She drove the small Micra along the road towards the cemetery at top speed and started to count the farms once she passed it since she remembered that it was the third one on the left and, although it wasn’t visible from the road, there was a stone marker to indicate the entrance. She was slowing down to make sure she didn’t miss the marker when she saw Flora’s Mercedes parked at the side of the road by a path that led into a small copse which, now night had fully fallen, seemed impenetrable. She left the Micra behind the Mercedes, checked there was no one in it and cursed again at her brilliant idea of changing cars since she had left all her equipment in her own one. She checked the boot and was pleased to discover that Iriarte’s wife was sufficiently well prepared to keep a small torch there, although the batteries were running rather low.
She dialled Jonan’s number before she went into the wood and was stunned to realise that she had no coverage; she tried the police station and Iriarte’s phone anyway. Nothing. It was a pine wood with low branches and lots of needles that carpeted the floor making progress slow and dangerous even though there was an obvious path between the trees. She guessed the local residents must have been using that shortcut forever and her sister must have learned about it during the time when she lived on her parents-in-law’s farm as a newly-wed. The fact that Flora had decided to approach the house through the woods instead of using the access road gave Amaia an idea of her plans: despotic and domineering Flora had put two and two together before she herself had, manipulating the information she received punctually from the unsuspecting Fermín, who had been captivated by her hypnotic litany of suffering. Amaia thought of the shameless way she had behaved during dinner on Sunday, the offensive comments about the young girls, her ideas about decency and the txantxigorris placed on the table, trying to distract Amaia’s attention from the real perpetrator, the man she had never loved but whom she considered one of her responsibilities, like looking after their ama, running the family business or taking out the rubbish each night.
Flora dominated her world using discipline, order and rigid control. She was one of those women forged by force in the valley, one of those etxeko andreak who had assumed leadership of their family and their lands while their menfolk travelled far away in search of opportunities. The women of Elizondo who had buried their children after epidemics and gone out into the fields to work with tears in their eyes, one of those women who were well aware of the dark and dirty part of existence, who simply washed its face, combed its hair and sent it off to Mass on Sundays with shining shoes.
She suddenly experienced a sense of understanding of the way her sister had led her life in a way she never had before, mixed with an overwhelming repugnance at her heartlessness and the way she gloried in it. She thought of Fermín Montes collapsed on the ground in that car park, and of herself, defending herself awkwardly against her sister’s carefully calculated attacks.
And she thought of Víctor. Her dear Víctor, crying like a little boy as he watched her kissing someone else on the other side of the window. Víctor restoring old motorbikes, reclaiming a longed-for past, Víctor living in the house that used to belong to his mother, Josefa ‘La Tolosa’, who was a true master when it came to making txantxigorris. Víctor who had gone from a domineering mother to a tyrannical wife. Víctor the alcoholic, Víctor with enough strength of will to remain sober for the last two years. Víctor, a man aged between twenty-five and forty-five. Víctor outraged at the upstart imitator of his mise-en-scène. Víctor, obsessed with the ideal of purity and integrity which Flora had taught him as a way of life, a man driven to take utmost control by his passions, a killer who had made the jump by taking the reins of a master plan to control his passion and desire, his tendency to see young girls in a sexual light and the dirty thoughts that those same girls provoked in him with their shamelessness and constant exhibitionism. Perhaps he had tried to stop his fantasies with alcohol, but a moment arrived when the desire was so urgent that one glass was followed by another, and another, in order to silence the voices that clamoured inside him, begging him to unleash his desires. His eternally repressed desires.
But the alcohol had only made Flora leave his side, and that had been like being born and dying in the same moment, since at the very time that he was liberated from the tyrannical presence that had subjugated him and made him control his impulses, the umbilical cord that had connected him to the only relationship with a woman he considered clean and the only person who had been able to control him had been cut. Amaia was sure that Flora had noticed something, Flora, the despotic queen who missed nothing … It was impossible that she hadn’t realised that Víctor was harbouring a demon in the deepest depths of his soul which he fought to control, and that he sometimes succeeded. And she knew, of course. There was no doubt she knew that morning when Amaia took her the txantxigorri found on Anne’s body. The way she had held it in her hands, smelling it and even tasting it, knowing for definite that that cake represented the clearest and most unmistakable proof, a homage to tradition, to order, and to Flora herself.
Amaia wondered how long Flora had waited to change flour supplier after she had walked out the door, at what point Flora had put her plan to seduce Montes in motion and had been sure of everything. Had she really needed the confirmation from the laboratory or did she already know when she tried the txantxigorri, when Anne was found dead, when she sat at her aunt’s table and justified the crimes? Or was it only a ploy to gauge Víctor’s reaction?
