The Heart Tastes Bitter

by Victor del Arbol

  ‘I once had an instructor at the directorate, a real professional, a guy who taught interrogation techniques, and for some reason, he liked me — people like us have unusual proclivities. One of the things he believed was that feigning ignorance is a form of intelligence. You have to start from zero, he’d say, take nothing for granted, pretend you know nothing, erase what you think you know in order to find out what you need to know. Otherwise, preconceived notions will trick you, deflect your attention from the obvious. If he could see me now, here, with you, he’d give me hell, tell me I was being an idiot. And he’d be right.’

  Guzmán glanced sidelong at Arthur. The man looked awful. He could imagine the devastating effect it had had on him, watching a video of his daughter being raped. He wondered how many times he’d watched it, and what kind of self-inflicted torture he went through every time he did.

  ‘You should have told me about that video, don’t you think?’

  Arthur stared off into space, his lips slack, his mouth half-open, eyes wide and shiny. Guzmán walked over to a collection of porcelain figurines — a group of musicians playing instruments — and touched them.

  ‘It was Olsen, wasn’t it? He tried to blackmail you. And you killed him.’

  Arthur gave him a snide look, full of hate.

  ‘For someone so smart, you don’t have a fucking clue.’

  Magnus Olsen had been no one in Arthur’s life, until one ordinary rainy day in late 2000. Arthur recalled having shaken the man’s limp hand on one occasion, when his American subsidiary was looking for backing from some venture capitalists that belonged to a consortium Olsen represented. The guy looked like a scared puppy and was perspiring, which suggested he was afraid of getting caught in a lie. Olsen appeared surprisingly vulgar and had no visible appeal, despite sporting a gold watch and a very attractive wife.

  Olsen spent the whole meeting staring at Arthur, his face red with swollen veins. Arthur could remember the man’s tie — flopping awkwardly over his open shirt — and his malt whisky breath. At some point, Olsen managed to lead Arthur away from the others and into a corner. His Spanish was peculiar. He held onto each syllable before releasing it like a bubble. At first he inquired politely about Aroha. The question made Arthur uncomfortable but didn’t surprise him. His daughter’s repeated disappearances and run-ins made for popular gossip, and not just in the tabloid news — in the business world, too. Arthur thought Olsen was trying to ingratiate himself, earn his confidence for future deals, so he attempted to blow him off with a few nominally civil words.

  ‘I hear your daughter disappeared a week ago.’

  ‘The police are on it.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s just another one of her little escapades.’

  Two days later, Olsen phoned him at the office. He sounded incredibly nervous and pressured Arthur to meet him in Madrid, someplace discreet. Arthur tried to give him the brush-off, but Olsen cut him off, saying he had valuable information — regarding Aroha’s whereabouts. Before hanging up, he warned Arthur not to go to the police, under any circumstances.

  Arthur didn’t breathe a word about it to Andrea. He didn’t want to upset her. His wife was hardly even getting out of bed anymore, instead just popping pills and waiting for the phone to ring. Besides, he’d had about all he could take of people contacting him in the hopes of earning some cash for tips that always turned out to be dead ends.

  He did, however, talk it over with Diana, who at the time was living in an apartment they secretly shared in the chic Salamanca district.

  ‘You should go to the police,’ was her advice. ‘I know Olsen. He’ll try to get you embroiled in something for sure.’

  But Arthur hadn’t listened.

  They arranged to meet on the outskirts of Madrid, on the road to Extremadura. Olsen was waiting for him inside his car, parked behind a service station. There were trucks parked at an angle, hiding him from view, but Olsen still looked uneasy. Before opening the passenger door to let Arthur in, he glanced around to make sure no one was spying on them. It was clear that his nerves were shot and he hadn’t gotten much sleep.

  ‘So, what was it you had to tell me?’

