The Ripper Page 3

  When Lopez opens the door, he seems concerned at the look on my face.

  - "Anything wrong, Commissioner?"

  I hold up the report and Lopez takes a step back, like a vampire faced with a cross.

  - "I don't want to see it."

  - "You don't need to see it, either."

  I leave the report in a drawer and lock it. Where no one will be able to see it, even by accident. I need a cigarette and Lopez and I smoke together in silence for a while. It's awkward because he won't stop looking at me.

  - "Where's Malasana?" I ask, trying to lighten the mood.

  - "He finished interrogating the girls and took them to identify the body."

  - "Right. I want a meeting with anyone who's available."

  - "Some of them are still on holiday."

  - "All permission is revoked. We have to search, door to door, from the Best Mojacar hotel to Club Mandala, until we find someone who could have seen something."

  - "It's Saturday and the last day of August, Commissioner," says Lopez. "Most people will be out of town."

  - "Even so. Issue the order."

  Malasana comes in without knocking.

  - "They've identified her. We have to talk to the pimps."

  He can't help the aggression in his voice. He would collapse if not for the adrenaline that's been keeping him on his feet since this morning. His drawn face now boasts prickly, wiry stubble and the sweat of many long hours on the job. His small frame looks even smaller in the armchair, a shadow of Lopez's expansive physique.

  - "We're going to send the agents round door to door in the area."

  - "I'm not going to waste time on that," he protests.

  - "Lopez will do it." "You and I have other things to do. Did Tatiana say anything we weren't aware of?"

  - "No, and she isn't going it."

  - "What about Ramona?"

  - "She's easy. They'll take care of her."

  Abruptly, he puts his hands on the armrests to get up and drag me to go after the pimps who need to be questioned.

  - "Lopez, call the Ministry and have them give you everything they have on the victim and contact the Romanian authorities. Then call all the men and have them meet downstairs.

  - Shall we get going?" asks Malasana, getting up.

  - "We have to wait til tonight."

  The long hours of the afternoon mock us from the other side of the window as we wait desperately for night to fall. The afternoon light is huge, filling every available space, filtering into the furthest recesses of the mind. Just looking at the light makes the room feel even hotter, despite the AC whirring in the corner. We three men are incensed, raging with heat. It's only inside ourselves that we feel the cold.

  - "What about the autopsy?" asks Malasana.

  - "What we expected."

  - "Really?"

  - "Down to the last detail. Do you want to read the report and see the pictures?"

  - "No."

  I send Malasana home to rest for a few hours. Fewer than thirty agents gather for the meeting. Between our understaffed station and the holidays, there's no one else I can call up. They fan themselves with sheaves of paper to ease the close heat of the meeting room. The AC is on full blast, but nothing can cool the forty-degree heat making us slick with sweat.

  - Tonight, starting at eight P.M., you'll be working in pairs, going door to door, at every house and housing estate between the Best Mojacar and Club Mandala.

  A murmur of protest kicks up among the agents, some of whom were enjoying their day off.

  - "But isn't it a gender-based case, Chief?" "Just find the boyfriend and that's that," says a voice at the back.

  - "We don't know," I say, lying. "For now, you'll do as I say. We don't know whether the victim had a boyfriend. She was a sex worker."

  - "A prostitute?" asks Martin, who has joined the meeting despite being on holiday.

  - "Yes. Romanian."

  - "What about the pimps?" he asks.

  - "I'll handle that."

  Rumours and conversations start up. There's no doubt in their mind. It was most probably her pimp. Or a client who lost it.

  - "Door to door. And no more fuss. Lopez will coordinate the team. Any information goes straight to him."

  - "What about you, boss?"

  - "I'll do as I like, since I'm the boss."

  - "What about Malasana?" asks Martin, suspicious at Malasana not attending the meeting and jealous that he's been assigned to a different task.

  - "He'll come with me. He's the one who knows the local prostitution scene best. He identified the girl in two hours."

  - "What did the other girls say?" asks Garcia.

  - "That she lived with them, she hadn't been here long, they didn't know her from before and last night she was pounding the pavement, around the Best Mojacar. So now you know. Someone must have seen her. She was very attractive. She had clients left, right and centre. A real beauty. There must have been a car that stopped for her. Or someone took her up to a flat. Whatever."

  - "Chief," Martin starts in, but waits for the other voices to clear. "In Almeria province there have been several cases of prostitutes being murdered. Very few and far between, but as regular as clockwork. And no one's ever been arrested. There aren't even any suspects. Isn't this another one of those murders? Could this be the work of a serial killer?"

  A heavy silence descends, broken only by the constant whirring of the AC.

  - "I haven't got a clue, Martin. But those crimes happened a long time ago. Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

  Martin read up on those crimes when he was assigned to Baria. He compiled copies of the Guardia Civil reports on so-called Operation Indalo.

  - We have to do more research to understand what we're dealing with.

  Martin's remarks change the mens' attitude and when I finish up, ordering them to be as diligent as possible, no more protests are heard.