The hill sloped away from the road and the dense smell of resin irritated her nasal passages, making her eyes itch, while the weak light of the torch faded away, leaving her in absolute darkness. She stood still for a few seconds while her eyes adjusted to the lack of light and she could just about make out a glimmer of light between the trees. Then, in complete darkness, she saw the unmistakable dancing glint of the torch Flora was carrying jumping between one tree and the next, like flashes or lightning bolts in the undergrowth. Amaia set off towards the area which seemed lightest to her, stretching her hands out in front of her and using the screen of her mobile phone, which barely lit her feet and switched off every fifteen seconds, to help. Placing one foot in front of the other, she tried to hurry so as not to lose the trace of Flora’s light. She heard a noise behind her and she was hit in the face by a rough branch as she turned round, resulting in a deep cut on her forehead that left her stunned and which immediately started bleeding. She felt two trickles running down her cheeks like thick tears and the phone came to rest somewhere near her feet. She probed the wound with her fingers and discovered that, although deep, it wasn’t that big. She pulled off the scarf she was wearing round her neck and knotted it tightly around her head, pressed on the cut and managed to make it stop bleeding.
Confused and disorientated, she turned slowly, trying to locate the cloudy light she had spotted between the trees, but she saw nothing. She rubbed her eyes, noticing the sticky blood that was starting to dry and thought about what she must look like as a feeling similar to panic started to take hold of her and her growing paranoia made her listen carefully, trying not to breathe, certain there was someone else there. She gave a startled shriek when she heard a powerful whistle, but she knew immediately that it wouldn’t harm her, that it was somehow there to help her and that if she had any chance of getting out of that wood before she bled to death it would be with him. Another whistle sounded clearly to her right. She stood up straight, forcing her head up, and went towards the sound. Another short whistle came from in front of her and suddenly, as if someone had opened a curtain, there she was at the edge of the copse where it met the lawn that stretched up to the Uribe house.
The recently cut grass made the cross-country run easier for Amaia, who had not remembered the lawn being so vast. The house was lit by various lamps positioned around the manicured lawn, interspersed with old farming implements intended as works of art arranged around outside. She spotted Flora’s armed outline under the gentle light of one of the lamps, advancin
g towards the back of the house with a determined step and turning towards the main entrance. Amaia felt an impulse to shout Flora’s name, but she repressed it as she realised that she was still on open ground and it would also warn Víctor. She ran as fast as she could until she reached the protective wall of the house and, pressing herself against it, drew Montes’s Glock and listened. Nothing. She walked with her back against the wall, looking behind her from time to time, aware that she was as visible there as Flora had been before. She advanced cautiously towards the main door, which appeared to be ajar and from which a faint light was shining. She pushed it and watched it open heavily inwards.
Except for the fact that the lights were on, nothing suggested that there was anybody in the house. She checked the rooms on the ground floor and discovered that they had hardly changed since La Tolosa was mistress of the place. She looked around in search of a telephone but she couldn’t see one anywhere; carefully, with her back against the wall she set off slowly up the stairs. There were four rooms with closed doors that opened off the landing and one more at the top of a short flight of stairs. One by one she opened the doors of solid bedrooms full of hand polished wood and heavy floral bedspreads. She set off up the last flight of stairs, certain that there was no one in the house but holding the gun in both hands and ready to fire nevertheless. By the time she reached the door, her heartbeat was pounding in her ears like a series of thunderclaps, leaving her almost deafened. She swallowed and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She moved to one side, turned the door handle and switched on the light.
In all the years she had been an inspector with the Policía Foral, she had never found herself in front of an altar. She had seen photographs and videos during her time at Quantico, but, as her instructor had told her, nothing could prepare you for the sensation of finding an altar. ‘It might be a little space, inside a wardrobe or a trunk; it might occupy an entire room or fit inside a drawer, it doesn’t matter. When you come across one, you’ll never forget it, because this bizarre museum where the killer hoards his trophies is the greatest demonstration of sordidness, perversion and human depravity you can find. However many studies, profiles and behavioural analyses you may have studied, you won’t know what it’s like to look inside a devil’s head until you find an altar.’
She gasped in terror when she found a blown up version of the photos they had at the police station. The girls were looking at her from the mirror of a large, antique dressing table on whose glass Víctor had arranged reports from the paper, articles about the basajaun, the girls’ obituaries, which had been published in the paper, and even some orders of service from the funerals. There were photos which had appeared in a local gazette showing the families at the cemetery, the tombs covered with flowers and the groups of students from the school, and, below these, a collection of shots undoubtedly taken at the scene of the crimes showing the different stages he had worked through in preparing his scene step by step, like a guide to death. A documented and graphic explanation of the horror and history of the milestones in the killer’s macabre career. Amaia observed the number of reports incredulously, some of them yellowed by the passage of time, curling up at the edges due to damp, some of them dated twenty years earlier and so short that they barely took up a couple of lines about the disappearance of female campers or day-trippers in places far from the valley and even on the other side of the border.
They were arranged in a sort of staircase, at the top of which was the name of Teresa Klas, declaring that she was the queen of that particular circle of hell. She had been the first, the girl for whom Víctor lost his head so badly that he even ran the risk of killing her barely a few metres from his home; but far from filling him with fear, her death excited him so much that he killed at least three more women during the following two years, propitiatory victims, young women with a clear profile of provocative teenage girls, whom he attacked on the mountain in a rather amateurish way compared with the sophistication his crimes now showed.
