The Hermit (30 page)

Through the shelves he can see people walking around in the hallway. The man in overalls is washing the floors in front of the storage room door, so there’s no one out there at the moment besides him.

Erhard picks up his pace, his eyes darting faster over the shelves. He pauses only when he sees square shapes: cases, cardboard boxes. The police seem to use a standard box, with the docket for the case number on one side. Although those boxes are smaller than the one he’s looking for, each time he sees one at a distance he thinks he’s found the right one. He turns around and begins investigating shelf number four when he finds the one he’s searching for on the lowest shelf. Written across it is the word
Archivados
. It looks like an ordinary box packed with porcelain, but he recognizes it instantly.

He sits down and pulls out the box to analyse its contents. But it’s impossible to see anything in such bad light. He’d like to carry it to the table near the door, but he hears some men talking either at the door or in the storage room near the first shelf. If they spot him they’ll wonder what he’s doing. There’s no lid on the box, and no flaps that he can fold out. He grabs some paper from one of the other shelves and wraps it around the box. From his pocket he withdraws the yellow note with the address of Morro Jable’s small police headquarters and affixes it. The paper doesn’t stick, but it doesn’t matter. He just needs to get out of here, fast.

He hurries past two men now seated at the table, and out into the corridor before they can say anything. He doesn’t look up, but heads straight towards the exit. The entire office is now a bustle of activity, and people rush past him. There’s even a voice that sounds like Bernal in the back of the room. A group of five people on their way through the metal detectors. He hopes to exit while the guard is occupied and doesn’t notice. The coast is clear on his right.

– Señor Jørgensen?

Hassib, the police officer he met in Raúl’s flat, is standing in the doorway of a small, well-lit room with great big copy machines. – Hello again, Erhard says, not slowing.

– What are you doing here? Hassib calls after him.

– I’m delivering a package on behalf of your colleagues, Erhard says, passing through the metal detector without glancing back. Just as he’s about to shove the door open with his shoulder, he feels a hand holding him back.

– Who sends packages by taxi?

Hassib has set down his coffee and is looking at the box in Erhard’s hands.

– How should I know? I’m just doing what I’m told. Erhard nods at the yellow note. – Morro Jable headquarters, he reads.

– Jable? Hassib studies the note closely. – What’s the rush?

– You can drive it out there if you want to, Erhard says, holding out the box. – I don’t need the forty-five euros.

The young Arab’s eyes are bleary, with dark bags beneath them. He glares at the box as if he’s considering something. Then he shakes his head and retreats a step. – I’m not done with you, he says. Then he turns and leaves.

Erhard pushes the door open and hustles to his car.

42

At home he empties the box on the table. Because of the draught that always breezes through the house, the newspaper fragments flutter like ashes in a bonfire. The smell of urine is nearly gone, but not quite. He sorts the fragments, tossing those with clear images or text back into the box. Then he arranges the rest in orderly rows, studying them one by one.

He uses a magnifying glass. He’s thorough, lifting each little fragment and examining both sides before returning the fragment to the box. Once he’s checked the first rows, he arranges new rows. He’s never considered how much empty space there is in a newspaper. After he’s gone through half, he counts all the blank fragments. Seventy-seven white or newspaper-coloured. Fifty-one black or grey. Thirty red. Five green. Four blue. Two purple.

Then he takes a lunch break. Sits on the stool eating a heel of stale bread.

He hasn’t deliberated on Papa Palabras’s offer yet. Which is to say: He hasn’t made a decision yet. On the one hand, the offer is interesting; on the other, it’s inappropriate and completely wrongheaded. Palabras knows Erhard has zero experience running such an operation. He knows that Erhard would have difficulty – if he doesn’t find it impossible – being the boss of people who’ve been his competitors these past few years. With a couple of them, he wouldn’t mind demonstrating that he can do better without them – Pauli Barouki for one – and he’s already begun to consider the improvements he might implement. One could do a lot for the drivers: improve the situation at dispatch and with the taximeters, get better coffee in the break-room. But it’s too early to think about these things.

