The Hermit (32 page)

He counts his money and finds he has just enough for a couple of drinks and a meal, but not to spend the night. He’ll have to sleep on the beach, which he’s done before. It’s easy enough if he’s pissed. Maybe it’ll be the last time he’ll ever need to.

The notion that his luck is about to change doesn’t stick; it slips through his fingers like sand. He doesn’t dare believe it. For nearly twenty years, misfortune has followed him; he has made poor decisions and lived the wrong kind of life and met the wrong people at the wrong times. Usually he feels, and even says, that his timing has been ten years off. First ten years too early. Married while still a teenager – that says it all. While the last twenty years have been ten years too late. Too late to do anything about his music, to meet a nice woman, to lean back and enjoy life as one does at his age in Denmark and as so many of his Danish contemporaries here on holiday do. And suddenly, emerging out of his wretchedness, in the middle of all that’s going on with Raúl and Beatriz and the dead boy, he sees an opportunity that he needs to grasp. No matter how difficult or foolish it might turn out to be. The opportunity to become something else, to be someone. Maybe he’ll be able to purchase one of the houses above the city. With a garden. He can sit reading in an air-conditioned office or take a walk down to the workshop to speak with Anphil, or he can host meetings and offer his guests a dram of whisky.

He hasn’t told Emanuel Palabras anything about this.

In the morning, before he left his house, he called Palabras and mentioned the episode with Barouki, and Marcelis’s phone call. He didn’t repeat everything that Marcelis had said, but he did say that Marcelis seemed unhappy with Erhard’s potential role.

All bark and no bite, Emanuel had said. Raúl had his share of confrontations with Marcelis too. Welcome to the company, he added.

The last thing he said:
Say yes and I’ll give you a salary worthy of a director
. Which sounded good at that point, but Erhard considers his title now. What did Raúl actually do for the company? If Erhard assumes Raúl’s job, does that also mean that Erhard should keep a low profile and stay out of daily operations? He wants to make a difference; if he can’t, he can always quit. Nobody owns him.

But he’s tempted by thoughts of skipping his generator idea and getting Beatriz to a private hospital in Puerto, maybe inviting Aaz and his mother to his place for coffee.

Ponytail girl is the one who brings his Mai Tai, setting it on a saucer. He pays sixteen euros and lays four in her hand. It’s a decent tip, and yet she stares at the coins with no change of expression. He asks her if she knows Søren. Her gaze is sharp. Maybe she’s mostly into girls, he thinks. She glares at him as if she thinks men are pretty much a waste of time.

– What do you want to know?

– Søren Hollisen, do you know him? Perhaps he’s a customer?

– I know who he is. Everyone here knows.

– How do you know him?

– I don’t
know
him. It’s impossible to know him.

– But you’ve met him.

– Met, she says, making air quotes with her fingers.

– Are you from this island?

– Fuerteventura.

– Oh, Erhard says. But he isn’t interested in small talk with this girl. – Does anyone here know him better than you?

– Ellen.

– Who is Ellen?

– The owner, a Brit. She’s out in the back. But she’s leaving soon.

Erhard thanks her, then sips his Mai Tai. It’s too sweet. Too much syrup, not enough lime. But it’s got plenty of rich, dark rum. He eats the embellishment, a pineapple and orange. While he chews the pineapple, a woman in a light-blue shirt and black trouser-suit sits down at his table. She looks like a man, but one with long hair gathered up in a bun and a mouth so tight and narrow that it resembles a line drawn with a Sharpie.

– Friend or foe? she asks with a distinct Irish accent.

Erhard says nothing, just looks at her.

– You’re looking for Søren Hollyson. She pronounces it Soren – Are you a friend or foe?

– Neither.

– What has he done this time?

– As far as I know, he hasn’t done anything.

– Why are you looking for him then? I’m guessing it’s not because you’re attracted to him?

There’s something sly about the way she questions him. It feels like more of an interrogation than when Hassib asked him questions.

– Maybe I’ll tell him myself.

– Go ahead, but you’ll have to travel to Dakar. Has it got anything to do with money?

– Maybe, Erhard says, to confuse her a bit.

– He has nothing to do with this place any more. We’ve done everything we can to get back on our feet again after the mess he left behind. We don’t want to get mixed up in anything.

