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“Doctor...”
"Yes, Morgan?"
"A few minutes ago you told me that a few angry nurses would surely come after you for what you did to Félix.”
“Ah...”
"Well, I see them. Only they’re not nurses, but those from security. And they come armed.”
Monday, November 13, 2006
The digital alarm clock blinked 13:10. What... what day is it? Monday. Yes, it must be Monday.
Alfred Horner had slept for more than ten hours straight. He remembered drinking some whiskey shots and falling asleep on the couch with a jazz record playing in the stereo. No, it definitely hadn’t been a good night. Now, however, he felt like new, his head clear of bad omens and energy running through his muscles again. The gun? He cocked his head to the dresser in the hall. Well, it's there.
He stretched his whole body. Then, still in his underwear, he prepared a fruit smoothie and a toast of seed bread that he bathed in honey. He had breakfast at one-thirty while listening to the radio. Back in the room, he performed five sets of twenty push-ups and as many abs. Finally, he took a cold shower and dressed in a T-shirt, Chinese pants and sandals. Horner had done all these mundane and routine activities without even thinking for a second about the threatening video he had received the other evening, nor Henry Millward, or anything that had disturbed him since Mike Lennard died. He'd even gotten used to watching the cracked plasma in the living room and the broken shelves.
Then he heard a car that stopped outside and it reminded him: Ania. Turning to the kitchen window to check, the cell phone rang on the study desk behind him.
THOMAS CALLING
He ignored the call and turned off the vibrator.
I'm on my day off, dammit.
He looked out the window again and saw a six-foot-tall blonde emerging from a red Mini Cooper. She walked like a model, dressed like a model and had the tits of a model. He smiled. Among all the things he had forgotten, one was that today was her day of visitation. He went to open it.
"Want something different?" Snapped the gorgeous woman from the door. She was holding leather handcuffs in her hands.
Ania rarely spoke, but when she did she used to do it with the aim of making Alfred hot. But at least it was customary to say hello. This time it was enough to pronounce three words with her sensual accent from the east to make him horny. He lunged at her and pushed her against the door, which slammed shut. He had no intention of wasting any time. As they kissed, Horner felt Ania's body beneath her coat. Damn, she only comes in underwear. Very hot, he undid her coat and then the bra. He stopped kissing her to lead her to the bedroom, where she pulled her panties off. She had a smacking hot body. The time in the room had slowed, and in less than a minute he had already handcuffed her to one of the bars at the head of the bed. Sex with Ania and whiskey: the only effective antidepressants he knew.
She was screaming with pleasure. He loved it when she did that.
The doorbell rang throughout the house. No one listened.
Horner's vision blurred with desire. The telephone rang again. No one paid any attention to it.
"Don’t stop, fuck, go on..."
Ania's body had hunched in an unnatural posture.
"You're hurting me," she moaned chained to the bed.
Something was wrong.
But Alfred couldn’t stop. He tried to focus his eyes. Why were Ania's wrists bleeding? He looked into her eyes and saw panic in them. He felt strangely powerful.
The screams were now of real pain.
Friday, July 5, 2002
Four years before the events related to the Rubial brothers' death, Nacho and Alfredo were drinking Heineken beer. They were leaning on the windowsill of the kitchen in Nacho's parents' house, who would be out all week enjoying themselves at the pool of the mansion with a carefree air. They were in a complex of villas on the outskirts of Marbella, where they lived, in addition to Nacho and his family, the butler, the maid and also the cook.
The atmosphere was sultry, and the moon, almost full, shone especially bright. It was the first Friday after the exams of all the courses in law school. Nacho, taking advantage of the fact that his parents were gone, had decided to increase his popularity among the rest of the university students by celebrating a multitudinous party in the garden.
The two young beer drinkers studied in the same class, although they were not friends. Alfredo, to whom everyone called Freddy, had just turned twenty-four. Nacho was already twenty-five. The first one, who wore a black leather jacket, was the handsome student, the biker, and the hunk. The other had failed classes, and he wore a blue Armani jacket, which on its own aroused admiration. That casual encounter of alpha males in the window frame proved fateful for the youngest of them. Nacho Conde belonged to the class that in the faculty was known as a flirt, a womanizer. The reasons for the offensive discrimination were not without some weight. Since starting the course in his new class, Nacho had already broken up three couples and had conquered several more girls, so, after spending some good times with them in the backseat of his car, he would apply the, if I’ve had you, I don’t remember you. For Freddy, who had always been considered the winner of the class, Nacho was a threat.
