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The access to the quarry was virtually impassable. The asphalt was cracked and raised in many places, and the vegetation on both sides of the road had grown so much that, on occasions, he had to carry on without knowing whether there was much road left ahead. Carlos drove very slowly, in silence, concentrating, until at last he found himself inside the quarry.
It was a grey and horrifying place, even on such a bright day as that. Carlos got out of the car and stared at the forgotten machinery, the abandoned buildings, the drops that surrounded the hollow and threatened to fall down... He turned towards Natalia, who had just got out of the car with her medical examiner workbag in her hands.
‘What do you think?’
‘The type of place fits. Maybe we should put surveillance on all the abandoned quarries in Biscay,’ she said.
‘I thought about that, but it’s impossible. There are almost eighty thousand abandoned quarries in the Basque Country: seven hundred in Biscay alone. We don’t have the cash to keep watch over all of them.’
‘Okay, we’ll thing of something else later.’ Natalia pointed to the police cordon that could be seen a few metres further ahead, surrounded by several police cars with their lights on. ‘Let’s go over there.’
They walked in silence before arriving at the cordon. An ertzaina, a Basque police officer, lifted it up as soon as he recognised them, so that they could pass through. In the centre of the circle formed by the cordon could be seen an enormous greyish rock. It must have weighed over half a ton, and it was covered in moss. Carlos thought that it must have broken away from the steep quarry walls many years ago now. The killer had used it as a kind of altar. Lying face up on top of it was the naked body of a woman. The corpse was totally covered in white body paint, and rested with the legs together and the arms in a cross. Over her face, she was wearing a white mask on which the letter L was written clearly on the right cheek, and the letter V on the left one. The body was totally naked, with the exception of the watch, also white, that she was wearing on her wrist.
‘It’s him. There’s no doubt about it,’ said Natalia in a whisper, before bending over the body to begin work.
‘Damn. It can’t be. We were monitoring the hotel...’
‘Yes, and while we were playing the idiot there, he managed to capture this woman somewhere else.’
‘Shit! Shit! Shit!” Carlos kicked at one rock so hard that it bounced all the way out of the police cordon.
‘Getting worked up like that isn’t going to achieve anything. Relax, and stop wrecking my crime scene, please.’
‘Did you know that when you get all professional like that, you’re insufferable?’
‘Whatever you say... Don’t you have some witness to question?’
Carlos bit his tongue and left the circle. A few metres away, a couple of hikers were waiting. Whilst she was siting on a rock, with her body shaking from the sobs, the man was looking towards the inside of the cordon as if he were hypnotised. Carlos went up to them and showed them his badge.
‘Inspector Vega. Homicide,’ he introduced himself. ‘Are you the one’s who found the body?’
‘Yes, that was us.’ The man continued looking towards the place where the body was until Carlos stood in the way in order to get his attention. ‘It’s horrible... What kind of monster could have done something like that?’
‘He’s not a monster. He’s a man, and we’ll catch him soon, but for that we need your cooperation. What were you both doing around here?’
‘Hiking. We come through this area everyday because we’re preparing for the Camino de Santiago.’
‘Did you pass through here yesterday?’
‘Yes, and she wasn’t here.’
‘Did either of you see anything strange on your way here? Did you cross paths with anyone suspicious?’
‘We didn’t cross paths with anyone. This road isn’t very well-known and, furthermore, they say it’s dangerous because of the landslides.’
‘Even so, you came,’ commented Carlos.
‘Yes, it’s a very demanding route, with very steep inclines, sharp declines with gravel, lots of out-of-control vegetation... It’s considered a milestone for expert hikers. If we get used to doing this route, there won’t be any stage of the Camino to hold us back.’
‘Thank you very much. An officer will be coming now to take down your details just in case we need to ask you any more questions. Then you’ll be able to leave.’
Carlos returned to the inside of the cordon. Natalia was kneeling down on the ground, concentrating on her work.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Fairly well. Were they able to tell you anything interesting?’
‘Only that her death must be recent, because they passed through here yesterday and there was nothing, so he must have killed her last night.’
‘Yes, I was thinking that same thing myself, judging by the temperature and rigidity of the body. I estimate that she’ll have been dead for between eight and twelve hours.’
‘And have you found anything else?’
‘Not at first sight, no. It seems our killer still continues to be just as much of a perfectionist.’ Natalia remained silent for a few seconds, with her gaze riveted on the ground, before whispering. ‘But we’ll find something. We have to.’
