Amaia Salazar—Jonan Etxaide

Amaia Salazar and Jonan Etxaide’s partnership combines a clear professional hierarchy with an unusual degree of trust: Amaia leads the investigations, while Jonan works as her deputy and investigative partner, but their exchanges allow room for candor, humor, and mutual care. The relationship becomes especially consequential when the inquiry into the desecrations at Arizkun and the murders associated with Tarttalo draws Amaia toward a painful discovery about her family. Jonan’s value is not limited to carrying out assignments; he helps her examine evidence, keep a sensitive inquiry discreet, and face what the evidence may mean.

Professional Roles and Daily Work

Amaia’s authority is explicit in the division of work she sets for the team. She and Inspector Iriarte are to visit the chaplain and parish priest in Arizkun, while Jonan is assigned to continue researching anti-Catholic websites and movements connected with the agotes in the valley, with Zabalza assisting him. The arrangement shows a partnership embedded in a wider investigation: Amaia sets priorities and allocates responsibilities, and Jonan takes on a distinct line of inquiry rather than simply following her from scene to scene.

Their working rapport also has a relaxed, familiar register. When Amaia enters the office and finds Jonan at his computer, she jokes about whether he has joined the other officers at the coffee machine. He replies that he does not usually drink coffee, at least not with them. The exchange briefly sets their easy familiarity against the office’s group dynamics, without obscuring that Amaia is his chief. Jonan can speak with her directly, and she can tease him without the exchange becoming a challenge to her authority.

Their collaboration includes practical fieldwork. At Arri Zahar Cave, Amaia and Jonan enter the wooded area carrying rigid equipment cases and using powerful torches. Amaia helps him with the cases as they cross a small bridge and climb the hillside to the rock and cave entrance. They photograph the site, apply luminol to the wall, and use orange glasses to see the reaction after switching off their torches. The carefully coordinated forensic procedure gives their partnership a physical form: investigative reasoning depends on equipment, preparation, and two people working through the same sequence of tasks.

Trust and Discretion

The cave investigation also requires discretion. Amaia tells Jonan that the inquiry is authorized but must remain quiet; publicly, their work is to be presented as an investigation of the church desecration. Jonan thanks her for trusting him. His response makes the confidence between them explicit, while the instruction shows what that confidence entails: he is being brought into a sensitive investigative thread whose public appearance differs from its real purpose.

The trust is reciprocal in practice. When Jonan brings Amaia information from the funerary business Baztandarra, he relays an unsettling report: a woman had dragged another woman into the establishment, led her to the coffin display, and threatened that she would soon die. Jonan distinguishes this as an anecdote rather than presenting it as a proven connection to the case. His report adds a possible lead without overstating its evidentiary weight, and Amaia can receive it as part of the ongoing flow of information between partners.

Their exchanges also show Jonan adapting to Amaia’s pace and judgment. He arrives early after being unable to sleep at his hostel, where a large bachelor party has kept him awake, and finds her at work. He brings two coffees, one for each of them. Amaia then spends about twenty minutes bringing him up to date on her discoveries. His arrival is practical, but the scene also shows their investigative routine as a form of companionship: he comes to the office, brings something to share, and listens while she lays out what she has found.

Shared Reasoning and the Case

As the investigation develops, the two work through evidence that links the church desecrations to the murders. Amaia’s initial assessment of a severed arm is cautious: the amputation might be incidental, perhaps intended to remove a ring or prevent identification, even though those explanations make little sense in a victim’s own home. That restraint matters to their joint inquiry. The evidence cannot be treated as a signature merely because it is disturbing; its meaning has to be tested against the circumstances of each case.

The discovery of the word Tarttalo scratched into a prison wall adds a more specific point of comparison. The writing had been painted over, but the grooves remained visible in a photograph, preserving the word as a clue. Later, Amaia explains that the Logroño killer died by suicide in his cell after leaving the same message in identical lettering, despite the unusual spelling. She argues that the repeated post-mortem removal of the same arm, with the limb missing from each scene, cannot be explained by the ordinary pattern of abusive partners who kill. The combination of a concealed detail, repeated mutilation, and matching inscription shifts the inquiry from a possible imitation toward a single individual’s signature.

Jonan is among the colleagues with whom Amaia works through the case’s changing evidence. After a forensic call, he drives while gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turn white. He reasons that the Tarttalo figure and the Arizkun desecrator may be the same person: the visitor who left the mairu bones for Amaia must have known about the family burials around her grandmother’s house, and the bones of Amaia’s sister could only have been recovered by someone with information held by her mother. He connects that knowledge to the person who visited Amaia’s mother and treats the family-specific placement of the remains as evidence linking the crimes. Amaia is stunned by the implications, and their exchange becomes a moment when Jonan’s analysis carries the investigation into her private history.

The pair also revisit the apparent contradiction surrounding Jasón Medina. Medina confessed to forcing and killing Johana Márquez, then violating her body, but said he did not know how the arm had been removed. He had left to fetch a rope, intending to imitate a crime he had read about; when he returned, the arm was gone. Amaia remembers his crying and perplexity, and the investigators consider his reported sense of being watched. In a later discussion, she asks how Tarttalo could have arrived at exactly the right moment to take the arm if Medina acted impulsively and had no plan. The question turns the missing limb from a repeated feature into a problem of timing and access, sharpening the search for someone who could identify and follow killers.

Personal Support at a Family Threshold

The partnership takes on a more intimate weight when Amaia faces the possibility that a small coffin contains the remains of a sister she did not know she had. Jonan understands both the practical and emotional stakes. He warns that opening the coffin would require an order and that, if anything unusual were found, they would need to explain why it had been opened. Amaia says she cannot yet take her suspicion to a judge: she has no proof, only a terrible possibility, and wants to see whether her sister is there. Jonan does not dismiss the procedural risk, but he recognizes that she will not be satisfied without looking.

At the coffin, Amaia hesitates, questioning whether she can open the grave of a sister whose existence she learned of only days earlier. Jonan offers to do it for her. She refuses, deciding that she must do it herself, but asks him to help bring the coffin into the light. They lift it together, each holding one side. Jonan’s presence does not remove the burden from Amaia or take the decisive act out of her hands; it makes it possible for her to proceed without facing the task alone.

When the evidence later reinforces the connection between Tarttalo and the desecrator, Amaia is overwhelmed and says she needs time to think. Jonan is driving, and the scene keeps their shared work in view even as the investigation presses into deeply personal territory. Across their partnership, his role is consistent: he contributes independent reasoning, accepts the responsibility of confidential work, and offers practical support without claiming authority over Amaia’s decisions. The case tests the boundary between professional investigation and private discovery, and their trust allows the two to meet that boundary together.