That night he fell into the trap of the womanizer to get into this delicate subject: Freddy’s new girl. She was a fourteen-year-old girl who had simply developed her femininity before the other girls, and who, therefore, caused a furor among the most avid college students of adolescent love. In spite of her youth, she was already looking at men with such a practical style to seduce a man, and her pale skin had the soft touch of the girls her own age. It was an open secret: the girl had promise.
"The girl is hot, I congratulate you," Nacho said, looking toward the edge of the pool, where the girl, visibly affected by the effects of the rum, moved like a fish in the water between boys up to ten years older than she.
Freddy detected an obvious provocative tone in Nacho's voice, which he probably didn’t even try to disguise.
“Quit that.”
He knew very well where Nacho was headed with his speech. He gritted his teeth and said nothing more. He took another sip of beer.
"Come on, Freddy, are you kidding? Don’t tell me you’re jealous. We're good friends! Tell me, have you asked her to sleep with you?”
The provoked looked at Nacho for the first time with an expression that said clearly don’t mess with me. He went on to explain that his girl was a virgin, and that she had asked him for some time before taking the big step. God, he felt ridiculous just thinking about it.
"Bah, you're gay," he said as if he didn’t happen to be the host of the party, he kept the green bottle to his mouth. “If you continue to be an asshole and don’t hurry, at any time you’ll find out that she is fucking someone else.”
"Fuck you," Freddy countered, very tense for having his manhood questioned.
The offended posed the empty bottle on the windowsill and without saying goodbye went into the hall, where he met up with his colleagues.
After a very long time, when he had consumed so many beers that he had lost count, Freddy decided to go out for a walk. He walked aimlessly around the garden, stumbling as the music reverberated loudly inside his head. Then he noticed something less than fifty meters away, and felt a little dizzy. Inside the pool and even with his clothes on, Nacho Conde was kissing passionately a young woman who smiled like a dizzy dummy. Under the water, some of her intimate parts were being stroked. Several guests, mostly women, attended the sultry show with disgust. Freddy, who feared the worst, bent his head to discern the face of the girl, and then his suspicions were confirmed. Anger rose from his feet and came out in an uncontrollable explosion.
The sight of his sweet little girl rubbing against the body of his greatest enemy had provoked in him as much rage as excitement.
He strode to the edge of the pool. He pushed back a young lady who was watching the spectacle from the front row on the side of the pool and reached for the teenager's armpit, who seemed to be on the edge of an ethyl coma. He pulled the soaked blouse and pulled the almost motionless body out of the pool. There was a circle about them both, perhaps waiting for Freddy to give first aid to the young woman, or they might have been anxious for him to pounce headlong on the disgusting jerk, still in the pool, mocking smugly, and start an exciting fight. Everyone would have wished one of these things to happen. Instead, he took the girl in his arms and took her away from the party.
Already outside the complex, under the eyes of a few curious people who had followed him, he settled her in the seat of his motorcycle, a black Kawasaki Z 750, and sat behind her, making sure that he held her tightly between him and the handlebars. He left.
Something had crossed in the depths of his head. He was drunk and had also tried several marijuana joints during the party. But that's not what it was about. The image of her, his girl who had so often denied him, rubbing herself like a nymph against Nacho Conde in front of everyone, had caused a complete short-circuit in his brain. He couldn’t reason, he was simply beside himself. He drove on a course to nowhere following a path that should lead somewhere. Her black hair fluttered in the wind and went into his nose and mouth, irritating him. He had only one thing in his mind: to hurt her. It had become a strange obsession.
The road was lost inside a forest, and some leafy trees closed their path. He stopped. He looked around, but he couldn’t see anything, not even the stars. The deep darkness was only comparable to the absolute silence. Perfect for what he had planned to do.
While Freddy, disoriented at the sight, surveyed the ground, the weight of her, free of restraint, caused her to fall to the ground from the seat of the Kawasaki. The blow woke her up, though her alcohol level was so high she didn’t seem to be aware of what was going to happen to her in the next few seconds. He dragged her to the base of a tree. He placed her face up like a lifeless log. Then he ripped off her still moist blouse with his teeth, and began to run his tongue over her torso.