  Olsen launched into a sorry tale full of debt, jail threats, and creditors making his life impossible. Arthur already knew part of the backstory — it had made the financial news. For weeks they’d been publishing the gossip, either real or invented: his wife and children’s reactions, the scandal it had all caused at the firm, and all sorts of conjecture about a hidden, sordid private life. Hundreds of investors had put their trust in Magnus Olsen — and hundreds of thousands had, in turn, handed over their assets to the investors’ companies, placing their and their families’ futures in his hands. And he’d failed them. The market had taken a nosedive, and now lots of people were left hanging out to dry.

  But none of that concerned Arthur. He spent ten minutes listening to Olsen’s whining, his sundry excuses and his ludicrous plans to re-launch his businesses. By the time he mentioned needing money — lots of money — Arthur realised that coming had been a waste of time. The guy was a con artist who would just get Arthur tangled up in his web.

  ‘If you’ve got financial problems, talk to Diana — or to Rueda, my secretary. Set up a formal meeting, and don’t waste my time.’

  He was about to get out of the car when Olsen grabbed his forearm forcefully.

  ‘I know where your daughter is,’ he said, sounding desperate, staring into his eyes with the intensity of a madman.

  Arthur gazed at him uncomprehendingly. Olsen was rubbing his hands together as though he’d broken out in hives. His face was red, and despite it not being at all warm inside the car, rings of sweat were visible around his neckline and armpits.

  ‘Your daughter is in grave danger, Arthur. And I can help you. I know where she is, but by tomorrow they might have already moved her someplace else.’

  Arthur tightened his jaw, grabbed him by the grimy lapels of his jacket and shook him hard.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Olsen swore that just by having met with Arthur, he was putting himself and his family at great risk, but he needed money. Lots of money, he said.

  ‘Call me tomorrow, and have a bank transfer ready to go. I’ll send you a code and an account number. When I get confirmation of the deposit, you’ll get an email from an internet café containing the details of your daughter’s whereabouts. And after that you won’t see me again.’

  This, Arthur suddenly realised, was actually full-on blackmail. He let go of the man.

  ‘Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Arthur.’

  Arthur felt his vision clouding over and a burning in his stomach shot up his throat like a ball of fire. Losing control, he punched Olsen in the face, hard.

  ‘You son of a bitch! You tell me where my daughter is this second or I’ll beat the ever-loving life out of you.’

  Olsen dodged Arthur’s fists as best he could. He opened the car door and managed to get half his body out. His bottom lip was split, his shirt covered in blood.

  ‘Stop it. Stop it right now — if you ever want to see your daughter again,’ he jabbered as Arthur beat him.

  A flash of insight checked Arthur’s rage. No matter how badly he wanted to rip that sick fuck to shreds, he realised that, at least for now, he was at the man’s mercy. He stopped pummelling him and tried to calm down.

  ‘I’m going to the police.’

  Olsen was trying to straighten out his clothes. He opened the glove compartment and took out a little packet of Kleenex.

  ‘No, you’re not. The people who have your daughter would find out immediately and get rid of her. The cops would never find her. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about,’ he said, gingerly wiping the blood from his lip.

  ‘Did they kidnap her? What did you do to my little girl?’ His voice was imp
loring, but Olsen wouldn’t give in. At Arthur’s temporary show of weakness, Olsen smiled faintly and looked rather smug.

  ‘Tomorrow. Don’t forget. Now get out of my car,’ he said, before starting his engine.

  When he got home, Arthur debated possibilities, over and over again. His first instinct was to go to the police, but he discarded that option almost immediately. This was the first decent clue as to Aroha’s whereabouts he’d had in weeks, and he wasn’t about to let it slip away. He went to the bank, got access to his safe deposit box, and took out part of the money Olsen was demanding — as well as the unlicensed HK pistol, which he slipped into his belt. One way or another he was going to get the information he needed. If he had to flay the man alive, or blow his brains out, so be it.

