The Silence of the White City Read online

  “That’s for you to say, Unai. And say it out loud. Because the whole of Vitoria is going to be asking that question in a few hours, as soon as it starts trending all over Spain, and we have to be prepared to answer when the press is on our backs.”

  I sighed.

  “All right. I’ll ask the obvious questions. We’ll see where that takes us.”

  “Go on, then.”

  An idea settled on my left shoulder, like a black butterfly. I knew it with absolute certainty: if I’d had a crystal ball, if I’d known I was going to be put in charge of this case, I would never have become a homicide detective.

  It was as clear and undeniable as that.

  I would have stayed in Villaverde, sowing wheat with my grandfather.

  Because I didn’t want to have to face it. Not this. Any other case. For years I had been preparing myself mentally, and until now things had gone well for me. Good statistics, cases solved in a reasonable time frame, congratulations and pats on the back from my superiors. But not this, not with Tasio Ortiz de Zárate involved.

  But I had to put it into words, to make it real. I couldn’t leave it buzzing annoyingly above our heads.

  “All right,” I said, giving in, “I’ll say it out loud: How on Earth has Tasio committed two more murders with the same signature as the killings that happened twenty years ago, when at this very moment he’s locked up in Zaballa? Can a person, however devilish they are, be in two places at the same time?”

  2

  THE ARQUILLOS

  EL DÍA DE SANTIAGO

  MONDAY, JULY 25

  I was fascinated by the strange symmetry of events. A pair of victims, with ages ending in zero or five…a murderer and a policeman identical in all aspects…the crimes stopping when Tasio was sent to prison and starting again just as he was about to leave for the first time…

  I must confess, I didn’t sleep that night.

  I gave up and got out of bed at six o’clock. Partly because, under my wooden balcony on the Plaza de la Virgen Blanca, people were still celebrating El Día de la Blusa as if there were no tomorrow. And partly because my day looked as if it was going to be complicated: I would have to struggle with the press and listen to instructions from Superintendent Medina. It was going to be a long day stuck at the station, and I needed to get some fresh air to face it.

  I put on my running shoes and trotted down the stairs to the doorway separating me from the heart of Vitoria. A couple of years earlier I had found an apartment in the center of the city that I could rent for a good price. A friend who worked at Perales, Vitoria’s leading real estate agency, owed me a favor after I expedited a restraining order on an ex-boyfriend who was harassing her. A real asshole.

  Begoña was more than grateful. She knew I was looking for a place to live after what had happened to Paula and the children, so she offered me a bargain on a place before she put the announcement in her firm’s window. A newly renovated one-bedroom apartment. Very elderly neighbors, good as gold but deaf as doorknobs. The best views possible for a third-floor apartment, but no elevator. Just for me, no room to share it with anybody else. In other words, perfect.

  I raced out onto the street, bumping into waves of people finally making their way home. It almost looked like a procession. They were running out of things to say, and most of them were walking along wearily, some zigzagging into Calle Zapatería, keys in hand.

  Escaping from the crowds, I headed for less busy streets. I went down through the square to Calle de la Diputación, continued along Siervas de Jesús, and ran around the entire medieval quarter. Half an hour later I was coming back over Cuesta de San Francisco a second time, feeling fresher and more awake. I turned down along Arquillos—and there she was, the mysterious runner I had been encountering every morning for the past week. The only other person crazy or motivated enough to go running this early.

  She never went down narrow alleyways. She kept out of the shadows, seeming to connect the dots between streetlamps, and always ran down the center of the streets. She wore a whistle around her neck. A cautious person. More than that, someone aware of danger. Either she had been attacked, or she was afraid of an attack. And yet, she went out running before dawn every day of the week.

  I slowed down when I reached the end of the arcades: I didn’t want her to think I was following her. I didn’t want to scare her. I wasn’t pursuing her, even though this woman, who always wore her dark hair in a long braid under an incongruous baseball cap, intrigued me more than I cared to admit. I turned my attention to a huge poster advertising a musical version of Moby-Dick at the Teatro Principal.

  Call me Ishmael, I thought, recalling the opening lines of the novel. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation.

  To my surprise, she was the one who broke the ice and snapped me out of my daydream. When she reached the esplanade outside San Miguel Arcángel Church, she stopped by the bronze statue of the Celedón holding his umbrella and raised her leg onto the railing to stretch.

  I ran past, politely pretending not to notice her, but she raised her head.

  “Aren’t you joining the celebrations today?” She laughed, her infectious energy stopping me in my tracks. “Either you’re not or you like running too much.”

  If you only knew, I said to myself.

  “Neither, I’m afraid,” I said, not wanting to get too involved. “Or maybe both.”

  I had never seen her close-up. Her thin face had a friendly expression in the streetlamp’s feeble glow. It was impossible to make out the color of her eyes, but she was quite tall, with very pale skin. Pleasant, desirable. All that, and yet there was something distant.