The innocent babe with a lifeless smile could only call, “Freddy..." Apparently, she was still madly in love with him. It was when he took off her pants as if he were undressing a plastic doll, and then her panties, that’s when she seemed to realize where she was and the danger she was in. The instinct for survival made her start to scream like crazy, but the biker knew they were several miles from civilization. No one was going to listen. Possessed by an evil never known in him, Freddy stopped her by covering her mouth with his hand. Then he had a better idea; he was going to need both hands. He grasped the fragile wrists and forced them so that they surrounded the trunk of the tree. He used his belt to immobilize them. The girl moaned as if her shoulder had been dislocated, she seemed on the verge of fainting. Then Freddy slipped her own blouse into her mouth and unzipped his trousers.
Once she was at his mercy, he raped her in the darkness for more than an hour. Only one thing competed with the muffled cries that the girl let slip through the damp cloth that covered her mouth: during the act, Freddy repeatedly whispered in her ear two words that would remain engraved in her brain forever: “you're mine..."
When it was done, at dawn, Freddy was still beside himself. Unaware that he left a fourteen-year-old naked, wounded and unconscious in the middle of nowhere, he climbed back onto the motorcycle and drove away. It was daytime when he got home and got into bed. He fell into a deep sleep and slept more than fifteen hours straight. Once awake, at dusk the next day, He remembered almost nothing of the previous night (and absolutely nothing of the abuse committed).
After that day, Freddy never saw the girl again, who was none other than Alyssa Grifero. He traveled to England to study English during the summer, and thus avoided crossing with his cheating ex-girlfriend. It was an unnecessary precaution, as the teenager didn’t leave the house for weeks, and when she did, it was to leave the coast of Malaga and disappear from the map.
As they were about to conclude their holidays, Freddy learned from a friend in Spain that the girl had gotten pregnant that summer; there were rumors that she had been raped. She had apparently aborted. Freddy, still in England attending his classes, was astonished to hear this, and a terrible doubt assaulted him at once. Had he been the cause of the rape?
What the hell had happened that night? The truth was that he was so drunk that day, so out of his mind, that he remembered nothing. What if the child was his? What would become of the little girl now? He chose to reject everything. Most likely, the bastard Nacho Conde was dating her for a while and had overtaken her at some point.
The young man then decided to start a new life in Oxford, England, where he was bitten by the police bug, so he applied and he was approved. He changed his name and became agent Alfred Horner (orphaned from birth by his father, he used the family name of his host during that summer). He met a beautiful young woman named Donna, and did not think of Alyssa again, he literally erased her from his memory, until the night that, four years later, he met the stunning Ania handcuffed and open-legged, at his disposal.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Everything became crystalline. A door had opened in the depths of his subconscious. Nailed to the waist of that blond monument, he watched as the last piece of the puzzle flew past his eyes like a feather and settled gently into a hollow of the same shape. The complex puzzle had been completed. Now he knew with certainty who had liquidated Mike Lennard.
Just getting rid of Ania, Agent Horner got dressed and got the address for Diane Tallent in a few seconds from the police headquarters. He picked up his badge and the Hekler Koch Compact before going out the door.
Someone knocked on Diane Tallent's door. The British girl, who had just taken a hot shower, turned off the dryer, covered herself with a cotton sweater, and ran to open it. Vader's fluffy butt came to rest on the dais beside her feet when the figure of a man about her age, looking as if he'd had a bad day, she glimpsed him on the other side of the wood, displaying his bright face with an identification badge.
"Diane Tallent?" He asked roughly.
The one mentioned nodded with a frown as she stroked the tips of her hair, still wet.
"I'm police officer Alfred Horner," he said. “You are detained.”
Oh, my God...
She had no choice but to struggle, because when she wanted to react, the woman's arms were already immobilized against the wall. A metallic cold gripped her wrists. She bellowed and kicked with all her strength in the hope that some neighbor would listen, but the wind was intense and there would probably be no one on the street at that moment. The last thing that kept her memory was that she was dragged into the back seat of a car. It all faded when the clang of something rigid hit the back of her neck.
It was 06:50 pm and it had started to rain.
Sara squeezed her fingers together as she ran and noticed a viscous liquid. The blood that had sprouted from the Buddhist's hand was clotting on her skin.
What am I going to do now?
She wanted to go to the police and tell them about her meeting with Kurt Payne. How he had cornered her on the landing, leaving her no choice but to use her knife in self-defense. Because it had been self-defense, right? Would they believe her? She had to be calm. After all, she had not killed anyone.