Right now he’s mainly curious as to why Palabras is so eager to bring Erhard aboard. There’s no simple answer. The charitable answer is that he wants to maintain control of the business, and now that Raúl is gone, Erhard is the closest thing to a right-hand man who knows something about operating a taxi company. The practical answer is that Palabras wishes to delay any decision regarding Raúl’s business until it’s clear just what happened to him. The cynical answer is that Emanuel Palabras wishes to assert his influence on his son’s company, even in a future where someone like Marcelis Asasuna probably will aim to increase his role in the company. In reality, Erhard really wishes to say no thanks and continue his life as usual. There’s something about the offer that seems strange, even if he can’t precisely say what.

He finds scribbled on one of the fragments, in faint ink,
rick 2310
. He examines the fragment carefully under the magnifying glass. Someone traced it repeatedly, so that it pierced the paper.

He sets the fragment aside and inspects a new row, not looking at the contents of the newspaper, only the forms, colours, structures. He knows exactly what he’s searching for; he’s seen it a number of times without thinking about it. If the newspaper was sent to the island from Denmark, then someone in Denmark would’ve stamped the recipient’s name. A name and an address in grey, blocky type. It may have worn off some, or it may be illegible, but nevertheless it would’ve been added after the newspaper had been printed, all the way up at the top of the front page so the mailman would have been able to read the address even when carrying the newspaper in a stack of letters. Finally after almost three hours, and after laying down a forth row of newspaper fragments, he finds it. Part of it, at least. The address is incomplete, consisting only of a name, road, and house number. The name of the city is missing.

Café Rústica, c/o Søren Hollisen, 49 Calle Centauro.

It doesn’t ring any bells. In thirteen years as a taxi driver he has never heard of Calle Centauro. Or a cafe by that name. He goes out to his car and calls dispatch. Two minutes later he gets a response. There’s no Calle Centauro. Not here on the island, the girl adds.

Maybe
Politiken
wrote the wrong address. If only he could find the name of the city. He continues to rummage through the pile of fragments. Evening falls, then night. He takes a short break and checks on Beatriz, making sure her IV is stable and giving her the right dosage. Her body is absorbing sustenance. Though his hands are cold, he feels her body, warm and pulsating.

He makes it all the way through the pile of fragments, but doesn’t find a city name. He considers starting over again from the beginning. But something tells him that the fragment he’s looking for isn’t there. He has been thorough. A thousand fragments might be missing. If he gathered every single one of them, laying each one together like puzzle pieces, then maybe he would see the holes here and there and know that the fragment with the city name is one of the missing pieces. But he can’t do it any more. He’ll have to find Calle Centauro another way.

On Tuesday morning he doesn’t drive to Alapaqa but to Tuineje. To Mónica’s. He has never visited her without Aaz. It’s a big step. He parks at the side of the road to gather his courage, but instead grabs his notebook and dashes over the road to the payphone.

– This is Erhard Jørgensen. May I swing by?

– It’s only eight o’clock. Quarter after eight, Mónica says.

– It’s important.

– Does it have anything to do with Aaz?

She sounds afraid.

It hadn’t occurred to him that she would think of Aaz. – Not at all, everything’s OK. It’s about the computer, like last time.

She’s relieved. – Can’t it wait?

– I’m parked down the road. I’m calling from a payphone.

Pause. It annoys Erhard a little how long it takes her to respond.

– Give me ten minutes to eat my breakfast.

He waits in the car, then walks to her house fifteen minutes later. Before he reaches the door, she opens it and leaves it ajar, so he can enter. She has apparently cleaned up. Papers are neatly stacked, and a dishrag dangles from a little cord above the sink. She’s wearing a red dress with small, glistening sequins. It looks like something one wears to tango. Erhard doesn’t tango.

– You’re a cab driver. Don’t you know every address on the island? she asks when he explains what he’s looking for. The computer is on, and she sits at her desk. – Didn’t you say something about learning how to use a computer?

– Someday, maybe, Erhard says, though he can’t picture ever doing so.

– What was the place called again?

He spells the cafe’s name as well as the name of the street.

– It’s on the east coast, Mónica says, zooming out. – Oops. I forgot to write Fuerteventura. Just as she’s about to tap the keys, she zooms out again. – Wait, it’s on Tenerife. Does that sound right?