‘Don’t worry, Natalia.’ Carlos crouched down alongside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Catching Charon seemed impossible too, but we did it. At any moment, he’ll let slip a clue, a small trail... He’ll stop being a ghost and, when that happens, we will be ready to catch him.’
*****
Natalia came closer to the corpse in order to observe her left hand more carefully. She had no fingernails. She took a look at the other hand and ascertained that they were missing too. She paused the recorder and went over to her desk, where she had the forensic reports about the two previous victims. After reading for a few minutes, it confirmed what she was thinking. He hadn’t pulled out their nails. Why with this woman? Could it have been a new form of torture? Could it be that the killer was becoming more sadistic with each crime?
She filled a receptacle with water, picked up a sponge, and removed the white paint from the body’s fingers. There was no clotting on the fingers, which meant that the woman was already dead when he pulled out her nails. That invalidated the idea that he had done it to cause her suffering. So then, what was the reason?
One idea forged its way in her mind only a few seconds later. The killer had done it in order to eliminate any possible evidence. If the woman had put up resistance and had fought, she could have broken nails, and even retained a skin sample from the killer on them. That was why he had removed them: to completely eliminate that possibility.
She continued cleaning the paint off the woman’s left hand and, upon reaching the wrist, she had to stop in order to take off the watch. She put it in an evidence bag, whilst she went back to wondering for the umpteenth time what significance it could have. It was obvious that it meant something to the murderer, that it was a message that to him made complete sense, but it was written in a code that so far they were not able to decipher.
As she went along removing the paint from her arm, she began exposing multiple injuries and scratches. They were very superficial, which eliminated the hypothesis that they could have been inflicted with any weapon. They looked like grazes, very likely caused by shrubs or brambles. That could mean that the woman had tried to flee cross-country. Natalia paused and, without being all that aware of what she was doing, ran her fingers over that injured skin. She could imagine herself fleeing in terror, trying to escape her killer... She knew that they would catch him in the end, but for this woman it was already too late. Her work could provide her with justice, but it would not be able to return her life to her. She felt her eyes stinging, so she let go of the woman’s arm, leant on the table, and took a few deep breaths. This victim did not need her compassion, but her professionalism.
She spent the following two hours removing paint, noting down each observation... In reality, she did not find anything new that could help them. There were still no hairs, skin remains, or fluids that could belong to the killer. She tried to console herself with the thought that this woman had been on the verge of escaping; she had managed to evade the total control and obsessive perfection of this man. That demonstrated that he was not infallible; that he made mistakes. One of them would have to be his downfall.
Once she finished cleaning the whole body, she went over to the head in order to remove the mask. She could have done it much earlier, but she had preferred to leave it until last. She knew what she would find: a face without features, utterly disfigured by the sulphuric acid. One could think that the killer only did it to make the identification of the victim more difficult, and to hold up the investigation, but Natalia suspected that there was something else. She thought that, in that final act of extreme cruelty, the killer was trying to erase the woman’s features, to eliminate her identity, to turn her into a nameless ghost... It was not enough for him to kill her: he wanted to erase her.
Upon removing the mask, she focussed once more on the letters that were written in black marker on the cheeks: an L on the right, and a V on the left. Carlos was still of the opinion that they could be her initials, but they did not fit in the case of Andrea. It would imply that maybe she had given him a false name, or that he could have been mistaken. Natalia did not think the same thing. If, as she suspected, the killer was trying to completely destroy the identity of those women, why would he go and leave their initials? Those letters had to mean something else. She went back to looking at the reports on the previous victims, in search of a pattern: “Ex” on Andrea’s mask, “1 Cor” on Carmen’s, “Lv” on the latest victim’s... What could that be?
She sat down behind the desk and unblocked her laptop. She opened the browser and typed in the letters: Ex, 1 Cor, Lv. In less than a second, Google gave her the answer:
BIBLIA.net: List of abbreviations of books
They were the abbreviations of the books of the Bible: “Ex” was Exodus; “1 Cor” was the first book of the Corinthians; “Lv” corresponded to Leviticus... How had she not thought of this before? It was so typical... There was no need to have even studied forensic psychology to realise it. It was enough to have seen a few bad films about serial killers.
She looked up those books on the Internet. Each one of them was enormous. How would she ever find, amongst all of that information, what the killer was telling them? It was going to be a ton of work. Luckily, she knew a young man who, in that moment, was being paid for doing practically nothing. She grabbed her mobile and dialled Gus’s number, whilst containing a giggle upon imagining how un-amused he was going to be about it.