A shiver ran down her spine.
‘I want this photographed from every angle,’ she ordered. While waiting for the photographers to do their work, she stepped back a few paces, crossed herself, and, lowering her head, said another prayer for the victim.
Judge Markina stood gaping at her, as Dr San Martín approached.
‘It’s just another way of distancing oneself from the dead,’ he murmured to Markina, who looked away, shamefaced.
Stepping over the grave, Dr San Martín took a pair of nail scissors from his bag, then glanced at Markina, who gave a nod of approval. With a single movement, he snipped the plastic lengthways, exposing the top half of the body.
The corpse lay fully outstretched, tilted slightly on its right side. Decomposition was relatively advanced, although somewhat delayed by the cold, dry soil. The flesh looked sunken and shrivelled, above all on the face.
‘Fortunately, because of the recent cold weather, the degree of decomposition is less than you’d expect after five months,’ San Martín explained. ‘At first glance, the corpse presents a deep gash to the throat. Bloodstains on the pullover indicate the victim was still alive when this was done to her. The wound is deep and straight, indicating an extremely sharp blade and a clear intent to cause death. There is no sign of hesitation; what’s more, the wound travels from left to right, suggesting her assailant was right-handed. Blood loss was extreme, so that despite being well wrapped up in relatively dry ground, there is abundant evidence of insect activity in the initial phase.’
Amaia approached the head of the grave and crouched down. Tilting her head slightly to one side, she remained like that for a few moments, as if she were feeling dizzy.
Judge Markina looked at her with concern. He moved towards her, but Jonan restrained him with a gesture, then whispered something in his ear.
‘That mark on her eyebrow, is it from a blow?’ asked Amaia.
‘Well spotted,’ said San Martín, beaming with the pride of a teacher who has trained his pupil well, ‘and it would appear to be post-mortem, because there’s an indentation but no bleeding.’
‘Look,’ said Amaia, pointing, ‘there seem to be others all over her head.’
‘Yes.’ San Martín nodded, leaning closer. ‘There’s some hair missing here, which isn’t due to decomposition.’
‘Jonan, take a photograph from here, will you?’ asked Amaia.
Markina crouched down beside Amaia, so close that he brushed her with his jacket sleeve.
He murmured an apology, then asked San Martín if the body had been there the entire time or if it had been brought there immediately after death. San Martín said he thought it had, explaining that the maggots’ remains corresponded to early stage soil fauna typical of the area, but that he would only know for sure when he had carried out all the relevant tests.
Markina stood up and walked over to the judicial clerk, who was busy taking notes at a discreet distance.
Amaia remained kneeling for a few seconds, puzzling over the body.
Jonan gazed expectantly at her.
‘Can we take it away now?’ one of the technicians asked.
‘Not yet,’ said Amaia, raising her hand without looking round. ‘Your honour,’ she called out.
Markina turned towards her and obediently made his way back.
‘Quiralte said that if he’d spoken to me sooner he wouldn’t have had to rot in jail for four months, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he did, although having confessed to the crime, I’m not quite sure how he imagined that would happen.’
‘I think I do …’ she whispered, pensive.
Markina held out his hand, which she frowned at, rising to her feet and circling the grave.
‘Doctor, could you cut through more of the bag, please?’
‘Certainly.’
He went to work with the scissors again, this time opening the lower half of the bag down to the knees.
The skirt Lucía Aguirre had been wearing with her striped pullover appeared hitched up, and her underclothes were missing.
‘I assumed we would find evidence of sexual aggression – it’s common in cases like these. I wouldn’t be surprised if it occurred post-mortem,’ said the pathologist.
‘Yes, like a furious unleashing of all his fantasies – but that’s not what I’m looking for.’
Gingerly, she peeled away the bag on either side.
‘Jonan, come here a minute. Keep the plastic taut so the mud doesn’t get in.’
Jonan nodded and passed the camera to one of the technicians. He knelt down and clasped the two bits of plastic firmly in both hands.
Crouching beside him, Amaia fumbled for the victim’s right shoulder, slowly feeling her way down the arm, which was partially obscured by the body leaning slightly on to its side. Using both hands, she dug her fingers underneath the body at the level of the bicep, and pulled gently to reveal the arm.
Jonan gave a start, lost his balance and fell on to his backside, still clinging to the plastic sheet.
The arm appeared to have been severed from the elbow in a clean, neat incision; the absence of any blood made it easy to see the tip of the arm bone and the atrophied flesh surrounding it.
A terrible shiver coursed through Amaia’s whole body. For an instant all the cold in the universe converged on her backbone, making her judder as if she’d received an electric shock.
‘Chief …’ Jonan’s voice brought her back to reality.
She looked straight at him and he nodded.
‘Come on, Jonan,’ she ordered, tearing off her gloves and starting to run towards the car.
She stopped in her tracks, wheeling round to address Markina:
‘Your honour, call the prison and tell them to keep Quiralte under strict surveillance. If necessary, they should put a guard inside his cell.’
Markina was already clutching his mobile.
‘Why?’ he asked with a shrug.
‘Because he’s going to kill himself.’
She had let Jonan take the wheel – she always did when she needed to think and was in a hurry. He was a good driver, managing to achieve the right balance between safety and the impulse to put his foot down on the accelerator, which she would have yielded to. The journey from Azanza to Pamplona took them less than thirty minutes. In the end the rain had held off, but the overcast skies had led to a starless, moonless night that seemed to dampen even the city lights. As they turned into the prison car park, they saw an ambulance with its lights extinguished.
‘Shit,’ she whispered.
An officer was waiting for them at the door and ushered them into a corridor so they didn’t have to go through security. As they hurried along the passageway, he brought them up to date:
‘The paramedics and the prison doctor are with him now. He seems to have swallowed something, rat poison probably. A fellow inmate on cleaning duty must have sold it to him. They usually put it in each other’s food or cut drugs with it; in small doses it causes stomach cramps and nausea. When you gave the alert, he was already unconscious, lying in a pool of his own blood and vomit; I reckon he’s puked his guts out. He regained consciousness, but I don’t think he even knows where he is.’
Pale and worried-looking, the prison governor was waiting for them outside Quiralte’s cell.
‘We had no way of knowing …’
Amaia walked straight past him