– Easy now, easy, Miss…

– Blythe-Patrick. Ellen.

– OK, Ellen. I don’t know Søren at all.

– Are you with the Danish police?

– No. I’m from Denmark, it’s true, but I haven’t been back in many years. I live in Fuerteventura.

– Well, I haven’t seen him in months, perhaps a year. But I’ve heard he’s in Dakar.

– I may not even need to talk to him. Maybe you can help me?

She straightens in the chair and glances around the cafe, as if she’s nervous someone will hear them. But there’s no one around. On a sofa in the back of the room sits a couple, so clearly pissed that they’re practically asleep. – I don’t want to get mixed up in Søren’s shit.

– I’m not mixing you up in anything, Erhard says. He draws the small baggie from his pocket with the slip of paper inside. – Do you recall if the cafe ever had a subscription to a Danish newspaper? Sometime last year?

The woman glances down at the paper and grins. – Yes. I do. I do, because no one ever read it.
Politiken
, it was. She butchers the pronunciation as
pollyticken
. – It just sat there. Turned out that we never got Danish visitors. And the Norwegians and Swedes apparently don’t give a toss about Danish newspapers.

– When did you subscribe?

– I don’t know. A year ago? One day it just stopped coming. Søren started the subscription, but no one knew how to cancel it, so we just chucked all the newspapers into the rubbish bin.

– Have any of your colleagues suddenly vanished in the last three months?

– Vanished, no. But a few have them have gone home. To England, Spain, Holland, or wherever it is they’re from.

– Do you know any young girls who’ve gotten pregnant and had an abortion?

– You Danes aren’t afraid of stepping on people’s toes, are you? She laughs. – But I like that, as long as you don’t scare my girls.

– I’m trying to help someone I know find his girlfriend. She was last seen here with this newspaper.

She leans across the table and lowers her voice. – If you’re looking for girls in the 18- to 30-year-old range who forget to insist on condoms, then you’ve come to the right place. There are all sorts of girls like that here, in every stage of pregnancy, even the skinny ones that you don’t notice are pregnant until they retch on the floor of the bar. Islanders may be Catholics, but their daughters aren’t exactly nuns. The clinic down in Santa Cruz makes a pretty penny. This is a party island. The men don’t care, and the girls are too stupid. It’s as simple as that. Is she Danish?

Erhard had always imagined the mother was Danish, because the child had been swaddled inside a Danish newspaper, but now he’s not sure. He recalls the images he’s seen of the boy. – Possibly. She’s light-skinned.

– A friend’s girlfriend, you say? You don’t know much, do you?

– Did someone take the newspapers home? Maybe a Danish girl, a customer here?

– Well, on any given day except Sundays, more than 1,500 people party here until the sun rises. Could one of them have taken the newspaper home? It’s hard to say. I know that we mostly just threw them out. We got tired of them.

– So when did you stop receiving the newspapers?

– In October. Maybe November.

– What did you do with them? Where did you throw them out?

The woman scrutinizes Erhard as if he doesn’t understand something. – In the rubbish bin, of course.

– May I see?

– Sure, just walk around the building. Have fun.

Erhard looks at her as he gets to his feet. – There’s too much syrup in your Mai Tai. Don’t put so much in or use more fresh lime.

44

He doesn’t care to rummage through the rubbish bins. It was just something he came up with to irritate her. Why would he? What would he search for? What good would it do him to see where they threw a bunch of newspapers months ago? So he walks up and down the street and finally into a bar that’s broadcasting horse races on its many televisions.

At around eleven o’clock he eats a ham sandwich and drinks the cheapest beer on the menu. He doesn’t speak to anyone. He practises being the director: crossing his legs and looking dignified, smiling a little, and waving at the waiter – a small man with a waist apron underneath a pair of man-boobs. Erhard orders another beer. A woman sits at the bar, and he dreams of impressing her in conversation. He knows his newfound confidence is only because he’s on Tenerife. At home he wouldn’t puff himself up like this. At home he would’ve already gone home. The woman, who’s at least twenty years younger, is seated with her back to him, but he can see her spine through her thin yellow dress. She doesn’t even glance in his direction, but seems mostly interested in writing something on her mobile phone.

