Lorena had not had the time to become disillusioned with mankind, still less to repent of her sins. A stiletto blade had pierced her body just below her left breast. Somebody had made love to her and then stuck the blade in her like a pin in a voodoo doll. The only sign of violence was the small circle of blood no bigger than the areola of her nipple.
She was flat on her back. No more than thirty seconds could have passed between pleasure, pain, and nothingness. Her legs were splayed open, but I felt a mean-spirited sense of relief when I realized there was no smell of semen. There is nothing more unpleasant than the scent of another man’s spunk. I suppose it has to do with the sense of having one’s territory invaded; the same feeling a woman has when she sniffs someone else’s perfume on her man.
Poor little thing, I said to myself as I examined her body for any other wound or mark. Poor little thing.
I had hardly spoken to her, and she was somehow involved with the people who had stolen my car, but seeing her like that I could not feel angry. She could not run away from me any more as she had done in the restaurant. I was the one who had to get away now. I could not imagine Inspector Ayala looking kindly on my explanation of events, although if he thought about it at all, he would have realized I did not have the time to seduce someone and kill her in the quarter of an hour between me leaving the police station and the discovery of her body. But until the forensic report confirmed this, he would adopt the standard police methods of trying to beat the truth out of me.
The forensic report, I told myself. Perhaps the doctor could help me. I did not even know his name.
“You mean Doctor Burgos,” the man on the front desk told me when I asked him if he knew the person who had dropped me off at the hotel. “Who else in Bahía Blanca or anywhere else in all Patagonia would paint a V.W. Polo sky blue?”
He looked in his address book and wrote a phone number on a piece of paper. He even had time to recommend him.
“He attended my wife each time she gave birth. Four fillies, one a year.” He added, confidentially: “And he got us out of a real spot of bother last year. There were twin girls on the way …”
A forensic doctor and an abortionist.
I did not see any contradiction there. It seemed to me legitimate to prevent the birth of beings who—as everyone knows—only mess up the environment and not only threaten the future of all the other species but of the planet itself. Seen in this way, an abortionist is only carrying out preventative medicine, and that is highly recommended nowadays as a means of avoiding the astronomical cost of keeping people alive in old age.
A forensic doctor, on the other hand, is a failed writer. Since he has no imagination, he rummages in people’s stomachs to try to uncover the mysteries of death. It is not for him to discover them—that is the job of theologians and alchemists—but the forensic doctor is clearly (or obscurely) a stubborn dung beetle digging his own grave in the belief that he is burying others, and with them the answers to all the enigmas they could not discover while they were alive.
“Where’s the body?” the roly-poly doctor said. He did not sound in the least bit surprised.
“In my room at the Imperio Hotel.”
“You ought to be a thousand kilometers from Bahía by now. Abroad, if possible.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Do you think anybody is going to believe you? Here people are pardoned after they’re burned at the stake. I can’t remember your name …”
“It’s Pedro Martelli. People call me Gotán.”
“Don’t go back to the hotel, Don Gotán. Whoever left the body there is trying to frame you. Do you have a car?”
“The dead woman stole it.”
“Not good. Well then, take a taxi to the railway station and wait for me there. There are no police guards because hardly any trains reach Bahía Blanca these days, and there’s nothing left to steal because the place was stripped when they shut the railways down.”
I stopped a taxi in the street and told the driver to pull up outside the hotel for a moment. The porter was surprised to see me back only five minutes after I had left.
“Has anyone been here asking for me?”
When the porter shook his head I plucked up the courage to go over to the receptionist and slide a hundred-peso note under the register.
“That’s for you to forget I asked about the doctor in the blue car.”
His sphinx-like expression told me I could put about as much trust in him as an infant deer could in a lion reading her The Jungle Book. There was just the slimmest of chances he would not give me away.
Bahía Blanca has a Victorian railway station, built by the British. Once upon a time express trains came and went from Neuquén, Bariloche and Zapala, dust-covered carriages filled with passengers from Patagonia, still wide-eyed from the vast desert lands. These were once the domain of Mapuches, Araucanians and Tehuelches, until in the nineteenth century they were all wiped out by the campaigns of a general called Roca, that same general who the Peronist government decided to honor by baptizing this railway line in his name.
Nowadays the station was nothing more than a stopping-off place sunk in desolation and melancholy. As if by miracle, there was still one train a day to and from Buenos Aires, although most people preferred to take the bus because they could not trust the railway timetable. The train left at night, so my taxi driver was curious to know what I was doing at the station at 7:00 in the morning.
“If you want to buy a ticket, the office only opens at midday,” he said nosily.
“I’m a photographer. I’m working on a series about Argentine railways.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he peered at me through the rearview mirror, looking for my camera. To avoid further scrutiny I got out of the taxi without waiting for my change.
“Be careful, there are lots of delinquents around here,” he warned me as he pulled slowly away, still staring at me through his side window.