  “What about you?” I asked, standing a few feet away. “Do you like being different?”

  “Perhaps this is the only moment all day that I have to myself.”

  Either you have family duties or a stressful job. Possibly morning and evening. A lot of overtime, a responsible position, I deduced, but I kept these conclusions to myself.

  “I’m glad ours is not a species in danger of extinction,” I said.

  She smiled and came over to me.

  “My name is…Blanca.”

  A two-second pause and a quick glance at the Virgen Blanca’s niche on the wall opposite us. Too long to tell somebody what your real name is.

  Why are you lying?

  “What about you?” she asked.

  Call me Ishmael.

  “Ishmael.”

  “Ishmael, I see. Well, pleased to meet you, Ishmael. If you’re crazy enough to keep running at this time of the morning, I imagine we’ll see each other again,” said Blanca before running off down the steps.

  I stood by the Celedón, watching her go past my doorway and head for La Florida Park.

  * * *

  —

  Two hours later I was pedaling to my office in the Lakua neighborhood, where our new police headquarters was situated in an impressive concrete building. I chained my bike to a rail in the parking lot, took a deep breath, and went in.

  What would the day hold for me? What would I be turning over in my mind that night as I tried to go to sleep?

  Focus on whatever comes up today, and everything will be fine, I tried to persuade myself, but I didn’t believe it.

  I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Sitting at my computer, I began to gather all the information we had and to organize my ideas. Then Superintendent Medina knocked twice on the door and came in, grim-faced. The superintendent, a man with thick black eyebrows and a bushy white beard, could be either harsh or understanding, depending on the day.

  “Good morning, Inspector Ayala. Have you read this morning’s newspapers?”

  “I haven’t had a chance, sir. Has the war started already?”

  “I’m afraid it has.” He sighed and tossed me a copy of El Diario Alavés. “Someone leaked the news about the discovery of the bodies in the Old Cathedral. They put out a special edition yesterday evening.”

  “A newspaper edition that late?” I said, puzzled. “Nobody ever publishes extra editions like that anymore. As far as I know, anything that doesn’t get into the morning edition is updated online.”

  “Exactly. That gives you an idea of how closely El Diario Alavés intends to follow this case. It’s no surprise. No one on the streets of Vitoria after midnight was talking about anything else. I’ve already fielded calls from a dozen radio stations and several national television channels. They all want to know what’s going on, and they want more details. Come into my office; Inspector Gauna is waiting for us. Deputy Superintendent Díaz de Salvatierra is joining the force today. She’s the one you’ll be reporting to. Naturally we were all hoping her first day would be calmer, but news is news, as journalists say. Follow me, won’t you?”

  I agreed, glancing quickly at the newspaper headline: TWO YOUNG ADULTS FOUND DEAD IN THE OLD CATHEDRAL.

  I sighed in relief. The headline was simply descriptive, and the tone was surprisingly neutral. It was nothing like the rivaling headlines we’d seen twenty years earlier, when El Diario Alavés and El Correo Vitoriano’s competition was at its peak.

  * * *

  —

  I must admit I was quite curious about the new deputy superintendent as I walked into the wood-paneled office. New appointments were always guarded like state secrets; there was no point trying to find out about them beforehand. Our superiors kept quiet, and usually no one knew who would be coming in, because they were frequently transferred from other police stations. Estíbaliz was waiting in uniform at the huge conference table. I gazed at the new deputy superintendent and, for a second, didn’t know how to react.

  “Deputy Superintendent Alba Díaz de Salvatierra, this is Inspector Unai López de Ayala.”

  Standing in front of me, extending her hand, was an elegant woman in a two-piece suit. She was pretending this was the first time we had met, even though we both knew it wasn’t. Because this was the same woman I had met early that morning. The woman who had called herself Blanca.

  “Deputy Superintendent,” I said as neutrally as I could. “Welcome to Vitoria. I hope you’ll enjoy working with us.”

  She stared at me a fraction of a second longer than required, smiled for her audience, and shook my hand for the second time in less than five hours.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Inspector Ayala. I’m afraid we’re going to have to hold our first briefing right away.”

  “Inspector Gauna,” said Medina, “do you already have the crime-scene report?”

  “I do,” said Estíbaliz, getting up and handing out three copies. “I’ll summarize: The killer or killers have not left a single fingerprint or palm print. CSU tried every process they could think of. There are no footprints, either. The victims had only been dead a couple of hours when they were deposited in the cathedral crypt. There are no signs of sexual abuse, or of resistance. What we can say, even before the autopsy results come in later today, is that the probable cause of death was asphyxia caused by repeated bee stings in their throats.”

  “Bees?” said the deputy superintendent. “How did they get there?”

