‌

‌The Corpse

‌22 January–28 January

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32

– Are you ready for Virgin del Carmen’s arrival?

A loud voice down on the street cuts through Erhard’s sleep. He sits upright on the sofa and glances around the empty terrace. He recognizes that sound. It’s coming from a loudspeaker on the roof of an old Mazda that’s cruising the streets advertising the festival on 23 February.

– Sign up for our events and help give our city and its tourists the island’s best party.

To judge by the brightness of the sun, it’s past noon. The sun is a hot glowing ball in the middle of the sky, and all shadows have been pushed aside. The morning’s drinks are still on the table, stained a dark red, with dried-up lemons on the rims of the glasses. Beatriz and Raúl must still be asleep, since they didn’t wake him up.

He gets to his feet and spots the washerwoman on the other roof staring at him. He waves at her, but she scurries through a door and leaves an empty clothesline. He pulls a Perrier from the fridge and unscrews the cap. He gulps it down, then descends the narrow stairwell to the balcony. The balcony door is open, the curtain fluttering.

He walks into the kitchen and the living room, then returns to the balcony as if they might have appeared while he was inside. He turns around and goes back to the living room, then the dining room – a room he’s never set foot in – and onward to the office, which seems unused, and finally to the bedroom, where he pushes open the door with his foot. He pretty much expects to see Raúl on top of her or fucking her from behind, her breasts dangling free, Raúl angry and excitable as a donkey. But no. As if they’d been in a hurry to leave, the bed is unmade.

He calls out for Raúl several times. Each time it sounds more and more bleak, as if someone’s clipping his speech, or as if the walls somehow swallow the sound. Raú. Ra. R.

In the entranceway, he opens a small chest of drawers and rummages around inside. He searches for paper and a pen to scribble a note for when they return, probably very soon. He steps on something that’s sticking out from under the chest of drawers, a set of keys to a Mercedes along with some house keys – Raúl’s. He must have dropped them. Maybe someone drove him. Just as he bends down to pick up the keys, he hears a sound coming from the office. He hasn’t heard it before. If he heard that sound at home, he would know exactly what it was: the goats rubbing against the wall of the house when it’s raining or too windy. But here, in a three-year-old building thirty metres above the sea, you would hardly expect to find any goats or rats or other animals clawing or scratching so loudly. Perhaps a seagull has gotten into the flat looking for French fries or deep-fried shrimp or something else it’s developed a taste for down at the harbour. Cautiously, he enters the office: a dark space that’s in stark contrast to the style of the rest of the flat. It has Emanuel Palabras’s stamp all over it – a mahogany desk, reclining leather chair, two leaf-shaped shields wrapped in colourful skins. The sound has ceased, but must have come from the large, built-in wardrobe. One of the wardrobe’s doors is pushed a little to the side, leaving a black slit running from floor to ceiling like a colourless block.

Erhard shoves the door aside. Inside, the shelves have fallen down. Clothes and boxes filled with CDs and computer cables are piled up.

Every second or third month Raúl binges on whatever he can get his hands on. He doesn’t plan it that way; it’s how his mind operates. Just when everything’s going well between him and Beatriz, and him and the world, he shits on it all and starts taking whatever the pushers in Calle Mirage give him. Erhard has picked him up several times strung out some place, causing trouble at a party, or in his wretchedness just needing some company. But it’s not Raúl he sees at the bottom of the wardrobe, underneath the clothes and the shelves. It’s Beatriz’s hair, an ear, a large orange earring.

He removes the clothes and the shelves, then lifts her out of the wardrobe and carries her into the bedroom, where he lays her on the bed. She doesn’t look heavy, but she’s not easy to carry. His back aches, but he doesn’t have time to worry about that now.

– What happened? Where’s Raúl? Where the hell is that idiot?

She doesn’t respond, of course. There’s blood on her nose and mouth and down the front of her blouse, and she has a horrible gash on her lip. Most of the blood appears to be coming from a deep wound below her hairline. She’s just staring at the ceiling, slowly blinking her eyes and breathing in wheezy gasps. The telephone is on the nightstand right beside Beatriz. He calmly punches 112 and hears someone answer. Then he looks at Beatriz.

She’s staring directly into Erhard’s eyes. There’s something about her expression. It’s not pain or confusion or death. At first he believes that she’s dead, that her pupils are completely dilated because she has slipped life and found peace, but then he sees that her gaze is more insistent, almost commanding. Her pupils are tense from exertion.

You mustn’t tell them. For Raúl’s sake. Let me go.

– What? he says. On the other end of the line, Emergency Services repeats their questions, but Erhard doesn’t hear them. Beatriz closes her eyes and goes quiet. She’s somewhere far, far away.

Emergency Services keeps asking Erhard what has happened, and where he is located. It’s a man’s voice, friendly. Erhard removes the telephone from his ear and presses the red button, ending the call.

Her words – and he’s certain they are her words – turn everything upside down. Help me. Let me go. What the hell does that mean? The words reverberate and then seem to vanish into nothingness. And why didn’t she wish him to call an ambulance? Why was it for Raúl’s sake? Was there something she didn’t want him to get mixed up in?

Raúl may be an arse in many ways, but Erhard has never seen him physically harm Beatriz. That’s not the kind of relationship they have. It’s not like him, either. Or Beatriz. It’s what makes her so modern, so lovely, so irritatingly unobtainable: her independence, pride, and strength. Whatever occurred in the flat, it wasn’t an accident or an ordinary domestic dispute. Something very bad happened.

He checks Beatriz again. As part of his job, he has learned first aid and has kept his certificate up to date for years. He lowers his head to her chest and watches it rise and fall. He tilts her head back slightly, so she can breathe easier.

His eyes wander from her mouth to her throat and down, down. Her bloodied robe is wide open, revealing her breasts and hairy vulva behind cotton knickers that appear rather cheap. He quickly cinches her robe and wraps her up in the bed sheet she’s lying on.

He walks through all the rooms again, now searching for clues. Blood, overturned objects, feet sticking out from under the sofa, disembodied limbs. He notices nothing out of the ordinary. But some of the desk drawers in the office aren’t fully closed, and the bed appears messier than usual. And why is the bread knife in the middle of the kitchen table? It’s as though someone got it out to use it, then left it there.

Help me. Let me go.

He goes to the kitchen and cracks open a Dos Equis, gulping it down greedily. He pulls his notebook from his pocket. Although he has no system, he knows exactly where he’ll find the number. One evening in Puerto he wrote Michel Faliando’s name and telephone number with a blunt-tipped pencil. He doesn’t remember why he wrote it down. But Faliando is a member of the City Council – and, he remembers, a doctor.

He grabs the wall telephone.

First he tries Raúl. But his call goes immediately to voicemail. He doesn’t leave a message. He redials and gets the same response.

Then he calls the doctor.

– Michel Faliando? This is Erhard Jørgensen, Raúl Palabras’s friend. He doesn’t have the energy to explain, but it’s the only way. – Do you recall that we met at an event once in Puerto?

Erhard explains that Beatriz has been hurt. She’s hit her head, badly, and requires immediate medical attention.

– No, unfortunately I can’t ask anyone else, Erhard says. – It’s complicated.

Silence on the other end of the line.

– It’s Emanuel Palabras’s daughter-in-law, Erhard says, trying to get some leverage.

Continued silence.

– Is she unconscious? the doctor asks.

– She’s breathing.

– Are there drugs involved?

– No, Erhard says automatically.

– Is she a diabetic?

– No, I don’t think so.

– Irregular breathing? Wheezing?

– Yeah, a little, maybe.

– Is she lying on her back or in the recovery position?

– On her back, Erhard says.

Silence.

The doctor says he can be there in two hours. Erhard doesn’t know what to say, so he just thanks him.

Two hours. Hopefully she’ll survive for that long. He’ll do everything in his power to make sure she does. He’ll take care of her and feed her with a spoon and hold her head and…

And then he remembers Alina.

The drive to Majanicho takes fourteen minutes. And the entire time he’s certain that the whore despises him. She has now sat chained up for nearly a day, with no food for more than sixteen hours. Unless she’s managed to find something in the one cupboard she can reach. He steels himself to tell her what has happened, but he’s not sure whether or not he should tell her anything about Raúl Palabras or Beatriz. He’ll just say he was in a terrible car accident. Hell, his shirt is soaked with blood.

At least he’s got the charger with him. The bundle of clothes, underwear, and charger are all on the passenger seat.

He knows he needs to release her today.

He quickly parks the car, leaps out, and hurries inside. She’s not on the mattress or in the kitchen. He glances warily around each corner, ready for her to jump him or throw something at his head. It makes sense that she would.

– Alina?

He peers in the shed. Empty.

Then he remembers the chain. He inspects the ground and the floor inside the house, searching for it, but it’s nowhere to be found. Maybe she succeeded in breaking it and getting loose? But how far might she have gotten? And where is the rest of the chain? Cautiously he walks around the corner of the house and looks up at the metal ring the chain is fastened to. The ring is still there, but the chain’s not dangling down the wall as he would have expected if she’d pried it off her foot. Instead it runs in a taut line straight up the house before disappearing on the roof.

Erhard turns towards the hill. Half-expecting to see her walking barefooted across the rocks. But she’s not up there. Just wind and dust.

She must be on the roof. Erhard keeps the ladder around back, but now it’s lying at a ten-degree angle away from the house. She must have brought it over here. When she got up on the roof, she’d either pushed the ladder or accidentally knocked it over.

He positions the ladder against the house and begins to climb.

If she’s hiding up there, he should have seen her as he drove in. But maybe she’s lying down, fatigued by the blazing sun. Maybe napping, ready to attack him as soon as he peeks over the edge.

The rooftop is a hotchpotch of various materials: plastic, corrugated cardboard, a tarpaulin drawn over a sheet of plywood, and chunks of rocks in the 1.5- to 2-stone range that are supposed to hold it all together against the wind. He peers over the roof’s edge.

It’s empty.

His gaze follows the taut chain running from the metal ring to the opposite side of the house, where it plunges over the roof between two large rocks.

She’s thrown the chain over the house, he thinks. To confuse him. So she’ll have time to get away. That confirms what he’d suspected – also when he visited her flat. She’s smart. Maybe smarter than Erhard. He doesn’t feel like crawling across the roof. He’s not even sure it can support his weight. On his way down the ladder, he curses to himself. Then he hustles around the house to verify the broken chain.

He scans the countryside, hoping to see her trotting away. But he sees nothing. Not even the goats. The bleached sun is three-fifths of the way across the horizon. The rocks are scorching hot. Any living thing in direct sunlight would be fried.

What he sees when he turns the corner of the house makes him gag, because the girl’s face has gone. The chain is just short enough that she’s hanging with her foot against the wall, her hip and femur torn from their sockets, and yet long enough that her head and arms touch the ground, resting in a red pool of blood. When he nudges her with his foot, the corpse swings to one side and reveals her face. A swarm of irritating flies buzz away. Alina’s face is in fact gone, her round cheeks replaced by something that resembles grilled cheese. He raises his hand to his mouth and turns away in disgust.

Maybe she was planning to attack Erhard, but stumbled over the rocks and fell to her death. Maybe she leaped off the roof on her own – to put an end to her misery or to break the chain. He can hardly stomach the thought. He’d not intended for this to happen. Not at all. Hell, he’d almost begun to like her.

She couldn’t have been hanging there long. The blood’s not even dry. Erhard recalls the wild dogs that helped themselves to Bill Haji.

The police won’t care for the true version of events. He knows what Bernal will think. He won’t believe Erhard’s story; he’ll think that Erhart kidnapped the whore, blackmailed her, and threw her off the roof. Witnesses have seen Erhard in her flat, and his fingerprints are all over that place.

He needs to reconsider. He needs to think and think hard.

He puts on a pair of work gloves and pulls out the tarpaulin, spreading it beneath Alina before cutting the chain with the bolt clippers. She tumbles onto the tarpaulin. A couple teeth, or what look like teeth, dislodge from her mouth along with a fresh gout of blood. He wraps her up and drags her into the shed. He shovels the dark-red soil into a bucket and spreads it across the stones five hundred metres from the house. With the backside of the shovel, he scrapes gravel over the pool of blood, then pours a few litres of water on the spot, so the gravel appears less arranged. Inside the house, he scrubs every surface Alina has touched, first with a wet rag and then a dry. The time is 2.20 p.m. He has forty minutes until the doctor shows up at Raúl’s place.

As if he’s been flying in an airplane, he feels nauseated, and he pours cognac in a coffee mug, then drinks it standing in front of the house and staring down the trail. There are no sirens, no blinking police cars. Nothing. If he’d just let the girl go when she’d begged him. Now he’s got a dead woman whose body he somehow has to dispose of, an unconscious woman he has to hide, and a friend who has gone missing. At some point, people will start looking for all three. He doesn’t know how long he can keep things under wraps. If he’s caught, he’ll have a hard time explaining himself. No matter how he spins his story, it looks bad.

It almost makes him laugh. But it’s not funny. If they find Bill Haji’s finger on the shelf, too, then it’ll look even worse. The Hermit. That twisted old geezer out near Majanicho.

Majorero. The word hangs in the air, then fades. He stares at the girl’s ruined face, mouth, nose, and lips like a red slab.

He goes inside and brings out the finger. It looks like a liquorice stick, the kind he used to eat as a child. The ring is still stuck tight, but it would come off if he broke the finger. No longer can he wear it as if it were a new finger. Which annoys him. Because it was a real treat for him to prop it in the empty slot on his hand, no matter how out-of-place and miscoloured it appeared to be. He recalls the afternoon that he drove several people, who all gave it no more than a passing glance, because it appeared to be nothing more than a sprained finger. They didn’t figure the taxi driver was riding around with a dead man’s digit, so they’d probably guessed he’d had an accident. Even though the finger looked different than the others, thinner and darker; some might have even thought it resembled a ring finger where the pinky should be. But no one stared at it or grew suspicious. They accepted the most logical explanation and overlooked any indications pointing to the opposite.

What if? he thinks, returning the finger to its container and hiding it behind the books once again. When she was alive, he’d tried to hide Alina just like he had Bill Haji’s finger. But he doesn’t dare bury her out here. The dogs would smell her at a distance. Besides, the ground is solid, and a really strong man would have to dig for at least a day. Maybe he could rent a Bobcat or an excavator, or bribe a sexton to throw her into some other person’s grave. He could also drive her to the coast. There’s a vast ocean to heave her into.

