carried out. Now, based purely on what’s in front of me, I can state: thirteen years of age, female. Taking into consideration the temperature of the liver, I would say she’s been dead around two hours. Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet,’ he confirmed, palpating the girl’s jaw again.
‘That fits in more or less with the timing of her call home and her parents reporting her missing at the police station. Yes, two hours, if that.’
Amaia waited for him to stand up and then took his place kneeling next to the girl. She didn’t miss Jonan’s look of relief at being released from the forensic pathologist’s scrutiny. The girl’s eyes stared blankly into infinity and her mouth was half open in what looked like surprise, or perhaps a final attempt to inhale, giving her face an air of child-like amazement like a little girl on her birthday. All her clothing seemed to have been slit cleanly down the middle from her neck to her thighs and was pulled open to either side, like a half-unwrapped gift. The gentle breeze coming off the river moved the girl’s fringe a little and Amaia caught the scent of shampoo mixed with the more bitter aroma of tobacco. She wondered whether the girl had been a smoker.
‘She smells of tobacco. Do you know whether she was carrying a bag?’
‘Yes, she was. It hasn’t turned up yet, but I’ve got officers combing the area as far as a kilometre downstream,’ said Inspector Montes, gesturing toward the river with his arm.
‘Ask her friends where they were and who they were with.’
‘I’ll do it first thing in the morning, chief,’ said Jonan, tapping his watch. ‘Her friends will be thirteen-year-old girls, they’ll be asleep right now.’
Amaia observed the girl’s hands lying beside her body. They looked white and unblemished and their palms were turned upwards.
‘Have you noticed how her hands are positioned? They’ve been arranged like that.’
‘I agree,’ said Montes, who was still standing next to Jonan.
‘Get them to photograph and preserve them as soon as possible. She may have tried to defend herself. Her nails and hands look fairly clean, but we might be in luck,’ she said, addressing the officer from Forensics. Dr San Martín bent over the girl again, opposite Amaia.
‘We’ll have to wait for the autopsy, but I’d suggest asphyxiation as the cause of death, and, given the force with which the string’s cut into her skin, I’d say it was very quick. The cuts on the body are superficial and were only intended to slash her clothes. They were made with a very sharp object, a knife, a cutter or a scalpel. I’ll confirm this for you later, but the girl was already dead by this point. There’s barely any blood.’
‘And what about her pubic area?’ interrupted Montes.
‘I think the killer used the same blade to shave off her pubic hair.’
‘Perhaps they wanted to take some away as a trophy, chief,’ suggested Jonan.
‘No, I don’t think so. Look at how they’ve scattered it at the sides of the body,’ observed Amaia, pointing out several small piles of fine hair. ‘It seems more likely they wanted to get rid of it to replace it with this,’ she said, gesturing to a small, sticky, golden cake that had been placed on the girl’s hairless pubic mound.
‘What a bastard. Why do people do that sort of thing? As if it wasn’t enough to kill a young girl without putting that there. What on earth can they be thinking to do something like this?’ exclaimed Jonan in disgust.
‘Well, kid, it’s your job to work out what that swine was thinking,’ said Montes, going over to San Martín.
‘Was she raped?’
‘I don’t believe so, although I won’t know for certain until I examine her more thoroughly. The staging is decidedly sexual … cutting her clothes, leaving her chest exposed to the air, shaving her pubic area … and, of course, the cake … it looks like some kind of cupcake, or …’
‘It’s a txantxigorri,’ Amaia interrupted him. ‘It’s a local speciality made to a traditional recipe, although this one’s smaller than normal. It’s definitely a txantxigorri though. Jonan, get them to bag it, and please,’ said Amaia, addressing the group, ‘don’t mention this to anybody. It’s classified information, at least for now.’
They all nodded.
‘We’re finished here. She’s all yours, San Martín. We’ll see you at the Institute.’
Amaia got up and took one last look at the girl before going up the slope to her car.
Inspector Montes had chosen an eye-catching, and doubtless very expensive, violet tie that morning, which stood out against his lilac shirt. The overall effect was elegant, but it did have an incongruous air of Miami Vice about it. The cops who joined them in the lift must have thought the same thing and Amaia didn’t miss the disapproving looks they exchanged as they got out. She glanced at Montes since it was likely he’d noticed too, but he carried on checking the messages on his smartphone, enveloped in a cloud of Armani aftershave and apparently unaware of the effect he was having.
The meeting room door was closed, but before Amaia could even touch the handle it was opened from inside by a uniformed officer, as if he’d been stationed there expressly to await their arrival. He stepped aside, giving them a clear view of a light, spacious conference room and more people than Amaia was expecting. The Commissioner was at the head of the table with two empty spaces to his right. He waved them forward and began the introductions as they moved into the room.
‘Inspector Salazar, Inspector Montes, you already know Inspector Rodríguez from Forensics and Dr San Martín. This is Deputy Inspector Aguirre from Narcotics and Deputy Inspector Zabalza and Inspector Iriarte from the police station in Elizondo. They happened to be out of town when the body was found yesterday.’
Amaia nodded a greeting to those she knew and shook hands with the others.
‘Salazar, Montes, I’ve called you here because I’ve got a suspicion Ainhoa Elizasu’s case is going to be trickier than expected,’ said the Commissioner, taking his seat and gesturing to them to do the same. ‘Inspector Iriarte contacted us this morning to share some information that could be important when we see how the case you’re working on develops.’
Inspector Iriarte leant forwards, putting his enormous aizkolari woodsman’s hands on the table.
‘A month ago, on January 5th to be precise,’ he said, consulting a small black leather-bound notebook that was almost hidden by his hands, ‘a shepherd from Elizondo was taking his sheep to drink at the river when he found the body of a Carla Huarte, a seventeen-year-old girl. She disappeared on New Year’s Eve after going to the Crash Test night club in Elizondo with her boyfriend and a group of friends. She left with him at around four in the morning and he returned alone about three quarters of an hour later. He told a friend they’d had a fight and she’d become so angry she’d got out of the car and stormed off. The friend convinced him to go and look for her and they went back an hour later but they couldn’t find any trace of her. They say they weren’t too worried because there were a lot of courting couples and stoners around the area. Furthermore, the girl was very popular
