“I don’t know if I follow,” she said.
“There was something worrying me throughout the investigation. I could understand how one of the others might have killed Gaspar, Sara and Amanda, but why be so cruel to Ródenas’s wife? And the little one. Octavi Pujades said so as well.”
“Well, someone was cruel to them.”
Salgado tried not to think about the terrible incident that must have occurred that night. “And another thing: of the three victims, Gaspar Ródenas clearly fulfilled the requirements of a possible suicide.”
“He couldn’t bear the weight of guilt …”
“That on the one hand; the acquisition of a weapon on the other. I don’t know if he was planning what he was going to do when he got hold of the pistol or if it occurred to him then, but he certainly used it. Against himself and his family. His case was filed as such, and for four months nothing else happened.”
Lola nodded.
“And then we come to Sara. Another key to this whole affair. So alone on the one hand, and so loyal on the other. At heart, so vulnerable to anyone who might come close and show her affection. When I found out that the photo arrived after her death I guessed this had to mean something. Gaspar had committed suicide four months before and everything had continued as normal for them. The only possible explanation was that during those four months someone had become close to Sara to obtain information-”
Then the phone rang and Héctor picked it up on the first ring. It was a brief conversation of short tense sentences; when he hung up, he leaned back in his chair and exhaled a long sigh.
“They’re on their way,” he said. “Fort has just arrested Mar Ródenas as she was taking the money from the supermarket locker where Sílvia Alemany put it. Her fiancé was waiting for her in the car and tried to run, but they caught him shortly afterward.”
“You were right,” Lola congratulated him.
But Héctor didn’t seem satisfied. “I didn’t believe that Gaspar would have committed suicide without saying why he was doing it. And Mar was the only person who could have found a note that could have put her even partially in the picture of what had happened in Garrigàs. That gave her the opportunity. The desire for revenge against the others was a good motive. And economic necessity, or greed, made her modify her plans. As sometimes happens, she and her fiancé had beginners’ luck. The luck of perverse consequences.”
Mar Ródenas was much more serious that evening than the other times Héctor had seen her. Despite everything, he couldn’t help a strange feeling on seeing her handcuffed, sitting in the same room where Manel Caballero had been. Not compassion exactly, but a kind of sadness. At heart he was sure this young woman in front of him would never have taken that step, but when greed is aligned with revenge the results could be horrible.
“Hello, Mar,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“To tell the truth, I never expected to see you in these circumstances until yesterday.”
“No?” Her voice was hard, bitter. “We all make mistakes, Inspector.”
“You’re right. Mine was trusting appearances. Yours was thinking you could get justice on your own and in passing make the most of it.” Héctor looked hard at her and continued, “Although in your defense I will say there’s something I can understand. The scene you found at your brother’s house must have been devastating for you. Seeing that Gaspar had killed his wife, his daughter and then shot himself would be enough for anyone to lose their mind. And reading the note he wrote must have been a traumatic experience. Then, on the computer, among other things, you found the photo of the dogs.”
She remained silent, expectant, but he didn’t give her much of a break.
“I want to think that at first you kept that note with good intentions. Without it, your parents could always believe their son hadn’t committed that atrocious crime. You kept it and began to become obsessed. Especially because it didn’t tell you everything, right? I don’t yet know what it said, but I imagine it referred to a killing carried out in the Garrigàs house, after returning from burying those dogs in the photo and with the complicity of the others, not giving more details than their names. If he’d described it in detail, you wouldn’t have had to approach Sara Mahler. You met her at Gaspar’s funeral, didn’t you?”
She looked away, but couldn’t help a fleeting nod.
“Poor Sara …” said Héctor. “She was reserved, discreet and at the same time in much need of affection. And you presented yourself to her as what you then were: a girl whose brother had died tragically; an unemployed young woman and, with the way things are, with no very promising future. You told her you’d found Gaspar’s note and hidden it to avoid causing further pain to your family. Sara, with a father who didn’t love her, was touched and confided in you.”
Mar was still locked in sullen silence and Héctor went on.
“Sara gave you presents and spent money on dinners and other things because she grew to care for you and because, like everyone, she needed someone to talk to. Not only about that, but also about herself and the company, even Amanda and her sexual habits. What’s more, if the subject of Garrigàs came up, she didn’t feel she was betraying anyone: you’d convinced her you were going to keep a secret of which you already knew something, not for them, but for your parents, and little by little you wheedled the rest of the information out of her. At the end of the day, she must have thought you had a certain right to know. There was only one thing, a detail she refused to reveal despite your insinuations: what they had done with the bodies.”
The inspector paused. There were many things he didn’t know, that he had to guess; information to obtain from this girl who right now seemed ready to remain silent forever.
“What happened, Mar? Did you try to convince her to help you in this blackmail?” He’d been talking to Víctor Alemany that very morning, and the company director had related his strange encounter with Sara in Sílvia’s office the night of the Christmas dinner. “Did you tell her you both deserved something better? A tangible reward in exchange for your silence?”
Mar Ródenas shrugged.
“Why not?” she finally said. “That was all they could give me.”
“But Sara couldn’t do it. I don’t think she was capable of betraying them; she didn’t dare leave the photograph of the dogs in Sílvia’s office.”
“Sara didn’t have a shred of ambition!” Mar retorted.
“No,” said Héctor. “Sara was loyal, but suddenly she saw her loyalties were divided. On the one hand she had the pact with her colleagues; on the other, her liking for you. In any case, her faithfulness to the pact won out. And you got angry, didn’t you? She’d gone from being an ally to an obstacle: she knew too much.”
Inspector Salgado was putting the facts in order following reasoning that led him to the only conclusion possible.
“So the night before Reyes you decided to meet her to insist once more she tell you what you didn’t know. And she flatly refused. You argued. By the way, you were blond then, weren’t you? You both had dyed hair: you blond and she jet black.”
Mar turned to him. A slight trace of fury still shone in her eyes.
“She tried to dissuade me, and I knew she was just like the rest. And I told her so.” The fury in her eyes became rage. “I blurted it all out, I insulted her. I reminded her that any moment what she feared so much could happen again.”
“Sara Mahler had been the victim of sexual assault, hadn’t she?” Given what he knew of Sara it was a reasonable possibility.
“Years ago,” she said scornfully. “Sara was frigid and men terrified her. She couldn’t even take a taxi; anything not to be alone with a man.”