The Hermit Read online

  – So what do you want from me?

  – You’re going to examine the fragments we’ve got and tell me what they say. It’s probably nothing. Maybe they’re just pieces of a newspaper, meaningless. Right now I’m trying to understand what happened. Between you and me, I’m not getting a whole lot of support from my bosses on this one. And I’m going a little rogue with this newspaper stuff.

  They reach the first roundabout leading out of the city. The sun is stuck between two clouds, like an eye that’s been punched.

  – Tell me again why you were out on the beach the other day? Bernal asks.

  – My friends wanted to watch the lightning.

  – Your friends? Raúl Palabras and his girlfriend?

  – Yes.

  Bernal stares at Erhard, while Erhard gazes ahead at the traffic.

  – I haven’t read a Danish newspaper in years, Erhard says.

  – Just look at the fragments and tell us what they say. That’s all I ask.

  Both the police and the island’s inhabitants call police headquarters in Puerto ‘the Palace’, because it’s located in the ruins of a palace built for the Spanish king at the turn of the twentieth century. Apart from the impressive outer walls and beautiful arches between some smooth columns, however, not much of the royal grandeur remains. The offices, where six or seven men sit sweating behind their computers, resemble that of some building in a sleepy 1960s Copenhagen suburb.

  On the way in they pass some metal detectors. Erhard is afraid they’ll body-search him and find the bag with the finger in his pocket, but he ends up just following Bernal down the hallway and into a room that resembles a warehouse or a garage. Bernal closes the door behind them and rummages around on a large shelf; he returns with a big, light-brown box, then slips on rubber gloves.

  – Shouldn’t I wear those too?

  – It doesn’t matter, Bernal says, glancing momentarily at Erhard’s missing finger. He begins to gather the fragments of newspaper from the box. – The bastards left a little surprise for us on the backseat.

  – The bastards, Erhard says. He recognizes the box as the one found on the backseat. Even though it was night time and the only light came from a teetering police lamp.

  – We don’t know how the pieces connect, whether they connect at all, or even if it’s worth it for us to sit here putting the puzzle together. Can you read any of it?

  Erhard studies the fragments. There are photos, words, some colours. – They must’ve gotten wet. The sheets are stuck together.

  – Yes, Bernal says bitterly. – That’s the problem. We can’t tell if it’s just a newspaper, or if there’s a message in it somewhere.

  – So what am I supposed to do?

  – Read the headlines, the ones in bold. Can you decipher any of that? This one, for example. He points at a large section with a headline and a subhead. It’s very strange seeing so much Danish text gathered in one place. – What’s it say?

  – ‘More homeless will die in Copenhagen if the winter is as hard as last year’s. A man froze to death.’

  – What does that mean?

  – I don’t know. That it’s tough being homeless in a cold country?

  Bernal gestures with his hands. – Go on. What about this one?

  This fragment is clearer, but it’s stuck to another fragment. – ‘Fathers have no success with appeals.’

  – What does that mean?

  – I don’t know. That’s what it says.

  Bernal looks unhappy. – OK, study the fragments. Tell me if anything seems out of the ordinary.

  Erhard rummages through the papers, reading them, then stacking the ones he’s read in a pile. There’s nothing – nothing at all – that captures his attention. They are your typical, not especially interesting articles about Danes and their finances and their children and their institutions and their divorces and their TV programmes. A great deal of what he sees is about the Hell’s Angels. Although it’s been many years since he last read a Danish newspaper, he doesn’t feel it’s much different today. He doesn’t recognize some of the names, but other than that, it’s the usual.

  – I don’t think there’s anything, but I don’t know what I’m looking for.

  Bernal gets to his feet. – I don’t know what you’re looking for, either. This is a shitty case.

  That last bit he practically whispers. He scoops the fragments in great handfuls and tosses them into the box. A urine stench wafts through the room. From another room, behind the shelves, a small child hiccoughs or whimpers. Bernal doesn’t notice.

  – I can’t help you unless you tell me what I’m looking for. I need to know more.

