PREFACE

MARIÑA

Last seen today at 14:53

‘I’m on my way home, what’s for lunch?’ (14:35)

Voice call 3 mins 5 secs (14:37)

‘I’ve just got back, darling, where are you?’ (17:37)

Audio transcription (angry voice):

‘Mariña, where are you? You told me you’d be home all afternoon’ (18:03)

2 missed calls (18:14)

Audio transcription:

‘I’m starting to get worried. It says you saw my first message, why won’t you pick up? Where are you? Mariña, please’ (18:54)

5 missed calls (19:01)

‘Pick up your phone right now, I’m about to call the police. Where are you?’ (19:16)

1 missed call. Phone switched off or out of service (19:18)

‘I’m going to the police. Please, call me when you see these messages’ (19:19)

1

HOUR ZERO

The police inspector Mario Fernández stretched his back and winced from the pain. The chair was the most uncomfortable he’d ever used. Eight hours sat on duty there… it was true torture, unconstitutional – they might as well kill him on the spot to end his pain. Opening a new tab on his work computer, he began searching for ergonomic chairs.

In a matter of moments, everything would change.

‘There’s a woman outside who wants to talk to you,’ said an officer in uniform.

Mario looked up from his computer and tried to convey to the police officer he’d been unaffected by this announcement. But how it had made him jump! He’d had so little work to do that his senses had started to become less effective. He hadn’t heard the officer knock on the door or come in either.

‘Talk to me?’ he asked, puzzled.

Who on earth could be asking for him? It was late on a Thursday evening, there was just half an hour left before he could go home. Outside it was really cold, one of those epic storms that would be on the TV later – at that sort of time, there wasn’t anyone around. The inspector asked himself who would dare leave their house and head outside in such heavy rainfall. If someone had made their way all the way there, they must surely have a strong reason for doing so.

‘Yes, to you,’ replied the guard with a hint of annoyance in his voice, making it very clear that directing people through the police station was not part of his remit. ‘They asked for the chief inspector – that’s you, isn’t it?’

A point well made, thought the inspector. A few months ago, in Vigo, no one would have dared talk to him like that, especially a police officer on a lower rung than him. In Vigo, he was the best officer, the inspector with the highest number of solved cases, the guard with the highest success rate. There, he had been recognised and valued. But in Viveiro, his new destination, nobody seemed to have much respect for him. They were all waiting for him to make the smallest error to ensure his fall from grace entirely, hoping they’d be rid of this disgraced man once and for all.

His office was a sign of all the mistakes he’d made, a constant and indelible reminder that his years of glory had since passed. That his badge had been removed and he was simply waiting for an enforced retirement he didn’t want to accept. If they wanted him to go, they were going to have to throw him out. And he wouldn’t let himself be defeated so easily. He was going to fight until he’d spent every last drop of strength.

All the criminals he’d put behind bars had been given second chances. They’d all had new starts when they left prison, they’d been given help to reintegrate back into society, to find jobs, new homes, a new life that was far, far away from the sins they’d committed in the past. But he’d been denied this opportunity. He’d messed up and yes, everyone agreed on this. Even he recognised it. People have flaws and he wasn’t any different, he was a human like any other; we all fail sometimes, don’t we? Why had it been that for him this had cost him his home, a place that had seen him grow up and mature, a job in the city where he’d always lived, his family, his friends…? He knew why and the reason was very clear to him. He was a man of the law, employed by the state to maintain order, one of those charged with protecting the community. He wasn’t allowed to trip up because his mistakes could cost lives.

And he knew that so well! The price he’d had to pay was so high.

‘Tell her to come in,’ replied Inspector Mario Fernández as he shut the tabs on his computer where he’d been looking at chairs whose prices ranged from four days to one whole week of his salary. Crikey…

The visit to his office could only mean a new case. In Viveiro he didn’t ever expect any of his friends to visit – primarily because he didn’t have any. It had been months since he’d arrived and he didn’t know anyone well enough to call them a friend or even an acquaintance, to be honest. Since he’d moved to the city, he’d only ever spoken with work colleagues, but he’d never gone out for a coffee with them or to eat together at the weekend. He was the odd one out in the office, the antisocial one. But he couldn’t risk anything.

