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Art’s hectic footsteps down the hall brought him out of his concentration. Carlos looked up from his papers and fixed his gaze on the living room door. Natalia appeared a few seconds later, with the dog trying to pass between her knees.
‘Hi. You’ve not brought anything back? You were supposed to be going shopping.’
‘Yes, but we bought things for Gus. You should have seen him. He looked so handsome and smart...’
‘Did you take photos?’ asked Carlos, jokingly.
‘No. He even prohibited me from mentioning anything to you, so I don’t want you taking the mick out of him.’ Natalia pointed at him with her index finger as a sign of warning.
‘You know I can’t promise you that. It’s above me.’
‘Don’t be cruel. He seems very taken with this girl.’ Natalia managed to get Art to stop jumping on her, and began to take off her coat. ‘What were you doing?’
‘Checking the reports. I know there’s something that’s escaping me.’
‘And if it’s escaping you, how do you know there’s anything in the first place?’
‘It’s a hunch. I feel it in my gut, as you know.’ Carlos moved his papers around and then hurled them back down on the table, frustrated. ‘I’ve spent three hours like this, and I’m not getting anywhere.’
Natalia left her coat on a chair and sat down beside him on the sofa. She took one of the reports by chance and started taking a look at it.’
‘Come on, I’ll help you. What is it we’re supposed to be looking for?’
‘Therein lies the problem: I don’t know.’
‘You’re not making it very easy for me, but I’ll try. If you’re going to stay calm about it, we’ll look back over the reports as many times as we need to.’
They remained in silence for a few minutes, until Carlos put the report he was reading down on the table and pointed at a paragraph.
‘I think it’s this one. The questioning of the couple who found the last victim.’
‘I remember seeing you talking with them, but you said they hadn’t been able to tell you anything important,’ said Natalia.
‘It’s not what they told me, it’s what they were.’ Carlos remained silent for a few seconds, putting his thoughts in order. ‘They were hikers training for the Camino de Santiago.’
‘Do you think the killer is a pilgrim?’
‘No, woman... Look...’ Carlos opened the laptop and searched on Google Maps. ‘This is the quarry where we found the body. And this here is a hiking route. If we search for the place where we found Carmen’s car, what can we see nearby?’
‘I don’t know. What is that?’
‘Another hiking route,’ Carlos continued typing in searches and showing them to Natalia. ‘The place where we found Carmen’s body, there was another route nearby. The place where Andrea’s car turned up was alongside a bidegorri[1]...”
‘Okay, there are hiking routes near all the important crime scenes in the case. Where are you trying to go with this?’
‘Well the first thing is that this answers one question that was driving me crazy. Our man gets to the hotel on foot, drives the women away in their own cars, and then abandons said cars in remote and inaccessible places. I’ve spent weeks wondering how he would get home, and here is the answer. He’s a hiker. He knows all of those paths.’
‘I’m glad you’ve found your answer, but I don’t see how this is going to help us. We Basques love to hike. Half the population does it. And, besides, I don’t think you have to be registered or have any kind of card to go out walking in the mountain.’
‘You’re a spoilsport,’ Carlos furrowed his brow, feeling annoyed. ‘There are hiking clubs. Perhaps we could ask them for a list of members.’
‘You can do that if you want, but I see our killer as being a solitary walker.’
‘Well, that’s another point to search for.’ Carlos threw himself back in the sofa and massaged the nape of his neck, trying to get rid of the tension in it. ‘How many do we have now?’
‘Well we know he’s a white male, between thirty-five and forty-five, very tall, about 6’, and is strong and hefty. We know that he’s epileptic and has had to request extra prescriptions of Luminal. We also believe he’s married or widowed, and that it’s possible that he has served a prison sentence for domestic violence. We suspect that he has an obsessive personality and strong religious beliefs. He likes to arrange to meet up with women over the Internet, with the promise of having sex, but he does not have sex with them, which reinforces the idea about the extremist religious beliefs. And, finally, he could be a hiker and be a member of some club for going out on walks at the weekend.’
‘Dear Lord, I know more about that guy than I know about myself and, even so, we don’t have anything.’
‘We have lots of things,’ Natalia consoled him. ‘Right now it seems like a puzzle with too many pieces, but they’ll soon begin to fit together, and then we’ll have him.’
*****
It seemed that the bad weather had decided to give them a bit of a break that day. The sun was shining radiantly in a sky that was devoid of clouds, and a gentle swell rocked the sailing boats tied up at the port. Such incredible weather for an October day also had its drawbacks. The car park at the marina was virtually full, and all of the places they found looked too small to park Natalia’s enormous Mercedes.
‘Look, that place is good. Why don’t you put it there?’ asked Lorena, fed up of going around in circles.
‘I don’t know if it’s going to fit, and I don’t want to scratch the car.’ Lorena folded her arms and frowned. ‘Fine. I’ll try it,’ Gus said.
Gus pretended to be very calm and have everything under control, but in reality he knew that he did not have a thing under control when it came to the whole parking business. He had not parked since getting his licence, and all the cars he had parked in his lessons were half the size of this monster. Even so, he fought with the controls without complaint or protest and, miraculously, he managed to fit the car in without a scratch.