– Is there a cafe nearby?

– Let’s see. She points at an aerial photograph, taken right above the little waterfront city. Some text is written across the map, and Erhard spots the name of the street. – Café Rústica. Was that it?

– It’s on Tenerife?

– Yes, in Santa Maria del Mar, just south of Santa Cruz.

– And there’s no Calle Centauro here on this island?

– No, not as far as I can tell. She stands up. – Would you like a cup of coffee since you’re already here?

– Can we find one more thing first?

She returns to her seat.

He shows her the fragment with the pen’s scratch-marks: rick 2310. – Maybe they’re digits from a telephone number?

He gives up trying to follow what she’s doing on the computer. Instead he watches her fingers deftly manoeuvre across the keyboard. She obviously plays the piano.

There’s no one called Rick with those digits in his telephone number. Not on Gran Canaria either. No one’s called Rick, for that matter. But plenty of Ricardos, Richards, Rickos, Rickys, and Rickis, of course. There’s no connection. She also searches for the name Søren Hollisen and finds a Søren Holdesen Jensen, an engineer from Farum, Denmark – but no Hollisen anywhere close to the Canary Islands. She tells Erhard that you can’t always count on the Internet to find answers. Not everything is online. If a person doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be found on the Internet, either.

Then she prepares coffee.

Erhard studies the map again. Sees the cafe’s name in small white letters across the aerial photograph. For some reason it seems right.

It must be the place, even if there’s one ‘a’ too many or too few in the name. Mónica cleans up the kitchen and he tells her loudly about the newspaper fragments, and how he’d put them together to locate the address. He wishes he could tell her what it means. About the boy in the box. But he can’t do that. Not yet. He drinks his coffee. It’s strong and bitter. As he watches her wipe coffee grounds from the kitchen counter, he notices her nice round ass behind all the sequins.

He heads home to fill the generator, then drives to the garage to hoover the car and wash the doors and panels. Normally he cleans his car every other week, but it needs a scrubbing: all the black surfaces on the seats and the steering column are grey with dust. The auto workshop has a special brush that blasts water through the seat cushions and sucks it out again, removing grime and stains. He also gives the boot a thorough scouring. You never know who might look in there.

After his conversation with Emanuel Palabras, he’s curious to see things with fresh eyes. He’ll stop by the office, maybe run into Pauli Barouki and tell him that he bloody well better take care of those damn forms. And the carwash in front of the office which Erhard never uses because it’s always too crowded. White foam runs into the drain, which is plugged with disintegrating cardboard.

But now he can take his ideas to Taxinaria and push some of them through. From colleagues who’ve changed sides, he knows that they have the same problems. He could be the man of the day, the man of the month, with all of his ideas. Raúl, that asshole, used to just laugh at Erhard’s angry outbursts. Who knows whether he implemented any of his ideas at Taxinaria. According to rumours he’d heard, they’d purchased more sponges for their wash centre and a new smart-board for the duty roster. The only thing Erhard has ever managed to get Barouki to agree to was a bookshelf for a lending library. Erhard had installed the shelf himself and donated the first books. Of course, Erhard was the only one who ever used the shelf. In the end, Erhard removed his books and took them back home.

When he’s done cleaning his car, he parks on the other side of the fence and enters the gate. He waves a quick hello to Gustavo, the brand-new driver, as well as Sebastiano, who works for Taxinaria.

Maybe Erhard was right all along that Pauli Barouki didn’t like him. Perhaps because Pauli knew that he was friends with the Palabrases. It seemed as though he treated Erhard differently than the others. Like that time with the lockers. Each driver was given a little locker to store his coats, a change of clothes, or personal property. At one point they were reassigned lockers to accommodate the new drivers. Erhard’s was moved into the corner, squeezed up against the electrical box. Which meant his locker wasn’t even half the size of the others. Earlier, that locker had been given only to substitutes and part-time drivers. Erhard complained, but Barouki simply retorted that, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do for him, and that Erhard shouldn’t expect special treatment just because he had friends in high places. At the time, he’d thought Barouki meant his reputation in the company, where Erhard served as a kind of confessor for several of the most frustrated drivers. But maybe he’d meant something else entirely.