The doctor will arrive in thirty minutes. He considers postponing the appointment, but he doesn’t want to put Beatriz’s life in greater jeopardy. She should have already had medical attention. On the other hand, he doesn’t want Alina lying here in the shed if he needs to go anywhere with the doctor or do something else. His only alternative, no matter how foolish it might sound, is to put Alina in the car and figure out what to do with her later. After the doctor has gone. It’s a bigger risk, but he doesn’t dare do anything else.

He doesn’t have any more time to consider alternatives.

He puts on a pair of gardening gloves and carefully places Alina’s body in the boot. He wraps the tarpaulin up in an elastic cord, keeping her snug. Then he drives back downtown. There’s the usual Saturday traffic. He gives Muñoz and some colleagues parked at the giant HiperDino supermarket a quick wave. He continues down Calle del Muelle.

By the time he noses down the ramp to the private car park under the building, only eight minutes remain until the doctor arrives. Although a construction crew is in the process of removing columns and laying more parking spaces, no one is currently working; the basement is empty and dark. A plastic sheet covers much of the small basement. Wheelbarrows, buckets with congealed cement, shovels, and a few strange orange machines that look like steam locomotives are scattered about. He parks next to the lift and cuts the engine, then glances around. It wouldn’t surprise him to find security cameras down here. He gets out of his car. Wind whips down the ramp and around the corners. He locates the camera on the ceiling, just to the left of the lift, but the plastic sheet is blocking it, so Erhard remains out sight. He presses the red UP button.

He realizes that he still has Raúl’s keys in his pocket. The silver-grey Mercedes 500 SL is parked a short distance away. He backs his own car beside the Mercedes, arranging the boots of the two vehicles against one another. He checks for cameras, and doesn’t see one on this side of the lift. They might be located behind some large boards that are leaning against the wall, but this side of the basement is not under surveillance. He unlocks Raúl’s car and quickly transfers Alina’s body to Raúl’s boot, which appears to have never been used.

Afterward, he parks his own car crosswise in a handicapped spot, then hustles to the stairwell that leads up to the sixth floor.

When he reaches the flat, the doctor’s already at the door. Irritated at having to wait.

– Buenas, Erhard says.

– Someone let me in the front door, the doctor says.

– I’m sorry. I had to run an errand.

The doctor gives Erhard a concerned look. – You should probably sit down for a bit.

Erhard shakes his head as he unlocks the door. – I just need some water.

The doctor goes directly inside and glances around. – I’ve been here before.

– This way, Erhard says.

– Where did you find her? The office?

– Yes.

Erhard opens the bedroom door. Beatriz is lying in the same position as when he’d left. The doctor has brought an ordinary shoulder bag, the kind used for laptop computers. He quickly fits his stethoscope to his ears and listens. With a small penlight he illuminates her dark eyes. He runs his knuckles across her cervical vertebrae, right below her gold necklace and its amethyst eye, which stares into the air. He pinches her cheek too. For a moment Erhard thinks she’d dead. He holds his breath.

The doctor continues to examine Beatriz. – How did she strike her head?

Erhard describes how he found her.

– Water, the doctor says suddenly. – Lukewarm water.

Erhard fetches a bowl and a dry towel in the kitchen.

The terrible-looking gash that progresses from her hairline and up underneath her hair is messy and red. The doctor dabs her with the towel, then inspects her throat, shoulders, ribs, belly, and thighs. Erhard feels as though he should turn away, but he can’t help but follow the doctor’s brown fingers gliding across Beatriz’s body.

The doctor turns to Erhard. – I need to ask. May I be honest?

– Of course.

– The Palabrases aren’t exactly your average family.

– What are you trying to say?

The doctor nods at Beatriz. – Someone did this to her.

– Did what?

– A contusion. Someone pushed her and gave her a blow to the top of her head. A very powerful one at that. It’s a miracle she’s still alive.

– Can she talk? I thought I heard her speak earlier.

– Not likely. This appears to be acute swelling with possible brain damage. Moderate to severe head trauma. She’s comatose.

– What does that mean?

– That she’s suffered a brain injury. She’s lucky that she was operated on a few years ago. Someone bored into her cranium. He lifts her hair to show him something, but Erhard turns away. – See these holes. They’re bleeding, but they’ve reduced the pressure from the blow. Anyone else would be dead right now after being struck with such brute force.

– What if she was pushed or something fell on her head, an accident?

– It’s possible. If she ran into a barbell weighing four stone.

Erhard doesn’t recall having seen any barbells on the floor next to the collapsed wardrobe. Or anything heavy for that matter. It was stuffed mostly with folders, cardboard boxes filled with photographs, and wooden shelves.

The doctor lets go of Beatriz’s hair, and it falls across the darkened punctures, concealing them again. – Someone hit her with a blunt object, possibly a baseball bat, that doesn’t leave any evidence. This appears to be an assault committed in rage.

– So you think it’s… You mean to say it’s…

He can’t bring himself to utter the words. Even though he’d come to the same conclusion, he just can’t believe it.

– Who else could’ve done it? I’ve known the Palabrases for many years. Raúl’s quite the party. I don’t think he’s mean-spirited, but he’s known for his benders and his outbursts.

– No, it’s not possible. I can’t believe that. He loves her.

The doctor makes an involuntary cluck with his throat. – I’m sorry, but love has many faces, and they’re not always of your Romeo-and-Juliet variety.

Erhard tries to recall what Raúl said last night about their relationship.

– What’s going to happen to her now? Why won’t she wake up?

– She has swelling in her skull. And the pressure has increased so much that the blood-flow to her brain has ceased. She needs to be taken to the neurological centre in Puerto and put on a respirator as quickly as possible.

– Will she wake up then? Will she be normal? Erhard asks the first questions that come to mind.

– Maybe. Maybe in a few hours. Or days from now, weeks. But she needs to be on a respirator now. That’s the important thing.

– Are there any painkillers for her or medicine?

– She needs time.

– What about… you know?

– He will have to face his punishment.

The doctor gathers his things and leaves. But before he goes, he pauses in the doorway. – Take her to the hospital. Now. Call if there’s anything I can do. By the grace of God.

That last is a salutation Erhard can’t stand, but it’s meant kindly enough. Yet it sounds definitive and gloomy.

Erhard heads straight to the cupboard and pours himself whatever he can find. A white rum. He gulps it and returns to the bedroom, sitting down beside Beatriz. Cautiously, as if each movement could cause the blood vessels in her head to burst like soap bubbles, he peels back one of her eyelids with his thumb. Her pupil is nearly as wide as her eyeball, but it’s still a pretty eye. Like a glass ball with neat patterns. He releases her eyelid and it glides shut. The gravity of the body is enough to make you cry. Her mind. Knocked out of her with one blow. If Raúl’s responsible, it is unforgivable. He knows Raúl did it, but the implications are too much for him now. Right now he can only focus on saving the body before him.

He picks up the telephone, then hears the voice again.

Help me. Let me go.

He looks down at Beatriz, but this time her eyes are closed, and he knows he’s imagining the voice. It’s not real.

Help me. Let me go. What do the words mean? Let her die? Get her away from Raúl?

– Beatriz, he says out loud, his voice choking up uncontrollably.

Take care of me.

He calls her name again. He wants to shake her, but doesn’t dare touch her. – I need to call, he says, dropping his hand to the telephone.

Por favor.

That last makes him cry. He doesn’t recall when he last cried or even felt pain like this. He feels uncertainty, and he feels grief due to her condition, but most of all uncertainty. Is he imagining it? Or is it really her voice that he hears? It sounds like her. It sounds exactly like Beatriz. The same rusty voice, almost whispering, pleading. He lets go of the telephone and cries into her bathrobe, into her naked breast.

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33

– Can you get me a respirator?

– I told you she needs to go to…

– I know, but I’m not going to do that. You’ll have to call. And report me.

Silence.

– Can you get me a respirator?

– Yes, the doctor says simply.

– How fast?

– An hour. Maybe sooner.

Erhard glances at the clock radio on Raúl’s side of the bed. – Meet me at 9 Via Majanicho at six o’clock. The little house at the end of a long path.

– After Guzman?

– Just before Guzman.

– Are you moving her out there?

– Yes, it’s peaceful there.

– Are you sure? Is he really worth it?

– No, but she is, Erhard says and hangs up.

As he was talking to the doctor, an idea formed in his mind.

How might he hide Beatriz and keep her alive, so that no one searches for her? How can he hide Alina’s body, so that no one finds it? Maybe the answers are the same.

The two women have the same hair colour and are approximately the same size. Alina’s a little chubbier than Beatriz and has slightly larger breasts, but not everyone notices such things. Beatriz has no family here on the island, or anywhere else for that matter, so there’s no one to confirm her identity besides Erhard and possibly a few casual acquaintances whom Erhard doesn’t know. What he does know is that she has no close relations. She has often complained about that lack of intimacy. Someone to talk to. Every Tuesday or something she assists one of Raúl’s friend’s daughters, who runs a boutique down on High Street. But that’s only so the daughter can take a day off, not because they’re friends.

And Alina. Like any whore on the island, no one will miss her. A few johns will call in vain. A pimp somewhere, maybe in Guisguey, will lose a little income. But no doubt he’ll think she went home to the mainland.

No one will miss them. And no one will link the two women.

But he’s all alone in this plan of his. He can’t involve the doctor any more than is necessary. Keeping Beatriz alive and out of the searchlights is one thing, but it’s quite another to rid himself of a body. The kind doctor wouldn’t go along with that. Erhard will have to take care of that himself.

Under the sink he finds the kind of rubber gloves people use to clean. He grabs a red blanket from Raúl’s sofa and takes the lift to the car park. The lift is narrow, fitting at most two people. Erhard rarely uses it, because it’s usually too slow, and Raúl never uses it but trots down the stairs so fast that Erhard can’t keep up. Right now the lift is the only real choice. He sticks a wedge in the door, keeping it from going anywhere.

He stares into the boot of Raúl’s Mercedes. At the strangely lifeless pupa. The easiest thing to do would be to drive her down to the harbour and heave her into the sea, or over to the construction site and toss her into one of the chutes. There are security cameras down there, too, probably.

He quickly wraps the tarpaulin – with Alina inside – within the red blanket. It doesn’t look completely natural, but it’s not as suspicious as the tarpaulin, where the whore’s shoulder and hands are visible though the translucent fabric. Then he scoops her up and returns to the lift; the bundle is heavy and it takes him some time. In the lift he squeezes her tightly so she doesn’t slide out, and barely manages to push the button. The door closes. His back aches from the load, and he’s forced to brace her against the wall in order not to drop her. He keeps his eye on the numbers, –1, 0, 1, 2. Between each storey Erhard fears the lift will stop. Third. Fourth.

Fifth. The door opens. He can’t hold her any more. His back can’t bear her weight. He drops her on the floor, then drags her to the flat and hauls her inside. He listens briefly in the entranceway, hears nothing. He slams the door and tugs her cautiously into the office and behind the desk. Blood has dripped onto the tarpaulin, but he unfolds it and pours the blood into a bowl from the kitchen. Using scissors, he cuts Alina out of her ripped tights. Because of her broken ankle, they’re impossible to remove. He removes two necklaces and a bracelet. Though he can’t wear gloves to do this fiddly job, it doesn’t matter. He throws the jewellery in the rubbish bin. It’s hard to look at the whore’s face; not all the blood has congealed yet.

Alina’s lying in her underclothes. Apart from her face and her ankle that’s poking out to the side, her body resembles a mannequin, an advertisement for cheap lingerie.

He walks into the bedroom. Before he touches Beatriz, he listens. Listens to her breathing; it’s rhythmic, but with a faint wheezing, like a plastic bag filling and emptying. He hears the air passing through her nostrils, soughing through her nose hairs. But he can’t hear any words. On the one hand, he’d like to hear the words again, but on the other, they make him nervous and uncomfortable. As he watches, he notices a hint of a scar above her mouth, as if she’s been operated on for a cleft lip. He’s never noticed that before. But it looks so healed and natural that it’s almost a joy to see.

He carefully removes her arm from her robe and pulls the robe off underneath her back. He takes off her thick athletic socks, too, which probably belong to Raúl; they’re splattered with blood. And the pendant. He tilts her head slightly to the side; it’s hard to see just what he’s doing, but his fingers are familiar with this kind of jewellery, and finally he manages to open the tiny lock and remove the necklace. As he walks back to the office, he notices Beatriz’s fantastic nails. The one on her middle finger is dangling loose, revealing a pale, cracked nail underneath. He needs to remove them all. If he’s to turn Alina into Beatriz, those nails will have to be part of the ensemble. He twists the loose nail free, then begins to remove the others. They’re firmly attached, but he’s able to wriggle them off. Only the thumbnail requires a strenuous effort.

In the bathroom he finds a special glue that looks just right for the job, and he affixes the nails on Alina’s fingers. One by one. Calm, thorough. He has never glued nails, but it reminds him of the model airplanes he used to build as a kid. After a few minutes, the nails are all fastened. Alina’s thumbs are a little too big for Beatriz’s nails, but the rest fit quite nicely.

He arranges Beatriz on the passenger seat so that she looks like a sleeping customer. With pillows and a blanket, she’s packed in so tight that she won’t slump or slide to the floor. He drives slowly through the city and around Majanicho; he doesn’t dare take Alejandro’s Trail, which is too uneven and bumpy. It’ll take an extra ten minutes, but he still has time.

He carries her into the living room and swaddles her in a blanket that he’s shaken free of dust and crumbs.

At 6.15 p.m. he hears the doctor’s car and goes out to greet him and to help bring in the equipment, which isn’t much more than a mouthpiece connected to a small machine by a thin tube. The doctor fastens it to Beatriz’s mouth, then pulls an elastic band around her head. The device is already on, and Erhard sees Beatriz’s abdomen heaving unnaturally, like bagpipes. The doctor explains that she needs to hyperventilate to create rapid circulation in the damaged regions of her brain. Erhard just watches her belly rise and fall underneath the all-too-large t-shirt. The respirator inflates. It blinks and glows.

Afterward, the doctor gives her a thorough examination and takes her blood pressure. At last he affixes a catheter to collect her urine in a bag, then instructs Erhard to change the bag as soon as it’s more than two-thirds full.

– If we can’t bring her out of this coma in two or three days, we’ll need to insert intravenous nourishment, the doctor says. It’s important that Erhard keep an eye on her; it’s important that he call as soon as the machine beeps or something happens. – If she’s going to be here, you’ll need to be vigilant. The doctor acts peevish to make it clear that he disagrees with Erhard’s plan.

Erhard glances nervously at the wall outlets, which throw sparks. He’ll need more power from the generator, and he’ll need to buy a new one, especially if more devices will be added. The doctor rejects Erhard’s offer of a beer, then walks out to his car, promising not to tell anyone.