  I spend the next two hours putting together a preliminary report and send it off to Almeria's Chief of Police. Lopez comes to me with a few questions, and I order him to do some fieldwork and keep in touch with the agents, supervising any witness statements on the ground that may be useful. I order the agents sternly not to give information to journalists or feed into rumours. Macabre murders like this one always attract attention, so I ask them to call on the public to collaborate and I assign two men to the police phone line. Later, I check that the Cyber Crime Unit has taken down the pictures of Cristina Stoicescu posted online and I look for news on the crime. The first impression, of a gender-based crime, has given way to speculation on sex trafficking and prostitution rings.

  I let it be and ring Malasana, though he shouts back from his office. He hasn't gone home to rest.

  The afternoon has faded when we leave the station, but the heat is still suffocating, enough to have your T-shirt sticking to your skin within seconds. We get in the Golf. This time, I'm driving. Malasana leaves his gun in the glovebox.

  - "Someone's packing," I remark.

  - "It's going to be a long night."

  We cross the city, which seems to be waking up from the lethargic slumber of the afternoon. Pavement cafes full of people drinking ice-cold beer and soft drinks to alleviate the heat. Sweat-slicked passers-by. People sighing or undoing their top buttons to catch the breeze, a breath of fresh air to cool them down. The pedestrian streets fill up with window shoppers. The shopowners smoke in the doorways, bored of the afternoon slump and hoping that the lack of a breeze will drive customers into their air-conditioned stores. Crossing a city with a population of scarcely fifty thousand on the first day of September is an exercise in patience. Everyone is driving back from the beach or their holidays and all the cars are full of junk, people double-parking to unload their luggage.

  - "Turn on the siren, boss," suggests Malasana.

  - "Like we haven't got enough on our plate already."

&n
bsp; The local police can't manage the flow of traffic. A coastal town that swells in size in one go and whose postwar urban planning and, more recently, cannibalistic expansion, hasn't made enough room for a population that doubles every summer. The traditional winding streets, barely eight or ten metres wide, are a river of cars and disgruntled honking. We see two-storey houses, doors swinging wide to the evening breeze and balconies like hungry mouths desperately seeking air. We see the shadowy interior of those houses, where people in their underwear try to live their lives normally, despite the close heat. The AC units hanging on the outside walls drip water and people pass by on the narrow pavements talking about the late summer heat. We see old men wearing open shirts and slippers, leaning on their walking sticks. Matrons with patterned dresses on, fanning themselves with brio. Foreigners in socks and sandals, looking all around.

  We cross the main square where the town hall sits and turn onto Avenida del Siglo XXI: the work of a megalomaniac who channelled a stream, stagnant and stinking, in an attempt to create a boulevard next to a non-existent river. From there on, we cross through housing estates until we get to the ring road. We're driving slowly, but the air buffeting us through the window gives the illusion of being cool, though it's just hot air moving fast. Finally we reach the old city bypass, flanked by plane trees with a white ring around the trunk. Recently watered crop fields line the road. We leave behind the madness of the desert heat as the smell of damp earth breathes some life back into us.

  El Garfio is the last place you'd want your daughter to be. Four walls and a flat roof after a bend in the road, hidden behind a grove. Some crook decided the only way to make money out of the place was to fill it with cheap whores, and he set up a seedy brothel crawling with dirt. The clientele is just as exclusive. You can have a drink for half of what it would cost you at the Hotel Argaria and they'll do you up nice and quick as you please, twenty or thirty euros for a full service; or, for the more refined types, you can head over to a nearby motel for fifty euros an hour, leg-over included.

  We turn a blind eye to El Garfio because they don't cause much trouble, chiefly because the owner is more of a brute than his customers. It also serves as a refuge for prostitutes who can't work somewhere nicer, either out of limited options or because their pimps say so.

  The evening light reflects off of dirty windowpanes set in white aluminium frames. Incredibly, the golden rays of the setting sun give the place a touch of beauty that will soon disappear, just an illusion. The door is made of metal, set with glass, with a roller grille. There are three cars parked by the door and the light - as far from mood lighting as you can imagine - gives us a good view of the bar on the left, three patrons leaning on it.

  Malasana knows the owner, who owes him a few favours. Not that that stops him from shooting us a dirty look when we walk in. We see three Latin American girls on the right, sitting at a table empty of drinks, looking like they're gearing up for their first shift. Some wait for potential clients inside El Garfio and others will head out several hundred metres further along the road, scouting for desperate men who'll have them in the backseat and, with any luck, buy them a drink afterwards.

  - "What do you want?"

  Pestucias - Antonio Something-or-Other's nickname - greets us. He wears a shirt open to below his chest, showing off a belly replete with thick black hair and a large cross dangling from a gold chain, fat, like the rest of him: fat face, fat nose, fat ears, fat cheeks, fat eyebrows, fat soul. Hi eyes are narrow slits in his fleshy face. Only by using a magnifying glass could you determine the colour of the irises. The expression on his face - like a raging bull - and the reluctant pose are proof enough that he's not a weak man, despite his weight. We know he's hiding a hunting rifle and an iron bar in the kitchen, to keep trouble at bay.