If anyone from his past life had heard him say he didn’t enjoy going out, they’d probably have laughed. Of course he enjoyed it, that was undeniable and nobody who knew him would dare contradict it. But if he so much as thought of going into a bar again, a heavy pressure would push down on his chest and make breathing much harder… A knot he couldn’t swallow, a weight crushing his sternum which made it impossible for him to fill his lungs, difficult for him to breathe and pressed down on his heart, taking his breath away. He didn’t like modern music either or alcohol. Not anymore. Anyone who says the inspector doesn’t like alcohol might as well say he doesn’t drink it anymore because it tastes like pig shit to him. But he can never so much as have a sip again. Ever. They made that very clear.

If one drop of alcohol so much as fell on his tongue, there wouldn’t be any hope of return, he’d be thrown out of the force, barred forever and surely put in prison. Anything with the merest drop of alcohol in it was, for him, like throwing a lit match straight onto a pile of dynamite. To say that beer never killed anyone wasn’t entirely true anymore because no matter how small the amount of alcohol he drank, it could cause the inspector to go back to his habits from before and if he did, they’d completely throw him out. They’d already suggested he retire, almost forced him to, but he’d felt too young and hadn’t wanted to leave a job which, in spite of bringing little more than trouble into his life, he had no desire to leave. What would he do at home on his own anyway? He couldn’t imagine himself retired at 55, heading off to feed the ducks each morning or out to the bar to play dominoes. If this was the life that awaited him, he’d surely be back drinking in no time.

Everything had changed when they’d moved him from Vigo to Viveiro (or had it been earlier?). In Vigo, he’d had a good job, a good office, lots and lots of friends (who had fallen by the wayside slowly but surely) and all kinds of girls to hang out with too. Back then it had been easy for him to go on dates. Alcohol had made him more attractive, more forthcoming, but that’s not really the point here. He’d hooked up with girls, yes, hooked up with a lot. He always had someone to go out with, someone to tell his woes to, someone who’d listen. And at home, after all that, someone to lie next to in bed and warm his feet. He’d felt regret for this every single day. His wife was a good person, she hadn’t deserved what he’d put her through, to have endured so many affairs.

He’d initially drunk to socialise, as so many do – a beer, a shot, a calimocho here and there, and he’d danced and sung and laughed. Then something changed and every night he’d drunk an extra beer or shot to dance longer, laugh more, feel happier and have an even better time. Nights out with his friends went from having a couple of drinks and dancing all night to drinking all night long and just dancing for a couple of songs. Dancing… stumbling… falling over… only to do it all again the next time. He’d stopped knowing the difference between dancing and falling.

His friends started to have plans more often than not (one flimsy excuse after the next) and they stopped going out with him, stopped picking up his calls and stopped saying hi out on the street. And it became a vicious circle. The more time he spent on his own at bars, the more alcohol he drank to forget about the void his friends’ absence had left in his life. He never thought he had a problem, only recognising it after he’d spent weeks in therapy. He’d always blamed other people – his wife because she didn’t love him, his friends who were getting married, the waiter who only served him dregs and took his car keys away, his boss, the cleaner, his work colleagues… What mattered was that ‘blame’ never fell on him. His misfortunes were always down to things others had done, he was a mere observer and it was external factors that were making him fall, stumble, drink…

Before, when he was in Vigo, his wife would sometimes go and visit him on one of her daily walks. She’d once even taken him a packed lunch when he’d forgotten. Two or three times a month, his school friends would also go and visit him, normally on the lookout for favours, and sometimes they’d end up having a drink together in a nearby café. In his office, which looked out over the Ría de Vigo, Mario Fernández had welcomed victims, complainants and suspects on a daily basis. He’d given them coffee or a glass of water and invited them to take a seat on one of the very best ergonomic chairs the market had to offer.

Now he had nothing of the sort. He was in a city where very little work was sent his way. And he should be saying thanks because they’d given him a semblance (or illusion) of a second opportunity. He couldn’t complain.

He’d started to think it would be best to give in and accept the retirement they’d offered. At the end of the day, nothing ever happened in that city, he’d spent shift after shift sat there and hadn’t investigated anything more than a few livestock robberies, instances of drug trafficking, a handful of minor crimes, one case of gender violence and not much else. He deeply yearned for a case that would put him back on the front page of a newspaper…

His thoughts were interrupted when a woman, about forty years old, came into his office. Her eyes were teary and her hands trembled from fear, her fingers completely white from holding onto her bag so tight.

Mario had thought she must be a victim.

