The Hermit Page 10

– What good would that do? It wouldn’t help one iota. They’ll just find someone else. Someone who’ll take my money and a drink at Plaza Mayor.

  – Maybe. But they can’t keep it up.

  – So you’ll go to the next girl and the girl after that? You don’t have enough money for that.

  Erhard is annoyed that it has suddenly become a question of money. But she’s right. He doesn’t have the money. He barely has enough to give her a thousand. If she actually agrees, and he has to throw a plane ticket in to boot, he doesn’t know where he’s going to find the money. Not right away, in any case.

  – If you really want to bring all this to light, why don’t you go to La Provincia?

  That’s the largest newspaper on the island, and Erhard has considered it.

  – Because it’s a case for the police, not the newspapers. Something terrible happened to that boy. It was a crime. I know it was.

  – Did they choke him?

  Alina becomes alert. She snatches the bottle from Erhard, drinks.

  He can tell by her expression that she hasn’t seen the images or heard very much about the boy and how he died. More’s the pity that she’s willing to accept the blame. – No, they starved him to death. The assholes.

  – I can’t back out of it, she says.

  – What did they tell you?

  – It’s a majorero. He’s someone important.

  – Did they threaten you?

  – No.

  – Is he from Los Tres Papas?

  – I don’t really know. Maybe.

  – You haven’t accepted the money yet, have you?

  She glances around the room. Maybe she’s looking for her clothes. Erhard doesn’t see her clothes – the black dress or the gold blouse – anywhere.

  – You haven’t spent any of the money yet?

  – I’ve spent everything that I got so far, she says, gathering up some fabric from the floor, a pair of skimpy knickers.

  – How much? How much have you spent?

  – Two thousand, maybe more.

  He doesn’t understand. How does a girl like that spend so much money? – What the hell did you buy, a car?

  – Chill out, you’re not my grandfather.

  – If you’ve already spent the money… He can’t finish the sentence. It makes everything that much more complicated. If she has already accepted the money, the whole thing is at a different level now. She snaps her bra across her chest and spins it around, then lifts the straps over her shoulders. The bra makes her small breasts appear large and inviting. It’s an expensive bra. Even Erhard knows that. At least 100, maybe 200 euros. Her golden blouse would run a few hundred euros at the fancy shops in Corralejo, the same with her dress.

  – Stop staring at me. I’m not as dumb as you think, she says, before heading to the loo. She switches on the vent fan and it begins to whir.

  – You have to pay the money back. You have to…

  – What are you thinking? I’m not paying the money back. It’s my money, it was given to me.

  The sensitivity Erhard noticed a moment ago is once again gone. The businesswoman has awakened. The police picked the right whore. Naive, but not without intelligence. Someone to be dominated, but not manipulated. Ambitious, but not desperate. Though it’s not exactly a mystery how the daughter of olive farmers wound up as a prostitute, there’s surely more to it than bad grades in school and a rejected job application at the local supermarket. Only a parent can destroy a person this badly. Only an evil parent can make a person so cold, so indifferent, that one will sell oneself in bite-sized chunks garnished with one’s soul.

  – If I… If I pay you the money that you then pay back, he says. – I can get a few thousand tomorrow morning. When do you go to court? Friday?

  – Don’t bother. It won’t happen. You don’t have the money.

  – I’m telling you that I’ll pay back what you’ve spent. Then we just need to figure out…

  – It’s a lot more, she says. Dressed now, she looks different, adult. – Closer to four thousand.

  Erhard feels the energy draining from him. All the whisky and other alcohol he’d consumed that evening suddenly rises to his head, making him completely drowsy and sulky. You stupid little girl, he wants to say, but he can’t do it. Since it’s about money, Erhard can’t compete. – Forget it, he says, starting towards the door.

  – What are you going to do? she calls after him.

  – Find the boy’s real mother, he says. He walks out the door and into the hallway, passing the lead singer and one of the other band members, who’ve stood there listening. Erhard appears so belligerent that the two boys step back when they see him.

