The Hermit (42 page)

He sits in the rear of his office talking softly so that Ana can’t hear him, even though he thinks she’s at Marcelis’s desk this morning. But surely she can’t help but notice all his activity. She brings him coffee, despite the fact that he’s told her repeatedly not to, and slips out again in order not to disturb him. He eats lunch with the telephone girls, who’ve grown accustomed to him and discuss the actor Tito Valverde, who plays Gerardo Castilla in
El Comisario
, Crown Prince Felipe’s divorce, and one of the girls’ dog; he had been staying with a neighbour and was given cat food to eat, which seems to shock several of the girls. Erhard hears their voices, but doesn’t pay close attention to what they say.

He makes more calls. Since the first time he rang TiTi Europe, he’s known that they were withholding information. They were hostile and suspicious. He preps himself to call, walking around his office talking softly to himself. The trick is to get in touch with one of the employees he didn’t speak with last time. When the receptionist answers, he immediately requests to be put through to the accounts department.

– Alfonso Diaz, accounts payable.

– Good morning, Señor Diaz, my name is Jorge Algara. I’m calling from Mercuria Insurance in Las Palmas. I can see that you’ve got a large claim that’s to be paid out to you, but I’m missing some details about the incident. This is again followed by silence.

– I don’t believe so, he says.

He’s the first to begin that way.

– Are you telling me that you’re not interested in receiving a payment in connection to a collision in January?

– We’ve had no collisions in the past fifty-four months.

– Impressive. But you’re right. According to my papers, it was a near-collision.

– A near-collision?

– That’s a word we in the insurance business use.

– Whatever it is, we’ve not been involved in anything, nothing like that. But I’m here in accounts payable. I can transfer you to our traffic supervisor. He’ll have more information for you.

The traffic supervisor is one of those Erhard spoke to last time, and the conversation didn’t go well. If he’s transferred there, it’s over. – It’s accounts payable with whom I need to speak. The other party has just acknowledged its role in the matter and is willing to pay 30,000 euros, at face value. If you would check some information, I will then simply ask you to provide a bank number so the money can be transferred.

The hook is cast. Silence.

– One moment, please. The man on the other end fumbles with the receiver. It’s as if he holds his hand over the microphone, so Erhard can’t hear his conversation. A woman and a man. He hears the word
no
several times. – Hello, Alfonso Diaz says. – Have you called before? I’ve been told that you called earlier.

Erhard doesn’t know what to say. What would someone say who hadn’t called before? – No. I’m calling from Mercuria Insurance.

– Are you the one who called about the Volkswagen Passat?

– I’m calling from Mercuria Insurance.

– We can’t help you. Then he lowers his voice. – We’re not allowed to provide the information you’re requesting. Don’t you read the newspapers? We don’t operate the
Seascape Hestia
. I can’t help you.

– So you’re not interested in a payment of…

– Goodbye.

The man hangs up.

Erhard is incensed. He stares at the telephone and can’t help but throw the receiver across the room, until the cord stretches taut and the plastic device falls to the floor and shatters. Goddamn them and their secrets. Are there rules for what one may say – or do they know something about the little boy? He can’t believe it. To abandon a child is too low-class, too cynical, for any company to cover up. No, they’re keeping silent because of something as meaningless as money. These companies, which, even in a recession, earn unimaginable sums importing unimaginable quantities of discount products made by children in Asian sweatshops; these companies, which are controlled by nouveau riche Russians and pampered heiresses who eat Argentinean beef and light their stoves with stacks of euros. Whatever rule, whatever consideration, is about money and making more of it, never less. He has the urge to visit them – no, not visit them – to find their office and break in. Find what he’s looking for and set the place on fire.

The door opens, and Ana pops her head in. She looks at Erhard, who’s sitting against the wall on the far side of the room, then at the floor where the telephone’s smashed to pieces.

– I’d like a new telephone, Erhard says.

– What happened?

She seems shocked, even though she must be used to this kind of outburst from Marcelis, who is known for throwing his pens.

He’s too embarrassed to respond.