  “Inspector Ayala and I found signs that both victims had adhesive tape stuck across their mouths. I think the killer stuffed several bees into their mouths and then taped them up. There was an odor of gasoline around the victims’ faces. That kind of smell infuriates bees. It seems as if the killer wanted the bees to sting his victims in the throat so that the swelling in their mucous membranes would block their windpipes and cause death by asphyxiation. To accomplish this, he had to block their nostrils as well. I’m afraid it must have been a very painful death.”

  I was watching the deputy superintendent out of the corner of my eye. When she heard that, she clenched her teeth.

  “What do we know about their identities?” she asked, brushing a lock of hair from her face.

  “I wanted to mention that. We’re matching their descriptions to recent missing person reports in Vitoria and the province. Until yesterday evening, there were no reported disappearances, but last night’s headlines are having an effect. We can expect calls to increase throughout the morning, but they should ease by evening.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Putting it simply, ma’am,” Estíbaliz replied, “parents read in last night’s special edition that a young man and a young woman were found dead in the Old Cathedral. Last night was the eve of El Día de la Blusa. A lot of twenty-year-olds haven’t returned from the celebrations yet. Now it’s eleven a.m. Parents have grown hysterical, calling their children’s cell phones and getting no response. It’s normal for young people to switch off their phones at night or to simply not reply. Then they tell their parents there was no coverage or that their battery died. The Calle Olaguíbel station house is overflowing with desperate parents who can’t locate their children. Our emergency services are struggling to cope. When I last checked, five minutes ago, we had logged almost three hundred calls. We can’t officially process them, though, until twenty-four hours have passed without the person appearing. Most of the callers read the news this morning and are worried because their children haven’t come home yet. As the day goes on, the kids will return and many of the parents won’t bother calling us again to let us know. They’ll simply be so relieved they’ll want to forget the whole thing as quickly as possible.”

  “Which gives the killer or killers a precious few hours,” I said, thinking out loud. “It’s no coincidence he killed them on the evening before El Día de la Blusa. I think that’s precisely what he wanted: to stay a step ahead of us, and to create this atmosphere of collective psychosis in the wake of the celebrations.”

  “First impressions?” asked Deputy Superintendent Díaz de Salvatierra.

  “They’re very small,” I blurted out.

  “What’s that?”

  “The two victims. Both are very small. And they’re not heavily built.”

  “So where does that get us? Why do you bring that up, Ayala?”

  “Because we always assume the killer is a man. But for the moment I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that it could be a woman, at least a tall, fairly strong one. I could see her killing them one after the other. Up until now, the victims have been babies, or children aged five, ten, and fifteen years old. If we’re right, the latest ones are twenty-year-olds. Not very tall or strongly built. It’s equally possible for the killer to be a man or a woman. If the murders continue, it’ll be interesting to see the size and build of the next victims.”

  “The next victims,” the deputy superintendent repeated. “Are you so sure there’ll be more?”

  “Oh, please! We have to stop pretending this is an isolated crime,” I said, rising to my feet. “That’s handing the killer an advantage. We must accept that these latest murders are directly related to the ones that took place twenty years ago. They’ve started again, and they’ll continue. I recommend we warn all twenty-five-year-olds in the city with double-barreled names from the Álava region. We can’t possibly protect five thousand young people, but we can give them advice to help them stay safe. We can tell them not to go out alone, to make sure they’re always with someone when they come back at night. Not to stand on their own in doorways; not to go out to the countryside by themselves on the weekends. We have no idea where the killer captures and keeps the victims before killing them. We simply have to try to make it more difficult for him or her.”

  DSU Salvatierra stood in front of me, her arms crossed. “We’re not going to do that.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, unable to believe my ears.

  “We’re not going to alarm people further,” she said, shaking her head so coolly it exasperated me. “If we announce those self-protection measures, the whole city will be plunged into panic, and that will only make it harder for us to do our jobs. I don’t want the situation to become chaotic.”

  “It already is chaotic, that’s what the murderer wants. Are you telling me, ma’am, that your aim right now, at this very moment, isn’t to prevent the very likely murder of two twenty-five-year-olds?”

  That was what we had to do, what the whole thing was about: to hunt down the murderer before he, or she, struck again.

  That was what it was about.

  But when I looked at the other three, there was a strange look in their eyes, as if I had gone too far and shouted at them. Maybe I had, I don’t remember.

  At that moment Pancorbo, one of our longest-serving inspectors, came in, scratching the rebellious strands of hair on his round, polished head.

  He whispered in the superintendent’s ear and gave us all a worried look, then disappeared as stealthily as he had arrived.

  Superintendent Medina pinched the top of his nose between his bushy eyebrows and closed his eyes for a second.

  “Are your computers on?” he asked.

  Not following, Estíbaliz and I shrugged.

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “Well then, get back to your offices right now, leave the intranet, and shut down your computers. And turn off the Internet connections on your cell phones as well. The station’s systems are being hacked.”