  Bernal considers at length. Erhard guesses that he’s weighing his words. How much he’s allowed or wishes to say. – Come, he says. – Over here.

  They walk around the shelf and into a dark corner. He turns and stops Erhard, who’s right behind him. In the darkness Erhard sees only half of Bernal’s face. – You don’t have a weak stomach, do you?

  Erhard shakes his head.

  – Do you remember that girl Madeleine?

  – Did you find her?

  Bernal looks annoyed. – Do you remember her?

  Erhard nods.

  – Good. We don’t want that kind of case here. Not at all. We’ve done what we can. You need to know that. No one is working at cross purposes here. What happened in Portugal completely destroyed the tourist industry in Praia da Luz, and the police were hung out to dry in the media as a flock of fucking Thomson and Thompsons. The difference here is that no one is missing the child. No crying mothers or fathers, or cute siblings pining for their little brother.

  – The child?

  Bernal flicks on two wall lamps, then moves to the whiteboard. – The boy, he says, pointing at a photograph.

  It’s a large black-and-white photograph, probably a colour photo originally, and difficult to look at. But there is no colour now, only gradations of black, maybe brown or some greenish tint. Crossing through it is a big, black square marked by four light-grey cubes that provide the square with depth. In the centre of the square, as though surrounded by an invisible eggshell, is a tiny human being. One hand is up near its head as if to scratch itself, while the other hand is, almost impossibly, wrapped around its back. The child is covered in pale-grey newspaper fragments.

  Erhard has to turn away. His eyes slide towards the whiteboard and more photographs with the same horrible scene. Close-up images of the boy’s mouth, his eyes – which are closed, sunken in a sickened darkness. Photographs of the car, of the backseat where the box rests between seatbelts as if someone had tried to secure it.

  – How old is…? Erhard’s mouth is so dry he can hardly speak. – How old is he?

  – Three months. Thereabouts.

  – Someone must be missing him.

  – Unfortunately not. Whenever a case like this arises, it’s always worst with the babies. They don’t know anyone. They don’t have nannies or playmates. They leave behind no colleagues, ex-girlfriends, or empty flats with unpaid rent. If Mum and Dad don’t care, then there’s no one worry to worry over them.

  – Someone must’ve reported the child missing. On the islands or in Spain?

  Bernal goes on: – If you ask me, Mum went out in the waves and drowned herself like some cowardly dog. No one walks out on her child like that, unless something’s wrong with her.

  – What if something happened to the mother and the father? What if they went for a walk out on the beach and fell and…

  – What if they shagged in one of the caves? Problem is, we’ve scoured the area. With dogs. With helicopters. There’s nothing. It’s Bill Haji’s bloody ring all over again. Gone.

  – Someone must have seen the car arrive. What about that guy on the beach? The surfer?

  – We’ve spoken to him twice. He didn’t get to Cotillo until the day after the car turned up. Nobody knows anything. Nada. And the car was registered to an importer outside of Lisbon, but the
car never arrived; he thought it was on some lorry in Amsterdam two months ago.

  – Maybe a car thief stole it with the boy inside?

  – Where? In Amsterdam?

  Erhard doesn’t have an answer.

  – The most bizarre thing of all is the odometer. It registered thirty-one miles. Thirty-one.

  – What about fingerprints?

  – No fingerprints on the wheel, the gearstick, or the front seat. Finding prints is not as easy as some people think. And maybe Mum was wearing gloves? Maybe someone removed all traces? We found prints on the cardboard box, but no one we recognize, and who knows who had the box before the boy was shoved inside it? Someone, in any case, secured the box tightly in the seatbelt. It appears as though it’s been shaken around quite a bit, perhaps when they drove the car off the hilltop near the car park. It was on the beach at high tide, but no water gushed in, and no one in Cotillo saw the car when it arrived. If only we’d had some dogs. They’ve got dogs on Tenerife, but it takes a day and a half to get them over here, and by then it would’ve been too late.

  – What if the mum and dad left the country?

