The Silence of the White City Read online

  EVA GARCÍA SÁENZ

  THE SILENCE OF THE WHITE CITY

  Eva García Sáenz de Urturi was born in Vitoria and has been living in Alicante since she was fifteen years old. She published her first novel, La saga de los longevos (The Immortal Collection), in 2012, and it became a sales phenomenon in Spain, Latin America, the United States, and the United Kingdom. She is also the author of Los hijos de Adán (The Sons of Adam) and the historical novel Pasaje a Tahití (Passage to Tahiti). In 2016 she published the first installment of the White City Trilogy, titled El silencio de la ciudad blanca (The Silence of the White City), followed by Los ritos del agua (The Water Rituals) and Los señores del tiempo (The Lords of Time). She is married and has two children.

  ALSO BY EVA GARCÍA SÁENZ

  The White City Trilogy

  The Water Rituals

  The Lords of Time

  The Ancient Family Saga

  The Immortal Collection

  The Sons of Adam

  Other Novels

  Passage to Tahiti

  A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, JULY 2020

  Translation copyright © 2020 by Penguin Random House LLC

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Spain as El silencio de la ciudad blanca by Editorial Planeta S.A., Barcelona, in 2016, and subsequently in the United States by Vintage Español, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2019. Copyright © 2016 by Eva García Sáenz de Urturi.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: García Saénz, Eva, 1972– author.

  Title: The silence of the white city / Eva García Saénz ; translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor.

  Description: New York : Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019058952 (print) | LCCN 2019058953 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PQ6707.A7325 S5413 2020 (print) | LCC PQ6707.A7325 (ebook) | DDC 863/.7—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019058952

  Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9781984898593

  Ebook ISBN 9781984898609

  Map illustrations © Gradual Maps

  Cover design by Henry Steadman

  Cover photographs: bee © wanttodo/Shutterstock; city © Alberto Loyo/Shutterstock

  www.vintagebooks.com

  ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Eva García Sáenz

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: The Old Cathedral

  Chapter 2: The Arquillos

  Chapter 3: Zaballa Prison

  Chapter 4: Villa Suso Palace

  Chapter 5: The Casa del Cordón

  Chapter 6: Number 2 Calle Dato

  Chapter 7: Villaverde

  Chapter 8: At Matxete’s

  Chapter 9: Armentia

  Chapter 10: La Senda

  Chapter 11: San Antonio

  Chapter 12: The Green Ring

  Chapter 13: The Vitoria Clinic

  Chapter 14: San Vicentejo

  Chapter 15: Avenue of Pines

  Chapter 16: The Angel of Santa Isabel

  Chapter 17: Monte de la Tortilla

  Chapter 18: The Statue on Calle Dato

  Chapter 19: Txagorritxu

  Chapter 20: The Campillo Mural

  Chapter 21: Number 2 Calle General Álava

  Chapter 22: The Monte Gorbea Nature Reserve

  Chapter 23: The Lantern Procession

  Chapter 24: The Dawn Rosary

  Chapter 25: The Balcony of San Miguel

  Chapter 26: Miraconcha Avenue

  Chapter 27: The Calle Honduras Towers

  Chapter 28: Zugarramurdi

  Chapter 29: The Unzueta Mansion

  Chapter 30: Casa de las Jaquecas

  Chapter 31: Doña Otxanda’s Tower

  Chapter 32: Izarra

  Chapter 33: El Caminante

  Chapter 34: The Prado Park

  Chapter 35: The Monte Gorbea Cross

  Chapter 36: Salburua

  Chapter 37: The Duende Underpass

  Chapter 38: Tres Cruces

  Chapter 39: Doña Lola’s Yew Tree

  Chapter 40: Number 1 Calle Dato

  Chapter 41: The Aiurdin Pass

  Chapter 42: Murguía

  Chapter 43: The Battle of Vitoria Monument

  Chapter 44: Hemingway College

  Chapter 45: Arriaga Park

  Chapter 46: The Old Quarter

  Chapter 47: Treviño

  Chapter 48: Ochate

  Chapter 49: Sant Iago

  Chapter 50: Laguardia

  Chapter 51: San Tirso

  Chapter 52: Kraken’s City

  To my grandfather. For any number of reasons.

  [The] world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.

  —RUST COHLE, True Detective

  PROLOGUE

  VITORIA

  AUGUST 2016

  The TV crews were obsessed with hounding my oldest friends in the cuadrilla. They needed a headline and were convinced those closest to me could supply it. From the moment the news broke that the killer had shot me, reporters chased them all over Vitoria: from then on, nobody got any peace.

