So, on one side there was arms trafficking. On the other, a serial killer of women who, if not exactly of loose morals, were not of very tight ones either. This seemed like two worlds from completely different systems, like Pluto and Ganymede. No way the two of them could meet. Even the existence of one of them was questionable, as if it had not yet swum into the astronomers’ ken.
I left the ruined or half-built house the same way I had got in. I felt angry with myself for not having the courage or the lack of scruples to avenge the dog. The killer was sleeping peacefully while his colleague was enjoying himself in bed.
I was still squirming out of the bathroom vent when someone opened the door. If I had waited a second to see the face of the person coming in, holding a candle stuck in the top of a beer bottle, I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble.
I sell bathroom furniture. I am not a detective. When I was in the police force I was not one either, and I hate speculating over things I know nothing about. There are detectives with diplomas, philosophers, people trained at university to sniff out the unknown. The National Shame has its homicide and scientific experts; it is not Sherlock Holmes we need in Argentina, it is the will to investigate. If the greatest living criminals in our history are walking around freely, it is because somebody right at the top has decided they should not be punished.
I strolled calmly away from the house beneath a heavy, steady rain, which helped dissolve and wash away the mud I was covered in. I drove back to the hotel in Isabel’s car. It was not a four-wheel drive, but coped splendidly with the mud-bath of the track, and when we reached the asphalted road it wanted more speed than I could risk because the town was so close.
As soon as I woke the next morning I rang Mónica and Isabel’s number in Buenos Aires. Something told me that if anyone answered it would not be Isabel.
“Pablo, thank God! Where did you get to?”
“Where am I, you mean. I’m at the Cabildo Hotel in Tres Arroyos. We were supposed to meet here.”
Mónica fell silent, then a few seconds later started to sob. She had no idea I knew something of what had happened to her, and could guess the rest. Still sobbing, she began telling me about their ordeal: she and her daughter had been intercepted on the bus they had decided to take from Bahía Blanca to Tres Arroyos. Two men—“polite but all muscle” I was tempted to say, but did not—got on the bus after swerving in front of it to bring it to a halt. My hotdog driver had forgotten to tell me this particular detail.
“There was a woman driving their car.”
“A young woman?”
“Yes, and very pretty. She looked like a T.V. presenter.”
I wondered whether I was dealing with the illegal arms racket or the white slave trade. Perhaps it was both: after all, they are different markets, and modern marketing gurus tell us we should spread our portfolios.
“Is Isabel with you?”
Mónica broke down again. After a while, choking and spluttering, she tried to explain. No, Isabel was not with her: the men had taken her off somewhere else. As soon as they were forced into the car, the two of them had been blindfolded. Then the car sped off along what Mónica thought from the way it lurched and swayed must have been a dirt road. Finally they came to a halt and Isabel was literally yanked from her side. Mónica heard her shouting, desperately calling out to her:
“Mummy,” she shouted, “Mummy, help me.”
Mónica was still sobbing, but there was no stopping her now.
“‘Let go of her,’ I screamed, ‘if you want someone, take me.’ Then somebody hit me on the head: I thought I was going to die, Gotán, but I must have only passed out. I could still hear her shouting, I was begging them to let her go, thrashing to and fro as if it was a nightmare. After that they must have given me a sleeping pill or something, I don’t know. When I woke up, I was in the Accident and Emergency department in Haedo.”
“In Haedo?”
“Yes, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. I asked them who had brought me there.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The police.”
She could not deny it, and did not seem surprised at my magical powers of deduction. She had been taken there in a police patrol car. “We found her by the roadside,” the officers had told the duty doctor. “When she’s recovered, send her home, if she can remember where she lives.” None of the police had stayed to keep an eye on her, but one of the doctors was so concerned that he offered to take her home. Mónica accepted, but did not tell him anything about what had happened.
“I don’t trust anyone, Gotán. I don’t know what’s going on.”
To calm her fears, the doctor said he earned less than a housemaid, and so had to keep his mouth shut and get used to seeing very strange goings-on. Mónica timidly asked what kind of strange goings-on. The doctor, who had only been out of medical school for a couple of years, said his parents had told him all about what had happened in Argentina during the ’70s dictatorship. He had always found it hard to believe there could be criminals as vile as that in such a beautiful country, with its bountiful land packed with cows and soya, as well as hard-working people like his parents, who had slaved their asses off—he used a more polite term, because he was speaking to a lady—so that he could get to university, become a doctor, take an oath to save lives, all lives, including those that were not worth saving.
But now he did not know what to think.
“It’s true the armed forces thought they could bring Nazism to the south of Latin America. But they were thrown out twenty years ago. In the ’60s, twenty years after the Second World War, you wouldn’t find a single Nazi in either of the two Germanies, not even in a museum. Here they stroll down the streets like lords,” said the doctor, trying to navigate a traffic jam on Avenida Rivadavia, heading in toward the center of Buenos Aires.
I reminded Mónica that one of those two Germanies had been full of prosperous capitalists, while the other was filled with reluctant Communists. In response, Mónica reminded me quite rightly that all she was interested in was finding her daughter alive.
“If you want to discuss politics, go and find the doctor in Accident and Emergency at Haedo,” she said.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said.
When they reached her apartment, the doctor had asked her if she knew what had happened to her.
“I was on the verge of telling him, Gotán. But as I said, I don’t trust anyone now. He could have been another policeman in a doctor’s gown.”
“I’m a policeman,” I said.
She sighed wearily. It was all too much for her, only a few hours after she had buried Edmundo, even if he had been such a disappointment to her.
“You were one, Gotán.”
“You’re right. Now I sell bathroom furniture.”
“I wouldn’t buy anything from you. I’d be worried every time I went to the toilet: ‘Where did he hide the microphone?’”
Our shared laughter was forced but necessary. I told Mónica to take care, to make sure she did not open her door to anyone, and that I would see her in Buenos Aires.
Before leaving Tres Arroyos I called Burgos’ mobile. He must have been busy cutting up the latest corpse, because all I got was his voice telling callers to leave a message. In the thirty seconds I had, I urged him to get somebody to go out and look over the farm in daylight; the estate agent could tell them where it was and how to get there.
I had no problems on the drive back to Buenos Aires. The traffic police stopped me at Las Flores and asked to see my papers. I handed them the I.D. card I had been given in Bahía Blanca in the name of Edgardo Leiva. That was no problem, but they did almost arrest me for not having my registration or any other of the documents required to drive legally.
“I’m sorry, lads,” I told them, and flashed my old police badge. They saluted and waved me through.
A couple of kilometers further on, I threw Edgardo Leiva out of the car window.