Долорес Редондо – Offering to the Storm (страница 17)

‘Okay, why children, and what is done to them?’

‘Children under two are used in ritual sacrifices. Often they are bled to death. In some cases they are dismembered, and the body parts used. Skulls are highly prized, as are the longer bones, like the mairu-beso used in the desecrations at Arizkun. Other rituals make use of teeth, nails, hair and powdered bone made by crushing up the smaller bones. Of all the liturgical objects used in witchcraft, the bodies of small children are the most highly valued.’

‘Why children under two?’

‘Because they are in a transitional phase,’ Jonan broke in. ‘Many cultures believe that, prior to reaching that age, children move between two worlds, enabling them to see and hear what happens in both. This makes them the perfect vehicle for communicating with the spirit world, or obtaining favours.’

‘That’s correct. Children develop instinctual learning up to the age of two: standing, walking, holding objects, and other imitative behaviour. After that, they start to develop language, they cross a barrier, and their relationship with their surroundings changes. They cease to make such good vehicles, although similarly, youths of pre-pubescent age are also prized by those practising witchcraft.’

‘If someone stole a corpse for such purposes, where might they take it?’

‘Well, as a detective I imagine you’ve already worked that out: to a remote place, where they can perform their rituals without fear of being discovered. Although, I think I see where you’re going with this. You’re imagining temples, churches or other holy places. And you’d be quite right if we were talking about Satanism, whose aim is not only to worship the Devil, but also to offend God. However, witchcraft is a far more wide-ranging branch of evil than Satanism, and the two aren’t as closely related as you might think. Many creeds use human remains as vehicles for obtaining favours; for example, Voodoo, Santería, Palo and Candomblé, which summon deities as well as dead spirits. They perform their rituals in holy places as a way of desecrating them. And, of course, Arizkun is situated in the Baztán Valley, which has a long tradition of witchcraft, and of summoning Aker, the devil.’

Amaia remained silent for a few seconds, looking out of the window at the gloomy Pamplona sky to avoid the priest’s probing gaze. The two men said nothing, aware that behind Amaia’s calm appearance her brain was working hard. When she turned once more to Sarasola, her sarcasm had given way to resolve.

‘Dr Sarasola, do you know what Inguma is?’

‘Mau Mau, or Inguma. Not what, but who. In Sumerian demonology, he is known as Lamashtu, an evil spirit as old as time, one of the most terrible, cruel demons, surpassed only by Pazazu – the Sumerian name for Lucifer. Lamashtu would tear babies from their mother’s breast to feed on their flesh and drink their blood, or cause babies to die suddenly during sleep. Demons that killed babies while they slept existed in ancient cultures too: in Turkey they were known as “crushing demons”, while in Africa the name translates literally as “demon that rides on your back”. Among the Hmong people he is known as the “torturing demon”, and in the Philippines the phenomenon is known as bangungut, and the perpetrator is an old woman called Batibat. In Japan, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is known as pokkuri. Henry Fuseli’s famous painting The Nightmare portrays a young woman asleep on a chaise longue while a hideous demon crouches on her chest. Oblivious to his presence, the woman appears to be trapped in a nightmare. The demon has many different names, but his method is always the same: he creeps into the rooms of sleeping victims at night and sits on their chests, sometimes clutching their throats, producing a terrifying feeling of suffocation. During this nightmare, they may be conscious, but unable to move or wake up. At other times Inguma places his mouth over that of the sleeper, sucking out their breath until they expire.’

‘Do you believe …?’

‘I’m a priest, Inspector, and you’re still thinking about this in the wrong way. Naturally, I’m a believer, but what matters is the power of these myths. In Rome, every morning at dawn, an Exorcism Prayer is performed. Various priests pray for the liberation of possessed souls, and afterwards they attend to people who come to them asking for help. Many are psychiatric cases, but by no means all.’

‘And yet exorcism has been shown to have a placebo effect on people who believe themselves to be possessed.’

‘Inspector, have you heard of the Hmong? They are an ethnic group that live in the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, and who collaborated with the Americans during the Vietnam War. When the conflict ended, their fellow countrymen condemned them, and many fled to the United States. In 1980, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta recorded an extraordinary rise in the number of sudden deaths during sleep: two hundred and thirty Hmong men died of asphyxia in their sleep in the US, but many more were affected; survivors claimed to see an old witch crouched over them, squeezing their throats tight. Alerted to what was happening, parents began sleeping next to their sons to rouse them from these nightmares. When the attacks took place, they would shake them awake, or drag them out of bed. The most terrifying part was that, trapped in their waking dream, the boys could see the sinister old woman, feel her crooked fingers on their throats. This didn’t happen in a remote region of Thailand, but in places like New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles … All over the country, every night, Hmong men suffered such attacks. Those who didn’t succumb were kept under strict surveillance in hospital, where the invisible attacks, in which the victims seemed to be strangled by some invisible creature, were witnessed and videod. Doctors were at a loss to diagnose a specific illness. The Hmong’s own shamans concluded that the demon was targeting this particular generation of Hmong because they had become distanced from their centuries-old traditions and protections. Requests to perform purification rites around the victims were mostly refused, because they involved animal sacrifice, even though in cases where permission was granted, the attacks ceased.

‘In 1917, seven hundred and twenty-two people died in their sleep in the Philippines, suffocated by Batibat, which translates literally as “the fat old woman”. And in 1959 in Japan, five hundred healthy young men died at the hands of pokkuri. It is believed that when Inguma awakens, he goes on a murderous rampage until his thirst is quenched, or until he is stopped by some other means. In the case of the Hmong people, the phenomenon that claimed the lives of two hundred and thirty healthy boys remains unsolved to this day.’ His eyes fixed on Amaia. ‘Even science could offer no explanation: autopsies were carried out, but the cause of death could not be determined.’

14

In accordance with Amaia’s orders, Dr San Martín had started the autopsy without them. When she and Etxaide approached the steel table, at the centre of a room filled with medical students, the pathologist had his back to them, and was busy weighing the internal organs on a scale. He turned, smiling when he saw them.

‘Just in time, we’re almost done. The toxicology tests show high levels of an extremely powerful sedative. We’ve identified the active ingredient, but I won’t hazard a guess as to the name of the drug. As a doctor, Berasategui would have known which one to use and how much to take. Most are injectable, but the small abrasions on the sides of the tongue suggest he took it orally.’

Amaia leaned over to examine through the magnifying glass the row of tiny blisters either side of the tongue, which San Martín was holding up for her with a pair of forceps.

‘I can smell a sweet, acidic odour,’ she remarked.

‘Yes, it’s more noticeable now. Perhaps the cologne Berasategui doused himself in masked it. A vain fellow indeed.’

Amaia examined the body as she listened to San Martín. The ‘Y’ incision started at the shoulders, travelling down the chest to the pelvis, laying bare the glistening insides, whose vivid colours had always fascinated her. On this occasion, San Martín and his team had forced open the ribcage to extract and weigh the internal organs, doubtless interested to see the effects of a powerful sedative on a healthy young male. The startlingly white ribs pointed up towards the ceiling. The denuded bones had a surreal look, like the frame of a boat, or a dead whale’s skeleton, or the long, eerie fingers of some inner creature trying to climb out of his dead body. No other surgical procedure quite resembled an autopsy; the only word that came close to describing it was wondrous. She understood the fascination it held for Ripper-type murderers, many of whom were skilled at making precise incisions at exactly the right depth to enable them to extract the organs in a particular order without damaging them.