besides I didn’t want your mother going hysterical on me. I need a bit of calm now. I’ll rest and keep checking the frequency of the contractions. When I’m ready, we can go to the hospital.’
The skies above Pamplona were still overcast, and the distant twinkle of winter stars was barely visible.
James was asleep face down, sprawled over a larger area of the bed than he was entitled to, in that peaceful, relaxed way of his that Amaia had always envied. At first he had hesitated about going to bed at all, but she had persuaded him to rest while he could because she’d need him awake later on.
‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’ he had insisted.
‘I’m sure, James. I only need to check the frequency of the contractions. When it’s time to go I’ll let you know.’
He had fallen asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, and the house was silent save for his steady breathing and the soft rustle as she turned the pages of her book.
She broke off reading as she felt another contraction. Gasping, she clutched the arms of the rocking chair she’d been sitting in for the past hour, and waited for it to subside.
Frustrated, she put down the book without bothering to mark her page, realising that, although she’d read quite a lot, she hadn’t taken any of it in. In the past half-hour the contractions had grown more painful, almost making her cry out. Even so, she decided to wait a little longer. She leaned out of the window gazing down into the street, which was quite busy that Friday night, despite the cold, the occasional drizzle, and the fact that it was well past midnight.
She heard a noise in the hallway and went over to listen at the bedroom door.
It was her in-laws, returning after dinner and a stroll. She glanced at the soft glow coming from the reading lamp she had switched on and thought about turning it off, but there was no need; although Clarice meddled in virtually every area of their lives, she wouldn’t dare barge into their bedroom.
Continuing to check the increasing frequency of the contractions, she listened to the sounds in the house, to James’s parents going to bed, and how everything stopped, giving way to a silence troubled only by the creaks and whispers that inhabited the enormous building, as familiar to her as her own breath. She had nothing to worry about now; Thomas was a heavy sleeper, while Clarice took tablets every night, so she wouldn’t be awake before dawn.
The next contraction was truly terrible, and despite concentrating on breathing in and out the way she’d been taught in her prenatal classes, she felt as if she was wearing a steel corset that was squeezing her kidneys and lungs so tight it made her panic. What frightened her wasn’t so much giving birth, although she admitted feeling some trepidation about it, whilst being aware that this was perfectly normal. No, she knew that what frightened her was something far more profound and deep-seated, because this wasn’t the first time she had confronted fear. She had carried it around with her for years like an unwanted, invisible traveller that only appeared when she was at her lowest ebb.
Fear was an old vampire looming above her bed while she slept, hidden in the darkness, filling her dreams with terrifying shadows. Suddenly she remembered her grandmother Juanita’s word for it: gaueko: ‘the night visitor’. A visitor who retreated into the darkness whenever she succeeded in opening a breach in her own defences, a breach that let in the light of understanding, only to reveal the cruelty of the terrible events that had marked her life for ever, and which through sheer willpower she kept buried deep in her soul. The first step had been to comprehend, to identify the truth and to confront it. And yet, even in that instant of euphoria when she believed she had triumphed over her fear for the first time, she realised she hadn’t won the war, only a battle – a glorious one, but a battle all the same. From then on she had worked hard to keep that breach open, allowing the light that flooded in to strengthen her relationship with James, as well as the image of herself she had built up over the years. And as a postscript, this pregnancy, the little being growing inside her, brought her a feeling of serenity she could never before have imagined. Throughout her pregnancy she had felt amazing: no morning sickness, no discomfort, her sleep was restful and serene, free from nightmares or sudden jolts; she had so much energy during the day that she even surprised herself. The perfect pregnancy, until a week ago, the night that evil returned.
She had been going in to the police station every day as usual; they were investigating the case of a missing woman, whose partner was the chief suspect. For months the disappearance had been regarded as intentional, but her daughters’ insistence that their mother hadn’t left of her own accord had aroused Amaia’s interest, and she had reopened the investigation. Besides her two daughters and three grandchildren, the middle-aged woman was a catechist at her local church and paid daily visits to the care home where her elderly mother lived. Too many commitments for her to vanish without a word. They had established early on that suitcases, clothes, personal documents and money were missing from her house. Even so, when Amaia decided to take over the investigation, she insisted on going back there. Lucía Aguirre’s house was as neat and tidy as the photograph of its smiling owner, which had pride of place in the hallway. In the tiny sitting room, a piece of crochet lay on a coffee table covered with photographs of her grandchildren.
Amaia searched the kitchen and bathroom, which were spotlessly clean. In the master bedroom, the bed was made and there were few clothes in the wardrobe and chest of drawers. In the spare room were twin beds.
‘Jonan, do you notice something strange here?’
‘The bedcovers are different,’ said Deputy Inspector Etxaide.
‘We noticed that the first time around. The matching counterpane is in the wardrobe,’ explained the accompanying officer, checking his notes.
Amaia opened the wardrobe to find the blue counterpane matching one of those on the bed neatly folded in a see-through plastic pouch.
‘And didn’t it strike you as odd that this neat, house-proud woman wouldn’t take the trouble to use matching bedspreads, when she had them to hand?’
‘Why start changing bedspreads if she was planning to disappear?’ the officer said with a shrug.
‘Because we’re slaves to our nature. Did you know that some women from East Berlin mopped the floors of their houses before fleeing to West Germany? They were abandoning their country, but they didn’t want anyone saying they weren’t good housewives.’
Amaia pulled the bulky package out of the wardrobe and put it on one of the beds before unzipping it. The sharp odour of bleach permeated the room. With one gloved hand, she tugged at the edge of the counterpane, unfolding it to reveal a yellowish stain in the middle where the bleach had eaten away the colour.
‘You see, officer, it doesn’t fit,’ she said, turning towards the policeman, who nodded, speechless.
‘Our murderer has seen enough TV programmes about crime scene investigations to know that bleach gets rid of bloodstains, but he’s a terrible house husband because he didn’t take into account that it also removes the colour. Call in Forensics to do a blood search – this stain is enormous.’
After a thorough search by the forensic team, traces had been found, which, despite the attempted clean-up, revealed amounts of lost blood that would have resulted in loss of life: the human body contains five litres of blood; losing five hundred millilitres is sufficient to cause fainting, and the tests suggested more than two litres had been spilled. They had arrested the suspect the same day: a vain, cocky individual, his overly long hair streaked with grey, and his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest. Amaia suppressed a laugh when she saw what he looked