Day had barely dawned. The ramshackle station did not seem like the ideal meeting place, but if the doctor had laid a trap for me, it was too late to back out now. I did not want to leave the city with the police on my heels and no idea of what was going on. The doctor was the only person I could think of who might help.
Less than five minutes later I saw the sky-blue V.W. splashing its way through the mud along a side street, then turning into the station yard, where it came to a stop next to a goods van.
“The police never come here. They’re afraid of getting mugged,” he said. He did not get out of his car, but jerked his head to invite me to climb aboard.
“What a night it’s been,” I said.
“You can say that again. But now you’re headed somewhere safe.”
He sped off in reverse toward the beaten-earth street that was a sea of mud. The car spun round like a top then leaped forward. I did up my seat belt.
“If we overturn and the car catches fire, you’ll be burned to a cinder with that belt on,” he said. “I trust to fate.”
I did not say it, but thought that what in fact he put his trust in were the layers of fat that would act as an air-bag if we hit anything. He groped for a cigarette from the packet on the dashboard. It was only when he had lit it and stuck it between his lips that he thought to offer me one.
“Homeopathy. Two or three fags a day are the best way of preventing lung cancer.”
I accepted his advice and was soon breathing in the therapeutic smoke.
“Why do you trust me?” I asked him.
“What about you? It can’t be because of my looks.”
He had two days’ stubble, and his eyes were bloodshot either from lack of sleep or because he was some kind of addict. No, it was definitely not because of the way he looked.
Nor did the aggressive way in which he drove inspire confidence. Or his agitated breathing, which suggested he had just killed someone and he was the one on the run.
“This is the third murder in similar circumstances” he
said. “I doubt whether you could have committed all three.”
He said it so matter-of-factly I was not sure if he was arguing his belief in my innocence or if he did not think me capable of anything quite so sophisticated. He sped off down a long, deserted avenue arched over with chinaberry trees. Eventually the road turned into an asphalted track, potholed by heavy farm vehicles.
“Rustlers,” the doctor explained. “It’s their trucks that make all these holes. They come out here and steal cattle. They butcher them at night, in conditions even Dr. Mengele would have balked at, then sell the meat directly to the shops at half price. That way everyone wins: the rustlers, the butchers, and the customers—they get the best steak for the price of scrag-ends.”
“What about hygiene?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered. “Look at those mad cows in England. It’s all very hygienic, but they feed them artificial muck. We all have to die sometime, and I’d rather it were from eating a nice, tender, juicy steak.”
We turned off down another track that was nothing but mud. The V.W. might no longer be sky-blue, but behind the wheel the doctor was shouting as enthusiastically as if he were piloting a speedboat.
“My little cottage in the country,” he said when we finally arrived, switching off the car’s straining engine.
From the outside it was nothing more than an adobe shack with a thatched roof. But once inside, I found myself in a large room that was anything but ascetic.
“I like luxury as much as the next man,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to show it.”
I could scarcely believe the contrast. More than a cottage, it was like an outlaw’s hideaway. It had everything to withstand a siege or a period of exile: freezer, microwave, T.V., mobile phone, shelves full of books, a video player, racks of wine, and a barrel-shaped bar stacked with bottles of spirits. There were two reclining chairs and a bed, with a small kitchen at the far end.
“This is my refuge. Nobody knows where it is. They know I have a lair, but you’re the first person who has been here: you’re not from around here, and this is an emergency.”
“It can’t be easy being a police doctor,” I said.
“It’s far worse being a policeman, believe me. This society of asslickers is always sacrificing them on the altar of their hypocritical so-called morality. But for now, just try to relax—you’re going to have more than enough opportunity to be stressed out.”
I did as he suggested. We had taken off our muddy shoes when we came in, so I walked over and sat in one of the chairs while Burgos served us both whisky on the rocks.
“At this time of day we should be having coffee and croissants,” he apologized, “but I don’t have any.”
He sat in the other chair, folds of flesh spilling over the green chintz. Taking a sip of his breakfast, he began to tell me the story. As he outlined the details, I realized the maze I had got myself into, and how hard it was going to be to stay alive until I could find a way out.
8
Isabel’s voice sounded agitated, as if she were speaking from a moving vehicle. Yet she was still at the hotel, waiting for me to come down and have breakfast with her. Burgos had advised me not to call her. Someone could trace the call, he said, and besides, it was his mobile I was using: “All I need is for them to think I’m your accomplice. I’ve only got a few more months before I retire.” In the end he relented: “It’s not 8:00 yet, which means the province’s entire security apparatus will be busy drinking mate.”
The Imperio Hotel was carrying on as usual. Lorena’s dead body was probably still on the bed in my room, lying in the freezing shadows of death until a maid found it and ran screaming into the corridor. I warned Isabel that this would very soon happen: I did not want the news to take her by surprise, or for her to have the least suspicion I might be responsible for the murder.
When I told her she went so quiet I begged her at least to breathe out so I would know she was still alive.
“Where are you now?” she whispered.