‘Great,’ said Lorena as she grabbed her jacket. ‘We’re super close to the bar where I’ve arranged to meet my friends. Let’s go.’
They got out of the car and, whilst they were doing up their jackets, Lorena went back to looking at him with admiration.
‘So this car isn’t yours?’
‘No, a friend’s lent it to me. I’ll be buying one myself soon, but I still haven’t decided on a model...’
‘Well I love this one. You should buy one like this.’
Gus gave her a timid smile and began to walk in the direction of the bar. His real problem was that he had not found any car, neither in that model or any other, that he could afford with the miserable savings he had in the bank. That could change with what the Ertzaintza was going to pay him for collaborating with them, but, no matter how long the investigation went on for, he would never in his life be able to afford a car like Natalia’s. With any luck, he could aspire to something akin to Carlos’s old banger, as long as they allowed him to pay in instalments.
They went into the bar, and Lorena deserted him to go straight towards a group situated at the back of it. As they all greeted each other with two insincere air kisses on each cheek, Gus weighed up the establishment. The distressed wood of the floor and bar looked good. Everything was dimly lit with some amber coloured lights whose shades pretended to be old maps. Behind the bar he saw shelf upon shelf full of bottles and, on them, a skull and cross bones. There were pirate flags, rudders, old barrels... The décor was so well done that it even came as a surprise to him that the waiter had all of his limbs intact and was not wearing a wooden leg, a hook, or an eye-patch.
‘What are you going to drink, Lorena?’
‘A green tea with ice and mint,’ she replied, as she continued greeting all of her friends without seeming to be about to introduce him to them at any point in time.
Gus went up to the bar, wondering why Lorena was not capable of ordering a beer or a Coca-Cola like everybody else. The waiter, an imposing blond man with a smile that was right out of a toothpaste advert, came over to him.
‘What would you like, sir?’
‘A green tea with ice and mint, and a beer.’
‘Home-produced or imported? Pale, dark, or lager? Any brand in particular?’
Whilst the man awaited his reply, Gus thought about how being rich was super complicated. He had never been asked that many questions in his own neighbourhood when ordering a darn beer.
‘It doesn’t matter. Whatever you keep in there.’
The waiter looked at him as if he had just uttered sacrilege for which he ought to be taken away to be burnt at the stake, but he did not ask him anything else. Gus placed a five-euro note on top of the bar and waited for him to serve the drinks.
‘You’re one euro short, sir,’ said the waiter.
Gus felt a shiver run down his spine, but did not protest. If he wanted to continue going out with Lorena, he was going to have to look for two or three other jobs. He took out the euro he needed, picked up the drinks, and went over to the corner where Lorena and her friends were.
‘Guys, this is Gus, my boyfriend.’
He had to make an effort not to drop the glasses. This girl certainly took things quickly... He put the drinks on the bar and held out his hand to the closest guy, who was a dark-haired young man with ringlets, dressed in a blazer and a pair of trousers that stopped short of the ankle. As Gus greeted them, he took a look around. They were all wearing blazers. He should have listened to Natalia. In spite of the fact that he was wearing what for him was a fortune’s worth of clothing, he felt like a housefly among butterflies.
‘It’s a pleasure, Gus. Lorena has told us so many things about you.’
‘I hope they’re good things,’ he said, taking a first sip of his beer in order to remove the taste of fear that was permeating his mouth.
‘Of course they’re good things, silly,’ replied a small brunette as she caressed his arm as if she had known him all her life. ‘She’s told us that you collaborate with the police in very important investigations, and that right now you’re trying to catch a dangerous killer.’
‘Yes, tell us,’ intervened another blond guy who looked like the typical representation of the captain of the football team in an American film. ‘How’s the investigation going? Are you close to catching him?’
‘Well, as you will all understand, I can’t tell you anything about that case...’
They all looked at him with the same thwarted expression. Gus turned towards Lorena and saw that she had her arms folded in front of her chest and a furrowed brow. He felt uncomfortable. Is that what he meant to her? A show monkey for keeping her mates entertained? He sighed, feeling overwhelmed, moved backwards, and leant against the bar with an air of intrigue. He took another sip of his beer, allowing the expectation to build. If what Lorena wanted was for him to talk, she was about to have discourse until the cows came home.
‘Don’t all get like that. This case is under secrecy in summary proceedings, and I can’t tell you anything, but I give you my word that, as soon as we solve it, you will know the details even before the media does.’ The faces of everybody present lit up, as if they were a group of children being told their favourite story. ‘In the meantime, I can tell you things about my previous investigations. Do you remember the murders of those teenagers a couple of years ago?’
‘Are you referring to Charon?’ asked the brunette, excited.
‘Exactly. Charon. I was part of the investigation team responsible for her arrest.’
Everyone took a couple of steps closer, hungry for his words. Lorena adhered herself to him, and took him by the waist, as if wanting to make it clear in front of her female friends that he was her property. He smiled, and deposited a gentle kiss on her neck before taking another sip of his beer and continuing speaking in order to impress his audience.