‘I’m Inspector Mario Fernández. Please, take a seat,’ he offered, thinking she’d go on to tell him that someone had tried to steal her bag, as had already happened three times that week. Slowly but surely they’d been able to piece together a computer-generated image of the thief and had shared this with the local police, but he still hadn’t been caught. ‘Tell me what brings you here.’

‘Good evening, inspector, thank you for seeing me so late in the day. My name is Azucena Gutérrez. They told me at reception to come and speak with you. I’m not sure if you can help me… They said I shouldn’t have come yet, that I should have waited until the morning. But I’m not sure…’

‘Why don’t you start from the beginning? Let’s see if I can help,’ he said in a calm and gentle tone, the same he’d used with victims in the past to help them feel a bit calmer and to try and get as much information as possible from them. ‘Could you tell me why you’re here, Azucena?’

The woman looked up from her bag and faced the inspector. She seemed completely lost. Over his career he’d seen too many people engulfed by intense sadness. Many seemed to leave their bodies and never return again. Azucena’s eyes were filled with such anguish that Mario found it harder and harder to look at her – he’d seen the same look so many times before. Too much sadness, too many irreversible bad decisions, too many lives undone and so many tears. Though he ought already to be used to it, those eyes would keep him awake at night.

Azucena looked at the inspector with fear in her eyes and the angst of someone who had been sent back home hundreds of times already that day to wait. Wait for what? A phone call she’d already spent hours waiting for. She was scared they’d dismiss her yet again, that they’d send her home. Mariña would turn up sooner or later, they’d told her when she rang the police earlier – the same thing the receptionist had said when she arrived at the station. But Azucena knew something bad had happened to her daughter, she felt it in her gut. She hadn’t carried her daughter for nine months to let such a feeling pass. A mother always knows when something’s not right.

‘Your colleague told me to come back tomorrow, but I just can’t… My daughter, Mariña, has disappeared, she’s not at home, she’s not… at school. I called her phone, sent her messages, but no reply. I’m sure something bad has happened. She always replies.’

‘So, your daughter hasn’t come home,’ the inspector picked up a piece of paper and a pen and started to note things down. ‘She didn’t come back from school? What time should she have been back?’

‘Normally she gets back around 3 pm. Class stops at 2:30 and she always walks back with a friend. I spoke with her friend as soon as I got home and saw Mariña wasn’t there, she said she left her at the doorway like normal.’

‘How long has she been missing? Five hours?’

‘More or less. She must have gone home at some point, I’d left her lunch out and that had been eaten. I called her at 5:30 when I left work and she didn’t pick up. I’m not sure what time that would have been.’

‘Have you spoken with your neighbours, did any of them see her?’

‘I called our upstairs neighbour. Her daughter is a bit older than mine and sometimes they lend each other books. She didn’t see her today.’

‘Could you tell me your daughter’s name and age, please? And do you have a photo with you?’

‘Her name is Mariña Gutérrez, she’s fourteen years old.’

Azucena searched through her bag and pulled out a wrinkled passport-sized photo. The inspector looked at it with scepticism. She seemed younger than the mother had said.

‘She was twelve when that photo was taken, I don’t have anything more recent here,’ she stuttered.

Mario let it slide for a moment.

‘When was the last time you spoke with her?’

‘She sent me a message as she left school asking about lunch. I rang her to tell her what to do and she said she was going to be at home all afternoon doing homework and revising for an exam she has coming up. When I got home her plate had been washed up, but I looked around the house and couldn’t find her. I kept ringing, but it said her phone was off or out of service. I don’t know what else to do.’

‘When you spoke with her, did you notice anything out of the ordinary? Did she seem nervous, upset about something…?’ asked Mario Fernández.

Azucena shook her head almost in tears, took out a tissue and wiped her nose.

‘Has she done something like this before or come back late?’

‘No, she doesn’t really like going out. She doesn’t have many friends, she finds it tricky to make them. At her last school they bullied her, we just moved here.’

The inspector was also new there, he thought, and he too felt lost.

‘Does she have a boyfriend or a girlfriend?’

‘Mariña?’ The inspector nodded.

‘No! She’s just fourteen!’

Mario looked away just in time to hide the look on his face. If parents only knew what their children got up to at that age… They were having relationships earlier and earlier. They saw it first-hand at police stations. More and more parents were coming in to say their children had disappeared. But in reality, they were trying, and often failing, to head out for romantic trysts. A night here and there, maybe two, but soon they’d be back. Could this be one of those cases? Could Mariña have gone off with someone?

‘Had there been any arguments at home?’ asked Mario Fernández.

