The Hermit (13 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

– And?

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

– Child murder? Go on.

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

– No, she says.

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

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

– But not murdered?

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

– So?

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

– Why? Solilla smiles.

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

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

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

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

– Don’t the police have her?

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

– Will she talk to a journalist?

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

– So what exactly would a journalist write?

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

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

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

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

Erhard knows what she means. – No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

– How much are they paying her?

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

– Then who is?

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

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

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

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

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

– Maybe, he says.

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

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

– Let me. His father owes me a favour.

– Today?

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

– The hearing is on Friday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– But why?

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

– Interesting. But it doesn’t sound likely.

– That’s what he said.

– The same one who told you the rest?

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

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

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

– Sure.

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

– Sure.

– Well, there’s your story.

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

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

– But what’s the motive?

– That’s what you’ve got to find out.

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

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

Diego rolls his eyes. – OK.

– OK what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erhard gives him his number.

– Don’t you have a mobile?

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

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

– I’ll do that.

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

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

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

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

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

Palabras doesn’t think it can wait.

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

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

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

He parks for an hour down at Carmen. Takes one trip out to Las Dunas with an enthusiastic young couple.

It’s not until six o’clock that his irritation and rage simmer down. He drives a family to the airport and enters the terminal to buy a sandwich. It too tastes like cardboard. Cardboard and fresh but flavourless local tomatoes. It’s the disgrace of the island: the new growers, who just want to export as many tons as possible, cultivate perfectly round tomatoes in dust-free hothouses. He eats while reading the headlines of the day’s newspaper. There’s an article in
La Provincia
about the biggest olive farmer on the island, who’s now moving to the mainland. He throws the rest of his paper sandwich into the trash and pays the girl at the kiosk with coins.

There’s an ad for the Sheraton Beach Golf and Spa Resort under his windscreen wiper. The construction projects begun before the financial crisis are finally being completed and can now fight for tourists’ attention, while the unfinished, cancelled hotels stand like monuments to naive investment fever and serve as giant bunk beds for the island’s beach bums. Hotel Olympus, Corralejo, is illuminated at night by fire and battery-driven disco balls as loud gangs of youths party inside its concrete shell. Such parties were once a problem, but the authorities have now chosen to look the other way. Where else can the poor wretches go? It’s more expensive to provide them with a place. There’s no barrier or fence. In January, a young man fell and died. An orphan without a story. Glue in his nose and a body ravaged by alcohol and drugs. The discussion that followed was focused more on the gangs than the dangerous construction sites that have sat abandoned for years. Erhard doesn’t mind the unlawful squatters. He’s been in that position himself, quaffing homebrews from petrol cans, watching little girls shuck off their clothes and run naked across glowing hot coals.

He glances at his watch and drives north. A visit to Papa Palabras is nothing to look forward to, but today he wants to take his mind off things. And a beautiful piano, a masterpiece of a piano, always has an uplifting effect on him. He hopes so anyway.

26

At the end of Calle Dormidero, the little road loops around a palm tree. At the top of the loop is the entrance to Papa Palabras’s enormous property. For some reason the gigantic wrought-iron gate automatically opens every time Erhard arrives. Other visitors have to place a call through the gate telephone. But not Erhard. He drives straight through and parks next to the servants’ quarters, located on the west side of the house. Erhard crosses the lawn, knowing that Emanuel is either sitting outside sleeping, head lolling on his belly as if his neck is broken, or he’s in his cactus-filled greenhouse asking his servant, a Maasai girl, to prick her finger on the various cacti to determine whether the plants are thriving or in need of water. That’s how you know, he has explained. But today, as Erhard skirts a bush and heads up the stairwell towards the terrace, he notices that Emanuel is indeed asleep. Someone rings a bell, and Emanuel wakes with a start, then watches Erhard impatiently, as if he’d been waiting for hours, bored.