  – We’ve searched all departures. No one has arrived with a child and left without one. The absolute worst part is the autopsy report… Bernal walks over to the photograph of the boy. He points at the region around his eyes, the blackened area. – Lorenzo estimated that the boy was starved to death, two to three days before the car was abandoned on the beach. Before… Before they left him in a cardboard box. The autopsy report also determined that he was around twelve weeks old. When we found him, we all thought he was a newborn, because he was so thin and tiny. We’ve called all the delivery rooms and doctors on the island, and all young mothers with boys ranging from one month old to five months. One hundred and eighty-seven mothers in all. All the babies were accounted for. We’ve spoken with a number of fathers, too. We got a few leads, but nothing that took us anywhere.

  Erhard can’t look at the photograph any more. – How can someone abandon a child? he says.

  Bernal looks even more tired now. – In the end, we had to bury him. Yesterday morning. East of Morro Jable, Playa del Matorral. A fucking Bobcat dug a hole the size of a microwave oven. We did it quickly to avoid media attention. We were afraid journalists would come out and see the small coffin. Do you know how creepy that is? I thought of my own 3-year-old boy. There’s something all wrong about burying children that small.

  – Are you still working on the case?

  Bernal gives him a look. – Only because the press has begun writing about it. They’ve found out there was a dead boy in the car. They don’t know anything more than that. The higher-ups don’t wish to have another Madeleine on their hands. That’s the only thing they say. Bad PR won’t help the tourist industry, which is already in the dumps. I shouldn’t get you too involved – we’ve got something. A local angle.

  – What does that mean?

  Bernal turns his back to Erhard as he speaks. – A local angle. An islander, a suspect.

  Erhard doesn’t understand. – If you’ve resolved the case, why am I here? Why are you wasting my time?

  – It’s not a waste. We need to examine everything. Now we’re just more certain. We’re barking up the wrong tree with that box. Bernal shakes Erhard’s hand. His is the warm hand of someone who spends the bulk of his time in an office. And then he follows Erhard out, down the hallway, and into the dark hall, which is kept cool by the massive stones in the masonry.

  – Let me know if there’s anything else I can do, Erhard says.

  – Will do. Bernal pauses at the heavy oak doors that are difficult to nudge open. Through the small glass in the door he gives Erhard one final glance.

  Erhard walks to his car, feeling the evening sun irritatingly insistent against his back. He needs water. He has a bad feeling.

  It’s one thing to hear about the police’s strange methods, their nepotism, corruption, brutality, rape of detainees, and the alcoholism within its ranks – but it’s another thing entirely to experience it firsthand. He’s met plenty of inebriated policemen, having ferried them home to shrieking girlfriends or sobbing wives, but it’s appalling to see a case being evaluated and solved on a policeman’s desk.

  He finds a warm bottle of water in the boot and sits in the car for some time before starting the engine. How random and harsh is life that a child can be born into such complete neglect. First by its parents, then by the system, and finally in death: a deep, black hole that sucks everything into it. He dreads to think of the outcome of the case. He dreads to think what awaits.

  ‌

  ‌The Whore

  ‌14 January–21 January

  ‌

  21

  When he gets up on Saturday morning, he turns on the radio. He spins the dial from Radio Mucha over to Radio Fuerteventura. He waits for the news as he cautiously removes the finger from the glass in which it spent the night. It appears to have completely stopped decomposing. Holding onto the ends, he wriggles it and tries to free the ring. But it’s still jammed tight. He drops the finger into the bag, then slips the bag into his pocket.

  He’s exhausted, or maybe just angry, after yesterday. Not because of the conversation but because he cannot let go of the image of the boy, the tiny box, the unresolved ending, the local angle – whatever that means.

  He drives down to Alapaqa and drinks his morning coffee. Aristide, a fisherman who doesn’t usually come to the cafe, is busy with a group of Finnish tourists who’ve ordered breakfast. Erhard showers and sits on a rock beside the harbour, watching the fishermen discuss who’s allowed to fish where as they point across the sea at some buoys lapping on the water. He fills his cup and drives north. He cruises slowly through Corralejo, then onto the country road, and finally out towards Cotillo.

