‘What do you keep in there, the original Ebola strain?’
The old man removed a key from his pocket; the other one he indicated was beneath a light socket. Guzmán slipped them both in and twisted the two locks simultaneously, then punched in a code — three letters and four numbers. The safe opened.
‘You have no idea what you’re doing,’ Dámaso murmured, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Guzmán went to the safe and casually shoved Dámaso aside. He was never afraid to walk through an open door, never worried about what he might find on the other side. Nothing could be worse than what he’d already left behind.
Inside the safe he found several dozen protective black cases, resembling book covers. Each had a sticker on the spine with a date and two letters with a dot between them. Guzmán bet that it was Dámaso’s writing, and that the letters were people’s initials. He opened a few of the cases; each contained a compact disc bearing the same dates and initials as those on the case.
‘What are these?’
‘Pornographic movies — very graphic.’
Guzmán understood.
‘And I bet they belong to the members of your film club. And I’ll wager my one good hand that they appear in some compromising positions. So what is it, child pornography? Bestiality? S & M?’
The old man gave him a grief-stricken look and said nothing. Guzmán nodded with feigned satisfaction. Nothing new about this, he thought to himself. It’s all been done before. Perversion becomes tedious with repetition. The rich can’t be original even when they’re acting like total degenerates. I can just picture them all gathered here, sitting in their theatre seats, staring at the screen, smoking cigars and jacking off, laughing, making crude comments. Or was that not how it was? Did they maybe bring some intellectual slant to? Did they discuss angles, focus, lighting, performance?
‘I imagine they paid a real fortune to see your films. Must be very rich people.’
Dámaso glowered.
‘They didn’t just watch the movies. Some of them paid a lot of money to take part in them. People you can’t even begin to imagine. People who’d do anything necessary to keep this from coming to light.’
Guzmán gazed at the old man carefully. He knew some people might have felt alarmed by Dámaso’s enraged expression, which was all bluster. But Guzmán felt nothing. He thrived on violence, saw it as his only possible path. There was nothing Dámaso or his powerful friends could do to him or take from him that hadn’t been done or taken already.
‘Is that what happened to Magnus Olsen? You and your little gang killed him?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Guzmán sighed deeply. His patience was wearing thin.
Slowly, he removed his leather belt. It had a large buckle. He yanked it hard at both ends, then wound it several times around his knuckles and cracked it like a whip. Before the old man had time to realise what he was going to do, Guzmán leapt and wrapped the belt around his neck, jerking it hard.
‘It’s terrible, when you can’t breathe,’ he whispered into his ear, pulling the old man’s neck toward his shoulder, suffocating him. Dámaso grunted and struggled to free himself. ‘Your lungs struggle to expand, searching desperately for relief, any tiny air bubble, anything to keep pumping oxygen. You could die at any moment, but your brain keeps working. You’re able to respond to questions. All I have to do is very slightly reduce the pressure and let a tiny bit of air in, just enough for you to articulate an answer. That’s what I think happened to Olsen, except whoever did it miscalculated and suffocated him. Then they tried to cover it up, did a poor job trying to make it look like suicide. But the police bought it. The police will believe anything, as long as it’s remotely conceivable.’
Guzmán let up on the pressure, loosening the belt around the old man’s neck. He let him cough and hungrily open his mouth, sucking in air, filling his lungs. Dámaso’s eyes were watering and he spat repeatedly.
‘The thugs you sent were so incompetent they didn’t even delete the message.’
Dámaso massaged his neck. His wrinkled, flaccid skin had turned red and would soon be bruised. His eyes were popping out like a toad that’s been run over by a truck. But still he refused to speak. Or perhaps his larynx was damaged. Guzmán wagged his head, looking resigned. He pulled out a switchblade and flicked it open. The blade, long and thin as a stylus, pointed at the old man’s face like an accusatory finger.
‘You won’t be able to take it, old man. You won’t last two minutes, not with what I’m about to do to you. Besides, what’s the point? You’re going to end up telling me what I want to know anyway and then you’ll die here, alone, like a dog in your own shit.’
Dámaso pawed at the air, trying to protect his face.
‘Olsen made a lot of money for us, it’s true, and he earned a lot of money, too, but he also made important contacts who helped his business. He had access to the safe, to the books where the clients’ personal details were kept — their real ones. The names on the tapes are pseudonyms, for obvious reasons. We didn’t realise he was stealing from us until it was too late. He’d copy the tapes and then blackmail the people. Some paid him off, others placed him in positions that were useful for his shady dealings. But he misjudged the last man he blackmailed. I tried to make him see reason when I realised what he was doing — that’s why I called that day. But it was too late. I don’t know the details of what happened, and I don’t want to. But there’s one thing I’m sure of: I didn’t kill him and no one in the club had him killed. Most of them didn’t even know what was going on. If they’d even suspected it, that would have put my safety at great risk, don’t you see?’
Guzmán examined the safe carefully.
‘Which tapes did he copy?’
‘Dozens, maybe. I never found out exactly. After his death, the club was dissolved and all the material was destroyed.’
Guzmán raised one eyebrow, pointing to the tapes in the safe.