  He’s too drunk to drive, but he does anyway. He ignores everything around him and drives irritated, dirt and stones plinking against the undercarriage, until he gets home. He doesn’t make it inside, just sinks into his seat and falls asleep before the engine stops ticking.

  ‌

  25

  Sleep. All too uncomplicated. An area untouched by worry.

  What’s the opposite of sleep? Wakefulness?

  Wakefulness – all too complicated. Completely tangled up in irritation and bitter thoughts. He can think of nothing else. Other than the whore and her expensive bra and the boy in the box and the police’s wall of files.

  He waddles about, unable to sit in one place; his breakfast tastes like cardboard, the air is dusty, and his coffee is lukewarm. Looking at his books, he thinks about Solilla and her secondhand shop where he buys them.

  Solilla’s around sixty years old, a frail woman who seems too confused and too busy to eat. Her laughter is fake and she organizes everything in her shop according to a system only she understands. Clothes are sorted by the length of the zipper, books according to size – and dog leashes, insect curtains, and pillows by their nickel content. Regardless where one is in the shop, even down in the basement, one hears her muttering to herself, complaining about the weight of a box, the appearance of a plant, the busyness of the shop, or a customer who tries on too many clothes without making a purchase. She doesn’t like those customers, but as long as one makes a purchase, as Erhard does, she’s both kind and knowledgeable; and as long as one makes a purchase, one is welcome to sit on the sofa outside the shop and talk to her. When it comes to literature, politics, and the history of the islands, she’s engaged and chatty. Once a journalist, she worked for many years at C2, the Canary Islands’ TV station.

  Maybe newspapers or television news are the last chance to find the boy’s parents. In any case, he knows that a case like this one will interest Solilla. Not necessarily the boy’s story – which she’ll probably find too fraught with emotion – but the police’s closure of a case through buying a suspect and a confession. Although she’s no longer an active journalist, her network of contacts remains intact, and she can probably find an old colleague who’d take up the story.

  He gets dressed and drives to Puerto. He parks behind a van, then bounds up the stairwell to the shop, which is in a villa below an enormous tree. In the shadow of the tree there’s a sofa and a table surrounded by boxes of books and magazines.

  Solilla’s down in the basement sorting the shawls. She calls his name without looking up. She’s one of the few on the island who tries to pronounce his name the Danish way, and nearly succeeds. Erhart Jørkenzen, she says. Very different from the stuttering Js and soft Ss he’s used to.

  She appreciates it when you don’t waste her time. – I need the name of a good journalist, Erhard says. – Someone who’ll write an article on corruption.

  – Ha, she says and looks at him. – They’re all dead. What’s the news?

  – The police buying a suspect, a confession that’s not legit.

  – And?

  – And that means that the child murder case is unresolved.

  – Child murder? Go on.

  – Maybe it’s not a murder. Do you remember the boy who was found in a car on the beach recently? Out near Co
tillo?

  – No, she says.

  She sets the box of shawls on a shelf, then gestures for Erhard to follow her. They skirt a customer thumbing through a box of African porn magazines. Solilla has always loved freedom of the press. Also when it comes to pornography. It’s one of the things she likes about Erhard. That he’s from the country that first legalized pornography.

  – They found a car, and on the backseat was a cardboard box with a little boy inside. Dead, of course.

  – But not murdered?

  – No, probably starved to death. They can’t find the parents.

  – So?

  – So they’ve found some, if you’ll excuse me, dumb prostitute and made her the scapegoat.

  – Why? Solilla smiles.

  They are on their way up the stairwell now; she’s walking ahead of him, and Erhard glares right into the back of her long blue dress.

  – The police want to close the case. Because of the tourists, they say.

  She grunts as if she understands their reasoning. – What do you want then? What have you got?

  – I have the girl who’s been paid to take the blame.