If she hadn’t had a romantic interest, perhaps she’d got angry with her mother and her disappearance was a cry for attention – a fleeting moment of resentment that would soon pass. He imagined the girl from the photograph on her own at some bus or train station with a rucksack on her back and very little money in her pockets. It usually didn’t take too long for kids in situations like this to head back home with their tail between their legs. These kinds of disappearances where teenagers ran away from family arguments were as typical as romantic getaways.

‘No, there hadn’t. Mariña’s such a good girl, I’ve never had to argue with her or punish her for anything. She always tells me everything.’

‘I’d like to see the messages you and your daughter sent each other today, please, and for you to write down your phone numbers on this piece of paper.’

Azucena swapped her phone for the pen and paper the inspector had held out to her.

‘Do you know what Mariña was wearing when she left home today?’

Azucena took a couple of moments to remember.

‘Jeans, a black sweater with a picture of AC/DC on it and a black anorak. And she had white trainers on too. I was always on at her to wear them on rainy days like this, I told her she might get a cold if she didn’t.’

‘It’s a Thursday night – are you sure your daughter’s not out partying?’

‘No, inspector. I’m very sure, I swear. Mariña would never do something like that and definitely not without mentioning it. She knows I’d be worried. She tells me everything.’

Azucena spoke with such conviction that for a moment the inspector doubted his first impression, which was that the young girl had run away. Azucena had convinced him that her daughter really did tell her everything – at least she seemed thoroughly convinced of this. A rara avis. Almost impossible in today’s world where everything is a false illusion. The inspector rejected the idea immediately – at the station they needed to be governed by Occam’s razor in the first instance. The simplest explanation was that the girl was out having fun and that’s how they’d treat the case. Mario knew what it looked like when parents thought their teenagers told them everything, but he decided to keep his opinion to himself, looking out for his own job as well.

‘For now, let’s wait tonight out. It’s possible she’s gone out with a schoolmate and time has run away with her. If your daughter comes home or if you hear anything from her, if she rings you, please call this number,’ he said handing her a card with his number on it. ‘If you don’t hear anything, come to my office first thing in the morning with a more recent photo of your daughter.’

‘What else can I do?’

‘Call her school friends, maybe she made plans with one of them. We’ll start ringing hospitals and bus and train stations, and we’ll also send out an alert to all our police officers in case they see something. We’ll set up controls on the roads heading out of town. And I’ll ring you if I hear anything.’

Azucena seemed a bit calmer and agreed to the plan. She wobbled slightly as she picked up her bag and left.

Mario noticed how her hands were trembling and felt sure he wouldn’t be the only one to be awake all night.

He took the photograph of the young girl and looked at her. In her eyes he saw the same thing he saw in the mirror every morning – fear. Fear of what, he didn’t know – fear of not fitting in perhaps, of being somewhere that didn’t belong to her. The kind of panic that comes from being in the wrong place, of not being able to meet people’s expectations. He felt a connection to those eyes that looked back at him.

Mariña, where are you?

2

WIDE AWAKE

Azucena walked home in the rain – anyone who walked past her would have seen how sad and worried she was. She had the kind of worry etched into her face that you only see in those who have lost someone they love. She was completely drenched when she got home but didn’t bother getting changed – she took her phone out and searched on WhatsApp to find the group chat she was in with all the parents who had children in Mariña’s year, third of ESO. It was ten o’clock at night but she couldn’t wait until tomorrow. She’d never forgive herself if she didn’t start looking as soon as possible or for not being at home when her daughter went missing.

Azucena had always been a single mum and she’d had to learn to live like that. When Mariña was smaller, she’d had to juggle so much so as not to leave her on her own and to make sure she was well looked after. There hadn’t been enough money for a nanny or a place at primary school. Her parents weren’t around to help either and nor was Mariña’s father. Azucena had made it work thanks to help from their neighbours.

Since Mariña had started at school, the weight on Azucena’s shoulders had lessened, things were a lot simpler. She trusted her daughter and often left her alone at home – Mariña was old enough, responsible and very independent. Azucena worked all hours of the day to help her daughter have a good start, but this had made Mariña grow up a lot faster. Azucena felt regret in that moment for all of the hours her daughter had spent alone – she wondered whether her little daughter might still be at home if she’d spent more time with her. The guilt started to consume her, her legs buckling beneath her and her eyes filling with tears. But she couldn’t allow herself to be weak, not in that moment. No. Until Mariña was back, she had to fight against the guilt.