‘Those were the most important ones, the most compromising. I’ve never used them, but I need the people implicated to believe I could. If they didn’t, I’d have been killed a long time ago. Those recordings are my guarantee of a peaceful retirement.’
‘The last tape Olsen stole, was it from your top collection?’
Dámaso grew even paler, if that were possible. Tiny blue veins appeared below his eyes, like roots with no place to take hold. The faltering affirmation that came from his lips was barely audible.
‘Who was on the tape? I’m willing to wager you’ve got a backup copy somewhere.’
For the first time, Dámaso regained control of himself. He let out a very weak laugh that slowly grew in intensity, becoming a horrific, evil cackle.
‘You have no idea what you’re looking for, do you? You got this far on intuition, but now you’re like a blind man who’s lost his cane.’
Guzmán pounced, grabbed the old man by the throat with one hand, and with the other pummelled Dámaso’s face one, two, three times until he heard his septum shatter.
When he let go, the old man was no longer laughing.
‘You’re going to tell this blind man everything. You’re going to be my guiding light, and then maybe, when I’m done with you, I’ll decide to let your heart keep beating in that sick little chest of yours.’
On his way out of the building, Guzmán was sweating. He used his handkerchief to wipe the blood splatters from his shirt, panting. Every instinct he had told him to get in a taxi and head straight to the airport, without even stopping at his hotel — to forget about the money Diana had promised, the money Arthur owed him. He could fly to Santiago, Buenos Aires, Lima, or any other place, and hide out for the next few months.
But Guzmán only listened to his instincts when they served his purposes. Ever since he was a kid, he couldn’t stand leaving crossword puzzles unfin
ished, riddles unsolved. But what pissed him off the most — back at school, and now on the street — was the idea that somebody was taking him for a fool, that anybody thought they could pull one over on him with no consequences.
He hailed a taxi, but he didn’t go to the airport.
15
The bank manager welcomed Arthur fawningly, like a servant. As though three long years hadn’t passed since Arthur had last shown his face at the bank; as if the manager were unaware of the reason for his absence. Arthur asked for access to his safe deposit box and to be left alone.
That was where he stored those things he could never allow to be associated with him: fake passports of various nationalities, so well done they were impossible to detect without exhaustive checks; cash — in dollars, euros and yuan — that was unaccounted for in any financial ledger; documents for savings accounts held in places that were lenient on fraud and tax evasion; records of industrial espionage and shell companies; tax avoidance schemes that Diana had been setting up for him for years, schemes whose plans were so intricate and complex that no tax inspector could ever unravel them without help. There was also an HK semiautomatic — and two loaded clips — for which he held no licence.
But what he picked up now was the envelope at the bottom of the box. In it was a CD. He felt its weight in his hand and his fingers trembled, as though it were heavy as an anvil and he could hardly hold it up.
When he got back to his office, Arthur sat down in front of his computer. On the screen, images flickered in the dark, their silhouettes reflecting on Arthur’s intent face.
At first there was nothing but a brick wall. Toward the bottom of it, at ground level, was a ring of soot and the remains of something that had recently been burned — it looked to be a couple of broken chairs, a bookshelf and two blackened smoking doors. It was hard to make out any details — the recording was poor quality and the camera was jiggling too much, never stopping long enough to focus on anything. The cameraman’s shadow was cast on the wall and you could hear his breathing, as well as a dull white noise coming from above, as though maybe it were raining. The smell must have been nauseating because the cameraman kept raising a handkerchief to his face to cover his mouth. The ground was littered with needles and a blackened spoon.
Next, a shirtless man came into view from the right, haggard, his chest hair grey, his face covered, dragging his feet. He made his way to a cassette player and turned it on.
‘Is this the music you want?’ His voice was guttural, his accent hard to place.
Who can say where the road goes
Where the day flows?
Only time …
and who can say if your love grows,
as your heart chose?
Only time …
Then the camera panned one hundred and eighty degrees. Whoever was choreographing the sinister scene remained off-camera, smoking in the shadows, the tip of a cigarette glowing in the dark. He pointed, indicating where the camera should focus. Nobody spoke. The only sounds were the music, the rain, and the scratchy sound of the cameraman’s hand bumping against the mike.
Then the camera shifted its focus toward a corner.
Arthur paused there, freezing the image.
It was her. His daughter. Aroha. She smiled at the camera and waved, as if this were a home movie.
Arthur leaned forward, pressing his feet into the floor even though the whole room seemed to have vaporised around him. He examined his daughter’s face in the grainy image, her imperfect, unfocused profile in the dim and murky light. Just a few months before then, she’d come back from Geneva and things seemed to have been going better. School was going well again, she seemed to be getting her life together — classes at the Lycée Français, horseback riding, friends in their neighbourhood subdivision. The typical, placid rich-girl existence. He recognised each of the freckles under her eyes and on her nostrils, which would flare when she laughed.
He hit play again.
She wasn’t laughing now.