  The next morning, Arthur sat down by the computer to wait, but he received no email. He waited for hours, until it started to get dark. And then he accepted the fact that the email wasn’t going to come. On the way home, he listened to the news on the radio: Magnus Olsen had committed suicide. His wife and children had found him hanging in their living room.

  Arthur parked on the shoulder and thumped the steering wheel with his fist, cursing. The only hope he had had of finding Aroha had just vanished.

  ‘Two weeks later I got an envelope.’ There had been nothing special about it, no stamp, no return address, just his name written in block letters. Inside was a clear plastic case with a CD, and a note.

  Arthur showed Guzmán the handwritten note:

  This video was made by Magnus Olsen; he’s the man behind the camera. If anyone knows where your daughter is, it’s him, or one of the other people in the video. I’m sorry I can’t give you more help than that. I hope it’s not too late.

  ‘So, I didn’t kill Magnus Olsen. And he wasn’t the one who gave me the CD. I don’t know where it came from. I’ve spent four years trying to figure out who sent it, but I still don’t know. Spending the last three years in jail has made it all a little harder. That’s why Diana hired you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that right from the start?’

  Arthur made a fist and pursed his lips, just for a split second. And then he regained his usual composure, putting on his slightly melancholic mask once more.

  ‘After I saw the video I realised that would be impossible. Olsen’s death closed off that option. I’d automatically have been considered a suspect. Plus, Andrea would have ended up finding out what they were doing to Aroha, and it would have killed her. That’s why I’ve concealed the tape’s existence for the past four years.’

  Guzmán poured himself a snifter of whisky without bothering to ask permission, and shook his head.

  ‘That wasn’t your only reason, was it? There’s another one, a more powerful reason.’

  It had dawned on Guzmán when he saw the tape. Dámaso had done everything he could to keep from telling him where it was hidden. But everything he could hadn’t been enough. At first, Guzmán thought the old man’s iron will stemmed from the fact that he was actually the one in the tape pretending to rape Aroha. But when he saw the whole of it, he realised that in fact the old man was trying to hide something else.

  ‘You already knew, when you hired me, who the three guys in the video were.’

  He eyed Arthur, sitting there at his desk. He was very still, not making a sound, gazing at the wall. His dishevelled red hair fell over his forehead, and he was breathing softly, the way a dying man does just before his last gasp.

  It took him weeks to ascertain the identity of the man in the video. He watched the sickening recording again and again in search of a sign, anything that might provide a clue as to where they were, or who the people doing that to his daughter might be. In the end he concluded that the scene had not been authentically violent or unanticipated, had not been as chaotic and horrifically brutal as it appeared. Instead it had been staged, and had ‘artistic’ aspirations. To call them artistic was repulsive, of course, but that was the aim. It wasn’t just a porn flick staring a young girl. And it wasn’t exactly a snuff film, full of blood and gore. It was much more than that — or at least it was trying to be. In a sense it was a testament, a declaration of intentions, a horrifying insight into someone’s world, someone who despite being forced to remain anonymous, was seeking some kind of recognition. It was the work of an expert, the work of someone who had inside knowledge about motion pictures.

  He watched it dozens of times, and finally he realised something. At one point, when Aroha was being tortured, she looked into one of the masked man’s eyes and murmured something, begging. She knew him. She trusted him.

  Arthur watched her lips over and over, until finally he could decipher what she was saying: ‘I want my mother. Ian, please. I want to go back to my mother’s.’

  ‘It didn’t take long for me to find out that while Aroha was at the institute in Geneva, there was a kid named Ian there with her. His father was film director Ian Mackenzie and his mother was famous, too — a renowned violinist.’

  Arthur had found out where Ian lived and went to the house, in a leafy Madrid suburb, in a very high-end housing development. He hadn’t been able to get into the complex, though, with all the security. Instead, a mannish-looking woman had come to the guard booth. She said she was the housekeeper. She informed him that the woman he was looking for was on a European concert tour with the Budapest Orchestra. She’d be gone for months, maybe even a year.