Erhard watches Beatriz for the next hour and a half. It occurs to him that the two women have already exchanged places. Alina’s story ends right in the place she’d always striven for. Beatriz’s story concludes right where – perhaps – she feared it would. He considers building a partition in the living room so that she can have her own room, then decides that if she’s still here in a week, he will do that. Maybe he could construct a private loft? It would be easy to take care of her that way, and easy to check the devices.

He latches the backdoor, then puts an extra padlock on the front door. Something about the episode with Alina makes him worry that someone will pay him a visit. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and probably no one will stop by, but still.

He drives out to Tindaya.

The island is so small that he knows every nook and cranny. And he knows where Lorenzo Pérez-Lúñigo lives: a large yellow house that’s passed through five generations of doctors. Lorenzo married into the house via Adela, Dr Agosto’s eldest daughter. Together they have four adult sons, and a stable of horses in the fields behind their house. He parks on a small private road that skirts the grounds. Then he strolls around and up to the house, which is quiet, sealed off. When Adela opens the door, she seems ill.

– We didn’t order a cab today, she says.

– Happy New Year. I need to speak with Lorenzo.

– He’s no longer practising.

– I know.

– One moment, she says, closing the door.

Five minutes later Lorenzo opens it.

– Yes, he says, perceptibly startled when he recognizes Erhard.

– I need to speak with you. Alone.

Lorenzo scrutinizes Erhard, possibly considering what will happen if he says no. Then he steps outside and follows Erhard.

They walk onto the street. There are never any cars here, but the neighbours sometimes peer through their shutters. Erhard guides him up the narrow road where the car is parked.

– How can I help you, Señor Jørgensen? the doctor says with a kind of affected highbrow manner that doesn’t match his typically vulgar style.

– Let me be blunt. I’ve kept quiet about your little secrets for more than ten years.

– Dios mío. What secrets are you referring to?

Erhard gives him a look, but Lorenzo doesn’t notice, so Erhard has to explain: – All those times you showed up plastered at car accidents, or that incident down at the shipyard, when your blood-alcohol level was far above what it should’ve been.

– That wasn’t unlawful. I rode in a taxi.

– But it’s not good form, so far as I’m aware. And there’s probably a good reason you once gave me a 100-euro tip.

– Are you complaining about tips now?

– Only when they’re a type of payoff.

– It was never a payoff.

– What about the time I found you out near Molino?

Lorenzo stares at Erhard in alarm. He doesn’t like to hear any mention of that episode. The doctor had crashed his car in the ditch early one morning, and he’d stood by the side of the road six miles from the closest village. On the backseat of his car was the naked body of an elderly person. Before Lorenzo called the mechanic to request a tow, he wanted Erhard to drive him and the body back to the Department of Forensic Medicine at the hospital in Puerto. It wasn’t the first time that Erhard had dealt with a body. But Lorenzo’s arrogance – as if it were part of Erhard’s job description to haul corpses – had made Erhard obstinate and sceptical, even though Lorenzo gave him a handsome tip. In the end, Bernal had saved Lorenzo from a police report. Though it probably would’ve been dismissed anyway, it would have ignited devastating rumours in the circles where Lorenzo Pérez-Lúñigo most wishes to be regarded as a respectable and brilliant official of the highest sort. Possessing a corpse in some godforsaken part of the island would’ve been awfully difficult to explain, and it would’ve called to mind some very unfortunate images. Lorenzo had understood that.

– What do you want? Why do you come here with this?

– Do we agree that you owe me a favour?

Lorenzo stares unhappily at Erhard. – I thought I’d already demonstrated my gratitude. So what do you want, Señor Jørgensen?

– I want to bring peace to a good friend.

– I can’t do that. I’m not a murderer.

– Lower your voice, Lorenzo. Nobody’s killing anyone. You just need to dispose of a body and pass it along quickly to the mortician, that’s all.

Lorenzo glances around. – What do you mean?

– Sometime in the next day, Beatrizia Colini’s body will be delivered to you for your examination. You need to report that her death was the result of a fall down a stairwell. You can note other small things, but you have to conclude that Beatrizia Colini died following an unfortunate tumble in which she struck her head.

– What have you done, Señor Jørgensen?

– I haven’t done anything. I’m just making sure that my friend Beatrizia’s reputation remains intact, and that the Palabras family isn’t involved unnecessarily in her death.

As soon as Erhard utters the name Palabras, Lorenzo flinches as if he’s bitten a lime. It was exactly the effect Erhard was hoping for.

– Lorenzo! Adela calls from the door.

– Do we have an agreement? Erhard asks.

– Can I trust that you will never visit me like this again?

– If you do this, I will never come here again.

Lorenzo turns and walks back to the house. – Coming, Adela, he says in a baritone voice.

When the door front door closes, Erhard climbs in his car and collapses in the seat. Only now does he realize how nervous he has been during the entire conversation. He starts the engine and heads back towards the city.

As soon as there’s some shade on the balcony, he carries Alina to the rooftop terrace. Halfway up the stairs he lets her slide headfirst out of the tarpaulin. He turns her around and lays her head on a pillow, so that he doesn’t have to look at her face. Rigor mortis has begun to set in. Erhard wipes the blood from the tarpaulin and the wooden balcony floor.

Erhard is unsettled and indecisive, pacing between the balcony and the bedroom. He drinks the expensive coffee. The sun is red, and he gazes across the city and the beach at the kite surfers out near the Dunes. The city noise below makes him sad. Children shout when they leap off a buoy down in the harbour. One of the city’s many impatient lorry drivers honks as he squeezes his load of cucumbers or beer into some narrow alley. Erhard has always loved the city. This city. God only knows how much he hates other cities, particularly Copenhagen; no other city is so hyper-regulated and boxy with tower blocks as Copenhagen. But Corralejo is incomparably unique, marked by aridity, an excessive desire to please, and a population of inbreds. It’s just the place for Erhard. A provincial hole with long opening hours, a little city with a big city’s attractions. But even if he had the money, he’s not sure if he’d choose to live here. The noise, the smell, the nightlife, the bars, the friendly women, and city living as a whole – it would be the end of him. It has always been a pleasure to visit Raúl, to sit on the terrace with two attractive friends and enjoy the moment. Now he wishes, most of all, to go back to last summer, when they went to a fish restaurant near Morro Jable. That evening when they sat together in the car and laughed at the thunder.

He calls Raúl’s number again. But he knows that he won’t answer. So he dials 112 and requests an ambulance.

Then he waits on the street for it to arrive. The paramedics need to carry the stretcher up the stairs. As they climb, Erhard tells them how he found her, and how he kept his eye on her. His nerves are calmed when one of the paramedics seems unconcerned. As if picking up dead women is an everyday event.

When the paramedics see her, they sit down and wait for the police and the doctor who’ll perform the post-mortem to arrive. Although Erhard has predicted this, it still makes him uncomfortable. He prepares coffee in the kitchen so they won’t notice his trembling hands. Five minutes later the doorbell chimes and he hopes it’s Bernal, whom he knows. But it turns out to be a young policeman, a tall, Arabic-looking man who might very well be a troublemaker. Erhard states his full name, but the officer just introduces himself as Hassib, then asks Erhard to tell him what happened. When Erhard tries to explain, Hassib doesn’t pay attention. Instead he stares at his mobile. Behind the policeman, a young, short-haired doctor in a suit enters the flat. The new health inspector.

– The wealthy and their fucking lifestyles, Hassib says, watching the inspector as he pulls back the plastic sheet they’ve covered Alina with. He examines her without touching her; he photographs her, close up and from a distance, then rolls her over and repeats the procedure. He also takes photos of the stairwell. He sees a tooth on the floor and photographs that, too.

Erhard observes everything while he drinks his coffee. The officer speaks with the doctor briefly and in a hushed voice, then they strap Alina to the stretcher and begin carrying her downstairs. The inspector asks Erhard for the name of Beatriz’s doctor, but Erhard doesn’t know. Ask Emanuel Palabras, he finally says. The inspector thanks him and hands Erhard his business card, which is printed on cheap paper, before he exits the room, his mobile phone stuck to his ear. Hassib walks around the flat, circling Erhard until at last he’s standing beside him in the kitchen.

– So when did you find her?

– Around eleven o’clock. We’d gone out and had a few drinks, and I slept here. When I woke up, I found her. Then…

– Eleven o’clock? Why didn’t you call earlier?

– She cried out in ways I didn’t understand, so I thought she was just hurt. When she was better, I was going to drive her to the emergency room.

– Emergency room? That woman is a mess.

– I thought she’d get better.

– But she’s dead, don’t you get it? Someone may have pushed her. Since Raúl Palabras hasn’t turned up yet, he might be our man.

– It’s not him. He would never do that to her. It must’ve been an accident.

– Where did you say he went?

– I didn’t say. I don’t know where he is. I’ve called him, but he doesn’t answer.

– If you know where he is, you need to tell me now. If we don’t get any more information, we’ll have to charge you.

They would do something like that, Erhard thinks. Take the first and best suspect. – All I did was sleep here, he says.

– If you talk to your friend, tell him he’s better off turning himself in.

Erhard doesn’t know what to say. He plucks a sour grape from a bunch on the table.

– Where did you say you slept?

– I didn’t say. In the bedroom, Erhard says, pointing.

To his amazement, the policeman strides through the living room and into the bedroom, then snaps on the light and looks around. – Where did Palabras sleep?

– I don’t know. I was pissed. We sat up on the terrace this morning drinking Bloody Marys and talking. I got really tired and pissed and wanted to go home, but they asked me to sleep down here. So I did. When I woke up, Raúl was gone and…

Erhard notices that the policeman is not writing anything down. He’s investigating the crime scene because that’s what he’s supposed to do, but he doesn’t actually care.

– How much did she drink? The girlfriend.

– Not much, I don’t think. We woke her up when we arrived, and she came out to the terrace with us. But she was tired and yawned the whole time.

Erhard’s surprised at how well he’s lying. All he has to do is recall the events of the morning and alter them slightly.

– How long have they lived together?

– Eight or ten years, maybe. Eight.

– They were happy together?

– Yes. He was crazy about her. And vice versa.

Erhard considers the words she’d uttered: Help me. Let me go. Do they mean anything? Are they just something Erhard imagined? He hopes not. Now that he’s set everything into motion so that he can hide Beatriz. To save her from someone who wishes to do her harm. It can’t be Raúl.

– But why did you sleep down here? asks the policeman. He rounds the bed and opens the wardrobe.

– How should I know? Hospitality, I guess. That’s the way Raúl is.

– Where did they sleep?

The policeman riffles through Raúl’s collection of suits.

– Maybe on the sofa. Or up on the terrace.

– Have you ever witnessed Raúl Palabras abusing Beatrizia Colini?

– Abusing?

– You know, hitting her? Slapping her around?

– Never.

The policeman goes to the living room. On the way he peers through the half-open door into the office. – What did you say was in here?

– The office. They never use that room.

The policeman switches on the office lights, and a twinge of misgiving runs through Erhard: Did he remember to clean up in there? For some reason, he hadn’t thought the police would spend any time searching inside the flat if the body was discovered on the balcony.

Hassib walks around the desk and strokes the closed laptop. – Whose is this?

– I don’t know. Maybe Raúl’s?

– I’ll take it with me, the policeman says. He picks up the computer and the attached cord.

– What’s going to happen now? Erhard follows the police officer into the living room and onto the balcony. The red stains on the stairwell and the woodwork are still there. – What will happen to her? Will she be taken to forensics now?

– We have to find her family. Do you know where they live?

– She doesn’t have any family here on the island. Maybe on Gran Canaria.

– Girlfriends? Ex-boyfriends?

– Not as far as I’m aware. It was always just Raúl.

– Work?

– A few days a week. Down at the boutique on Señora del Carmen. The one with the elephant. She’d just started.

– Does she have a mobile anywhere?

– I’ve looked, but I haven’t found it.

– Let’s give Señor Pérez-Lúñigo some peace and quiet to find out what happened to your friend. Anyway, we’ll seal off the flat. What is your name and address? We’ll need to speak with you again, I’m sure. He unwraps a long white stick of chewing gum and folds the stick three times before popping it into his mouth. – And we’ve got to find that bastard Raúl Palabras.

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34

He’s hardly able to breathe until they’ve gone. He stands listening, his ear pressed to the door, as the paramedics and the police officer chat all the way to the lift. He hears the lift rattling down the shaft.

The corridor falls silent. Sitting at the dining table, he stares at the front door, anticipating the policeman’s return. But he doesn’t return.

Evening comes. He loves the evening. Aromas swirl up from the street: cinnamon, caramel, urine, sea.

He has to save Beatriz. When she opens her eyes, when she wakes up in a few days, she can tell him what happened. Maybe she can tell him where Raúl is. Erhard can save both of his friends. Suddenly Emanuel Palabras comes to mind. Maybe Raúl called him? Or maybe Raúl’s at his place? He decides to drive home and give him a call. It’s time for a Lumumba.

The house is darker than usual.

Knowing that Alina died at his house, right around the corner where the field begins, makes everything feel unsafe and barren. More than ever.

He checks the generator and snaps on the light, then brings pillows from the sofa and a dining room chair into the bedroom and sits watching Beatriz’s body fill with air, empty, and fill again. The rattle of the wind, a tug and pull, hypnotic and exhausting.

But he doesn’t sleep. He sits rigidly, like a night watchman, and listens to Beatriz’s inhalations, thinking of Raúl the entire time, that he’s dead, and thinking of the little slit in the blanket through which he can insert his hand and feel her vagina. It’s terribly wrong of him, but even now, after having been unconscious for more than twelve hours, she still smells of juice and cinnamon and warm raisins. Just because there are no other women in his life. If there were, his sexual fantasies wouldn’t be about Beatriz. He tries to imagine Emanuel’s Maasai girl and her little ass, which he could see through her sheer dress. But he can’t. She’s too much and not enough. What the hell does he know about women? It’s been so long since he’s had one. There have been women in his life, brief encounters, mostly with the prostitutes he could afford. But he has always picked the older models, so that it wasn’t too embarrassing or strange for either one of them. Not to mention to give them a little business. The young ones have enough work. Those his own age just hang about reading magazines or eating yoghurt. Twice he’s picked the same woman, a Spaniard by the name of Afrodita. That wasn’t her real name, of course, but that’s what she called herself. She was a rather uninteresting woman who might’ve been mistaken for a cashier at a souvenir stand. The first time was at a place called La Mouscita in Puerto – which is now a pizza joint – and he’d actually pointed at another woman, a more exotic-looking mulatto; but the manager had misunderstood Erhard, and Afrodita almost appeared grateful when she was nudged forward. He didn’t have the heart to correct the mistake. Besides, it turned out, she had a strange but pleasurable fellatio technique which Erhard could feel the effects of for weeks afterward. The second time, he’d planned in advance to go right after the mulatto, but she wasn’t there; she might have been out sick or had the day off to attend her little brother’s wedding. During the hesitation that followed, he made eye contact with Afrodita, and he felt that he owed her another round for old time’s sake. He asked her to focus on sucking him off. He enjoyed her talents, but more importantly, he wouldn’t have to watch her remove her clothes. Not because he didn’t like her body, but because the first time she’d been so meticulous about removing and folding her clothes. He’d guessed that she’d once worked at a clothing shop, not a souvenir stand; it took such a dreadfully long time. So much time, in fact, that he lost interest in sex and didn’t get aroused again until she began to breathe warmly on his penis. Afrodita on her knees like a cleaning woman. Afrodita scouring the bottom of a boat. Afrodita diving among turtles. Afrodita talking to him under the water, bubbles pouring from her, downward, between the rocks where she gathers oysters.