  – Don’t the police have her?

  – No, she’s walking free, waiting. Her court date is Friday.

  – Will she talk to a journalist?

  Boom. There it is, a problem. – No, probably not.

  – So what exactly would a journalist write?

  – He can write an article in advance of the hearing that details how the police plan to charge a girl who wasn’t involved in the case.

  – Can you prove that the police are going to indict her?

  – I’ve spoken to the policeman who’s in charge. I’ve spoken to the girl.

  – Proof, Mr Jørkenzen. Do you have proof? Papers, photographs, you know? Something a journalist can use?

  Erhard knows what she means. – No.

  – And what does the girl say? What’s in it for her, as they say?

  – Money. She’s one tough bitch, if I may be so blunt.

  – OK, so I know a few journalists who aren’t completely hopeless, but they’ll all say the same thing: The girl won’t talk, and the police will obviously deny everything. How am I supposed to substantiate this story?

  – How do I know? That’s why I wanted to get a journalist involved. You know how to dig up stuff and investigate these kinds of matters.

  She smiles again. Flattered. – I’m not getting involved, if that’s what you think.

  – Trust me, Solilla, there is something fishy going on. It’s a shitty case, like the policeman said.

  – How much are they paying her?

  – The police aren’t paying her. That’s what’s odd about it.

  – Then who is?

  – Some majorero, the girl told me. Five thousand euros for every week she sits in jail.

  – That’s interesting. Of course, that means that if the police aren’t paying for her confession, they can deny everything.

  – Listen to yourself, will you? This is a sick and twisted story. It deserves to be publicized.

  She hands him a book. – Read it. It’s a classic.

  He glances at the book. It has a colourful cover with a black silhouette of a man smoking a pipe. The Adventure of the Speckled Band and Other Stories. He remembers reading parts of it. Many years ago. He riffles through the pages. Like every other book by Doyle, he never finished it.

  – Maybe, he says.

  – Diego Navarez. The son of an old friend of mine. He’s a journalist now, too. At La Provincia here in Puerto. He’s critical and bright. If anyone takes this up, it’ll be him. But he’s not as experienced. Not yet.

  He sounds good, Erhard thinks. Young people take a more idealistic view of corruption. – How do I get in touch with him?

  – Let me. His father owes me a favour.

  – Today?

  – Dios mío, you’re so wound up. I’ve never seen you like this.

  – The hearing is on Friday.

  She glances at the clock above the door. – I’ll call you in a bit. Wait outside on the sofa. I’ll be out when I’ve spoken to him.

  He sits on the sofa underneath the tree and reads Sherlock Holmes. Tries to, anyway. A cat belonging to the property – at which Solilla always throws rocks and bottle caps – sprawls out beside him, swishing its tail across the book.

  A short time later, Solilla walks down the stairwell. She hands him a telephone. – You can arrange a meeting with him yourself.

  Just as he’s about to forget Aaz, he remembers him. He drops him off at Mónica’s house and promises to return by 4.30 p.m. at the latest. Then he drives back to Puerto and finds the cafe. And waits. Orders two draught beers, one for himself and one for Diego. The foam settles.

  Diego’s much too young. He looks like a teenager wearing a shirt that was passed down to him, or which at the very least is not ironed. He sees Erhard and sits down.

  – So the mother who’s not the mother is getting money to take the fall?

  Erhard glances around the cafe, but there’s no one else but a few young men playing pinball behind an espalier of plastic flowers. – You’ve done your homework, Erhard says.

  – I read what little’s been published to date. Seems like a sad case, but not so unusual. People find little babies here and there. Two similar cases on the islands in 2010. Immature girls who didn’t want to rebel against their religious parents, I think. Third-trimester abortions, if you ask me.

  – But in this case the police have got a girl, a prostitute pretending to be the mother. They’ve concocted a lie.

  – Why would they do that? I imagine they’d like to solve the case.