  Arthur was frustrated, but undeterred. And he knew it would be stupid to ask directly about the boy. Over the next few days, he found out everything he could about the kid: where he was studying the cinematic arts, who he hung out with, where he went and when.

  One afternoon he followed Ian to a wooded area outside Madrid. A dirty, grubby place where families from the suburbs went for daytrips, laden down with picnic baskets, folding chairs and playing cards, blankets on which they took uncomfortable siestas on the pine needles after stuffing their faces with every pig part known to man. In the late afternoon, as it started to get dark over the brightly illuminated radio towers in the distance, the families took off and left the woods to the Senegalese prostitutes, North African and Romanian rentboys, small-time dealers, and a random and motley assortment of night owls who all looked like they’d seen better days. As soon as it was dark enough, a long line of headlights began parading slowly past that circus of misery, seeking out their vice of choice.

  Ian looked at home in that environment. Sometimes he’d roll down his car window to chat with an ageing prostitute, other times he’d buy drugs from some dealer, exchanging a friendly hug. One time Arthur saw him emerge from the bushes pulling up his pants. His face was scratched up and he wore an immensely satisfied expression. Whistling, he’d gotten into his car, lighting a cigarette, and had sat there for a minute leaning back against his seat, listening to the song playing on his stereo.

  After Ian drove off, Arthur walked down to see what was behind those bushes. What he found was a girl. Little more than a child, actually, thirteen or fourteen, slightly younger than Aroha. She sat there hugging her legs, arms covered in scratches. Her head hung between her knees and she was sobbing like the child she was. Clearly, her low-cut, bone-coloured blouse and tight leather pants were designed to make her look older, as was the excessive make-up, which was now running down her face with her tears. The padded bra was no doubt for the same effect, although it now lay beside her on the ground along with a pair of stilettos, one of which had a broken heel.

  Arthur asked her what had happened. The girl glanced up at him. Her face was grotesque — fake eyelashes dangled crookedly off the corner of her right eye, while her left eye was purple and swollen nearly shut, getting bigger by the second.

  She wiped her nose on a forearm, sniffled, and told him she was fine. It didn’t look that way to Arthur, so he told her he was going to call the police and an ambulance. She flat-out refused, and then began explaining th
at Ian was her boyfriend. He made her do strange things, like come to the park and let strangers do all kinds of things to her while he hid in the bushes and secretly filmed it all. And she went along with it to please him, because she loved him.

  ‘Love? How can you say that? How old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?’

  Was that what Ian had done to his daughter, too? Had he stolen her childhood, her innocence, and made her believe he loved her?

  ‘At least let me take you home. Your parents must be worried sick.’

  The girl didn’t seem convinced. It was as if there were two sides of her — one that wanted to go back to being a little girl, comforted by her family; the other preferring to be sucked in by that violent monster, trapped in his tentacles. And the two sides were at war. Finally she made a face, like the one Aroha used to make at the Feria de San Isidro biting into her candy apple because she lacked the patience to lick the crunchy coating until it went soft.

  ‘I’ll suck you off if you want, and you can just forget you ever saw me.’

  Arthur would never forget the look of hatred she shot him when, despite her screaming and struggling, he handed her over to the cops at the nearest police station.

  And then he decided that enough was enough.

  The next morning it rained torrentially. From the window of the bar where Arthur sat, the street and clothing store on the corner were blurry in the downpour. In his head, he replayed the scene from the night before, endlessly — the girl with her eyelashes hanging off, her emaciated face, her look of hatred. The images jumbled together with those of Aroha in the video. He felt like his head was going to explode, and his chest was so tight he was having trouble breathing.

  As soon as he saw Ian leave the corner shop, Arthur dropped a bill onto the table and strode out to confront him. Ian was walking toward him, completely unaware, his head protected from the rain by the hood of a camouflage sweatshirt, and he wore a leather pack strapped across his chest. He looked like a good kid, like any other kid. But that carefree, innocent-looking bastard had his daughter.