Detective Iriarte

Detective Iriarte is a police investigator from Baztán whose work with Amaia Salazar brings him into two intertwined investigations: the desecrations at Arizkun Church and the discovery of infant remains beneath a family home. He is shown less through private history than through the work he performs—reporting developments, responding to Amaia’s instructions, and recognizing why a traditional burial place should not automatically become a public spectacle. His importance lies in that combination of operational cooperation and local understanding.

Identity and Investigative Role

Detective Iriarte works within the investigation led by Amaia. The scenes in which he appears establish a colleague who is expected to gather information, report promptly, and act on decisions made in the course of the inquiry. When Amaia asks him for news from Arizkun, he gives a restrained assessment: there have been no further incidents, but the investigation has made no progress either. His report distinguishes a temporary quiet from an actual resolution; the absence of another attack has not identified whoever is responsible.

His presence also places him inside a broader inquiry into repeated violence and signature-like behavior. Amaia’s developing analysis links the postmortem removal of the same arm across cases to the word found scratched into a prison wall and repeated in another offender’s cell. The evidence makes clear that the pattern cannot be explained simply by the offenders’ familiar histories of violence, substance abuse, and abuse of their victims. Detective Iriarte is present as the investigation considers how an unknown person might have intervened in an apparently impulsive crime, removing the arm before the offender returned. The account does not assign him Amaia’s conclusions, but locates him among the investigators receiving and weighing the evidence that connects the cases.

The Arizkun Church Investigation

After an attack on the church, Detective Iriarte reports that around three in the morning, nearby residents heard a Bobcat strike the wall. They looked out but saw no one. When police arrived, they found a breach in the wall and human remains inside, on the altar. Amaia identifies the remains before he can finish the report, turning the call into an urgent lead in the investigation of the desecrations.

The physical scene gives the inquiry both a new object of investigation and a reason to move quickly. Amaia orders Detective Iriarte and Deputy Inspector Zabalza to meet her at the station to review everything known about the church desecrations. She also wants the young man behind a blog brought in for questioning. Deputy Inspector Zabalza reacts with alarm at the demand to act immediately, but Detective Iriarte is among the officers directed to carry out the investigation. The exchange presents him as part of a team working under pressure, as the discovery of remains changes the scale of what had previously been a series of church incidents.

Earlier, when Amaia asks whether anything has changed in Arizkun, Detective Iriarte reports a period of calm without investigative progress. The contrast between that stalled interval and the later discovery at the altar marks a reversal: the absence of new incidents had offered little by way of a lead, while the attack with the Bobcat produces evidence requiring immediate police attention.

The Burial Ground at Juanitaenea

When Amaia realizes that bones may have been found at Juanitaenea, she summons Detective Iriarte to accompany her. He takes his coat and joins her without asking for an explanation; together they make the short drive from the station to the house. The site is not an ordinary graveyard. Amaia recognizes it as an itxusuria, the traditional family burial space beneath the roof’s dripline, where unbaptized dead children were buried. That discovery reveals that the remains are connected not only to a possible crime but to the history and customs of the families of Baztán.

Amaia asks Detective Iriarte to help keep the burial place intact and out of public view. She explains that a full excavation would bring forensic teams and the press, expose the remains to cameras, and risk turning her family’s burial ground into a spectacle. She also believes the person who desecrated Arizkun Church has been plundering these graves; publicizing the discovery could warn that person away. Her request is therefore both protective and investigative: preserving the site may honor the dead while avoiding an announcement that could frustrate the search for whoever has disturbed the burials.

Detective Iriarte answers that he would not allow his own family cemetery to be dug up. His reply shows that he understands the request through shared regional custom rather than treating it as an attempt to obstruct police work. The scene does not establish that his own family has a burial ground at Juanitaenea; instead, his response recognizes why the place matters and supports Amaia’s wish to prevent indiscriminate excavation and publicity.

Characterization and Function

Detective Iriarte’s characterization rests on a sequence of practical responses. He reports the lack of progress honestly, provides the details of the church attack, follows Amaia to Juanitaenea without demanding advance justification, and accepts the cultural stakes of her request. The narrative gives him few independent deductions or personal disclosures, so his role is not that of a rival investigator or a private counterpart to Amaia. He functions as a reliable colleague whose reports help move the inquiry from one scene to the next.

His response at Juanitaenea adds a distinct dimension to that professional role. The remains are evidence, but they are also the dead children of local families, buried according to a custom that separates the inside of the home from the world outside. Detective Iriarte’s agreement recognizes that investigative procedure can have consequences beyond the collection of evidence. In the Arizkun case, speed and coordinated police work are necessary; at the family burial ground, restraint may preserve both dignity and the possibility of continuing the investigation without alerting the suspected desecrator. His contribution is to understand that these needs are not mutually exclusive.