The wind was blowing hard against her face, making it difficult for her to run and bringing chaos to the situation.
On the other hand, she told herself, the police probably keep the letters that relate to Diana, and what's worse, to Lennard. Frankly, she was making merits to earn a spot on the Wanted list at the police station, if such a thing existed.
Deja vu.
Just like last October 12, when she unveiled nosy Doctor Salas' deception, she was again running out of breath in the storm. On that occasion she had done it to try to save the life of Alfonso Morales. It was in vain. Now, however, she fled from fear. And just like that day, it seemed that her heart was going to explode. Why do you always get into these messes, Sara? The first drops of rain had already gotten rid of the dried blood on her hand, and as she decided whether or not to go to the police, she had already arrived at Diana's house.
Vader waited sitting by the fence at the entrance to the garden, and the door of the building was ajar.
Sara stepped quietly into the hall, completely silent. In the kitchen sink were two dirty dishes, a glass of wine, a frying pan, and some cutlery, all without scrubbing.
“Diana?” She exclaimed, but she got no answer but the echo of her own voice.
The bathroom door was open, and from the hallway you could see the straight curtain of the shower and a wet towel lying on the floor. Diana's hair irons were connected to the current. Sara frowned and pulled out the plug.
“Diana!” She repeated, this time with an annoying lump in her throat.
The last room she went through was the bedroom. The bed was made and smelled good, but there was no trace of her lover.
A mew from the front door caused Sara to shudder, and immediately afterwards Vader slipped into the room with his hair curled and his tail raised. He hid behind her legs.
"What's the matter, little fur ball?"
There was a loud slamming door. Someone had just entered the house, and Vader was trying to communicate that it was not his mistress.
Sara took a quick glance down the hallway through the gap between the frame and the door. She had to mentally count to three so that her body wouldn’t react to the terror of seeing that arrogant policeman creeping towards her position. She was able to identify a weapon hanging from his right hand. He was going after her.
Shit, shit, shit!
To the utmost desperation, Vader let out a second meow, which eliminated any possibility of going unnoticed. She turned and analyzed the situation. She only had one choice. She ran to the window, opened it wide, and jumped onto the back lawn just as the leather boots of the male figure trod on the bedroom floor.
She nearly tripped twice before leaving the garden for the road. She ran with all her energy, and as she struggled to save her life, she let the tears flow, clouding her vision. She had the idea of avoiding the main avenues, so she continued to escape through the narrow alleys of the city center. The ground slid like oil-battered songs, and the streetlights shone ghostly shapes on the stone walls. Without knowing how, Sara had ended up in the middle of a horrible nightmare.
The passage from High Street to Catte Street, also known as Queen's Lane, is a narrow, winding stone road through which time seems to have run out. A must for New College students, during the day Catte Street is one of the most charming tourist attractions in the city. At night, dingy and lonely, it becomes the typical place where no one wants to walk alone. As Sara twisted the first two corners of the passage, she passed a boy riding a bicycle. She made a stop to plead for his help, but the cyclist didn’t stop; he didn’t even look at her. She twisted the last gap between spasms and glimpsed the Bridge of Sighs, which led to the open city. Hopefully, she picked up the pace at the moment a police car skidded violently and stopped under the bridge. The driver got out of the vehicle.
That unexpected twist in the chase made Sara wince in her heart first, and then she stumbled. She had tried to stop suddenly, but the wet stone was like an ice rink for such acrobatics. She landed face-first against a puddle. She held her breath and closed her eyes. The muscles in her body didn’t respond, and she wasn’t sure whether any bones had been broken. Her pursuer must have been close by now. The only thing that could be heard in the alley was the strong heel that the soles of his boots produced when he stepped on the damp ground. They were approaching slowly.
Sara Mora prepared to be arrested. The heel stopped at her side, and Sara, fully surrendered, and relaxed her body to make things easy for her captor. She had no intention of resisting any more. She expected a brief shaking and a strong pull to place her wrists behind her back. She had seen it in countless movies. Instead, she was flipped over face up. She looked into the face of the cop who had been chasing after Mike's death. Raindrops fell from her bangs to her eyes, blinding her. And the warm glow of the lanterns didn’t allow her to focus on anything in particular. She did not see the butt of the pistol slam into her forehead.