Erhard wakes up every half-hour. He listens to Beatriz’s breathing, listens to the device. And every time his eyes scroll down to that dark slit that fits perfectly with his hand. Drowsy and horny, he turns back to his pillows. The night seems endless.

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35

The hills lie in shadow, and the sky is as yellow as an egg-yolk.

He’s standing among the rocks watching the goats trot towards him one after the other. Laurel’s little bell jangles each time he plants his front hooves on the ground.

Emanuel Palabras had been strangely detached on the telephone. He hadn’t seen Raúl for weeks, he said. When Erhard told him that Beatriz was dead and that Raúl was missing, he said Raúl was his mother’s child. Then he laughed as though he were sitting in a sauna shooting the breeze. Erhard has always felt oddly connected to Palabras. Two men out of step with modern times. A generation with a strong work ethic and a rawness towards life. One shouldn’t get mixed up in things one doesn’t understand, Palabras said several times, his pent-up irritation at his son on full display. In the end Erhard had to change the subject: How’s it going with ‘Coral’? Palabras just grunted and ended the call.

He herds the goats back to the house and feeds them. When he scatters the food the pellets clatter against the stones, and he watches the animals sniff at each one before licking them up with their grey tongues. He returns the ladder to its proper place on the other side of the house. Not so far from where he’d found Alina. It amazes him that she’d carried the ladder around the house before she’d crawled up on the roof. Why not just climb up on the same side?

The most important thing right now is to ensure peace and quiet for Beatriz. And to get a new generator, a better, more reliable one. Maybe one of those kinds that turns on and off automatically at night when he goes to bed. He’s wanted one of those for a long time, he’s just never had the money. Of course, it also wasn’t a necessity until now. If it costs less than 1,000 euros, he can buy one. The appliance shop won’t open till the morning.

He goes inside and eats a bowl of corn porridge, keeping an eye on Beatriz and the small drainage bag while listening to the radio. He finds his book and plops into his plush recliner with its worn fabric and its clawed-up armrest, a result of the previous owner’s cat. He reads a few lines in the story about the speckled band. ‘The least sound would be fatal to our plans,’ Holmes says, growing still. Two women die in the story. It’s ironic that Solilla’s book recommendation has become relevant these past few days. In some way, the red thread leads him to the boy in the cardboard box. Though he can’t quite see how, he can’t help but think that it’s all connected.

Did someone beat up Beatriz and do away with Raúl? Someone who frightened Alina so badly that she jumped off the roof? What did it have to do with the boy? Did someone see Raúl and Beatriz out near Cotillo that night of the lightning, and guess they were involved? Raúl and Beatriz weren’t celebrities, but when they entered a room or a restaurant, heads turned. They were memorable. And everyone knew the name Palabras. People whispered it at the farmer’s market and said it aloud at the Yellow Rooster – when the men had had enough to drink.

He hasn’t gotten anywhere with that image Alina found on her mobile. The image from the beach, the car parked at the water’s edge. He caught only a brief glimpse. She had her phone when he left to get her charger. That was the last time he saw Alina alive. The mobile must be somewhere nearby. He lies down on the floor and peers under the shelf and the chair. He lifts the mattress in the hallway. At last he spots it on the coat rack, balanced there as if someone had set it down to put on a jacket, then forgot all about it. He presses the buttons, but it’s still dead. He can’t remember what he did with the charger. It seems like several days ago, weeks even.

Why must everything be so bloody difficult? If he’s ever going to find something on that mobile, he needs some assistance. He thinks about Jorge Ponduel, whom he’d prefer to avoid. He’s a hot-tempered majorero whose worst day of life came when the goat-cheese producer Quesotierro dropped its sponsorship of UD Fuerteventura, the island’s only good football team. Ponduel loves electronics of all kinds and likes to discuss loudspeakers, monitors, and strange devices that can hoover by themselves, items which he has bought or wishes to buy. And he likes to complain about old equipment that’s either broken or just Japanese crap. As far as Erhard recalls, Ponduel works the morning shift Monday to Friday.

Erhard doesn’t usually drive his cab on Sunday afternoons. But he’s restless – and anyway, he needs the hours. Before he leaves, he pulls the curtains closed and turns off the light. Only the respirator lamps reveal her silhouette. In the darkness she looks like someone transforming into a corpse. If Raúl’s the one who beat her up, then he can go to hell. If Raúl is innocent, he’ll thank Erhard one day for having saved her life.

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36

There’s a new salesman in the appliance shop. A stylish Turkish guy with a fashionable goatee. Immediately he begins discussing something he calls the fuel economy. And sound investment-strategy. He shows Erhard a catalogue with photos of big blue generators.

For Erhard, the conversation is one of those that too quickly moves away from its starting point. The man is clever, but all he does is make Erhard feel stupid. He’d thought he could go home with a new generator today; he’d thought he could get it all taken care of in fifteen minutes. But he’s already been staring at this expensive catalogue for thirty minutes, and he’s none the wiser. Except that he’s now aware that his current generator is a kind of miracle; it came with the house and has only been repaired four times. Erhard has just about had it with all this sales chatter. He needs fresh air.

– Up to 100 kilowatts, and it’s all controlled by this remote control, the salesman says.

His name is Jorge, according to his badge.

– It seems a tad too fancy, too big, so…

– You said you’d like it more automated.

– Yes, but not… not like that. I’ll come back another day. Is your boss here tomorrow?

– My boss? You mean Christiano? No, he’s not here any more. I’m the new owner. What’s the problem?

– I just want a generator that’s better than the one I’ve got. Not some fine, pretty machine with all these bells and whistles.

– How much do you have?

– What do you mean?

– Money. How much do you want to spend?

It’s a very direct question, and Erhard has never heard anything like it. Young people. They do whatever the hell they want.

– That’s none of your concern.

– If you want to know how much you can get for your money, it’s easier if you give me an idea.

Erhard sees the time above the door of the shop. It’s almost eleven o’clock. – I have around 1,000 euros.

Jorge claps the catalogue shut, possibly insulted but not defeated. – OK. You know what we’ll do? We’ll go out here.

He exits the shop and starts towards the courtyard. Erhard follows him. He stops beside a broad door and removes some cardboard that covers up appliances on pallets.

– Here, you can have this generator for fifteen hundred.

Erhard sees a colourful, welded-up apparatus with a big tank and what looks like a black suitcase fashioned to a radiator.

– Forty to fifty kilowatts on a good day and at least twenty years of loyal service on an Atlantic fishing vessel. Not good as new, but damn well better than most of the things you can get for fifteen hundred or two thousand euros.

It looks older than the one Erhard already has, but his produces, at most, only twenty-five kilowatts and has only three power outlets. This one has six.

– Can you add a power switch with a timer? Erhard asks.

– Yes, Jorge says without blinking. – For 2,000 euros you can have a timer.

– Seventeen.

– Nineteen.

– OK. But I want it delivered to my house today.

– Will you be paying cash?

– I have one thousand.

– You’ll get it as soon as you pay the entire amount.

– Your old boss let me pay in instalments.

– He’s not here any more, the smartass says.

Which is a problem for Erhard. He needs more power in order to leave Beatriz all day. Right now there’s enough for only four hours on one tank-full, at most. That means he has to drive home and fill it with diesel in the middle of his workday.

– If you want to sell this old scrap metal, you’ll have to accept the thousand euros today and deliver it to my house today. Then I’ll return with the rest of the money, the eight hundred euros, later this week.

But that’s not how it turns out. Erhard can have it for 1,850 euros, excluding delivery. Twenty-two hundred euros in all. In exchange, the salesman promises to wait a week before selling the generator to anyone else.

He drives slowly down Atalaya and then Primo de Rivera, and finally Milagrosa. A customer practically leaps onto his taxi when he turns a corner, but he points at the Not in Service sign. He circles the block, then heads down Calle Nuestra Señora del Carmen.

Erhard is searching for Ponduel, but he can’t find him anywhere. He pulls up alongside Alberto, who’s reading a newspaper in his car, and rolls down his window.

– Morning, Alberto.

Alberto lowers his newspaper and says hello.

– How’s your arrangement with Muñoz going?

– Good, Señor Extranjero, Alberto says.

That means it’s going well, perhaps really well. Because of the arrangement, Alberto is now actually making money. Erhard pretends not to hear extranjero, which is the term natives use to put non-natives in their place. – Have you seen Ponduel?

Alberto looks down the street and points over his shoulder with his thumb. – Try number 62.

– Isn’t he working today?

– There’s nothing to do. There’s a strike in London, Berlin, Madrid. No flights until tomorrow.

Erhard parks opposite number 62. An electronics shop. The owner is a well-known figure – an Irishman who loves poker and beer.

There’s no one in the shop. Erhard heads into the backroom through the beaded curtains. He’s never been in the backroom before, having declined the invitation to play numerous times. The door to the rear courtyard is open. The owner, Cormac, is telling a story about doing business with the Chinese. With his index fingers he’s tugging the skin around his eyes upward. When he sees Erhard, he lowers his hands. – Hermit! he says excitedly.

Ponduel just gawks at Erhard, annoyed. As if he were a little boy unhappy about being picked up by his father. Erhard shakes Cormac’s hand.

– Ponduel, you’re the one I’m looking for.

– That figures, Cormac says, laughing. Probably already pissed.

– What do you want? Ponduel asks.

Erhard had forgotten just how unfriendly Ponduel actually is. Not a bad person, just unfriendly. Does he really want this man’s help? he wonders. They might have to spend several hours together, but he can’t think of another alternative.

– I need your smart head, Ponduel.

– As far as I can recall, you’re not the type to ask for help.

– But I am now. I need someone who knows computers.

– Oh yes, this man is a genius with a computer, Cormac says, handing Erhard a beer.

Ponduel seems reluctant. – What is it? I don’t do that kind of thing any more. There are teenagers who know more than I do. Ask one of them.

– This is different. I need to find something on the Internet.

– Hell, I could do that, Cormac says.

– What? Ponduel asks.

– A photograph.

Cormac erupts in laughter. – Oh, we know what you mean, he guffaws.

Erhard doesn’t know what’s so funny.

– What kind of photo? I need more than that.

Erhard’s afraid it’s going to become complicated now. – I don’t know.

– Where was it taken? Who took it?

– I don’t know.

– So it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.

– I know it exists. I’ve seen it on a mobile phone. But I can’t find it any more.

– Forget it, Ponduel says, gulping the last foam-filled swallow of his beer.

– I’ll pay you. Just let your taximeter run while you help me.

– Eager, are we? Cormac says, ambling out to the shop when a customer arrives.

– What’s the image of?

– I’ll tell you if you help me.

– Tell me. I can’t help you unless you tell me.

– It’s a photograph taken at Cotillo Beach, and it shows something very important. I found it with a friend, but she’s dead now. I would like to find it again.

– Who’s dead? Cormac says, returning.

Erhard hasn’t thought this through properly. Cormac doesn’t seem like the type of person you discuss this kind of thing with. It could get around quickly. – A lady friend, he says simply. – She fell down a stairwell.

– Where’s the mobile phone? Ponduel asks.

– I thought we could use a computer. The screen’s bigger.

– Where’s the computer?

Erhard stares at the floor. Ponduel snorts.

– You can always buy one here, Cormac says.

– So you need to get your hands on a computer and you need help?

Cormac laughs again.

Erhard’s sick of the tone. Why is everyone always just looking out for themselves? Why doesn’t anyone just want to help, without asking for anything in return?

– Forget it, he says. – I wanted to ask you. I don’t know anyone else who knows about computers. I don’t know any teenagers.

Cormac stands. – Ask Luisa Glades.

– Who’s she?

– She teaches at the IT school in Puerto. She lives here in town. Or her mother does, anyway. They say she’s very smart. She bought her computer here a month ago and even put it together herself.

– She sounds expensive. I don’t need an expert, just someone who can find an image.

– You can always ask her. Maybe she can teach you something. I don’t have her number, but you can find it easily enough.

Erhard pauses. – Glades?

– Yes, the hairdresser, the one down in Acorzado.

– Does she have two daughters?

– No. A daughter and a son. And the daughter’s called Luisa.

– And if you want all the juicy details, Cormac’s the man you need, Ponduel says, chuckling.

– Yes, gentlemen. I’m the ears, the eyes, and the travelling switchboard of Fuerteventura. Electronics can make even great men gossip like parrots.

This is a phrase Cormac utters now and then.

Her name is not Luisa Glades, it’s Luisa Muelas, but he doesn’t tell the two men that. Erhard recalls standing, horny and pathetic, outside the girl’s door in Calle Palangre. Inside she might have been sleeping naked on a red leather sofa with a champagne bottle between her long legs, while the fireworks boomed over Isla de Lobos and Bill Haji’s finger was in his pocket. Now it turns out she’s a computer expert.

Ponduel begins to deal the cards.

– Watch your fortune, Erhard says, exiting the courtyard and walking through the overheated shop past all the beeping machines.

Erhard musters his courage before going up the stairs to the salon. Three schoolchildren are getting haircuts. They’re sitting still, lollipops in their mouths. He turns away from the photograph of the daughter that’s hanging on the wall.

Petra is friendliness itself, asking to write his name immediately in the appointment book. But no, he’s not here to reserve a time. Perhaps another day.

He doesn’t even say computer and Luisa before Petra begins to brag about her daughter, and how busy she is. It’s only temporary, Petra promises. She’s getting married soon.

– Oh, I see. Well, congratulations.

– Let me call for you, Petra says, punching the buttons on the salon’s cordless telephone.