  There are very few customers at this time of day. He picks up a young man out near Las Dunas who hails him in an exaggerated way, waving his arms and legs. He has no luggage but needs to go down to Puerto, to the ships, before 8 a.m. So Erhard floors the accelerator in the old Mercedes. The young man goes on and on about a girl he’s just said goodbye to, telling Erhard that she’s not like other girls. Of course it turns out that he doesn’t have any money. His money’s on the ship, he says, which is probably a lie. If Erhard lets him go he’ll never see any money.

  – Give me your business card, I’ll give you mine, the young man tells Erhard, handing him a card. – I’ll send you the money.

  But Erhard doesn’t have a card. It’s almost eight o’clock now. He doesn’t care and tells the man to get going so he can reach his ferry. The man dashes from the taxi and down the street towards the piers. Halfway, he turns and waves, still running.

  This episode just reminds Erhard that he needs to ask people like that about a credit card before the fare begins. A confused young man in love.

  Driving westward, he lowers the volume on the radio so he can’t hear dispatch, which, as always, is thick with rubbish. Discussions about who had picked up the most rides last month, or who has the hottest wife. There’s always a lot of complaints from drivers being scolded by the boss because they don’t submit their paperwork in a proper fashion, or because they don’t drive enough per month, or because the substitute drivers don’t tidy up the cars properly following the night shift. Or because someone budged ahead in the airport queue for crying out loud. The girls at dispatch poke fun at them. Lucia teases the drivers who are in the doghouse. In his fourteen years as a cabbie, Erhard hasn’t heard one unsolicited peep from the boss or from the auto workshop, not so much as a single admonishment or comment or criticism. He’s thorough and methodical in his work. He spends fifteen minutes each day balancing his accounts. Every day he pays 30 per cent to TaxiVentura, 25 per cent in taxes, and 25 per cent to Annette, then leaves the last 20 per cent to himself. On a good day it’s enough, on a bad day he barely has enough to eat. But that’s the way he likes it; it’s what’s fair. TaxiVentura receives all of it except f
or his own cut: they pay the taxes and transfer Annette’s money to her bank account at the People’s Bank of Denmark once a month. And he keeps the car clean. He’s even tried to liven up the atmosphere down at dispatch, suggesting a bookshelf and a break room where people can have a cup of coffee or tea. But it went nowhere. Wait until you’re the boss, Barouki says, washing his hands – first without soap, then with soap, and then finally washing them all the way up to his elbows before drying them with napkins. He does that five or six times during the course of a single meeting. He’s a friendly man who loves air conditioning. He’d only driven a taxi for a few months before he became a haulier, a fleet operator, and ran his own business for almost ten years before becoming the director of TaxiVentura in 2004. He’s good with schedules. Erhard snaps on the radio and waits for the twelve o’clock news to come on, but there’s nothing of interest.

  He stops at a petrol station and washes his car. Afterward he rinses off the yellow foam, then dries the car with an old rag, polishing it with wax he’s gotten from one of the other drivers. He rarely does this. On an island where it’s always windy and dusty, it almost seems idiotic to wash and polish your car.

  While the wax settles, he reads the last chapter in the new book by Almuz Ameida, the great hope among Spanish crime novelists. He sits in the shade on a bench next to the station. From there he can see the rocks and cliffs on the beach. He can see the sand as it swirls up each time the wind sweeps eastward, like a broom, towards the island. There is always a bunch of cars parked on the flat section of the rocks. Surfers and nudists. Tourists who don’t get out of their cars, because of the drifting sand. At this moment he sees a family sitting in a most-likely-rented Seat and staring across the beach. There are no kitesurfers. They are all down at Playa Cualpa. But if one looks hard enough between the rocks one sees several brown, mosslike lumps reclining in inflatable chairs. Usually with a beer close by or small bottles of white wine. It’s the island of intoxication. Not like Ibiza or Mallorca or Crete – youthful boozing that’s mostly an excuse to have sex. The drinking here is discreet. Outside the few noisy discotheques and roaring cocktail bars with their improvised menus, hundreds of people are quietly crawling from one buzz to the next. Alcohol is cheap, the weather is good, and the calendar empty.