She rang the first number from the WhatsApp group, then the next. And as she did, the minutes kept ticking by – so too did her patience. Meanwhile, the voices on the other end went in the opposite direction, becoming increasingly more irritated as it got later.

‘Hello, this is Azucena, Mariña’s mum. Is she at your house?’

‘Hello, yes. This is Mariña’s mum. Do you know if Pablo saw her this afternoon? OK, thanks. No, I can’t find her.’

‘Good evening, this is Azucena. Did Lore see Mariña this afternoon? No? Yes, I’m sure she’ll appear. No, I don’t think so.’

‘Hello, good evening. Do you know if Julia spoke with Mariña this afternoon? No, she’s not at home. She hasn’t come back. OK, if you talk to her, please let me know. It doesn’t matter what time.’

‘Hello, good evening. Yes, I’m sorry, I do know the time. Does Lucas know anything about Mariña? Yes, it’s important, if you could go and ask him…’

Minute after minute, call after call, until almost midnight when Azucena got to the end of the list. Nobody had seen Mariña, nobody had spoken to her, nobody knew where she was. It seemed like she was asking for the whereabouts of a ghost that had dissolved in the middle of the night. Mothers should be superheroes, they should know their children, where they are, keep them safe from danger. It was what parents were obliged to do, to know everything about their children and be able to help them. That’s what was expected of them. It was their duty, wasn’t it?

She trembled from the cold, probably from fear too, and felt a helplessness that was hard to bear. She showered, put on a tracksuit, plugged her phone in, lay down on the sofa, turned the news on and prepared herself for her first night of being awake until morning. The headline on the screen read: a new and dangerous challenge spreading like wildfire amongst teenagers online…

Azucena was lucky, Mariña wasn’t on social media – she never got caught up in things, she was a good girl and she was lucky to have her as a daughter. Mariña was so kind, a true angel, her moon in the night sky, a sunny day after a week of thunder. Her daughter was her sun, her whole life. She had to come back, they had to find her.

3

COUNTING THE HOURS

Meanwhile, on the other side of Viveiro, the inspector was shutting the door to his taxi and running the short distance to the doorway of the flat he was renting. Some days the wretched rain didn’t show any signs of letting up.

He’d moved to this city months ago and it was the first time he’d got back so late. He was excited to be back in action, to have a case on his hands once more. Before he left the office, he’d spoken with his colleague, Deputy Inspector Afonso, and asked him to be at the police station first thing in the morning. He’d also called the Hospital da Costa and another in Lugo just in case. All of them would ring him immediately if any girl who looked like Mariña came in.

He’d spoken with everyone he’d said he would. For the moment there wasn’t anything else he could do. If the young girl hadn’t appeared by morning, the investigation could move forward – if that was the case, he’d send an email out to all the newspapers and ask them to publish her picture. And at the station they’d start to reconstruct Mariña’s last steps and speak with people she knew. Somewhere in his subconscious, as though he had a sixth sense, this case felt off to him and he had a bad premonition about it. It was those eyes…

His body had shivered when he’d looked at the girl’s face in the photograph once Azucena had left them alone. The look in Mariña’s eyes, after the flash on the camera had gone off, seemed to be one of someone who carried more secrets than one should ever have to. It was the look of someone who was sad, maybe even depressed. The gaze of someone carrying too much weight on their shoulders, the heavy eyes of someone carrying a weighty burden. The sort of gaze that shouldn’t be on the face of such a young girl.

He shook his head in an attempt to dispel the paranoia he was starting to feel, he never let himself be guided by bad omens.

He walked up the narrow staircase to the first-floor flat he’d rented, let himself in with the keys that still hung on the keychain the owner had given him and bumped into the first of the big cardboard boxes that sat in the corridor and was still yet to be unpacked. He hadn’t ever told his psychologist about this nor his alcoholics anonymous sponsor – he would refuse to speak to the latter even when he was at the door to a bar with his hand trembling as it latched onto the handle. He could defeat temptation on his own. Since he was small, he’d felt shame in asking for help, shame in admitting defeat. His father had frequently told him, ‘That’s not something men do.’ Nor was being cowardly ‘something men did’ and he’d had to leave Vigo with his tail between his legs. Perhaps that’s why he hadn’t unpacked his boxes of belongings, why he often heard his father’s voice telling him he was a failure – once he’d unpacked everything, the move would be definitive and with that so too would his defeat. His problem with alcohol would become more real and the reason why he’d left Vigo would become all too apparent.