They chat for five minutes before Petra tells her daughter about her good customer who needs help, that intelligent older man I’ve told you about, the one from Norway.

The conversation embarrasses him.

She turns to Erhard: – Where do you live? Out in Majanicho, right?

– No, Calle Muelle. Fifth floor. It says Palabras on the door.

Petra repeats the information for her daughter’s benefit. – And when can you do it? she asks him.

– Whenever. He thinks of Beatriz. – Tomorrow after siesta.

– Luisa says Wednesday around 8 p.m.

Erhard simply nods.

Petra hangs up. – Shouldn’t we schedule a haircut since you’re here?

There is an American couple staying at the hotel in Las Dunas.

She complains about the wind. – You could have told me when we booked the vacation, she says.

The man tries to explain how he didn’t know. – It looked great in the photographs!

– You can’t see the wind in a photograph, the wife protests. – You’ve got to do some research.

He drives home straight before siesta. He shops at Super HiperDino and buys some bread, cheap cheese, and a newspaper, which he reads from front to back after checking up on Beatriz, her pulse, her pupils; he shifts her position and massages her arms and thighs to get the blood flowing. He listens for her breathing, putting his ear next to her mouth. But she makes no sound. All that he hears is the huff of the respirator. He knows her body, it seems to him, as well as any woman he’s ever been with or loved.

There’s something extraordinary about being with an unconscious person. The normal rules of intimacy do not apply. He scrubs her with a wash cloth. Carefully. He watches her belly rise and fall, and he recalls sitting beside her on the beach or the rooftop terrace. When she exhales, her breath is gentle and billowing, alarmingly light. Her face seems paler, too. He finds the telephone and calls Michel Faliando, the doctor. A day has passed. There’s been no change or improvement. Michel asks Erhard various questions: Has she moved? Has she…? and so forth. Erhard repeats the same response for each question: no. Her pulse is stable, around sixty-one beats per minute, and the respirator’s working properly. For the first time, he hears uncertainty in the doctor’s voice. If there’s no improvement in the next forty-eight hours, Erhard will need to take her to the hospital. At most, she can survive three or four days without food or liquids.

Lying on the sofa, she’s visible to anyone who might open the front door. He’s tried to move the sofa, but it doesn’t help. It unnerves him. Besides, he needs something to do, so he starts building a bed in the pantry, the lowest-lying room and also the room with the highest ceiling. If he builds the bed on the shelf and encloses it, she can lie up there unnoticed even to someone standing in the pantry. At the same time, he can easily keep an eye on her condition by standing on a crate. There’s even an outlet at the very top, so the respirator can be positioned right next to the mattress.

It’s hard work, but he loses track of time. He saws old laths and screws them into place. He carries some old boards in from the shed, balances them first on top of the shelf and then the laths. One of the boards is too wide, and he’s forced to hack off the corners so that he can wedge it through the door and up under the ceiling. When the boards are in place, he finds an extension cord and arranges a small lamp along the wall. He hauls the mattress on which Alina had lain up to the bed and seals it with yet another broad lath, which he screws in place.

When the sun snips the hills in two, he drinks another glass of cognac from a wine glass and listens to Gillespie on Radio Mucha. During the news report, there’s no mention of the boy. Everyone on the island has happily forgotten about him.

– But not me, he tells Beatriz.

Now comes the hardest part. The worst part.

First he carries the respirator up to the bed and plugs it in; it hisses like a sick cat. Then he lifts her onto his shoulder while holding the catheter and drainage bag, and he bears her out of the room. One step at a time. He climbs onto a crate and then a chair, and he rolls her cautiously over the lath and onto the mattress, before nudging her carefully towards the wall, away from the edge and into the corner, illuminated only by the faint bulb in the small reading lamp. He affixes the drainage bag on a lower shelf. He attempts to figure out how to turn down the beeping respirator, but is afraid to mess with anything he doesn’t understand.

He puts everything back in the pantry: tins, old loops of twine, bottles of cooking oil and vinegar. He throws nothing out, even the stuff that’s past date. Finally the room resembles a pantry again. An unappealing pantry, but the illusion remains intact.

Next he checks the generator and fills it with diesel, hoping it’ll be one of the last times he’ll have to do so. He makes himself a plate of cheese and eats, gazing out the window at the road. The daylight is fading, and the dusty ground is getting darker and darker.

The police arrive at nine o’clock.

He’d figured they would come earlier.

A single officer, his silhouette in the black car, headlights bouncing over potholes. It’s Bernal. He can almost recognize the sound of his cowboy boots. Erhard lets him knock a few times before he opens the door.

– Hermit.

– Bernal.

Erhard doesn’t invite him in. Not right away.

– What is it with you?

– What do you mean?

– Bill Haji. The boy on the beach. Keeping company with Beatriz Colini, who’s now dead, and Raúl Palabras, who’s now vanished without a trace.

– It’s a small island.

– A small world if you ask me.

– You know me. I had nothing to do with her death.

Which is true, Erhard thinks.

– I know, but we’ve toyed with the idea. For now you’re not a suspect.

– They are my two best friends. I would never dream of…

– Were.

– What?

– Were your two best friends. Past tense.

– Raúl Palabras might still be alive.

– Do you know where he is?

– No. I told the other officer the same thing.

– Why would he hurt his girlfriend?

– He didn’t hurt her. She must’ve fallen. Raúl would never hurt her.

– Are we talking about the same Raúl Palabras who was twice charged with assault?

– He would never touch Beatriz. Not like that.

– Hassib wrote in his report that you spent an hour with her before she died. What were you doing?

– Trying to save her.

– How?

– By helping her, arranging her comfortably and talking to her.

– For an hour?

– A doctor came.

– Who?

– Does it even matter? He came and said there was nothing to be done. He left right after she died.

– He’s a witness. He’s a doctor. We need to speak with him.

– He was there as a friend of Beatriz’s. I don’t care to tell you who.

– I can arrest you and find the doctor myself.

– I know.

– When did you find her?

Erhard repeats the story he told Hassib.

– Eleven o’clock? You’re sure? Bernal asks.

– Yes. After I found her and made her comfortable, I went up to the rooftop terrace to look for Raúl. A woman on one of the other roofs saw me. She can confirm the time.

– Did Beatriz say anything?

– She mumbled something. She said Raúl’s name.

– Did she tell you what happened?

– She said she’d fallen.

– On the stairs?

– Yes, that’s what it looked like.

– Lorenzo says that both her ankles were broken, and that her face was a complete mess. That’s quite an atypical fall, if you ask me.

– How should I know? That’s how I found her.

Bernal gazes down the path as the goats trot towards the house.

– What’s with the horn?

– That’s how it looked when I got him.

– Let me in for a beer, Hermit. We need to talk about this.

Erhard had feared this would happen. But he doesn’t see how he can refuse. – I’m on my way to bed, he says.

– No you’re not. You’re staying up all night, the policeman says, stepping past Erhard and into the house.

Erhard fetches two lukewarm beers from the pantry. He glances briefly up at the bed, but he can’t see or hear Beatriz. He switches off the light and hands one of the beers to Bernal.

– You’ve rearranged, Bernal says.

Erhard looks around the room. What is it that he sees? – You mean the sofa?

The sofa he’d moved for Beatriz.

– Possibly. The room is different. He turns and looks at Erhard. – I have something important to tell you.

Pause. Silence. Too much silence.

– Raúl Palabras has fled the country.

– Have you found him?

Erhard feels a strange form of relief that Raúl is still alive, followed by anger that he’s fled from his crime. From his girlfriend.

– We have a photo of him at the airport. According to the passenger list, it was taken just before he boarded a plane.

– To where?

– I can’t tell you that.

– Spain?

– No.

– If it was taken before ten o’clock, there are only three possibilities: Casablanca, London, and Madrid.

– We’ll get our hands on him. As soon as he sets foot on one of the islands.

– I hope so, Erhard says, and nearly means it.

– OK, listen up, Bernal says. – If there’s anything, anything at all, that you’re not telling us, you need to fess up now. My colleague Hassib thinks you’re lying, that you’re hiding something. He wanted to bring you in, but I vouched for you. Bernal eyes Erhard as if it’s a question. – You need to tell me if there’s something we should know.

– I can repeat what I’ve already said, if you wish. I haven’t killed anyone, if that’s what you think.

Bernal grins as if he can’t imagine Erhard killing anyone and yet that’s exactly what he was thinking. – The girl falls down and dies, and Raúl flees the country. It can hardly be a coincidence.

– All I can tell you is that I found Beatriz. And that Raúl was gone.

– That’s what I’m saying. You’re clean. Hassib says you’re fucking with us. Those are his words, not mine. But you’re all right. He rises from his chair. – Beatriz Colini had a cousin and an aunt in Madrid. They can’t come to her service, or maybe they didn’t have the money to pay for tickets. If you wish to come, you’ll be one of the few. It’s tomorrow at five o’clock. Out near Alto Blanco.

– Why there?

– On the request of Emanuel Palabras. He’s paying for the service.

– Will he be there?

– I don’t think so. Thanks for the beer, Bernal says, setting it on the table. He hasn’t touched it. When he reaches the door, he turns: – One last thing. If you’re still wondering about that case with the boy, then, well, we didn’t get any further. The case is still open, but no one’s working on it.

– I thought you were going to close it with a false confession.

– She’s vanished. That’s what her kind does. She probably got cold feet. And we haven’t heard from our local sponsor, so you can rest easy again.

– You still haven’t found the mother.

– The earth keeps spinning, Hermit. New crimes are committed that need to be solved, and you’re sure keeping us busy.

Bernal walks out the door. Into the brown darkness of night.

‌

37

On Tuesday he drives from early morning to late, much too late. When he gets home, he’s absolutely whipped. Tired and out of sorts. He’s only had two breaks all day, each time to fill diesel in the generator, check on Beatriz, and grab a bite to eat. During the course of the day, he’s come to realize that earning 1,200 euros quickly is next to impossible so long as he’s obligated to share half of his earnings with TaxiVentura. When the day is over, he can only put 128 euros aside. It’ll take him several weeks to earn the money for the generator. Goddamned generator.

Standing on a crate in the pantry and listening to Beatriz, he sees the small, transparent mouthpiece covering her mouth steam up. She says nothing. She’s begun to smell a little, but he doesn’t dare shift her around or roll her over. Too exhausted to remove his clothes, he falls asleep on the sofa, stiff, inhuman.

He’s driving along a tall dike between reality and a little village bathed in sunlight, where people are walking in and out of restaurants. He hears footfalls outside the house and knows that he’s dreaming when he sees the body of a young woman slicked from head to toe with cooking grease from a pan, and he can’t quite make himself believe it’s all in his imagination. Someone jolts him with electricity.

But they’re just leg cramps followed by a stinging pain, as if someone has warmed his veins up to ninety degrees Celsius. Before he can question what the dream meant, he clambers to his feet and hurries out. The wind is strong today, and it rips at the car. The downtown streets are quiet. For several hours, he’s parked in the queue on High Street.

It hardly matters. It doesn’t do any good. And, in truth, he can’t stomach talking to anyone. Around ten o’clock, a man tries to barter a trip to Puerto for his family. Erhard accepts the man’s offer, but it’s all for naught. The man and his wife argue, then drag their daughter with them into a cafe. He tries to read Doyle, but he can’t.

At noon he snaps on his turn signal and exits the queue, heading to Café Miza.

There’s no one there. The place tends to be filled with students, young tourists who’ve found the place in their Lonely Planet guidebooks where it is named one of the top-five cafes with a scenic view. When he enters, Miza has the music turned up and is busy cleaning the coffee machine. She’s surprised to see him at this time of day. Even with young people there’s a certain unwillingness to change routines, Erhard notices, so he chooses to drink his coffee in the cafe instead of the car, as he usually does. As she scours the large machine, humming along with the music, Miza glances at him from time to time. She asks Erhard how his work is going.

– Fine, he says.

He gazes out at the sea. Nothing changes. Not a cloud in the sky. Just the hypnotic flow of waves crashing against the shore at knee height, rising, and then slipping across the rocks only to dissipate against the cliffs. The sky is clear. The invisible winds wash everything away. Everything is pure blue. Everything is white. Like last year. And the year before that. It’s not as poetic as it sounds.

The telephone rings. Miza puts down her rag and goes to the kitchen to answer. As she listens to the caller, she switches on her computer screen and punches a few keys. Someone must be making a reservation. – We look forward to seeing you, Miza concludes, clicking around on the keyboard. She’s in her mid forties and seems like a natural on the computer.

Erhard scans the beach and the road, then stands. – I’ve been coming here for, what, five years?

Miza laughs. – More like ten.

– You’ve never asked me about anything but my work until today.

– No. Your personal life is none of my business.

– You’re a good person, Erhard says.

– Thank you, Señor Jørgensen. She reassembles the coffee machine and brews a pot of coffee. – We try.

He looks at the computer. It would probably only take her ten minutes to find the images, but it would take him several hours, days, to find them himself. There’s no reason to bother Petra’s daughter with this; she’s a computer expert, she would just laugh at him and think he’s even more old-fashioned than he appears. But asking Miza would be easy; she has been his acquaintance for many years, maybe even his friend. Even if they’ve mostly just exchanged pleasantries about the weather, coffee, football, and fishermen.

Miza’s face knots in concern. – What’s wrong?

– I’m trying to find a photograph.

She glances around as if he might’ve lost it in the cafe. – I haven’t seen anything here, if that’s what you mean.

He looks at her. – I’ll find it.

She laughs. Although her husband seems pretty stiff, she’s got a good sense of humour. – Aren’t you working today?

He nods.

He drives to Alto Blanco. Takes a bouquet of white roses with him. They cost seventeen euros. Flown over from the mainland. He parks on the gravel lot and walks up the long stairway, which feels as if it’s going downward. The hilltop offers a flat, white landscape, but also a knockout view. The dust of a prehistoric volcano has settled permanently over the spot, so everything is white as though sprinkled with flour all the way to the sea. A little church made of black slate stands in the centre of the hill. Rock-solid and inviting, it’s the church for the island’s elite. They like the colours and the view, which transform wedding photographs into perfume advertisements. There’s even a flagstone area for camera tripods, ten square metres, where the paparazzi can smoke cigarettes as they wait for the bride and groom and their celebrity friends to exit the church.

He’s never been inside. He pauses at the wide door and peers in, but it’s dark, and he approaches only after he hears some voices within. He’s early.