An altar like that narrated the evolution of an implacable killer who had dedicated himself to his work for two years and who had stopped for almost twenty. The same twenty years he was with Flora, while he knocked himself out each day with prodigious amounts of alcohol, which served as a self-imposed yoke, one he accepted and considered to be the only way he could live side by side with Flora without giving in to his instincts. A destructive vice he had kept at bay, right up until the moment he stopped drinking, free from Flora’s iron control and liberated from the calming stupor of the alcohol. He had tried again, he had gone back to her to show her his progress, to show her what he had been able to do again for her, and instead of the open arms he had dreamed of, he found Flora’s cold, stony gaze.
Her scorn had been the fuse, the detonator, the starting gun in a race towards an ideal of perfection and purity that he demanded of all other women, and all those who tried to be women with their young and provocative bodies. Amaia found her own eyes amongst the photos on the altar and for a moment she thought she saw her reflection in the mirror. Occupying pride of place in the centre of the altar was a picture of Amaia herself, printed on photo paper, doubtless with a printer, and cut out from the original in which she appeared with her sisters. She reached out a hand to touch the image, almost sure that she was mistaken, brushed the smooth, dry paper and almost pulled it out of place when she jumped on hearing the unmistakable thunder of a shot being fired. She hurled herself downstairs, certain that it had come from somewhere outside the house.
Flora positioned herself in the entrance to the stables and aimed the rifle at Víctor without saying a word. He turned, surprised, although not startled, as if he found her visit pleasant and desirable.
‘Flora, I didn’t hear you arrive, if you’d called me beforehand I would’ve made myself more presentable,’ he said, looking at his greasy gloves as he slowly took them off and advanced towards the doorway. ‘I could even have cooked something.’
‘I haven’t come for dinner, Víctor,’ Flora’s voice was so icy and lacking in emotion that Víctor started talking again, never losing his smile or his conciliatory tone.
‘In that case, let me show you what I was doing,’ he said, gesturing behind him. ‘I was working on restoring an old motorbike.’
‘It’s not baking day today then?’ asked Flora, maintaining her stance and pointing towards a small cast iron door that gave access to the stone oven built into the wall of the house.
He smiled at his wife.
‘I was thinking of baking tomorrow, but we can do it together if you want.’
Flora, blew out a breath of air in a habitual gesture of fatigue as she shook her head to show her irritation.
‘What have you been doing, Víctor, and why?’
‘You already know what I’ve done, and you know why. You know because you think the same as me.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Yes, Flora,’ he said in a conciliatory tone. ‘You said so, you always said so. Those girls, those girls were looking for it, dressed like prostitutes, provoking men as if they were whores, and someone had to show them what happens to bad girls.’
‘Did you kill them?’ she asked, as if, in spite of the fact she was pointing a gun at him, she wanted to believe that everything was just a ridiculous mistake and that he would deny it, that it was all just a terrible misunderstanding after all.
‘Flora, I don’t expect anyone else to understand, only you. Because you’re like me. Everyone can see it, lots of people think like you and me, that the young people are ruining our valley with their drugs, their clothes, their music and sex; the girls are the worst, they don’t think about anything except sex; there’s sex in what they say, what they do, the way they dress. Little sluts. Someone needed to do something, to show them the traditional way and respect for their roots.’
Flora looked at him in disgust without trying to hide her astonishment.
‘Like Teresa?’
He smiled tenderly and
tilted his head to one side as if remembering.
‘Teresa, I still think of her every day. Teresa with her short skirts and those necklines, as shameless as the whore of Babylon. I’ve only seen one better.’
‘I thought it was an accident. Back then you were young and confused, and they … they were all loose women.’
‘You knew, Flora? You knew and you still agreed to marry me?’
‘I thought you’d left all that behind.’
His face darkened and he grimaced in pain.
‘I did leave it behind, Flora, for twenty years I stood firm, making the biggest effort a man can make; I had to drink to control it, Flora. You can’t imagine what it’s like fighting against something like that. But you held me in lower esteem for my very sacrifice, you sent me away from your side, you left me alone and you made me promise to stop drinking. And I did it; I did it for you, Flora, as I have done all my life, as I’ve done everything.’
‘But you’ve killed young girls, you murdered them,’ she said, amazed, ‘young girls.’
He started to feel irritated.
‘No, Flora, you didn’t see them making advances like whores … They even agreed to get into the car, in spite of the fact they only knew me by sight. They weren’t young girls, Flora, they were sluts. Or they would have become sluts shortly. That Anne, she was the worst of all of them, you’re more than aware that she was sleeping with your brother-in-law, that she attacked my family, that she destroyed the sacred bond of Ros’s marriage, our darling, stupid Ros. Do you think Anne was a young girl? Well that young girl offered herself to me like a whore and when I was finishing her off she looked me in the eyes like a demon, she almost smiled and she cursed me. ‘You’re cursed,’ that’s what she said to me, and not even death could wipe that smile off her face.
The Invisible Guardian Page 38