She leaves, then returns with a dustpan and a small broom. – Telephones are pretty cheap nowadays, she says.

He says nothing.

She peers down at the fragments and carries them out.

– Thank you, he calls after her. – I won’t do that again.

The door closes.

Seascape Hestia
?

It occurs to Erhard that the man from TiTi Europe’s accounts-payable department had actually tried to help him.
Seascape Hestia
must be the name of a ship. A ship that was located between Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura at the right point in time. The man from TiTi must have known there was something about that ship. He didn’t even have to look it up; he hadn’t enough time for that. He already knew. Something must’ve happened with that ship, perhaps something everyone knows but no one wishes to discuss.

There was also something about what he’d said: Don’t you read the newspaper? The man from TiTi Europe hadn’t been commenting on Erhard’s lack of information. He’d given him a clue: The ship you seek was written up in the newspaper. Or, put another way: Find old news about
Seascape Hestia
and maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for.

Shipping routes were seldom in the news, unless a ship capsized. But what if there was a collision? Erhard hasn’t even considered researching newspaper archives. It’s a good idea – except that he doesn’t know where or how to start. He would need to study an entire month’s worth of newspapers that are more than forty days old. And local or mainland newspapers? Could he go to
La Provincia
and request newspapers from January? Maybe the library in Corralejo has a newspaper archive he could rummage through?

He grabs his notebook and jots down
Seascape Hestia
, so he doesn’t forget the name. While he writes, he realizes that the office – which gets no direct sunlight after three o’clock – has grown dark. He rips out the sheet of paper and shoves it into his shirt pocket, then pulls on his sweater. It’s time to have another chat with Solilla, the bookseller, and to get hold of her friend again.

54

A flock of labourers emerge from the harbour and walk up the street. They’re not all men, some are women in overalls, still wearing their helmets, their work gloves tucked under their armpits. Standing on an empty construction site behind a linen shop, Erhard gazes across the street at the glass building where the newspaper is housed. It’s a dull yellow structure. The door opens, but apparently because of the wind. Or maybe because they’re electric doors. Diego exits a few minutes later.

He crosses the street and heads seemingly at random towards Erhard.

– Señora Solilla asked me to find everything published in January concerning the
Hestia
. There were five or six articles, but everything’s online, I think. He glances down at the file he offers Erhard. – This was all I could find. The printer protested a bit. But this must what you’re looking for, I think.

– OK, Erhard says.

– Still the same case? Diego glances down the street to his left, then his right.

– Maybe.

– I don’t know what it is you’re looking for, but if there’s a connection to the dead boy, I hope you can prove it. This might peck some of the rich boys on their toes.

Step on their toes
, Erhard thinks to himself. A journalist who doesn’t know his metaphors. – Ouch, Erhard says, suddenly bitter that the journalist doesn’t care to write about the case.

Diego shrugs. – Well, good luck, he says and returns to his office.

A Judas kiss, Erhard thinks.

Back in the car, he opens the file and reads it. There are six print-outs. Four articles about the same subject. The first is one column on the body of the British engineer Chris Jones, who was found in fishermen’s nets off the coast of Gran Canaria. The follow-up article links the engineer to the
Seascape Hestia
, which sailed from Gran Canaria and was expected in Lisbon two days later, but was now docked in Port Agadir, Morocco. The end of the article references a possible hijacking. Then there’s a long article from
El País
about the
Hestia
, and the author is clearly fascinated by the muddled case. The only crewmembers left on board were a Ghanaian captain, who claimed that he’d been brought to the ship by terrorists, while the eight-man crew had abandoned ship. According to Spanish authorities, the cargo had consisted of construction materials, plastics, tinned goods, and European cars. But the cargo hold was empty, and the Ghanaian captain didn’t know when or how that had happened. The last article is very short. It notes that the
Hestia
was to return to Holland, where it had been registered, and the investigation and search were to continue for the presumed Spanish crew. The Ghanaian captain had been released and not charged with a crime.