Inside, the shape is that of an octagon, practically ascetic. Ten raw wooden benches in the centre face a granite table. Above the table, a window is cut in the shape of a cross, self-illuminating and heartrendingly simple. Standing on the left side of the church, a choir of young boys wearing ugly yellow trainers below their black vestments silently button each other’s sleeves. Meanwhile, the priest is talking to a man in a black suit, who hurries out a side door when Erhard enters. One person is already seated up front, the girl who runs the boutique where Beatriz worked. She’s dressed in her smartest city outfit: a little hat with a veil and sunglasses, an ensemble befitting a rock star’s widow.

A few other girls soon arrive, clearly friends of the boutique, but no one Erhard recognizes. Affected by the atmosphere and the light and the choir, which has begun to sing, they greet each other politely. They’re all dapperly dressed, but one of the girls is wearing a very short skirt, which she tugs down. On the table, the altar, is an egg-shaped urn. The service is typically held before the cremation and with an open casket, but they chose not to do that here, so the ceremony will take place around the urn.

Now that he’s noticed the urn, it occupies the entire room.

Alina.

Because it’s actually her, of course. He hasn’t given her a thought since he switched her with Beatriz. Now he recalls that evening he saw her at the nightclub, the night she wound up in bed with that lead singer. How she lay there, her legs spread, and spoke to Erhard like the old fool he is. Completely indifferent and dumb and lewd all at once, so that all he could do was to fantasize about having his way with her, even if his entire nervous system screamed that she was a wretched harpy from whom he needed to keep his distance. Insolent, that’s the word for her.

Now she’s dead. He’s the only one who truly knows whose ashes are in that urn. Even though it wasn’t his fault, she was in his custody when she died. And it’s by his hands that her death has concealed Beatriz’s survival. Undoubtedly, there would be other kinds of people in the church had this been Alina’s real funeral. Maybe it would be packed with the girls from Guisguey, or maybe it would be empty. She probably wouldn’t have been buried, perhaps not even cremated, but thrown into a grave scooped out by a Bobcat, just like the boy. Because no one knew Alina. Because no one would pay to see a whore laid to rest. So in a way, Alina got a taste of life in first class, what she’d always dreamed of. Sitting in the back row, he feels the entire building whirl. At the same time, the bells begin their rhythmic pealing.

Why the hell did she go up on the roof? What possessed her to climb up there? If she was so desperate, why didn’t she use all her energy to attack Erhard when he returned like she’d done the day before? When he left her she’d been angry, and yet they’d been working on a project together, and she’d asked him to get her charger. Why would she choose to jump from the roof?

Right when the bells stop chiming, the door bursts open, and Emanuel Palabras and a bizarre troupe of servants enter, filling the benches on the left side of the church. They’re all dressed in black except for Palabras, who looks like a parrot in a green and blue suit and a white narrow-brimmed fedora. It’s the first time Erhard has seen Emanuel beyond his property, and just as all the rumours would have it, he’s not alone. With him are men, including his guards and even his gardener, Abril, and his Maasai girls, all of whom serve as buffers between the real world and Palabras. All conversation goes through them.

The priest is standing with his back to the assembly, but when he turns towards the pews, he seems surprised by the sudden spike in attendance. He raises his hands in a friendly gesture of greeting. Then begins. In that moment, Erhard has never felt so powerful a need to hear something meaningful, something eloquent about life and death, about the porousness of humanity, about the eternal search for meaning and familiar faces, about the longing for connectedness and loving hands, about the little person that just wants to be loved and feel the warmth of a mother’s lips behind her ear, about the hot, throbbing limbs that long to be held and licked, about the many hours one waits and waits and waits before one dies and dies. And the priest opens his mouth and recites from the Bible, a long passage about a golden calf, a story that Erhard remembers as a drawing in a children’s book he once had with a tattered spine. An angel walks in front of us, the priest says, then asks it to guide Beatrizia Aurelia Colini. The choir sings. Erhard’s gaze shifts from the cross above the table with the egg-shaped urn to the grey floor, and he doesn’t look up until the bells once again chime and the priest is on his way towards the open door. The man in the suit walks behind him, a church servant, holding the urn in his white-gloved hands. The entire assemblage follows them. First Palabras and his retinue, then the shop manager and the girls, and finally Erhard. Hassib, the policeman, is standing near the exit; he’s in uniform and he’s studying Erhard’s face. Or at least that’s how it feels. Erhard greets him with a nod and walks past him, into the now pale light outside. The priest and the church servant continue along a path that veers around the back of the church and down the hill, until they come to a plateau and a place with flower pots filled with sprays of fresh red flowers. The procession halts next to a slate-grey wall with metal containers inscribed with white letters. The mausoleum. It’s regarded by many on the island as one of the most exclusive places to end one’s days. But despite the flowerpots with lilies and roses, despite the nameplates with silhouettes of the deceased and small angels, Erhard still thinks the mausoleum looks like an ordinary row of PO boxes.

The egg-shaped urn is placed in one of the containers, and before the lid is sealed, the priest says a few words in Latin and blesses the parishioners. This is followed by a moment’s silence, and the sea is all that can be heard. The breath of the waves. The high point of the service, Erhard thinks; finally, the painful point about the incontrovertibility of existence: our finiteness against the sea that roars on. Life as acts we can practise but once.

They head back to their cars.

The last thing he needs right now is to feel mortal. Or to meet the policeman’s eyes. He hustles until his knees ache, getting ahead of the boutique girls and up to the car park. But when he reaches his vehicle, one of the men from Palabras’s flock catches up to him. Señor Palabras would like to speak with him. Would Erhard please come with him? The man points at a gigantic Mercedes in the middle of the car park. Erhard follows him and waits a few minutes in the backseat. The interior is of beige leather with plenty of legroom, so much so that Erhard can’t touch the front seat with his feet, even when he stretches. Then Emanuel Palabras climbs in, along with two skinny Maasai girls. Charles, one of the guards, sits in the passenger seat. His right foot is in a cast.

– A sad day, Emanuel Palabras says.

– Yes, Erhard says.

– I can’t say I knew her, unfortunately. My son wasn’t one to show her off.

Erhard doesn’t understand that. In his experience, Raúl was proud of Beatriz. Maybe it was his father’s company Raúl didn’t seek out. He says nothing.

– I believe he’d grown tired of her, Palabras goes on.

– We’ve just come from her funeral, Erhard says. – Shouldn’t we let that sink in?

Emanuel Palabras grins. – Do you think time will change anything?

– If you have an opinion about their relationship, maybe today’s not the best day to share it. Respect the dead.

– Respect, yes. But not dishonesty. Dishonesty does no one any good.

– What are you trying to say?

– Don’t be offended, Piano Tuner. I’m the one who paid for this funeral. I won’t bring shame upon this girl. I’m just trying to understand my foolish son. Why has he acted this way?

– So you’ve heard that he left the country?

– Yes, my friends with the police like to talk.

My friends. It didn’t sound so nice coming from a man like Palabras.

– And you probably think he was the one who killed her? Just like all your police friends do?

– They don’t seem to think so any more. Thanks in part to you.

That’s news to Erhard. – Good, he says simply.

– I’ve explained to them that there’s no one in our family even capable of removing a dummy from a baby’s mouth. We’re lambs in God’s great game.

That’s probably carrying it a little too far. As far as Erhard’s aware, both Emanuel and Raúl have beaten up a fair share of people, more than an entire football team’s worth.

– God only knows, Erhard says, feeling Palabras’s eyes on him.

– But no more chatter about that. How are you doing?

Every alarm bell goes off in Erhard’s head. Emanuel Palabras has never asked him such a question.

– In spite of today’s funeral, my good friend’s disappearance, and an unfortunate decline in tourism and pianos on the island, I’d say it’s going swimmingly.

– Tourism? When the hell did that begin to concern you?

– It’s macroeconomics. When the tourists go elsewhere and the local economy goes bust, it means fewer taxi rides.

– You continually surprise me, Piano Tuner. I like it when people see the big picture. My son wasn’t that strong on such practical matters, but he certainly understood people. I may have been the one to discover you, but he was the one who saw your potential.

Now the alarm bells ring even louder. Compliments aren’t free when Palabras is doling them out. An offer is imminent.

– I’ve been here the entire time, Erhard says. Long before you discovered anything at all.

– You just suddenly appeared. Like a sea god from the water.

It sounds so stupid that Erhard laughs. Palabras laughs too, as do the two Maasai girls, even though they probably don’t understand a word of it. Or maybe they understand everything. It’s impossible to read their faces.

Erhard moves to open the door.

– Hey, Emanuel says, raising his hand. – Are you leaving?

– Are we done here?

– When do we meet again?

– The first Thursday of the month. As always.

– We should see each other more often.

– Why? Erhard smiles, but he asks the question in earnest.

– Look at us. We have much in common.

– Age and a weakness for expensive pianos are probably the only things we have in common.

– Au contraire. We’re cut of the same cloth.

Erhard doesn’t quite see it that way. – What is it you want?

– I want to hire you.

– To do what?

– You’re smart. I’m sure we can figure something out.

– I have a job. Two jobs.

Three if one counts taking care of Beatriz, he thinks, but he doesn’t say that out loud.

– But you can use the money, no?

– I manage.

– There will be other benefits.

Erhard regards Palabras intently. He doesn’t understand what he means by ‘other benefits’.

– I manage.

– The offer stands, says Palabras.

Erhard gets out and the car speeds off. There’s no one left in the car park but him. The wind swirls up motes of white dust.

‌

38

Twice he wakes to the sound of a motor, but apart from the pumping of the respirator, he hears nothing. Just the insistent howl of the wind soughing across the stones, and the rustling of the goats alongside the house. Maybe they can’t find their food and are searching for shelter to rest. Erhard gets up and goes outside naked to wash himself at the big washbasin in the courtyard.

The light is on its way across the island. Behind his woodpile, he finds a pair of underwear and jeans that the wind blew off the clothesline. He pulls them on, then gobbles raw bacon on crisp-bread. Radio Mucha’s playing Coleman Hawkins’s version of ‘Out of Nowhere’. A 1937 recording from Paris.

He repositions Beatriz, checks her catheter, and tells her what’s in store for the day. It’s a Wednesday. He’s always a little livelier on Wednesdays.

At precisely 10:15 a.m., he picks up Aaz, who’s already waiting with his backpack at the front door of the institution; he climbs in without a word. Erhard lets him roll down the window and stick his hand out, like a seagull against the wind. There’s something deeply moving about this, and it causes Erhard to drive slowly and cautiously.

So, Erhard, how’s it going?

– Like shit, Erhard replies. He knows Aaz likes it when he swears.

Don’t tell me you’re busy. I know that you don’t do anything but read your boring books and drive me around every Wednesday.

– Aaz, you hick, you know I’d prefer to drive you every day.

You’re doing well?

– I’m busy, Erhard says, nudging Aaz. – But not with work. Beatriz is hurt. I need to take care of her.

She’s Raúl’s girlfriend?

– Was, Aaz. She was Raúl’s girlfriend. He took off, vanished.

Something must’ve happened to him. If he knew Beatriz was hurt, he would come back. He loves her.

– You’ve got a lot to learn about love, Aaz.

But why would he try to hurt Bea? He loves her. It couldn’t have been him.

– For the same reason a mother stuffs her child inside a cardboard box and abandons him in a car on a beach. Because sometimes we’d rather destroy everything around us than change ourselves.

No, no. That’s not right. If you love someone, if you have ever looked another person in the eyes, then you can’t hurt them.

– People are strange. Trust me, Aaz. I’ve driven a taxi for many years. I’ve been alive a long time, and I’ve seen the worst side of humanity.

My mother loves me. She loves me so much that she gave me to Santa Marisa so I would have a better life, even though she wanted to hold onto me.

– Your mother’s unusual. So are you.

No one abandons a child.

– You’re wrong, Aaz. But if we’re lucky, Raúl will turn up, after having screwed around with some female singer or gone on some drinking binge in Dakar. That’s how he is.

They drive through the town of Lorques which has a petrol station. Aaz glances at Erhard, as if he doesn’t like the silence.

– I’m supposed to meet the hairdresser’s daughter. Luisa.

She’s too young for you. In the photograph at the salon she looks like someone my age. Aaz grins, but only with his eyes.

– Just because we’re separated by a few years doesn’t mean we can’t meet up. She’s just going to help me with a computer issue I have.

You know everything about pianos, but nothing about computers.

– One can’t be good at everything, Aaz. You’ll have to come with me to the beach soon.

Liana won’t allow it.

– I know that. I’ve talked to your mum. She needs to write Liana a note, which I will give to her. We’ll go out and watch the kite surfers with their huge kites. You like them from a distance, but wait until you see them out on the water. Where I come from, children love to play in the leaves that fall from the trees in the autumn. The leaves fall like butterflies, and kids try to catch them.

Can I catch the kites on the beach?

– No, not really. But you can watch them swirl about. Just like the leaves from the trees.

The leaves don’t fall from the trees here.

– No. But we’ve got the sun.

He follows Aaz inside, and Mónica lets him use the telephone in the kitchen. He calls the doctor. He hears them playing the piano in the living room and whispers into the receiver. He stands at the kitchen door gazing out at Mónica’s rear garden, which resembles a typical English garden with roses and bushes, a small bench, and a bird cage with a pair of canaries.

The doctor is busy and sounds irritated, but promises to swing by in the evening. A policeman called his wife last night asking for him.

– She knows nothing. But I’m supposed to call him back today. What do I tell him?

– I’ve told them that a doctor examined Beatriz while she was alive, but that she’s dead now.

– She’s dead? The line crackles.

– No. But that’s what the police think. And they need to continue thinking that.

– I don’t understand.

– Don’t call them. If they call you, you only examined her when she was alive and dying. That’s it. We’ll talk more tonight.

Erhard sits down and watches them at the piano. Aaz is so tall that his mother looks like a little girl sitting beside her father. In his mind he thinks of her as an old woman, but it occurs to him that she’s probably the same age as himself. But she’s not his type. Or rather: Erhard isn’t hers. She may no longer be wealthy, and she may have sealed herself off in her lonely world, but he’s got the feeling that she has lived a life of culture, and she’s more sophisticated and distinguished than anyone he’s met on the island. She has these eyes that penetrate everyone as though she once, long ago, used up all her energy and just can’t do it any longer. It’s not that she’s unkind or cynical, just tired: tired after a stretch of arduous longing. She’s almost – almost – like Erhard, just a little happier, a warmer human being. Maybe it’s because she’s a woman, and women have always seemed more willing to love and be loved than men.