After he’s eaten, he goes down the hill to find the beach and a place to sleep. He’s tired, wiped out. He brought an extra beer from the bar. Café Rústica, just as the woman had said it would be, is packed. People are hanging from the windows and sitting on the patio as the music thumps and vibrates. The nightlife vibe is different here than on Fuerteventura. There’s a different kind of abandon, as if young people here are wealthier and more willing – which is probably true. He walks slowly past the cafe and pauses on the path leading around the building. He can see and smell the rubbish bins, which by the light of the streetlamps resemble parked tanks. A couple is making out intensely around the corner. Erhard coughs loudly so that they know he’s there, then saunters past them and down the alley. On his right is the cafe, a high wall lacking windows. Around thirty metres ahead, a yellow square forms an open door from the kitchen to the alley. On his left, a tall fence encloses what appears to be a container terminal. Erhard spots movement, and a posse of soft, mewling cats scuttle between his legs. In the darkness they’re all blue. The stench is powerful. Not from the cats, but the overflowing rubbish bin. Cinched rubbish bags are poking up from underneath the lid. He starts towards the open door, through which he hears rap music. A young man, a Moroccan dishwasher wearing yellow rubber gloves, strolls outside smoking a cigarette. The light from the doorway illuminates the fence and a row of wicker baskets, bottles, cardboard, and rotten fruit that smells sweet and hot. Erhard stands quietly until the dishwasher discovers him and nods. A young man like that doesn’t dare speak. Besides, it’s not illegal for Erhard to be here.

– Newspapers? Erhard asks, nodding at the rubbish bin. The man, who doesn’t seem to understand him, just nods again. – Are there newspapers here?

Erhard points at the bin.

– No, you put newspapers over there. They have to go in the container for recycling.

Erhard returns to the tall black container that he’d passed earlier. He peers inside it. It’s nearly filled with Spanish and English newspapers. He pulls out a few. They are from yesterday, Tuesday, Sunday.

– What do you need them for? the dishwasher asks. If you need them for sleeping, then you can borrow a blanket from me. It’s going to be cold tonight.

Just as Erhard’s about to respond, he sees a broad hole in the fence next to the newspaper container.

– What’s in there? Only containers?

The dishwasher has lit another cigarette and now sits on a folding chair beside the door.

– Storage, freight, import/export, furniture, antiquities. Anything that fits inside a container. They get angry when people go through there, but they won’t put up a new fence.

– Why would anyone go that way? Is it a shortcut?

– People host huge parties in the waterfront houses sometimes, and it only takes five minutes to get down there if you go that way. Otherwise you have to walk around, and that takes maybe fifteen.

– Do you have a torch? Erhard asks. But he doesn’t wait for a response before stepping through the hole in the fence.

He gets all the way through the container terminal without noticing anything particularly interesting. Partly because the area is dark, lit up only by some old streetlamps with tyres around their foundations, and partly because there’s nothing particularly remarkable. The dishwasher was right. Many of the containers are sealed with heavy-duty padlocks. There’s all sorts of stuff in the open containers. Boxes and bubble-wrapped items, or things packaged in glass cases or foam. Some containers hold steel and old bicycles. Down near the driveway, one hundred metres before the guardhouse and the barrier that blocks entry to the terminal, stand several refrigerator containers, a couple of RVs and small trucks, and what appears to be construction materials for a house. He passes the guard, who’s watching a Sylvester Stallone film, and continues to the beach. There he sits next to a bonfire with a sand sculptor and his dog.

The two men share the beer Erhard has brought, and they give the dog a slurp from a metal tray. The heat, the bonfire light, and the sound of the sculptor’s voice tires him out. The man talks about Lanzarote in the 1980s, when Moroccan fishermen filled their boats with people and knowingly crashed their cutters against the coast so they would have to be saved and brought to land. Erhard thinks he’s met this man before and wonders if he’s that well-known businessman who was convicted of fraud. Then he falls asleep. He wakes briefly when the sculptor lays some old towels, coats, and blankets over him, but otherwise sleeps. The sun rises. The sculptor must have packed his things and headed to the beach with his dog early; Erhard sees their footprints in the sand when he wakes around eight o’clock. He sits for a long time staring at the water.