  Posted on their doorsteps at the crack of dawn. They lingered at Saburdi’s on Calle Dato for a few quiet tapas in the evening. At the time, no one felt like talking, and the unrelenting media presence didn’t help.

  “We’re sorry about what happened to Inspector Ayala. Are you going to the demonstration this afternoon?” one reporter asked, brandishing a newspaper with the story splashed across the front page. A large photograph competed with the headline.

  The big, dark-haired guy trying unsuccessfully to hide his face from the cameras in the image was me, a few days before the shooting.

  My female friends lowered their eyes; my male ones turned their backs to the cameras.

  “We’re in shock,” Jota finally blurted out, draining his glass of red wine. “Life isn’t fair; it’s not fair.”

  Maybe he thought the journalists would be satisfied with that and stop harassing them, but just at that moment they spotted Germán, my brother. He was impossible to miss: only four feet tall, his dwarfism made him obvious to everyone. Germán tried to escape to the restrooms. The reporter, a veteran with a thousand scoops under his belt, alerted the cameramen as soon as he spotted him.

  “That’s his brother. After him!”

  My brother turned around before he slammed the door in the man’s face, and that gesture appeared on all the national TV channels that night.

  “Go to hell” was all he said. He wasn’t angry or offended. Simply exhausted.

  I know everyone in Vitoria was stunned by the fact that I had been shot in the head, and if thinking hadn’t been a physical impossibility just then, it would have moved me to tears.

  A policeman never expects to close a case by becoming the final victim of a serial killer who has plunged his city into a state of terror, but life has sly ways of playing tricks on you.

  So…yes, things didn’t turn out too well for me. As I say, I ended up with a bullet in my brain. But maybe I should start by telling the story of what, at first, became known as the “double crime of the dolmen” and, in the end, turned out to be a massacre carefully planned for many years by a criminal mind boasting an IQ far higher than those who were trying to stop him.

  When the person killing one victim after another is a damned genius, you can only hope your number doesn’t pop out of the golden lottery drum for the little orphan to sing out in his quavering voice.

  1

  THE OLD CATHEDRAL

  SUNDAY, JULY 24

  I was enjoying the best Spanish tortilla in the world, the egg still runny and the potatoes cooked but firm, when I took the call that changed my life. For the worse, I should add.

  It was the eve of El Día de Santiago, and in Vitoria we were celebrating El Día de la Blusa, an homage to the youngsters who enlivened the early-August celebrations by wearing traditional smocks. The bar where I was trying to finish my tasty snack was so crowded and noisy that when I realized my cell phone was vibrating in my shirt pocket, I had to go out into Calle del Prado.

  “What’s wrong, Estíbaliz?”

  My partner didn’t usually bother me on my days off, and El Día de la Blusa and the evening before were too sacred for anyone to even think about going to work. The entire city was in a state of commotion.

  At first, the noise of the brass bands and the flood of people following them prevented my hearing what Estíbaliz was trying to say.

  “Unai, you have to come to the Old Cathedral,” she insisted.

  Her tone of voice, and the undercurrent of urgency and bewilderment, struck me as odd. Estíbaliz has more guts than me, and that’s saying something.

  I understood immediately that something serious must have happened.

  Trying to get away from the ever-present racket that was engulfing the city, I walked automatically toward La Florida Park so that our conversation could be at least minimally productive.

  “What happened?” I asked, trying to shake off the effects of the last glass of Rioja.

  “You won’t believe it. It’s exactly the same as twenty years ago.”

  “What are you talking about, Estí? I’m not at my sharpest today.”

  “Some archaeologists from the company restoring the cathedral found two naked corpses in the crypt. A boy and a girl, with their hands resting on each other’s cheek. You remember that, don’t you? Come right now, Unai. This is serious, very serious.” She told me where to find her and ended the call.

  It can’t be, I thought.

  It can’t be.

  I didn’t even say good-bye to my friends in the cuadrilla. They were going to stay in Sagartoki’s, in the midst of that flood of humans. It was unlikely any of them would even pay attention to their phone if I called to say that El Día de la Blusa was over for me.

  With my colleague’s words echoing in my brain, I headed for the Plaza de la Virgen Blanca. I passed my own doorway and went up Calle de la Correría, one of the oldest streets in the medieval heart of the city.

  It was a bad choice. Like everywhere else in the city center that day, it was packed. La Malquerida and the other bars lining the Old City were crammed with locals. It took me more than fifteen minutes to reach La Burullería Square, at the rear of the cathedral, where I’d agreed to meet Estíbaliz.