He dodged his way through boxes until he reached the kitchen, took off his shoes and grabbed a yoghurt from the fridge. That wasn’t what he really wanted – what he wanted smelled a bit stronger and sweeter, and would course down his throat with a fire that would make him feel even more alive. He sighed since that couldn’t be. He didn’t have anything in for dinner – it was so infrequent that he’d actually cook at night. After alcohol, what he most missed from his old life was his wife and the delicious meals she’d have ready for when he got back from work. He also missed the company, having someone to talk to and tell about his problems, not having to do everything on his own. He hated eating alone. He missed everything that meant Vigo and not Viveiro was his home.

He was tired but knew he wasn’t going to sleep a wink. It had been months since he’d slept properly – each time the lights went out, the shadows from his past seemed to consume him. During the night he’d go over and over his mistakes, making it impossible to sleep. He wasn’t able to find a switch to turn off his thoughts – previously he’d have used alcohol to dampen down his regrets, but that wasn’t a possibility now. Whenever he tried to relax, his mind would start going in a downward spiral, reminding him of anything he’d ever done badly. He couldn’t turn it off or stop it. He kept going in circles and more circles. And he’d get dizzy from so much thinking. Nothing helped him with that.

Even so he needed to rest so he went to bed, lay down and read a few pages from the book that had been on his bedside table for at least six months, which is exactly how long it had been since he’d been thrown out of Vigo. The number of months it had been since his relationship with his wife had ended, since the problem at work, since all of the darkness from his life had been uncorked… He hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything since he’d stopped drinking, not even reading. He hadn’t finished a single book since then – he’d flick through the pages but not really pay attention or concentrate at all, and then he’d stop after five minutes. That’s why he hadn’t yet finished the book.

He got out of bed, went to the sofa and turned the TV on. He landed on a film about murders, got comfortable on the sofa and picked up a blanket. He tried to relax, but he didn’t get to sleep until three that night either. While he was asleep, he’d had a nightmare – in the depths of the night, he’d seen a set of fearful, dark, petrified eyes and it had made him wake up with a start at about six in the morning. He looked at his phone and saw he didn’t have any new notifications. He sighed, knowing it would be impossible to go back to sleep, to find his way back into the arms of Morpheus. He got dressed and went straight to the police station.

There hadn’t been any news about the girl there either. She was still missing, making it time for the investigation to start. The first hours a person is missing, especially someone under the age of eighteen, were key for finding them alive. It was time for Mario to undust the manuals he’d long forgotten, find a good notebook in one of his boxes and start gathering information.

Who was Mariña Gutérrez?

What were her hobbies? What did she like doing?

Who were her friends? Was she in a relationship?

Did she have any enemies? Had she had an argument with anyone?

Did she have any problems at home?

Had she taken drugs or any other illegal substance? Had she ever been in trouble with the police?

He had these questions and a thousand others to ask to try and figure out where Mariña was, what her movements had been on Thursday afternoon and what sort of problems she might have been facing. All to find out what had happened and where she was.

4

FIRST STEPS

Azucena hadn’t slept at all that night, she’d been watching her phone the whole time and had started to feel scared of all the phantom noises that had made it sound like she’d received a new message. There had been phantom noises coming from the rest of the house too, making it sound like the front door was opening and someone was in the next room – that Mariña was home safe and sound. In those moments, she’d imagined her daughter telling her a perfectly plausible story about why she’d been missing all Thursday afternoon – a lengthy tale about what had happened and why she’d got home so late.

But this was only happening in her mind – Mariña hadn’t been in touch and their conversations were only in Azucena’s imagination. She tried to cling onto reality, whatever that might mean, and she rang Mariña every hour, on the hour, but to no avail. She woke up at 6 am only to walk into her daughter’s room. She’d opened her cupboard to check that none of her clothes were missing, picked up a bag from one of the shelves and checked to see if it was still full – the jangling coins inside indicated the answer was yes. Mariña’s wallet was still in a drawer in the dresser and her backpack hanging on the back of her desk chair. Azucena unzipped it and found her folder and pencil case were still there too – her daughter hadn’t taken them out, which suggested she hadn’t spent much time at home.

Everything seemed to be in order. Azucena thought about going through her daughter’s drawers and wardrobe, through the entire room. She needed to do something, find her daughter somehow, find clues to find her. She couldn’t sit still – if she sat still, that would be an admission of defeat she couldn’t take on as a mother. Something made Azucena stop just before she started to go through the dresser – she knew Mariña wouldn’t want her mum to be going through all her things.

