Inspector Ayegui

Inspector Ayegui is an Estella police inspector whose brief but consequential role at Santa María de las Nieves Psychiatric Clinic combines practical command with a notably fair, old-school manner. When Amaia Salazar arrives after an attack on a caregiver, Ayegui becomes her guide through a sensitive and still-active scene: he explains what happened, controls access, and turns suspicion about an outside visitor into specific requests for evidence.

Identity and Characterization

Amaia has encountered Ayegui before and regards him as a good police officer, somewhat old-fashioned but fair and proper. That prior impression shapes her response when she learns he is in charge at the clinic: she is fortunate to find someone whose judgment she already respects. The text offers little biographical detail beyond his post and professional bearing, but his conduct supplies a clear working portrait. He is composed enough to manage a complicated scene and considerate enough to notice the strain it is placing on others.

His first exchange with Amaia makes that combination visible. The clinic director is in shock, and Ayegui leads Amaia away from him, placing a friendly hand on her arm and closing the office door behind them. He checks how she is and uses a wry remark about psychiatrists seeming unbalanced to ease the tension. The humor is edged with professional skepticism, but his immediate purpose is practical: to remove the shaken director from the pressure of explaining the attack until he has recovered enough to do so.

The Attack at the Clinic

Ayegui gives Amaia a concise account of the incident. At about half past seven in the evening, after watching television and eating dinner in her room, the patient was being helped into bed by a caregiver. She produced a sharp object from beneath her pillow and stabbed him in the lower abdomen, causing severe bleeding. The caregiver’s alert bracelet, similar to those worn by victims of domestic violence, summoned colleagues; they arrived within seconds and administered emergency treatment. The caregiver was gravely injured but expected to survive.

The details Ayegui emphasizes make the attack both a medical emergency and a security failure. The patient needed help getting into bed, yet had kept a weapon within reach beneath her pillow. The alert system and the rapid response of the other staff prevented the injury from becoming fatal, but did not explain how the object had entered a maximum-security institution. Ayegui does not treat the clinic’s polished corridors or well-dressed doctors as evidence that its security can be taken for granted.

At the cordoned-off room, he tells Amaia that the patient has been restrained, sedated, and moved to a secure area. The room is still being processed, so they cannot enter; Ayegui also allows the director ten more minutes to recover before giving his account of the treatment and medical circumstances. His handling of the pause is controlled rather than evasive: he distinguishes what the police can establish immediately from what the director must explain, and keeps Amaia informed without letting her cross a secured scene.

Evidence and Investigation

Ayegui’s central investigative inference is that the weapon came from outside. He notes that it is not a crude, improvised implement of the kind associated with prisons; someone must have supplied it to the patient. In his view, giving a dangerous psychiatric patient a weapon implies intention. This is a warning rather than a solved identification: the object’s origin points the inquiry beyond the room, but does not yet reveal who brought it in or why.

He follows that inference with concrete evidence requests. Ayegui tells the director to provide every recording in which the visitor appears, as well as the forms the visitor completed, so investigators can look for fingerprints. When a later call confirms that the identification document used by the visitor was false, Ayegui explains that criminal networks can supply anything from a forged document to an entirely new identity for a relatively modest price. The revelation sharpens the problem: the visitor’s paperwork cannot be trusted, so surveillance images and physical traces matter all the more.

Role in Amaia’s Investigation

Ayegui functions as a capable local counterpart to Amaia, not as the investigator who resolves the case. His contribution is to establish the sequence of the attack, protect the crime scene, recognize the implications of an externally supplied weapon, and secure the records that may help identify the visitor. His fairness is reflected in the care with which he handles both the distressed director and the injured caregiver’s circumstances; his old-school pragmatism appears in his attention to access, documents, and fingerprints.

The scene also gives Amaia a reliable point of contact in unfamiliar territory. She is visiting the clinic for the first time, and the admission of her mother under a high-security court order already makes the visit personally charged. Ayegui’s calm explanations do not lessen the danger, but they give the investigation a usable structure: a specific time, a concealed weapon, a rapid response, a room still under examination, and a visitor who used false identification. He leaves the larger question open while making clear where the next evidence must come from.