A small TV rests on a crocheted doily, and the local news is on. Mónica has turned the volume down. There’s a feature about the casino. Now something’s wrong with the environmental-approval paperwork. Critics reference the oil spill that happened in 2009, when a large cruise ship with a casino on board ran aground near Puerto and flushed 5,000 litres of oil into the water just beyond the harbour. Seagulls and fish were smothered in oil, and the entire area had to be cleaned up – while facing sharp criticism from a Spanish delegation from Greenpeace that had sailed out to meet them. It would be much different with a casino on land, of course, but casino operations on the Grand Canary islands at the beginning of the aughts prompted several suits due to the horrible working conditions for custodial staff and croupiers – and illegal rubbish disposal. On the television, Regional President del Fico and one of the island’s heavy-weight entrepreneurs are walking around the harbour as it appeared a few months ago. Back then it was basically just rocks, kelp, and old rowboats. In the background, a fisherman is fixing his net, which is all tangled up. Then they show images from the harbour: white yachts and a champagne bottle floating in the water.

Erhard rises to turn off the television. But Mónica comes over and changes the channel to a children’s programme featuring a turtle and a fish talking underwater. They aren’t really underwater; they’re hand puppets performing against a painted backdrop.

– I don’t want him watching the news. He doesn’t need to do that, she says.

Then she prepares strong Italian coffee. Erhard says nothing, but returns to his chair and lets her pour him a cup. Her arms look old, but he can see the strap of her black bra on her brown-skinned shoulder. He glances over at the computer on the desk.

– Do you know how to use one of those?

– I love it.

This surprises him.

– I’ve never learned how to use one.

– It’s like using a typewriter. Just easier.

– I never learned how to use a typewriter, either. I know everything about pianos, but nothing about computers.

She smiles falsely. – Does it even matter? You manage without one.

– I might as well just say it. I have a problem, Erhard says.

– Excuse me, Mónica whispers, as if Aaz isn’t allowed to hear. – What do you mean?

– I need to find a photograph on the Internet.

– Are you asking for my help?

– If I could’ve, I would’ve done it myself.

– But are you asking me to help you?

She makes it sound as if he’s asked something else entirely.

– Yes, he says.

– Why do men have such a hard time asking for help?

He watches her sit at the computer and strike a few keys. She glances up, then turns to him. – So are you going to help me or not? he asks.

She points at the seat beside her as if it’s a piano bench they will share. He gets up and sits beside her. He can feel her hip against his. He describes what Alina found. An image from Cotillo. Taken by some surfers.

She clicks on a page and quickly finds a bunch of images. Hundreds, thousands flowing down the screen. – Do you recognize any of them?

– No, he says. What he sees are images of tourists, all similar. – The photograph was taken around New Year’s Day, a few days afterward, maybe a week? He tries counting backward. – 5 January?

– Such pretty photographs of our little island, she says.

She may be right. The sun, the waves, the young men and women. But he’s only interested in one photo.

– I’ve never been out there, Mónica says.

– That one, can I see that one? He points.

– It’s not easy getting out there. And it’s much too hot.

But it’s not the right photograph. It’s not even from Cotillo.

– The photographer’s name, Erhard says. But he can’t remember the name. It had something to do with a child.

– A name would help, she says, her hovering hands prepared to type. He’s surprised at how natural all this seems to her. All these women and their computers.

– Did you take a computer class?

– No. I had a friend, and we wrote emails. That got me started. But today I use it for everything. Mostly to listen to music, or read up about Aaz’s illness, and succulents. They’re a kind of plant, a cactus, she goes on to explain when she sees the confusion on Erhard’s face.

He can’t recall the photographer’s name. He’s about to say Mix. It’s something that sounds like Mix. And something to do with a child. Fever. – Fevermix, he says.

– I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.

– MitchFever! That’s what it was.

– How do you spell that?

He spells it for her. He remembers now. The name was written inside a little box on the image. A child with a fever.

She keys in the name. That changes the search. Now there are fewer photographs. At the top of the screen, he sees the image of a girl lying in her bed, shirtless, and he senses Mónica’s discomfort. She glances at Aaz and scrolls down the page. – What is it we’re looking for here? she whispers. – Is it something naughty?

– No.

He’s just as startled as she is.

– You promise?

– Yes. Just keep doing what you’re doing, I’ll look for the photo.

The beach. Some boys in wet suits. Feet in the sand. More photos of the girl. In a chair, at a bar, wearing a hat, kissing a girl. Mónica shifts uncomfortably. She’s more prudish about these matters than Erhard had thought.

– There! That one.

Mónica clicks on the image, enlarging it instantly.

It’s the same image. Just better. Closer. Clearer.

– It looks as though the website is called Magicseaweed. And the photograph is called 01062011_42, she says, writing the number down on a notepad beside the computer. – So you’ll remember. The photo is in a folder called heather_weekend. She points at the screen. – From 6 January. Does that sound right?

The photograph: The VW is parked on the beach. The sand is rather dry, greyish. There’s water up around the front wheels. And behind the window: the boy, his dark eyes.

– Is there a way to see more images like this without losing this one?

– Yes, now that we’ve found it, we can find it again without any trouble. Tell me, what is it you’re looking for?

– The car.

Mónica clicks on something and another image pops up.

It’s the same angle. Down on the corner where the surfers always sunbathe. The date reads 5 January. The photo is called newyear_cotillo. Someone named Carlos III Santierrez posted it online. The beach is empty.

– So it’s in the first image, but not this one. Can I see the other one again?

She pulls up the first image.

It seems to convey the same mood as the one Erhard saw at police headquarters. The car’s black windows seem to merge right with his soul. As if the darkness is continually expanding and he’ll eventually be able to stick his hand through it to pull the boy, unharmed, out into reality.

– What is it with the image? The car?

– Does it say where he lives, Mitchfever?

– I doubt it. It’s probably just some funny name he came up with. That’s what many people do. Use another name. She types MitchFever into a narrow field and a list pops up.

In one way he’s happy that he doesn’t need to figure out how everything works. It would require too much effort on his part, much more than it took him to learn how to play instruments or understand music. And why would he need to? When this is over, it might be another several years before he’ll need to find something else. Still, when he sees what one can do with a computer, how easy it is to find information and images and news, he has the urge to discover what’s going on in Denmark, maybe even find photos of his family. Perhaps Annette and the girls, if he could figure it out.

– I think it’s a young lady, Mónica says. She clicks on some text. A new page shows a tiny image of a girl who looks like a boy, with short, dyed hair and large glasses. – It appears as though she lives here on the island. Down near Marabu. I can’t find her address, but many of the photographs were taken down there.

– How do I find her address?

– You could drive down to Marabu and show her photograph to some of the locals. Surely they know her. She sure knows how to attract attention.

– She’s just a child, Erhard says, staring at a photograph she’s taken of herself in the mirror. Her wetsuit is pulled down around her waist, and one arm covers her breasts.

– A confused little girl, Mónica says.

– Shouldn’t she be living at home with Mum and Dad?

– I hope she is.

– Not judging by these pictures.

– Look. The images all have numbers, Mónica says, pointing at the screen. This one’s called 11122010_107. And the next one’s 11122010_144.

– What does that mean?

– It means that some photos haven’t been posted online. Maybe there’s something she doesn’t want to show her mum and dad, or someone else.

– And the photographs from Cotillo?

Mónica returns to the photos from Cotillo. She toggles back and forth between the images. – Yes, she says. Here’s image number 43. The next one is number 010620111_48. Four images are missing.

Erhard drives Aaz home.

Aaz’s hand is sticking out the window. Just like the trip down here, Aaz is happy, easygoing. He keeps smiling, looking about as if everything’s lovely, even though he’s completely walled off from the world. He’s never been to the movie theatre in Puerto or down to the corner to buy an ice cream with five scoops.

Normally Erhard keeps the conversation going, but now he doesn’t know what to say. Your mother’s a nice lady, he wants to say, but why has he never said that before?

It doesn’t usually bother Erhard, but he notices that Aaz shows no sign that he’s just said farewell to his mother, whom he won’t see for another week. And it calls to mind the thought he has every time he tries to understand why he drives Aaz each Wednesday, for free, when the boy – who except for a few smiles deep in his eyes – shows no sign of recognition or happiness. On the one hand Erhard drives him out of pure love, but on the other hand, it’s because of the selfish, distant hope that Aaz will one day say thank you. Thank you for taking the trouble. Thank you for talking to me.

He’s touched that Mónica helped him, even if she wound up thinking Erhard was after something other than the car: the girl photographer. He wanted to say, What the hell are you talking about, woman? But he didn’t want to seem ungrateful. She could be my own daughter, he wanted to say. The girl was quite a bit younger than his youngest, Mette, who is over thirty now, but it wasn’t that far-fetched. He could see why she would think that. He’d stared too long at the photo the girl had taken of herself in the mirror, and maybe also at a photo from the beach in Morro, where she lay on a blanket without a stitch of clothing on. He’d never visited a nudist beach, and the sight of the girl had completely taken his breath away, even if he couldn’t really see anything. It wasn’t his fault. Mónica reacted as though he shouldn’t feel that kind of desire any more. As if he ought to have given up on his sex life years ago. But desire didn’t seep from one’s body the nearer one came to seventy. On the contrary, he could almost say. Sometimes, all his years of inactivity caused him to tingle with an abstract arousal at gouges in the tabletop or goat nipples, or things that resembled things that resembled things he once had access to, closed country now, accessible only via the narrow gate of his memory. His shame overwhelmed him. If he’d felt any lust staring at those photographs, it was gone now.

At Santa Marisa Erhard says goodbye, but Aaz says nothing. Just walks through the broad front door. He doesn’t turn around, and doesn’t wave.

The doctor stands on the crate examining Beatriz. – You can’t keep her here, he says, rocking her slightly so he can get his hand underneath her. – She needs to see a neurologist in Puerto. She’s dehydrated, and her stool is dry.

That’s where the strange smell is from, Erhard guesses. Like a pottery workshop. He can’t bear to watch. Instead, he rummages around in the kitchen. – Can’t you do something?

The doctor looks unhappy. – You can’t keep…

– A miracle can occur just as easily here as at a hospital.

– I’m not talking about miracles. I’m talking about equipment. If she has intracranial bleeding that isn’t treated.

– Either she stays here and survives, or she goes to a hospital and dies, Erhard says, sounding more confident than he feels.

The doctor removes a plastic tube from his kit and steps up on the crate again. – Did you turn off the respirator at any point?

– No, not at all.

But there was the time he turned the respirator off to move her, and also that one night that he didn’t manage to fill the generator with diesel. For a few minutes there was no current, and the respirator whistled. But he got it started again, and she was still alive. He needs another 950 euros to purchase the new generator.

– It’s a little difficult up here, the doctor says. – I’m sorry that I’m not sedating you, Beacita. He jabs a long nail into her neck, then the plastic tube. It looks unpleasant. Erhard can’t bear to watch. – How much has she urinated? the doctor asks to keep Erhard’s mind occupied.

– I don’t know. Two or three bags.

Shortly afterward, the doctor steps off the crate and hangs a large bag with some white mixture on a nail. He taps it and liquid begins to flow down the tube into Beatriz’s nose. Then he stands in the doorway.

– Have the police contacted you again? Erhard asks.

– No, not yet.

– Tell them everything, just like it was. That you found her unconscious, that you examined her but could tell her injuries were too great. She died while you were there, and I’d told you I would contact the police because I’d been in the flat.

– I’m not allowed to do that. I must report deaths.

– You were there as a friend, as a favour to me.

– I could lose my licence.

– But you won’t.

– They’ll consider it neglect.

– Tell them I threatened you.

– How?

– I told you that it would be your fault if Raúl got off scot-free.

– What do you mean?

– You could tell it was an accident, but that I was beside myself, and certain that Raúl had done it.

– But didn’t you say it was an accident…

– Yes, but if the police need to know why you didn’t do anything.

– I’m not sure about this, the doctor says.

– Maybe they won’t call you again. Her funeral was yesterday.

– What? How?

Erhard doesn’t want to explain. – Let’s just say they’re convinced that Beatrizia Colini is dead.

– What about her? He points at the pantry.

– She doesn’t exist. She’s free.

The doctor stares at him. At first he’s frustrated, squinting, then he softens, relaxes. – I think I understand, he says. – But you need to… She needs glucose. He points at the white bag. – And you need to turn her. She’s on her right side now. Tomorrow you’ll need to roll her onto her back, and then her left side the day after that. If we’re lucky, we can help her just as well here as they can in Puerto.

– It’ll be no trouble for me to reposition her.

– I’ll get you more glucose. Without attracting too much attention. And some more bags for her faeces.

Doctors can make anything sound ordinary.

– Thanks, Erhard says. He has trouble saying that word, but he owes him as much for all that he’s done.

The doctor simply nods as he packs his kit with all his equipment.

– Have you ever… have you ever heard the dead speak? Heard their voices after they died?

– Personally? No.

The doctor scrutinizes Erhard.

– How then?

– I’ve heard of couples who claim they’ve heard their spouse speak following their death.

– You believe them?

– I believe they’ve heard it, yes. But not that they’d actually heard a voice.

This annoys Erhard. – What do you think they heard then?

– I don’t know. It’s their imagination. A hope. A kind of phantom conversation. Pain over something left unsaid. Did Beatriz say something to you?

– She said something when she was still conscious. Before you got there. She told me that I should help her.

– And so you have.

– Yes.

– I still don’t understand why the police believe she’s dead.

– That’s my secret.

– What about when Raúl returns? He may be charged with murder.

Yes, Erhard thinks. – He won’t return, he says. – And if he does, that’s his problem. I don’t think Raúl hurt her on purpose; it was his behaviour, his lifestyle, that did it. He’ll have to explain what happened.

– And if he’s convicted?

– You said it yourself at one point. He’ll have to accept his punishment. And I’ll have to tell the authorities what I know. I’ll have to take it as it comes.

The doctor circles back to the beginning. – I could lose my licence.

– Not if you tell the truth, and only lie about everything that has happened since I brought her out here.

– My wife is worried. She’s afraid of Los Tres Papas.

This surprises Erhard. – They’re just a group of boys in oversized jackets. With padding in their sleeves.

– I thought you were with them. That you were some kind of gangster.

Erhard laughs, but it’s not actually funny.

– We thought you would threaten me or kill me.

– Why the hell did you come out here then?

– My wife didn’t want me to, either. But what can I do? I can’t leave the island. I can’t run from my problems.

Suddenly he seems less bureaucratic and more alive, even though Erhard still doesn’t like his sand-coloured tie, his sand-coloured shirt, his sand-coloured slacks, or his sand-coloured face. – Why do you think that about me?

– It’s no secret. Everyone knows.

– Knows what?

The doctor doesn’t wish to say. He claps his kit shut. – I’ll see you in a few days. I’ll come out and examine her again. If she shows no improvement soon, she’s as good as dead and the lie will be true after all.

