘I’ll have a look at the footage and I’ll call you if I
see your bear.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Not at all.’
She hung up and dialled James’s number. When he answered she simply said, ‘I’m on my way home, darling.’
37
The eternal blare of the television and the smell of fish soup and warm bread filled the house, but the normality stopped there. As an investigator she did not miss the fact that things had changed in her surroundings. She could almost feel the conversations about her that had taken place in the house, like a haze of negative energy which was still floating in the air like a bank of storm clouds when she came in. She sat down opposite the fireplace and accepted the herbal tea that James offered her while they waited for supper. She took a sip, aware as she did so that she was making it easy for them to continue their close scrutiny of her, which had begun the moment she walked through the door. There was no doubt they were worried, and yet she could not help feeling as though her privacy had been violated, nor block out the voice inside her that kept demanding ‘Why don’t you just leave me be’. The blind fury that had overwhelmed her in the forest returned in a flash, fuelled by the grim glances her family shot at her, their conciliatory words and muted, studied expressions. Didn’t they realise that all they were doing was annoying her? Why couldn’t they behave normally and leave her in peace? A peace like the one she had found in the forest. That powerful whistle that still echoed inside her and the memory of what she had seen managed to calm her again. She relived the instant when she saw it emerge from the lower branches of the tree. The quiet way in which it turned without looking at her, letting itself be seen. The stories that her catechism teacher had told them about Marian apparitions to Bernadette or the shepherds at Fatima came to mind. She had always asked herself how it was possible that the children had not fled the apparition in terror. How were they so sure that it was the Virgin? Why were they not afraid? She thought of her own hand searching for her weapon and the fact that it had immediately seemed unnecessary. The sensation of profound peace, immense happiness had warmed her heart, dispersing any shadow of doubt, any trace of anxiety, any pain.
The Invisible Guardian Page 29
