The Ripper Read online

  - "The girl was brutally murdered in a very busy area. That got me thinking, chief. Unless some madman lost his head, I don't know how it could have happened in the busiest spot in town, just there, at that time. That's why... don't laugh, officer, but..."

  - "Go on."

  - "People say we're crazy," he admits, lifting a hand and smiling. "But the fact is, Chief, that that girl was killed outside a nightclub, or bar or however you want to call it, called Mandala."

  - "So?"

  - "Do you know what mandala means, Chief?" he asks, watching me, testing my patience and milking my ignorance on the topic.

  - "No."

  - "Mandalas are symbolic, spiritual and ritual representations of the macrocosmos and microcosmos, originating in Buddhism and Hinduism. Mandala is a Sanskrit word. But mandalas can also be found in Christian art, in the so-called medieval mandalas or mandorlas, in the labyrinths of Gothic churches, stained glass roses, and the like. It's said that the circle around the mandala evokes the myth of eternal return. Traditionally, Western occult rituals made use of these symbols. Jung associated them with our collective unconscious, saying the centre of the symbols expressed the subject's attempts to perfect their process of individualization."

  I'm not getting even half of what he's saying. I don't know whether any of it makes even an iota of sense. Maybe this is the answer we've been looking for, as crazy as it may seem - maybe this is exactly why he killed her there, despite the danger.

  - "Cat got your tongue, Chief?"

  - "It's a very interesting point of view," I say, skirting around a real answer while new ideas start zipping through my mind.

  "I haven't even got started on the symbol he carved into the victim's skin."

  Sebastian Rodriguez smiles in satisfaction.

  - "Some acts carry hidden messages."

  I nod my assent.

  - "I'll bear that in mind. Would you be so kind as to write this up for us? I don't know the first thing about any of these matters."

  - "My pleasure. We have real experts at the organisation. When will you need it by?"

  - "Yesterday."

  Sebastian Rodriguez stands up, looking smug. He pushes the chair under the desk fussily. I see him out, requesting he keep our meeting to himself.

  Two hours writing up another report. I include the leads we're working on: a crime of passion; gang crime; prostitution rings. A one-off, random killing, too. I suggest that it may the first in a series of murders and add in the new ritual crime lead.

  This time the boss will be paying attention.

  I order Lopez to request a complete list of New Destiny members and tell him to find out more about other occult and esoteric organisations. Try and dig around, see if any member has a record for violent or sexual crimes.

  Martin goes over the results of his inquiry with me.

  - "I'm waiting for the list of convicts who were put away in 1996 and 1997 and got out last year. I also issued a request to Interpol for a different list. You never know. I also requested they confirm the identity of the prison guard who was a suspect at the time, but the more time goes by, the less I'm convinced, boss."

  - "Why?"

  - "Because of the M.O. it's not the same. And it doesn't usually change. He killed them and dumped the bodies. That's it. No mutilation. And also, he raped them, and this one didn't. It doesn't add up, boss."

  - I agree.

  When he gets up to leave, I say:

  - "Find out whether any animals have been eviscerated in the past six months."

  He stares at me.

  "He had to have something to practise on," I say, shrugging. "And it's not like we have anything better to do."

  Hidden away in the framework of a building that was never finished. A skeleton of concrete and brick. Malasana carries on with the inquiry.

  - The girls live alone. But Bogdan checks in on them every day. He sends them out to the different touting posts and watches them. Then he tallies up the spoils and takes them home.

  - He'll know we're looking for him. He won't be there tonight.

  - "You have to monitor what the girls said to the police, boss. They're not going to stop working. If it had been him he would have run off. Someone else from the same ring will come. If we see him tonight it's a bad sign. He didn't do it."

  Nightfall at last. A window with a lamp still on. The only one in the whole building. Like a light burning brightly out at sea.

  - "Who gave you that information?"

  - "My informers." "I have informers." "They're not like the others."

  I let him have a laugh at my expense.

  - "It bothers me that no cars are coming, Chief. According to my sources," he goes on, "Bogdan usually comes round at ten and then takes them out to work a bit later on."