Azucena sighed – if Mariña didn’t show up, the police would be searching for fingerprints. It was better for her not to touch anything.

The house seemed to be swallowing her. At 7:45, once she’d tired of being there and not doing anything, she put on her coat and went to the police station. She preferred being there and didn’t mind waiting on one of the chairs for the inspector to arrive. It was an aseptic space where she wouldn’t constantly be reminded of Mariña. Being at home, on the other hand, was eating away at her, crushing her, taking away all her hopes and depleting her soul – she couldn’t spend another minute there.

On her way to the police station, along the cobbled streets of Viveiro and through the freezing cold morning air, she rang her office since she ought to have been arriving at 8:30. She explained that Mariña was missing and her direct manager, who she dated secretly behind the boss’s back, told her not to worry, that he’d speak with the boss. She truly loved him. But their boss was a cretin – he’d surely have a thousand reasons for her to be in work that day. Imbecile – if he said anything, she’d leave it all. They’d keep going as they always had. Her daughter was worth so much more than a shit job with crappy pay.

When she got to the station, she greeted the guard at reception and breathed a sigh. The smell of bleach indicated that the cleaning staff had just finished and the empty corridors that the station wasn’t yet open to the public. The deserted space seemed to be bewitched. Azucena quickly looked towards the stairs and the lift, deciding to take the stairs – she needed to tire herself out if she wanted to sleep at all.

She got to the first floor and went to the information desk hoping that her voice would sound strong and assertive. Her legs were trembling, not responding like normal. Her heart was beating with such force that it hurt, reminding her that she was still alive, that she had to fight for her daughter.

‘Has the inspector arrived yet?’ she asked with a faint voice, all of the confidence she’d wanted to convey slipping away from her.

‘Do you have an appointment?’ The mother said yes, though without much conviction. ‘The inspector said I should come back but he didn’t give me a time or any other sort of details.’ She was sure they’d throw her out. ‘What’s your name?’

Azucena processed the question slowly through lack of sleep. If she was like this, she’d be no help in the search for her daughter.

‘Azucena Gutérrez.’

The man picked up the phone and spoke to the person on the other end before giving her an answer.

‘The inspector’s in his office, he’s waiting for you. Do you know where that is?’

Azucena nodded and walked along the empty corridor like a spirit in pain. Her heels clacked against the floor and she regretted wearing them. The click-clack disturbed the silence of the space she was in, flattened her senses, made her head hurt. It was too loud.

‘Well, I didn’t expect to see you here so early. Did you sleep at all?’

Azucena shook her head. The inspector thought it looked like she’d already started mourning.

‘I also suffer from insomnia,’ he tried to empathise with her. ‘Please, take a seat.’

Azucena sat down the way someone in a medieval torture chamber or the death penalty electric chair might, knowing that the biggest nightmare of her life was about to begin. Very deep inside her she still had a small hope that she’d hear from her daughter, hear good news, but that fleeting hope dissipated very quickly. As she took her seat, she noticed the folder the inspector had in front of him. She imagined it would be details about Mariña and as she looked at it, trying to read some of the reports, the inspector closed the folder and took a notepad and pen from a drawer.

‘I’m imagining you haven’t heard from Mariña either,’ said the man, shattering any hope of good news. ‘The police officers who are out and about haven’t seen any young girls who look like your daughter and there haven’t been any sightings at the hospitals either. I know it’s difficult to see how, but this doesn’t have to be bad news. Could it be that she ran away from home?’

‘No,’ Azucena replied, completely devastated.

She thought of the guards on duty the night before and how they’d all seemed to think her daughter was missing because she’d been angry, that she’d gone away of her own accord and would be back soon. Azucena felt powerless and hated herself for that, for not being able to do anything. They didn’t believe her and because of that, they were wasting precious time that could be spent on finding her daughter.

‘It’s normal for teenagers to be a bit rebellious. Is it possible she might have been angry with you. Even for the smallest of things?’

‘No, Mariña’s not like that. She really loves being at home, she doesn’t go out with her friends, she doesn’t have many of them. She was bullied at her last school and now she says she prefers being on her own to being with people who are mean to her. I brought her to Viveiro to start from scratch, but she’s still very shy.’

‘Do you know if she still gets bullied? Has she stayed in touch with her old classmates?’

