As Amaia made her way down the incline, worn out of the rock by the river over the millennia, she could see the floodlights and police tape that marked the area where the officers were working in the distance. Judge Estébanez stood to one side, talking in a low voice with the court clerk and shooting sideways glances to where the body lay. Two photographers from the forensics team were moving around it, raining down flashes from every angle, and a technician from the Navarra Institute of Forensic Medicine was kneeling beside it, apparently taking the temperature of the liver.
Amaia was pleased to see that everyone present was respecting the entry point that the first officers on the scene had established. Even so, as always, it seemed to her that there were just too many people. It was almost absurd, and it may have been something to do with her Catholic upbringing, but whenever she had to deal with a corpse, she always felt a pressing need for that sense of intimacy and devotion she experienced in a cemetery. It seemed as though this was violated by the distant and impersonal professional presence of the people moving around the body. It was the sole subject of a murderer’s work of art, but it lay there mute and silenced, its innate horror disregarded.
She went over slowly, observing the place someone had chosen for the death. A beach of rounded grey stones, no doubt carried there by the previous spring’s floods, had formed beside the river, a dry strip about nine metres wide that extended as far as she could see in the gloomy pre-dawn light. A deep wood, which got denser further in, grew right up to the other bank of the river, which was only about four metres wide. Amaia waited for a few seconds while the technician from the forensics team finished taking photographs of the corpse, then she went over to stand at the girl’s feet. As was her custom, she emptied her mind of all thoughts, looked at the body lying beside the river and murmured a brief prayer. Only then did Amaia feel ready to look at the girl’s body as the work of a murderer. A pretty brown colour in life, Ainhoa Elizasu’s eyes now stared into endless space, frozen in an expression of surprise. Her head was tilted back slightly and it was just possible to make out part of the coarse string buried so deep in the flesh of her neck it had almost disappeared. Amaia leant over the body to look at the ligature.
‘It’s not even knotted, the killer just pulled it tight until the girl stopped breathing,’ she said softly, almost to herself.
‘It would take some strength to do that,’ observed Jonan from behind her. ‘Do you think we’re looking for a man?’
‘It seems likely, although the girl’s not that tall, only five foot one or so, and she’s very thin. It could have been a woman.’
Dr San Martín, who’d been chatting with the judge and the court clerk accompanying her until this point, bade her a rather flowery farewell and came over to the body.
‘Inspector Salazar, it’s always a pleasure to see you, even in such circumstances,’ he said jovially.
‘The pleasure’s all mine, Dr San Martín. What do you make of this?’
The pathologist gave Jonan an appraising look, weighing up his youth and likely knowledge, then took the notes offered him by the technician and flicked through them quickly whilst leaning over the body. It was a look Amaia knew well. A few years earlier it was her who’d been the young deputy inspector in need of instruction in the mysteries of death, a pleasure that, as a distinguished professor, San Martín never let pass him by.
‘Don’t be shy, Etxaide, come closer and perhaps you’ll learn something.’
Dr San Martín put on a pair of gloves he’d pulled out of a leather Gladstone bag and gently palpated the girl’s jaw, neck and arms.
‘What do you know about rigor mortis, Etxaide?’
Jonan sighed, then started to speak in a voice similar to the one he must have used when answering the teacher in his school days. ‘Rigor mortis is caused by a chemical change in the muscles. It is evident in the eyelids first and spreads through the chest, trunk and extremities, achieving maximum stiffness after around twelve hours. The body starts relaxing again in reverse order about thirty-six hours later when the muscles start to decompose due to the effects of lactic acid.’
‘Not bad. What else?’ the doctor encouraged him.
‘It’s one of the principal indicators used to estimate the time of death.’
‘And do you think you can make an estimation based solely on the degree of rigor mortis?’
‘Well …’ Jonan hesitated.
‘No,’ declared San Martín, ‘absolutely not. The degree of rigidity can vary according to the deceased’s muscular tone, the temperature of the room or, as in this case, the exterior, since extreme temperatures may give the semblance of rigor mortis, for example if a cadaver’s been exposed to high temperatures, or when a body suffers a cadaveric spasm. Do you know what that is?’
‘I think that’s the term for when the extremities tense at the moment of death in such a way that it would be difficult to relieve them of any item they might have been holding at that precise instant.’
‘Correct, which is why forensic pathologists have to shoulder a great deal of responsibility. They shouldn’t establish the time of death without keeping all these factors in mind, and, of course, you can’t forget hypostasis … you might know it as livor mortis. You must have seen those American series where the forensic pathologist kneels by the body and establishes the time of death in less than two minutes,’ he said, raising an eyebrow theatrically. ‘Well, take it from me, that’s all lies. Analysis of the quantity of potassium present in the vitreous fluid represents a major step forward, but I’ll only be able to establish the time of death with any certainty once the autopsy has been 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