  - "Who told you? Ramona?"

  - "I'm not telling you."

  - "Why?"

  - "To annoy you."

  - "Well. Maybe he's decided their little trip is off tonight."

  Sick of waiting, I light a cigarette. Malasana's eyes cut through me like a knife.

  - "Hide, goddamnit.”

  - “We're wasting time."

  - "We'll have none of that. I'll tell you something else. And I came up with it all by myself. I think Bogdan is in the building. I think there's another flat he uses, since nearly all of them are empty, as his hideout. Wouldn't that be the easiest setup? Keep such a close eye on them that they'd never even notice. He tells them he's heading off, starts the engine and they see him drive away in the car. But he parks it a bit further along and walks back to the building. There's a back the girls can't see from the flat, he gets in that way and spends the night in a different flat. When he's supposedly driving over to see them, he leaves the same way he came in, gets the car from the spot where he's hidden it and comes back. They think he's not watching them all the time, but they're wrong."

  - "What makes you think that?"

  - "It would be the smart thing to do."

  He hides behind a wall with me, smoking. Grinds the butt out under his shoe when he's done.

  - "Come on," he says, glancing at his watch. "I bet you a cold beer that we'll find our little friend in there."

  We take the long way around to make sure we can't be seen from the flat where the women are waiting. In the distance, cars zoom past and honk, out on the bypass and sweeping into town on the beach road. But where we are is as empty as my soul.

  The building raises in the back a couple of metres above a semi-basement. Malasana perches on a power transformer. He jumps onto a balcony and signals me to follow him. The window overlooking the balcony he's on is closed, the shutters rolled all the way down.

  - "This way."

  He leaps nimbly onto the next balcony. Shutters up. We slip inside. Malasana covers his nose with his hand. We see a bunk and several bottles on a table someone has rescued from a skip. The torchbeam carves chunks out of the half-dark.

  - This is where he lives. There's no way the girls know.

  We hear a car start up, and a few moments later the hall door swings open and slams back. A heavy tread on the stairs. We wait for the silence to settle again and then make our way up to the fourth floor.

  Women's voices come from inside the flat. Then a man's voice, harsh and commanding. They're speaking Romanian. We wait for them to leave for half an hour. I contain my urge to smoke as well as Malasana, who's itching to kick the door in.

  Heels clicking. Voices. The door opens and a rectangle of light falls across the hall. Malasana draws back against the wall like a spider. Petrica comes out first, pulling at her belt, which offers more cover than her tiny skirt. Tatiana follows behind, her heels clacking on the floor. Petrica reaches for the hall light while a man leaves the flat and slams the door behind him without looking back.

  "Don't move! Police!" Yells Malasana.

  I position myself in front of the girls.
They scream. The man is much taller than Malasana. By his movements I can tell he's ready to attack, though Malasana is pointing his gun straight at him, the size of it making him seem even smaller and slighter.

  A terrible silence steals over the hall and the light goes out abruptly with a loud click. I punch the switch and it clicks back on. The girls run at me, trying to get away. I push them against the wall as the man takes a step forward.

  - "You want a bullet in the head, you bastard?"

  The man stops, hesitant. One foot pointing at Malasana. I hit the switch again before the light can turn off and things escalate.

  - "Open the door," I order Petrica.

  She rummages through her bag, fishes out the key and opens it. Bogdan looks at her, unsure of whether to try his luck in a fight with us or not. He looks me up and down, sizing me up.

  - "Turn on the light," I order him, pushing Tatiana towards the doorway.

  Bogdan hesitates, swaying, moving slowly. I can smell his fear. But he enters the flat with Malasana's gun digging into his kidneys.

  I tell the girls to sit on the sofa. It's cleaner than the last time we visited. Bogdan stands between Malasana and I, Malasana's gun still trained on him, my own pistol held loosely by my thigh.

  - "So you're the famous Bogdan."

  - "Fuck off," he spits, in a Romanian accent.