He starts towards the door. Erhard notices Alina’s mobile lying on top of the box next to the door.

– What does everyone know?

– That Raúl Palabras works for Los Tres Papas.

There’s still some workday remaining, and he feels the need to earn some cash. He tells dispatch that he’s available and listens for a call to head south. He drives down 101 and FV-2. He gets a one-way trip from Puerto to Pájara, but otherwise it’s just an ordinary Wednesday evening, warm and rather dull, interrupted only by the radio announcer’s observations about football matches in Spain. Historically, the entire island has rooted for Madrid, but in the last few years, young people have begun to side with Barcelona, which is evident from the cheers, snatches of song, and cussing on the radio. Erhard doesn’t care about any of it. He laughs at them. He’s never played football. Not even in school. He had crooked feet, he was told, and for many years he thought his condition would worsen if he ran around too much. Maybe it was just something his father said. His father thought football was for yokels, a loser’s sport, he sometimes said. Look at all those filthy boys playing football because they don’t know how to use their heads or their hands. They don’t even care to learn a sensible trade.

He approaches Risco del Gato, which lies right where the sun is setting; the town’s skyline is practically burned away by the strong sun. He sees the sign pointing towards Morro, and turns up the FV-2, but chooses instead to drive around Risco del Gato on the dusty north country road. On his left side he sees, for a long time, Zenon’s olive grove, the pride of the island. The only business with several hundred employees – at least until a few years ago. There’s no one in the fields today. Or in the courtyard visible through the fence and between the two giant buildings that face the road.

Erhard tries to recall what the photographer girl looked like. When he left his house, he didn’t think it’d be very difficult to recall her face, but the farther he drives the more it seems to be supplanted by other things: the woman with the shopping bags, a little boy swinging on a playground outside of Risco del Gato, a painting on a wall, the olive trees with their soft leaves. Now he remembers only words like ‘short’, ‘white’, ‘glasses’. He hopes it’s enough, he hopes things work out on their own once he arrives in Marabu.

Not until he sees the dashboard clock, a digital affair with green numbers, change to 7:02 does he recalls his meeting with Luisa, the hairdresser’s daughter, who is now fifty minutes away by car. Erhard has no telephone. Nor does he have her number for that matter.

There’s nothing to be done about it now. He doesn’t even remove his foot from the gas pedal. C’est la vie. He didn’t need her help any more, anyway; he’d solved his problem without her. He notices his own severity. Of course he’s embarrassed that the girl will ring the buzzer and wonder why no one answers. If he could, he’d call Petra at once and explain the situation to her, and she could then relate it to her daughter when she got the chance. He had pictured Luisa wearing a red snug-fitting blouse, he had imagined the scent of her hair or the sound of her hoarse voice as she explained to him how computers function.

To hell with it. There’s probably a reason that he’s forgotten her, and their appointment. He’s been busy with Beatriz, Aaz, the doctor, the boy. He owes Luisa an apology, maybe he’ll buy her a box of chocolates for her trouble. He’ll drive past a supermarket on his way home and, if he has the time, deliver the chocolates to Petra’s tomorrow morning.

He approaches the coast.

The beach is dark and small, and the water is relatively calm though there is a good breeze. He sees a few windsurfers and kitesurfers on the edge of the horizon. Now and then they streak through the sunlight like birds. Gravel plinks against the undercarriage. He drives until he spots a place on the beach where several people are seated beneath an umbrella under the shade of a small wooden kiosk, one of those places where you can rent kitesurfing equipment or buy ice cream. He gets out of his car and crosses the hot sand. He scrutinizes the faces he sees. Although there are people of all ages, a few of them are girls and boys the same age as MitchFever. Erhard walks around the kiosk and spots a woman his own age selling coffee and ice cream inside. He buys a cup of coffee that tastes of chlorine, and drinks it while watching a group of young people lying on blankets and towels, arms and legs all mixed up. Next to them are surfboards and duffels. Somewhere in the distance music plays.

The woman in the kiosk asks him if he’s going out today. By ‘out’ she means on the waves. Erhard shakes his head.

– I’m looking for a girl with short blonde hair. She looks like a boy.

The woman laughs. They all look like boys, she tells him.

– She’s with a group of young boys and a Spanish girl with long black hair.

The woman laughs again and points out that Erhard could be talking about anyone. Look around, she suggests. Just as Erhard’s about to repeat his question, it occurs to him that she doesn’t wish to help him. She doesn’t wish to get mixed up in anything. These are her customers, and she doesn’t want to ruin her business.

– I’m not a policeman if that’s what you think. I’m just… a cab driver.

The woman grins and scrubs the countertop with a rag. Erhard gazes across the beach. He thanks her for the coffee and starts towards a group of youths. Most of them are asleep. One of the boys is awake, and he’s watching the waves. Erhard speaks to him briefly. He’s a shy but friendly guy. But he doesn’t seem to like adults or even talking to them. He doesn’t know a girl with short blonde hair. But he says the name MitchFever sounds like that American girl who often surfs with some older guys. Erhard gets him to point him in the right direction, then he starts to go. – Hey, the boy calls out, you can’t walk there, it’s a couple of miles on the other side of Marabu, close to Morro Jable. Erhard heads back to his car.

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39

On the beach he waits for five surfers. One is skinny, feminine in appearance, could easily pass for a girl. It’s impossible to tell from here. He’s sitting on the sand, his toes buried in the moist layer just below the surface. Erhard recalls that time he’d waited for Raúl on the beach up near the Dunes. It was a Friday evening, they were both pissed, and Raúl wanted to surf before they went to a party. The water trickled over the shore, then retreated. He fell asleep, and when he awoke, the sun had gone down and the sky was aglow with stars and he could see Raúl riding the darkened waves.

One of the surfers lowers his sail and carries his board up to the beach. He’s a hundred metres away, but he’s walking in his direction, Erhard thinks, because the surfers’ duffels are lying between some rocks, and their car is parked along the road. Erhard stays put, not getting to his feet until the surfer is right beside him. He explains what he’s looking for, a girl with short hair, an American. The surfer studies Erhard, then asks if he’s her father. Erhard laughs. He wonders whether or not it’d be advantageous to say yes, he is, but decides that, judging by the way the surfer asked the question, the father isn’t a popular person in the girl’s life. He’s heard she’s a good photographer, Erhard explains, and he wants to speak with her about an assignment. This catches the man off guard. He begins to remove his wetsuit, and his bathing trunks, and figures Erhard is talking about January, an American, a fucking good surfer. She lives down near Morro Jable, but works at a beach bar in Marabu called Great Reef. He doesn’t know her, but everyone’s heard of her. Erhard asks why. Because she’s a little wildcat, if you know what I mean, the surfer says, disappearing into a large towel.

Erhard drives back to Marabu. This time down to the city beach, where he parks behind a supermarket that abuts the water. He has never been down here. In his many years as a cabbie, he has never driven anyone to this place, and he doubts that he can find the beach bar the surfer mentioned. But when he reaches the sand, he discovers how impossible the bar is to overlook; it’s the only building on the beach, and there’s a huge metal sign on the flat roof with the bar’s name etched on a surfboard. Bleached deckchairs are arranged on the sand, but no one’s outside. A handful of people stand inside the dark room leaning against a bamboo bar. They’re all surfers except for the one farthest away, whom Erhard recognizes as one of the island’s sand sculptors, a black man. But Erhard’s eyes roam immediately to the girl behind the bar. Her hair is blonde, and not exactly short, but close enough.

He approaches the bar and glances down at a bucket containing bottles of cold San Miguel beer. He opens one bottle and chugs half of it before setting it on the bar. The men don’t stop talking.

The girl is seated on the floor, and she’s busy filling a cabinet with Cokes. Erhard looks down and gets a glimpse of her fine-skinned, youthful white neck. He turns away. She stands up and puffs on a fag that was resting in an ashtray on the stereo system.

– MitchFever, Erhard says.

The girl spins towards him, startled, and it occurs to Erhard that there’s a great deal of mistrust and fear within the surfer community. As if they all expect to be sent home to their beds.

– Don’t worry, I just like your photographs, Erhard says in English, and quickly senses that this only makes her more uncomfortable. He swigs from his beer, giving her time to respond. She says nothing.

– I’d like to buy two of your photographs, he says, switching to Spanish. How does 100 euros sound?

– Photographs? What do you mean?

It sounds as if she doesn’t even know the word.

– The ones you took of local beaches. I saw a couple from Cotillo Beach that I really like.

– Oh, those, the girl says, approaching the bar. – On my blog?

– No, on the Internet, Erhard says, as if he’s always finding stuff he likes on the Internet. – I’m interested in Cotillo Beach.

– Are you some kind of journalist?

– No, I’m a cab driver. My name is Erhard.

The girl relaxes. – January, she says.

– How’d you come up with the name MitchFever? Is that some sort of artist’s name?

– Not exactly. It’s a long story. Let’s just say that’s what I call myself on my blog. Why do you want those pics of Cotillo?

– Just interested in them, is all.

The girl smiles and lights a new fag. Several of the surfers have left. Only two remain.

– I’m not really a photographer, you know.

– Do you have more photographs from Cotillo Beach? That aren’t on the Internet?

– Yeah, a few. I always take a ton, then can’t be bothered to upload them all. My connection is really slow.

– I see. Do you have any from the 6 or 7 January?

The girl eyes Erhard. Suspicious again. – Why?

– Do you recall the beach on 6 January?

– No. Was that the day I hurt my leg?

– I don’t know.

– Then I definitely don’t remember. My mother says I have the memory of a cat. Pretty bad.

– There was a car on the beach, a Volkswagen.

– So what?

– Did you take any photos of it?

– As if I could remember. She laughs. Almost indignant.

Erhard drains his beer. The two surfers are absorbed in watching something on one of their mobile phones. The girl lights another fag and rests her foot on an old beer crate. She’s pretty in an old-fashioned way, but her fine skin and features are almost ruined by too much exposure to the sun and alcohol.

– Listen, he says, I need to find out what happened to a little boy who lay dead for several days in that car. As far as I know you’re the only one who photographed the car before the police found it two days later. The picture was called… Erhard begins. Then he fishes out the little note that Mónica wrote for him. It was called 01062011_42.

– You some kind of detective?

– No, I’m a cab driver.

The girls pours a glass of tomato juice for one of the surfers and drops in a couple lemon wedges. She returns to Erhard. – I don’t remember the numbers. I’ve got loads of pics from that beach, I think, and maybe I recall one with a car, but… I’ll look when I get home.

– When?

– Tonight. I get off work just on the other side of midnight. I’ll check my hard drive. That’s where I keep my photos. I’ll call you if I find anything interesting.

– I don’t have a telephone. Can you meet me after you’ve searched your photos? I’ll just sit in my cab waiting.

She gives him a strange look. Maybe she still believes he’s an odd duck trying to lure her into something. But then she nods.

In the end, Erhard buys a sandwich from a nearby shop and waits at one of the tables in the bar. For three hours he gazes out at the water and reads his book, while she smokes a pack of cigarettes and watches television, switching between a football match and a snooker game. She wipes down the counter a few times.

Shortly after midnight he drives her home.

He enjoyed waiting for her. Sitting patiently and watching her clean up. Walking beside her to his car and asking if she’d had a good day. She lives on the roof of an old furniture shop in Morro Jable, where the owner has built a shack that is visible by the light of powerful streetlamps. An old stairwell leads to the roof, and Erhard follows her, but stays outside her shack, which seems small and intimidating.

She’s inside for a long time. He counts the minutes because he knows he needs to get home and fill the generator with diesel. He pictures January’s place filled with bottles, surfing gear, rickety shelves with Lonely Planet books, and maybe those vampire books that young girls always seem to be reading when they’re in his taxi, books they pick up in the airport probably.

The door opens, and the girl exits with her camera. She explains that she needs to click through hundreds of photos to get back to 6 January. Erhard watches while she scrolls through photographs of the beach, the bar, the surfer boys, and the same girlfriend over and over. She lives a colourful but monotonous life. All the photos could’ve been taken on the same day.

Finally she reaches the photos from Cotillo.

Erhard can tell right away. The light is very peculiar there. Unfiltered. Nearly blue. At first they breeze past a bunch of images of her friends surfing. Then they’re on land. He spots the car in the background of a photo showing her girlfriend wrapped up in one of the boy’s arms. Erhard takes the camera from her and goes through every shot, many of which he hasn’t seen. At one point January seems to have been chasing her girlfriend around the car and snapped, perhaps by accident, two photos.

One is of the car’s doors – the left rear passenger door – along with the handle and the lower part of a window.

The second photo was taken at a more directly downward angle, so that one can see the car’s left rear tyre. There’s a bright streak underneath the petrol cap. As if the water reached this level or the waves lapped against the side of the vehicle.

There are no more pictures of the car. Only those two that Erhard has already seen on the Internet. The rest of the series shows the youths arriving at the beach and getting ready to surf, January wearing a hat. In one image taken with an outstretched arm: the girl herself.

The next day he buys a box of chocolates, but he forgets to take it to the hairdresser’s because two businessmen climb in his cab and they’ve got to hurry to the ferry, and it’s Thursday, which means the doctor is bringing fresh supplies before siesta: an IV, a catheter, and some bags of what he calls glucose mix. The doctor shows Erhard how to take care of the bags that provide her with liquids and sustenance, and how to drain and clean the little container that collects urine and faeces. When the apparatus is plugged in, the light in the room flickers. He needs to fill the tank with diesel more often, the doctor says, and Erhard wants to yell at him, but instead sends him kindly on his way.

He earns 103 euros on Friday, only 42 on Saturday. On Saturday he sees something white sticking out of the mail box near the side of the road; it looks like a flag, but it’s his post. Just the very word: post. It’s been months since he last received mail, and this is a large envelope with no return address. But he knows who it’s from. The photographs are printed on ordinary paper, and the quality’s not great. But it’s good enough for him to see the car, its nicks. He’s thought about those nicks. He hangs the two photographs up on the fridge and lays the envelope on top.

What he really wants to do is take Sunday off, buy a couple bottles at Guzman’s, and drink them inside, under a blanket, sweaty and feverish. But he can’t afford to take a day off or get pissed. He might as well just turn off the respirator if he does that. He’s got to come up with the money. So on Sunday he drives until almost nine o’clock, earning a measly seventy-eight euros, then empties the half-empty bottles from the pantry into one earth-coloured cocktail. He toasts Beatriz, but what he’d really like to do is shake her, shake her awake, shake her to death. The responsibility is too enormous. He can’t do it. He can’t do it.