Montes

Montes is a police investigator defined in these scenes by action under pressure and a preference for practical inference. He forces his way into a locked, rain-swollen building, attempts to save a man who has hanged himself, and later helps direct the response to the abduction of Amaia Salazar’s son. His presence brings physical intervention and grounded tactical judgment to an investigation shaped by deception, manipulation, and uncertain motives.

Emergency Intervention

When Montes and Jonan Etxaide reach the locked building, Montes drives his shoulder into the door. It opens only a little before sticking, but he and Jonan squeeze through and hurry upstairs. They hear a body fall through the stairwell and find a man hanging. Montes immediately returns down the stairs, lifts the man by the legs to ease the strain of the rope, and calls to Jonan to cut it. The rescue is direct and bodily: before questioning or assessment, Montes uses his own strength to keep the man alive.

The rescued man later tells Montes that, because Montes prevented his death, he is now responsible for him. Montes meets the claim with sardonic disbelief. He points out that the man tried to kill himself before finishing his work and asks whether the man’s master would be pleased with that service. The exchange reveals Montes’s readiness to confront the man’s loyalty and to treat the attempted suicide not as an isolated act but as part of a larger operation. The man stiffens and insists that he has served well, leaving Montes’s challenge hanging against the loyalty he still professes.

Reading the Larger Operation

During the discussion of the case, Amaia argues that the man’s repeated requests for the time are meant to keep the police waiting for a promised statement. In her assessment, his work had ended when his wife ceased to behave as expected; with Beñat Zaldúa under interrogation, the desecrations had also stopped. She reasons that the man was supposed to die before the police could detain him, and that, when this failed, a further plan was set in motion elsewhere. Montes responds that the police cannot know where that other action is taking place. His brief objection registers the practical limit of the theory: recognizing a diversion does not itself identify its destination.

That uncertainty becomes urgent when Amaia reports that her aunt has nearly been killed and that her son has been taken. Montes immediately focuses on the roads. He argues that the abductors cannot get out ahead of the police if the road is closed, then counters the suggestion that they may already be in France: in the storm, with an elderly woman and a baby, they are more likely to seek a familiar hiding place than risk a long escape. He says he will issue the alert and contact Padua, the Ertzaintza, and the French gendarmes in case the abductors head toward Irún or France. His response combines contingency planning with a concrete reading of the circumstances: local knowledge, bad weather, and the vulnerable people in the vehicle all shape his prediction.

Character and Narrative Role

Montes’s actions repeatedly join skepticism to intervention. He does not claim certainty about the operation’s location, but he resists the assumption that the abductors have already escaped and proposes a search strategy grounded in what they can plausibly do. Earlier, he tries to keep a suicidal suspect alive; afterward, he questions the suspect’s claimed service to his master. Both moments show a policeman dealing with people not only as sources of information but as immediate physical and operational risks.

His role is therefore less that of the investigator who resolves the case’s hidden design than that of a colleague who tests explanations against urgent circumstances. In a story where a hidden operator appears to manipulate violence and police attention, Montes supplies a counterweight of tangible acts: the door forced open, the body held up, the roads to be closed, and the likely shelter sought before the storm makes escape possible.