  - "I want to talk about the girl who was murdered. I know you know what I'm talking about."

  - "Fucking pig!"

  Malasana puts his gun away. Our eyes meet, and we both know we need to soften Bogdan up if we want to get anything out of him. He's tall and sturdy, over five foot nine, with muscly arms and a tattoo featuring a woman's head and a shooting star and a few Gothic letters on his left arm. He wears cutoffs, fraying at the knees, a black T-shirt and trainers. Malasana orders him to turn around so he can frisk him. Instead of obeying him, Bogdan takes a step forward.

  - "Fucking midget!"

  A look of disgust freezes on his face.

  A second later Malasana starts beating him to a pulp: three punches here, four kicks there. Bogdan bends over and shouts until Malasana levels a kick at his solar plexus. That shuts him up. Malasana's apparent feebleness belies his mastery of marcial arts vale tudo. Bogdan falls to the floor, stricken. To finish the job, Malasana kicks him in the balls and Bogdan howls, curling up like a little boy.

  Petrica leaps up from the sofa and screams insults and threats in Romanian, bending over Bogdan protectively. Tatiana looks at us speechlessly.

  "Maybe now we can talk."

  We lock Petrica and Tatiana in one of the bedrooms and sit Bogdan down on the sofa.

  Malasana brings him a towel soaked in water. Bogdan breathes out blood and saliva. His T-shirt is slick with blood, sweat and tears. But neither his blood, sweat nor tears are honourable. He can barely sit up straight. He screws up his face, wrinkles emerging around his young features. Slowly, the pain seems to dissipate. When I look at Malasana, holding out the soaking wet towel, there's a boyish innocence in his eyes that must have been lost long ago.

  - "I hear you're very hard on the girls, Bogdan. Wouldn't have guessed that by looking at you now."

  Bogdan grunts, a spark of rage in his eyes. But he reigns it in and keeps quiet. He raises the wet towel to his face and starts mopping up the blood dripping from his nose, trying to stem the flow.

  - "Does hitting women turn you on? Maybe that's the only way you can get it up."

  Bogdan looks at me through teary eyes. They're filled with hatred.

  - "Cristiana Stoicescu..."

  - "Get to f..." Malasana smashes the heel of his hand into his neck before Bogdan can get the words out; Bogdan grabs at his throat, heaving for breath. He falls to the floor on his knees.

  It takes so long for him to draw a breath that he goes bright red, sweat dripping from his face. He draws a hoarse and wheezing breath and finally the air reaches his lungs, bringing him sweet relief.

  - "Cristiana Stoicescu."

  He manages to hoist himself up onto the sofa again. Coughs loudly. As his breathing returns to normal, he shakes his head stubbornly.

  - "Who killed her?"

  He shakes his head again.

  - "You watch them round the clock. They're always under your protection. You're telling me you don't know who went off with your best girl?"

  - "I don't know," he says hoarsely.

  Malasana cracks his knuckles and in the sudden silence it sounds like a threat. Bogdan glances at him fearfully.

  - "We're always watching from far off," he explains, at last. "We keep an eye on them from further away. We can't be right next to them because the clients don't come in otherwise, we scare them off. We saw a van. Cristina got in. That's all I know."

  He shrugs.

  - "They usually come back in about twenty minutes. We weren't paying attention. I was on my own that night and I had to watch them all."

  - "Could you give us a description of the van?"

  - "Ordinary. Dark. It was nighttime. I didn't see the number plate."

  Bogdan looks up and I start to believe him.

  - "Your boss did it and this is all bullshit," says Malasana suddenly. "Cristiana wanted to get out and you killed her."

  - "No!" shouts Bogdan. "She was the best! The one everyone wanted! The one who brought in the most money. We didn't kill her," he says, looking at me as he defends himself, and his eyes are sincere for once.

  The shouting has stirred up the girls in the bedroom and they're shouting too. Malasana throws a punch at the door, so hard that it practically knocks it off the hinges. The shouts stop immediately.

  - "I want to talk to your boss, Bogdan."

  - "No!" he pleads. "No!"