“I’m safe, for the next thirty or forty minutes at least. You and your mother need to check out of the hotel. Pay the bill and take a taxi to Tres Arroyos.”
“But my car is in the hotel garage.”
“Leave the key with the receptionist. I can’t explain now. I’ll sort it out later.”
“Mummy isn’t well, Gotán. She’s so sad. She’s in no state to play cops and robbers.”
“These people aren’t robbers, Isabel. They’re murderers. It wasn’t a heart attack that killed your father.”
It was only to be expected that this would make her burst into tears. I prayed there was no-one else in the hotel breakfast room, or that if there was they were paying her no attention. Even though boyfriends rarely break off a relationship in the early morning, it’s the first thing curious onlookers think when they see a woman crying into the telephone.
I heard another voice—Mónica’s—asking what was going on. “I’ll explain in a minute,” Isabel said, then, choking back her tears, asked what they were to do in Tres Arroyos.
“Take a room at the Cabildo Hotel,” I said, following Burgos’ advice. “Wait for me there.”
“What will happen if they arrest you?”
“Something terrible, I imagine,” I said, suddenly catching my breath. “If I’m not there by nightfall, take a La Estrella express bus to Buenos Aires. It leaves at 11:00.”
“Reclining seats with a stewardess,” the doctor said at my elbow.
“Who’s that with you?” Isabel asked in alarm.
“My guardian angel.”
A breakfast of whisky on the rocks seemed to have loosened the roly-poly doctor’s tongue. Serial killers apparently prefer cold climates, he said: southern towns and cities in a country like Argentina, northern ones in Europe or the United States. For some reason, these attacks are more prevalent in Scandinavia than in the Caribbean banana republics, he went on, as if setting out the introduction to a student lecture.
“So, that blond in your hotel room is the third in three weeks, Don Gotán. All following the same pattern: first the love-making, then after or during the orgasm a stiletto under the left breast, straight to the heart. None of the three was a prostitute. I’m not saying they were nuns, but they were well-educated girls. At least the first two were, and I’m sure this one was too if she was your dead friend’s partner.”
I told him about our one and only meeting, how we had been forced to flee, her obstinate refusal to speak during our night drive to nowhere, racing at 140 kilometers an hour along Route 3 until I almost ran out of petrol.
I do not know whether he believed me when I said we had not stopped for a quick fuck. He would have done, he said in the same tone as one would warn a companion on a long journey that you needed to stop for a pee. Evidently he did not consider the possibility that a beautiful young woman like Lorena would be revolted by the idea that a toad with a stethoscope round his neck might jump on her.
“You’re not gay?”
It was a question, but it sounded like a statement as he sat there holding his whisky glass up high like the Statue of Liberty’s torch.
“Me?”
“Yes, you, Don Gotán. I’m just curious.”
I felt as though I had been slapped as hard as in the police station, but this time it gave me a surge of adrenalin.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Nor am I.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“I lost my wife ten years ago. A galloping cancer that finished her off in a matter of days. It tore into her like vultures eating carrion, but she was lively and lucid to the last. Since then, I take on any job at all hours of the day or night.”
“Such as being the police doctor.”
He moistened his lips with a fresh glass of whisky.
“And you?”
“I’m not a police doctor.”
“So what are you?”
“I’m a policeman.”
&
nbsp; My tango woman Mireya could not believe I was a policeman either. Her real name was Debora, and she hated being called Mireya almost as much as she hated my profession. But who on earth in this day and age is called Debora?
Burgos said this was no time to tell each other our life stories. Plenty of time for that if I was arrested, long years inside waiting for hearings that would be time and again postponed, judges and sentences coming and going, legal chicanery until my dying day. A policeman where, he wanted to know.
“In the capital.”
“Ah yes, the National Shame,” he said.
“Don’t worry about my job, they threw me out.”
He did not ask me why. Perhaps he was saving the question for my years of retirement in jail, but then again if you’re about to go into battle it is best not to fill your rucksack with books and Bariloche chocolate. Too much information can slow you down. What is the point of discovering that the person meant to be on your side is in fact a psychopath who could dispose of you as easily as a computer virus?
If we have to put our trust in someone, it is as well not to know too much about them.
9
In spite of my being from the National Shame, Burgos seemed relieved I was a policeman. At first, his idea that we meet Inspector Ayala and Rodríguez in what he called “neutral territory” seemed crazy. It was like proposing that the Palefaces had something to offer besides pillaging and massacring the wretched natives. I was the Red Indian here, and normally I do not share a single puff of the pipes of peace I smoke locked in my bathroom.
“I’m innocent. I hope that you at least are convinced of that. Otherwise you’ll think I’m double-crossing you.”
“That’s part of any game between card-sharps,” he said. “I’d do it without a thought. Cheating on a Buenos Aires policeman wouldn’t ruffle my conscience for a second, but it wouldn’t help me achieve the one thing that made me agree to come here: to find the son of a bitch who’s getting a kick out of butchering the sweetest, most interesting young women on the coast.”
No One Loves a Policeman Page 4