Erhard tosses the stack of papers onto the floor of the car. Every time he manages to turn over one rock, he finds new rocks under the first rock. Now he knows that the ship is Dutch. Now he knows that the ship carried European cars. But he can’t solve a crime by reading old newspaper articles. Who the hell knows what happened on board that ship? The dead engineer, the hullabaloo surrounding the Ghanaian captain, the missing cargo – it all sounds like a desperate cash-grab.

The car smells like the box of books that’s resting on the passenger seat. The books once belonged to a cigar smoker. Although there are more than twenty titles, he figures he’ll only read a few of them: Chatwin, maybe Márquez – whom all Spaniards love and hate. He bought the others as a favour to Solilla. Including a novel about a guitar that survives the Spanish Civil War and World War I, only to wind up in Downing Street, in the hands of Churchill’s wife Clementine, who played guitar for Roosevelt’s wife when the Germans surrendered in 1945. Sure, why not? Everything is apparently possible. He has followed the car’s tracks. They didn’t lead up the hill and across the island, but out to sea and north to Holland via Agadir. He starts the Merc’s engine.

55

He’s out at the house to feed the goats. But he doesn’t feed the goats. The goats are nowhere to be seen and he doesn’t hear their braying or the cracked bell around Laurel’s neck, and he doesn’t see them darting among the rocks, their white spines like chalk lines against a cliff. The house is more rickety now. Even a house can be lonely when its resident moves out. The windows are wasting away like eyes, and a slamming door is a quivering mouth begging him to stay another day, another week. Maybe the house has always looked like this. Even when he loved it, even when he longed for peace from the voices in the taxis and the crush of people downtown. Even then it was like returning home to a snivelling lover who couldn’t live without him. He observes the house, hating everything about it as he, as in a childhood memory, remembers sitting outside in the rocking chair drinking Lumumbas or enjoying a quick sunset meal of potatoes. If not for the two goats, he would never return. Just as he’d feared, his many years out here have made him angry and unforgiving of the house and its dust, its creakiness, and its clothesline that was always too slack.

He throws the goat food on the ground. That usually brings the animals. The rattling of the bucket, too, especially Laurel, the most approachable of the two. Not just for the food, but for the hand that throws the food, a hand to stroke its back. Erhard likes the animals, especially Laurel. He doesn’t have a particularly close relationship with them, but he likes having them around, their random movements – without plan or special needs. One time the two creatures had stood a hundred metres apart and, along with Erhard, formed a triangle. A strange symmetry, which, after a few beers, seemed meaningful.

Wind tumbles across the rocks, and from far away comes the sound of a motorboat or an airplane. Erhard walks around the house. Pausing between the clothesline and a cairn he’d built over the years, he suddenly hears Laurel’s bell chiming in the distance. Like a low gurgle, a tinkling that is barely audible, and yet there it is. Though he doesn’t believe Laurel knows its own name, he calls for the goat. Then he clambers up on a large boulder so he can see across the fields and up the mountain, and loses himself in the greyish-brown landscape. And there, there’s a minuscule movement, a white line, Laurel leaping in the groove between mountain and field.

Something terrible has happened. It happens. It has already happened.

Watching Laurel approach, perhaps looking for food, Erhard’s not sure whether he’s afraid for Hardy, or another, maybe Beatriz. Hardy because he’s not around – and he’s almost always with Laurel. If they ever got too far away from each other, they compensated by trotting closer and standing side by side. This tightness seemed even more intimidating on the barren paddock. The rocks made them appear insignificant and vulnerable when they stood together, chewing on whatever they found: cardboard, straw. If Hardy’s not around, then he’s dead. Both goats are over fourteen years old, so it would hardly be extraordinary if one of them lay down and died. He thinks of Bill Haji. Could a group of wild dogs have attacked Hardy?

He rubs Laurel behind his ear and goes back to the house, casting more food on the ground. Laurel eats calmly, his ears waving like a handkerchief. It makes no sense to grill the goat about what happened to its brother. And yet he asks anyway, repeatedly: Have you seen him? Have you seen something terrible?