‘We haven’t gone back there, I’ve even sold the house so I suppose not. But I can’t be 100% sure, she never talks about it. She’s not on social media so I suppose she’s not in touch with them like that either, but I don’t know. Mariña doesn’t talk very much, she’s pretty quiet.’

‘Could you write down the name of her friends, please?’

‘I know that she works on all of her projects at school with a girl called Celtia but I’ve never met her. They go to all their classes together. Celtia isn’t very well integrated in the group either, she’s repeating the year. I haven’t heard her speak of any other friends, only the neighbour I mentioned yesterday.’

‘How’s Mariña doing at school?’

‘Very well, she’s getting high marks across the board,’ Azucena replied proudly. ‘She’s really smart, they’ve noticed it at school too.’

‘Has she ever had a boyfriend?’

‘No! Mariña isn’t interested in those things.’

Mario was writing down everything Azucena was telling him.

‘We’re going to let the press know your daughter is missing, we’ll ask them to circulate the recent photo of her I asked you to bring. I’m also going to ask our forensic team to head over to your house and collect fingerprints. Did you touch anything in her room?

‘No… Well, yes. I went in last night to see if any of her clothes or money were missing, but I tried not to touch anything.’

The inspector nodded.

‘Were there any signs in your house there had been a fight?’ Azucena looked confused. ‘Any upturned furniture, marks on the front door, broken plates…?’

‘No.’

‘Has anyone been in touch with you? Any suspicious phone calls or mystery letters?’

Azucena shook her head again. ‘If they call and ask for any sort of ransom, please ring us. I know they often make going to the police behind their back seem scary, but we will help you. One last question, Mariña’s father…’

‘She doesn’t have one.’

‘She must have had a father once.’

‘It’s just me. When I was pregnant, my boyfriend at the time washed his hands of us, he even left the country and from what I know he never came back. Mariña is my daughter. He never took any interest in us and he never tried to get in touch. He’s never met her or contributed financially towards her upbringing. Mariña doesn’t have his surname at all and in all official paperwork, she’s listed as being just my daughter.

‘OK,’ he said, in an attempt to soothe the situation again – there would be time to come back to the conversation about Mariña’s father later on, for now there was a lot to do. ‘I’ll send the forensic team to your house and I’ll head over to Mariña’s school to try and reconstruct what she was doing before she disappeared. You should head home now and stay by your phone, that’s your job for now – keep an eye on your phone and trust that we’ll find her.’

Azucena agreed and got up from her chair. She seemed to have aged ten years since last night – her sadness grew each second she didn’t find Mariña, the aura surrounding her was becoming darker and more dense. The eternal memory of a fight, of a search against time, was etched into her, making her seem older, more wounded, shattered.

‘Try and sleep a bit,’ he advised her before the door shut, even though he knew it would be impossible.

What mother could sleep without knowing if her daughter was dead or alive, or where she was?

Azucena thought all kinds of obscenities after the inspector’s last comment. Did he really think it was so simple? ‘Try and sleep,’ he’d said – what a stupid thing to say. They’d said the same to her when Mariña was born and she spent night after night crying. Back then they’d told her to try and sleep when the baby was asleep. But it wasn’t as simple as that. Such idiots, men would come and give maternity advice when they hadn’t so much as held a baby in their arms before. So too would women who paid nannies to look after their babies – their only job was doling out money so someone else kept their baby alive.

She’d always been alone. She’d brought Mariña up without a man by her side and it wasn’t like the child’s father was around to give any help at all. Azucena had been the sole one to look after the baby, she’d taken on all of the responsibilities – bathing her, giving her food, playing, getting her dressed. She’d had to work so hard to make it all possible. Hour after hour in a hellish job that had brought her nothing but misery. She’d dealt with horrible bosses before and stupid colleagues who gave her all the work because they knew she couldn’t leave the precarious situation when it was all she had. In those moments she remembered what a relief it had been when her daughter had started at school and how bad she’d felt for feeling that way – so guilty and like she was a bad person. For many months after she’d gone back to work post-partum, she’d often felt like she was abandoning her small daughter, someone who depended on her so much, to leave her in the care of people she didn’t really know. She wasn’t with her when she said her first words, when she took her first steps, started reading or writing. She felt that she’d been a bad mother for quite some time.

‘A baby needs their mother by their side.’ Anyone who said this was a complete idiot to her, the lot of them.

Text © Irene Rega Jul

Translation © Harriet Cook