  Malasana sets Cristina Stoicescu's picture in front of him.

  - "I knew you were going to come round and hassle me."

  The patrons observe this interaction and the girls are suddenly alert as cats. "Shut up."

  - Malasana warns him.

  Pestucias understands that we're not here to play around.

  - "Yes. I recognise her," he admits.

  I ask everyone to leave and wait outside. If anyone decides to make a run for it, they'll regret it.

  When we're alone, Pestucias bleats out a complaint.

  - "You could have let me know and we would have gone somewhere more private," he says, recriminating Malasana.

  - "There's no time for that with this," he answers.

  Pestucias picks up the picture. A look of sadness appears in his tiny eyes.

  - "She used to come here, like so many of them. She was beautiful. It's a terrible shame. And it's bad for business."

  - "Fuck your business!"

  - "There's not much else I can say," shrugs Pestucias.

  - "Who's her pimp?

  - You know who he is." "Well there you have it. You want to cause trouble for me?"

  - "Where can we find him?"

  - "You want them to burn my business down?"

  - "He knows we're looking for him. His girls told us so. We just need confirmation.

  - Some Bogdan. Dangerous." "He comes in from time to time, has a drink and looks over the girls," he says, so quickly his words are hard to make out. "My business is good for theirs and theirs is good for me. Everyone's happy. I haven't got anything against them."

  - "I know, I know, you're a man of principle. Where can I find him?"

  Pestucias sighs uncomfortably.

  - "The sooner you tell us, the sooner we leave," says Malasana.

  - "What if I don't tell you?" he retorts.

  - "We'll close your little dive bar and that'll be it for you," I warn him.

  He licks his lips and glances outside. Through the window we see the punters and prostitutes talking about our sudden arrival and watching what's going on inside.

  - "Hurry up, we haven't got all night."

  The bar's fluorescent strip lights makes us look ill. Night falls, an ashy, golden twilight, the almost joyful light of a summer's night, if not for the murder of Cristina Stoicescu.

  - "These guys are good. They know what they're doing. You won't find them anywhere too upmarket. I think they live in different places: abandoned cottages, empty flats, campers they drive around. They're not too up themselves."

  - "That's no good to us."

  - "That's all I know." "All these vague little remarks. Do you think I'm going round to their house for tea?

  - How many of them are there? Bogdan isn't exactly going to be on his own."

  - "You know that better than I do. And if you don't, the Guardia Civil does. That's all you'll get out of me about Bogdan."

  The forceful look on his face shows that questioning him further is a waste of time. To make up for it, he tells us about Cristiana Stoicescu. He tells us she wasn't exactly the life and soul of the party. He used to buy her drinks so she would feel more comfortable, since girls as pretty as her aren't exactly the norm. She was good for business. She had been there for a couple of months and already all kinds of people were asking after her every day. She raised the bar for the club. But she hated it. She was rude to the clients. Until Bogdan slapped some sense into her. Now his clientele had improved, some son of a bitch had to come along and off her and fuck things up for him too, he complains.

  We leave Pestucias at peace with his conscience and start interrogating the girls. Malasana knows them all. He calls them by name and tells them not to worry; this has nothing to do with them. None of them has anything new to tell us about Cristina, only that they used to run into each other at El Garfio and she was always busy with clients. Then we interrogate the punters. A bachelor, almost sixty, who wastes every afternoon here and blows his salary in El Garfio, harmless and so grey that even the prostitutes mostly ignore him. He looks at them to console himself and buys one a drink from time to time. That's all.

&nbs
p; The second punter is under forty but looks at least twenty years older. A slight man, he didn't shower after work and wears mud-stained overalls. His hands are fleshy and dirty with earth and his face is pale and gaunt with stubble that looks prickly even from afar. Sunken eyes and a tan line across his foreheard under a visor as dirty as a rag in a garage. He acts serious, so respectful that his voice, plummy with drink, is grotesque. He states that he had seen the murder victim, but that she was stuck-up. In other words, she ignored him, for obvious reasons.

  The third patron is friendly and outgoing. He's been watching us out of the corner of his eye since we came in. While we talked to Pestucias I could see him flirting with the girls, having a laugh with them, looking smug. He's wearing bermuda shorts that show off hairless calves and sandals too ugly to look at. A shirt, open over his hairless chest. Large drops of sweat drip down his neck and over his greying eyebrows. He hasn't shaved today and his greying hair is greasy and messy. He introduces himself as Javier Macias and seems surprised that we haven't heard of him. He owns a scrap and machinery business a bit further out of town, he says, pointing along the road.

  - "You have to be a real savage to do that," he says, sympathizing with us.

  - "Did you know her?" Asks Malasana.

  His bulging eyes widen and his answer is even smarmier than before:

  - "I've seen her around here. But I don't come here every day."

  He must handle money if he has a scrap business.

  - "She was the prettiest one," says Malasana casually.

  - "I come here because Antonio - we call him Pestucias - is a friend of mine," he says, laughing, "I finish work and drop by, but not every day, have a Coke and leave."