  He almust gets up. Puts his hands together as if to pray.

  - "We have a few questions for your boss."

  - "No! You can kill me. No!"

  Malasana gets up in Bogdan's face looking like he means business. I pull him back. Making things difficult for Bogdan now isn't going to get us what we want.

  - "We're taking you down to the station. You've resisted arrest, Bogdan."

  He nods. He knows how it goes. Sometimes you have to take one for the team.

  - "My boss punished me for losing Cristiana. I didn't want to," he says regretfully

  Malasana handcuffs him.

  Evil

  What is Evil?

  You're asking me?

  Evil is You...

  Ha ha ha ha ha....

  Evil. Its magnificent Light

  Its superhuman potential

  The human spirit of the centuries

  Is the force driving my knife

  3

  Ramona looks like a depressed housewife. She wears a tight T-shirt clinging to her chubby frame and ankle-length jeans. She's a world away from the girl we brought in, dressed to show off her body.

  She's decided to inform on her pimps. She's afraid. But she's thinking of the other girls, the girls they also tricked and cheated, luring them here with promises. The girls they force to do the job, violently, like Cristiana Stoicescu.

  Her voice is small, bleating, with trailing 's's, each sentence fading away into a whisper. Her round face makes you want to be kind towards her, but she isn't sexy. Prostitution was torture for her. She gives her statement listlessly, looking down at the table, looking up from time to time to see whether I'm paying attention. She confides in me:

  - "I don't know Bogdan's boss, he's just on the phone to him all the time. They brought me over and took me to a flat in Almeria. There was a guy there watching me, like Bogdan, but it wasn't Bogdan. Then they moved me to El Ejido and I had a different boss, you understand?"

  Lopez, who's taking notes, nods, and Ramona goes on. She tells us the location of the flats. She describes the henchmen. Later on, we show her photos of possible suspects (elementos fichados) and she recognises one of th
em. The other one isn't included in our summer catalogue.

  - "They pick one of the girls to be the boss in every flat. In our flat it's Petrica. She tells Bogdan what we do and she's in charge of the money."

  She tells us how the prostitution ring works: someone in charge of every group, but all of them independent, to avoid the whole thing crumbling if one group gets caught. Then she tells us where the girls from each group are sent to work in Almeria and El Ejido.

  We send Ramona back to the women's shelter and Lopez asks what we're planning to do with Bogdan, who we've sent to court on minor charges.

  - "They're releasing him tomorrow. We want him out and about.

  We need the Romanians to believe that we've finished investigating their potential role in Cristiana Stoicescu's death and it's business as usual for them."

  - "Should we tell Almeria to put together a raid?"

  - "We're not doing anything til the eighth."

  I lock myself in my office. The book is waiting for me with its sinister cover. Somber colours, a dark background, the shadowy figure of a man with a hat and dark cape, his back to us, next to a streetlamp in Victorian London. The Curse of Whitechapel: Jack the Ripper, the Definitive Criminal Investigation, by Ivan Ramila, a book I skimmed years ago and then left to rot on a shelf. Over the past few days I've seen it out of the corner of my eye, scared that if I cracked it open the prophecy I fear will be fulfilled. I can't stand it any longer.

  I skip the first few chapters and go straight to the first crime, which took place in the early morning hours of August 31, 1888. The body of Mary Ann Nichols was found in Buck's Row, an alleyway in Whitechapel. A dank and sordid place, sinister and poor, that passersby tried to avoid at all cost, taking the long way around. Her body was found by some carters who worked in a nearby slaughterhouse, at around 3:45 AM. There were two deep, distinct cuts in the throat, from left to right, which were undoubtedly the cause of death. It was easy enough to deduce that the killer acted surely and swiftly, not hesitating. The worst came next, when they discovered a deep slit from the lower abdomen to the diaphragm. There were deep cuts, three or four of them, lengthwise, and her vulva was slashed open left to right. The murdered left her intestines in plain sight, just as Cristiana's killer did. And, as with Cristiana, he removed the womb.