  In the fifteenth century, the square had been the market of the burulleros, or weavers, who made the city one of the main trading arteries in northern Spain, and it had retained their name. As I walked across the cobblestones, the bronze statue of Ken Follett seemed to watch me go by, as if the writer had anticipated the dark web of intrigue being spun around us.

  * * *

  —

  Estíbaliz Ruiz de Gauna, my colleague and fellow inspector in the Criminal Investigation Unit, was waiting in the square, making a thousand phone calls, darting back and forth like a lizard. Her red hair framed her face. At five feet two inches tall, she just met the height requirement to join the force. Had Estí been any shorter, Vitoria would have lost one of its finest, most tenacious detectives.

  We were both damned good at solving cases, although we weren’t quite as good at playing by the rules. We had received more than one warning for disobedience, and so we’d learned to cover ourselves. As for following orders, we were working on it.

  We were working on it.

  I turned a blind eye to some of the addictions that still slipped into Estí’s life. She looked the other way when I disobeyed my superiors and investigated on my own.

  My specialty was criminal profiling, so I was usually called in when we had a case involving a serial killer or rapist—any delinquent who reoffended. If there were more than three events with a cooling-off period between them, I was your man.

  Estíbaliz specialized in victimology, that great forgotten science. Why that person, and not someone else? She was also better than anyone at using the police databases, like the one that compiled the treads of every imaginable vehicle, or SoleMate, a guide to the footprints left by all the international makes and brands of shoes and sneakers.

  As soon as she saw me, she hung up her cell phone and looked at me, distraught.

  “What’s inside the cathedral?” I asked.

  “You’d better see for yourself,” she whispered, as if the heavens—or perhaps hell—could hear us, who knew? “Superintendent Medina himself called me. They want a profiling expert like you, and they’ve called me in to examine the victims. You’ll soon see why. I want you to tell me your first impression. The crime-scene techs are already here, and so are the pathologist and the judge. Let’s go in via Cuchi.”

  Calle Cuchillería was one of the ancient streets where the guilds had been established in the Middle Ages. Vitoria could boast an indelible record of our ancestors’ trades: La Herrería for blacksmiths, La Zapatería for shoemakers, La Correría for ropemakers, La Pintorería for the dyers’ guild. Despite the passage of centuries, the city’s medieval core was still intact.

  Oddly enough, from Calle Cuchillería you could enter the cathedral through what looked like the doorway to an ordinary dwelling.

  There were already two uniforms guarding the heavy wooden door at Number 85. They saluted and let us in.

  “I’ve questioned the two archaeologists who found them,” my colleague said. “They came today to try to make some headway with their work: the Santa María Cathedral Foundation is pressuring them to finish the crypt and the vault this year. They left us the keys. As you can see, the lock is intact. It hasn’t been forced.”

  “They came to work on the eve of El Día de Santiago? Isn’t that slightly…unusual for people from Vitoria?”

  “I didn’t notice anything strange about their reactions, Unai.” Estí shook her head. “They were shocked, or rather horrified. Horror like that isn’t faked.”

  All right, I thought. I trusted Estíbaliz’s judgment the way the back wheel of a bicycle trusts the front wheel. That’s how we functioned; that’s how we pedaled along.

  We went in through the restored porch. My colleague closed the door behind us, and the noise of the festivities finally faded.

  Until that moment, the news that two dead bodies had been found hadn’t really hit me; it had been too m uch at odds with the joyful, carefree atmosphere all around. But in that cloistered silence, with the archaeologists’ lamps dimly lighting the wooden staircase down to the crypt, it all seemed more plausible. And not exactly welcome.

  “Here, put on a helmet.” Estíbaliz handed me one of the white helmets bearing the foundation’s logo that every tourist visiting the cathedral was obliged to wear. “With your height, you’re bound to bump your head.”

  “I’ll be fine without it,” I said, busy peering around the room.

  “It’s mandatory,” she insisted, holding out the white monstrosity to me again and brushing the edge of my hand with her fingertips.

  This game we played had one very clear rule: So far and no further. In fact, there was a complementary one: Don’t ask; that’s far enough. I figured that two years without going any further constituted a status quo, an established code of conduct, and Estíbaliz and I got along very well. It was also true that she was busy with her wedding preparations, and I had been widowed for several— Well, that doesn’t matter.

  “You’re going soft,” I muttered, but took the plastic helmet.

  We climbed the curving staircase, leaving behind the models of the village of Gasteiz, the first settlement that had become the foundation of the city. Estíbaliz had to stop once more to find the right key to the door that would take us to the inner area of the Old Cathedral, one of our city’s symbols. It had been restored and patched up more often than my childhood bike. A sign reading OPEN greeted us on the right.