  – Apparently not. That’s what’s so crazy. They’ve stopped doing police work and have found someone to take the fall so they can close the case.

  – But why?

  – The policeman I spoke to said it’s because of the casino. Because they want to build it here on the island and not Lanzarote. A case like this would ruin their plans.

  – Interesting. But it doesn’t sound likely.

  – That’s what he said.

  – The same one who told you the rest?

  Erhard can hear for himself how problematic it sounds. – Yes, he says.

  – The police tend not to care so much about that kind of thing. They don’t really give a crap about the tourist industry, I think.

  – Didn’t they get new leadership recently, a new police commissioner?

  – Sure.

  – And he says he wants to investigate corruption, to follow EU directives.

  – Sure.

  – Well, there’s your story.

  Diego smiles. He’s a little too cocky, it seems to Erhard. – Yes, that’s a good story. Down at the bodega. But not in the newspaper. Nothing in that story of yours makes it probable.

  – I’ve just shown you how probable it is.

  – But what’s the motive?

  – That’s what you’ve got to find out.

  – My editor will ask me the same thing, I think. And he’ll want answers before he lets me use even half an hour researching anything. How much did the police pay the girl to confess? Have you seen any bank receipts or something that can prove it?

  – No. But the police aren’t paying her. Someone else is. Some guy with a lot of euros in his wallet.

  Diego rolls his eyes. – OK.

  – OK what?

  – That only makes it worse. Who says the whore didn’t simply earn the money? Getting mixed up in this will get ugly, very ugly, I think.

  Erhard shifts in his seat. The energy he’d felt before Diego arrived is nearly gone now. – But the boy. What about him?

  – The harsh truth, Diego says, is that the boy is dead. He wasn’t murdered, his whore of a mother probably just forgot about him. It’s sad and awful. No one wants to read about that.

  Erhard thinks about the car, the thirty-odd miles on the odometer. – But there’s more, he says.
– The car was stolen in Amsterdam, or somewhere, and suddenly shows up here. There’s something peculiar about that.

  Diego drains his beer. – OK. Listen, Jørgensen. I like you. But I’m here because my father and Solilla have worked together. I’ll keep my eye on this case and see if anything new turns up.

  – Something new has turned up, Erhard says. – The mother is not the mother. What else do you need for it to be new?

  – That’s interesting, but the police are doing what they can, I think.

  – The hearing is on Friday. If she pleads guilty and is sentenced, the police won’t reopen the case any time soon.

  – What if I go to the hearing? If there’s anything fishy that supports your theory, then I’ll be in touch with you. Give me your telephone number.

  Erhard gives him his number.

  – Don’t you have a mobile?

  – I don’t. You can call dispatch at TaxiVentura if I don’t answer at home.

  – Say hello to Señora Solilla. Tell her that my father still talks about her. He’s still fond of her, I think. In spite of everything. Thanks for the beer.

  – I’ll do that.

  So much for the idealism of youth. He feels like an angry old conspiracy theorist. He orders another beer and watches the dark-skinned boys playing pinball, listening to the strange sounds emerging from the machine.

  Just because he doesn’t know what to do with himself, he parks in the queue down at Carmen. He tries to read, but the words are meaningless to him. Right before siesta he’s told he’s got a phone call. He goes into Café Bolaño, whose number he gave dispatch, and awaits the transfer. Is the journalist already calling him? He hears the click of the switch.

  – There’s a problem, Emanuel Palabras says. Ever dramatic.

  It turns out it’s only something about the Fazioli.

  – It can wait until tomorrow, Erhard says. He and Palabras have a regular appointment every second Thursday of each month.

  Palabras doesn’t think it can wait.

  – I’ve got something I need to do, Erhard says. – I’ll stop by afterward.

  He picks up Aaz and drives him back to Santa Marisa.

  They don’t talk much. Erhard can’t think of anything positive to say. So he settles on squeezing the Boy-Man’s shoulder in parting.