The second attack on Arizkun Church turns a desecration into a calculated intrusion: a Bobcat breaks through the wall at the former Agotes’ entrance, and a small, unburned arm bone is left on the altar. The assault also redirects the police patrol with a deliberately minor fire at Palacio de Ursua. When Amaia Salazar arrives, the bone’s unusual preservation complicates the pattern of the earlier remains and brings the possibility of a personal connection close without resolving it.

An attack interrupts the investigation

The news reaches Amaia during a long night in the laboratory. While a PCR run continues, she is reviewing the case and considering the possibility that the samples contain evidence of lives taken by the two offenders she understands as an inducer and an obedient instrument of violence. The machine’s signal coincides with an incoming message on Jonan Etxaide’s phone and a call to hers. Detective Iriarte reports another attack on Arizkun Church.

Amaia immediately asks whether anything has been left behind. Detective Iriarte confirms that the attackers have left another small arm bone, but says it differs somewhat from the earlier remains and has not been burned. His choice of words—diminishing the bone to a little arm—registers with Amaia because he has young children. The report therefore carries both forensic information and the human scale of what the evidence represents.

Amaia instructs Detective Iriarte to begin the full procedure, notify Doctor San Martín, preserve the scene, and keep everyone outside the perimeter until she arrives. She expects the drive to take more than two hours. Rather than treating the call as a reason to rush blindly, she asks for the scene to remain untouched while she makes her way there.

The breach and the diversion

The attack took place at about three in the morning. Nearby residents heard the crash of a Bobcat striking the church wall and looked outside, but saw no one. When police arrived, they found a breach in the wall and the remains inside, on the altar. The attack was thus both an act of forced entry and a staged discovery within the church’s sacred interior.

The attackers chose their point of entry with historical precision. The Bobcat was driven into the section where the Agotes’ door had once been—the entrance they had been required to use, later sealed off. The wall there was brick, and the machine’s metal tines punched through it. Amaia notes that breaking through the church wall must have taken considerable effort; Detective Iriarte explains why this particular section made the assault possible. The old division embodied in the building’s architecture becomes the route through which the new violation is made.

The church patrol was absent for a reason. Fifteen minutes before the collision, an emergency call reported a fire at Palacio de Ursua, and the patrol was sent there because it was the nearest unit. The fire proved slight: gasoline had been poured on the palace’s wooden entrance door, which caught readily, and officers put it out with the extinguishers in their vehicle. The diversion’s modest scale is part of its effectiveness: it drew the patrol away without requiring a large blaze or a prolonged response.

The palace, like the church, is connected to the history of the Agotes. One theory holds that the lord of Ursua brought them to the area as laborers and servants. The two locations therefore link the immediate tactics of the attack to a longer history of exclusion: the attackers exploit the church’s sealed entrance and use a fire at another site associated with the same people to clear the way.

The remains on the altar

Doctor San Martín is waiting inside when Amaia arrives. A small bundle, covered by a metallic blanket, lies on the altar. He uncovers the bones while Detective Iriarte and the doctor watch Amaia as closely as they watch the remains. She makes an effort to remain impassive and studies the evidence before them.

The new remains differ materially from the earlier ones. Their ends have not been burned, their joint is clearly distinguishable, and their color is much whiter. Doctor San Martín explains that they have not been in contact with soil; instead, they were kept inside a well-sealed coffin in conditions of very low humidity. Even the finger phalanges are perfectly preserved. These are not merely another set of remains placed in the church: their condition points to a different history of storage and burial.

Amaia looks at the bones for several more seconds, aware that she may have a connection to them. She covers them again with particular care, almost as if wrapping them in a blanket. The gesture contrasts with the force of the machine that brought them into view: the attack treats the remains as an object of desecration, while Amaia’s response is protective, though she does not yet establish what the possible connection means.

Investigation and significance

The attack’s details give the police several distinct lines to preserve and examine: the point of impact at the former Agotes’ entrance, the Bobcat and its tines, the timing of the false fire call, the small amount of gasoline used at Palacio de Ursua, and the bone’s markedly different condition. Amaia’s insistence on keeping people away from the scene protects that evidence as the investigation begins; Doctor San Martín’s examination distinguishes the new remains from those found previously.

The event also tightens the relation between historical exclusion and present violence without making the two identical. The attackers use a door once imposed on the Agotes as their means of entry, while the remains on the altar recall the church’s earlier desecration. The white, carefully preserved bone stands in contrast to the burned remains and to the destructive breach surrounding it. Its source remains uncertain in this scene, but Amaia’s response makes clear that the investigation has become personally charged as well as forensic.