Now, the camera had zoomed in on Aroha’s face. She looked emaciated, her hair was dirty. She didn’t like having the lens that close and was trying to cover herself with a hand; that didn’t work, so she crawled away like a baby, disconcerted, her movements plodding, awkward, lethargic. Her pants were unzipped and the triangle of her panties poked out. Black bra straps were showing, too, sticking out from her sleeveless T-shirt. She’d lost a tennis shoe, or maybe she’d taken it off and now couldn’t find it to put back on.
‘Stop it. Come on, stop that shit.’ Her voice was thick and sticky, like a piece of gum you can’t get off the bottom of your shoe and that stretches longer and longer, becoming ropey, tangled, twisted, incomprehensible. She was high. She’d shot up — maybe her inner thigh, which might explain why her zipper was down. Or maybe on the sole of her foot, which would explain the missing shoe. Any unexpected place, which would hide the track marks, so her parents wouldn’t see. Fathers stop looking at certain parts of their daughter’s bodies after a certain age. If the door is accidentally open and they see them in their underwear, they turn away in shame, stammering excuses. Mothers are different. Mothers know.
‘Say something to the camera,’ the voice behind the lens hissed.
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Tell them you’re going to be a little late to your riding class,’ someone else said, emerging slowly from the shadowy corner and standing in front of her. He, too, wore a ski mask.
‘Okay, enough of this shit. I want to go home now,’ Aroha was becoming alarmed, fearful, dragging herself toward a filthy corner.
‘Not yet. First we’re going to play a little game. Like the other times.’
Aroha was a moving target. The camera followed her across the ground to where she’d pressed her back to the wall. Suddenly the recording juddered involuntarily, the shot changed. Then it went dark.
When it came back on, the camera was focused on a lopsided bedframe on the ground. Aroha’s hands and feet were tied to it with twisted wire. Her naked body curved to the side, but she wasn’t putting up a fight, wasn’t struggling to free herself from the wire bonds. Her expression was lax, her arms and legs shiny in the artificial light of the camera. Her limbs looked almost polished, surreal, like a porcelain doll. The guy with the hairy chest was kneeling beside Aroha’s head, stroking her sweaty hair with almost freakish tenderness. Arthur could have sworn his fingers were trembling as he stroked her cheek. But maybe it was the cameraman’s hand shaking. The man glanced furtively at the camera, as though awaiting an order.
‘Do it,’ the other ski-masked figure said from off-screen.
The first one climbed on top of her and began simulating having sex with Aroha. At first, she seemed to experience nothing but mild displeasure. She looked at the camera and murmured something Arthur couldn’t make out, since she was stammering. She sounded transfixed, her voice had an almost liquid hiss about it, like a fountain, or a leaky tap. Her pupils were dull, but little by little her confusion and irritation settled into resigned acceptance. It was clear that Aroha had been through this before, and not by force. But now, it was all going too far.
The other man pushed the old guy aside.
‘Not like that. I’ll show you.’
He unzipped his fashionably-ripped designer jeans and bent over her, the slender, delicate fingers of his right hand walloping her with a violent slap.
Seeing her image in freeze-frame for a moment, Arthur’s throat ran dry and he felt as if he’d swallowed an enormous dragonfly that was now fluttering against his trachea, trying to get out.
‘You’ve got to be violent. If you want it to look real, it’s got to be real.’
In a flash of lucidity, Aroha realised what they were going to do. She shook her head from side to side in a cold, near-passive, drug-induced desperation.
‘What are you doing? Stop
. Stop it. You’re hurting me.’
But he didn’t stop. He picked up a stick that looked like a policeman’s baton. Aroha opened her mouth wide and howled as loud as she could as it entered her vagina.
‘Close your eyes,’ Arthur whispered, his voice breaking, eyes stinging with tears.
It was absurd. Everything he was seeing had already happened. But by hitting play he felt like it was occurring all over again, and he wanted so badly for Aroha to close her eyes. Soon it would all be over. Everything would be forgotten. Even her unspeakable suffering.
The music blared, drowning out his daughter’s cries, as the man’s back filled the camera lens.
Who can say where the road goes
Where the day flows?
Only time …
and who can say if your love grows,
as your heart chose?
Only time …
Arthur shut his computer down but his pupils remained glued to the screen. There was something feverish, delirious in his look. The terror was reflected in his mouth, which hung open unevenly, as though he were on the verge of shouting and yet frozen, keening silently. Two fat tears, round and perfect, slid down his cheeks. It took him a minute to notice the shadow that was being cast on the screen. It wasn’t coming from inside, but from behind him. Slowly, he turned and saw Guzmán, haloed in lamplight, his silhouette backlit. He didn’t bother to ask the man how long he’d been standing there.
It was obvious that he’d been there awhile.
They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds, and then Guzmán walked over to the huge window overlooking Madrid. The tiny people down below, in the distance, were like little robots that couldn’t decide which way to go, what to do. The muddy colours on the street contrasted with the orange, lemon, and wine-coloured clouds floating above the skyscrapers’ roofs.
Arthur, still seated at this desk, could be seen reflected in the huge windows, his image superimposed over Guzmán’s. That was the closest the two of them would ever get, Guzmán thought, and he couldn’t say he was sorry about it. Two silhouettes, reflected as one on a pane of glass.
The Heart Tastes Bitter Page 31