The Hermit (47 page)

– But your friends. They must’ve heard something? I’ve driven a taxi for years, and taxi drivers gossip more than housewives, if you know what I mean.

Chris Jones laughs guardedly, as if he’s missing a tooth or two. – Hell, I know what you mean. Who are you anyway?

– I’m just an old man who’s trying to find someone from that ship, that’s all.

– An old man. A curious old man. But I like that. As long as you’re not the police. Or from the newspaper.

– I promise you, I’m not from either.

– Hand me one of those, he says, pointing at the whisky bottles. Erhard retrieves one for him, and the man pours whisky into a dirty cup that’s standing on a footstool next to the bed, and he gives it to Erhard. He himself raises the bottle to his lips and chugs a quarter of the liquid.

– What happened to your finger? Jones asks.

He doesn’t seem embarrassed to ask the question. It’s liberating when people ask Erhard.

– My punishment for a crime.

– Fuck me, what’d you do? Look at another man’s wife in the wrong country or something?

– Not exactly, but something like that.

– United Arab Emirates?

– Denmark.

– What? The Danes don’t do that.

– I did.

It takes a little time before Jones realizes what Erhard means. – That’s brutal, he says softly.

They drink.

– Last week, Jones says, after he’s wiped his mouth with the blanket. – I met one of the lads that I sailed with. Simao. We share a common interest in dogs. Jones whirls his finger around at the posters. – He came up here and sat in that very chair you’re in, stiff as a board he was, feeling real bad about what had happened to me. Then all of a sudden he told me about the
Hestia
. He knew exactly what happened and where they were all hiding and shit.

– Hiding?

– He told me the crew was mixed up in something and was hiding from the police and shit.

– Mixed up how?

– No idea. He was probably just showing off. That’s what everyone does. Every sailor has sailed around the world a thousand times, scoring some pussy at every port. Braggarts. Many of the sailors are tiny little men, assholes who don’t care to leave the ship when it reaches the wharf. As long as they’ve got fags and alcohol and Coke, they’d rather stay in their small cabins fucking each other. The scum.

– Huh, Erhard says.

– But Simao said something interesting. He said the cargo had been brought back here. The entire fucking thing returned to where it had started. I’d never heard that. Everyone thinks it vanished in the dark heart of Africa. Blame it on the niggers, you know.

– Interesting, Erhard says, though he’s unable to determine exactly what it means.

– It’s fucking organized, that’s what it is. Rich men in their offices, laughing all the way to the golf club. Isn’t that what people say?

– Where can I find your acquaintance? The braggart.

– If he’s not out to sea, then you’ll find him at one of the dog tracks, you know, the ones with the super-skinny dogs chasing each other?

– Which one?

– The big one north of here.

– What else is he called besides Simao?

– Simao. He doesn’t have another name. It’s just like Pelé. He has only one name.

– If I do you a favour, will you do one for me?

– That sounds naughty, Chris Jones laughs.

– If you find out where your friend Simao is right now, I’ll find out who beat you up.

– I know who beat me up. It was the asshole who took my papers.

– But you told me yourself he wasn’t alone.

– I’m busy at the moment, he says, waving the bottle.

– It’ll be here tomorrow. Or one of its four friends.

– It’s hard to say no to an old man like you.

– That’s right, Erhard says.

60

The container ship is called the
Nicosia
, and he can barely read the name – it’s been worn down by bird shit, wind, and the elements. It’s approximately fifty metres long. The wooden gangway is rickety; it looks all wrong, frail, next to the black wall of steel that forms the hull of the ship. He’d figured he could just begin by shouting for the crew, who would be busy on board, but there’s no one around. So he saunters up the gangway as if it’s all he’s ever known.

Even when he’s on board he doesn’t see anyone. The deck is filled with cranes and containers and thick cables with pulleys that fasten the containers to the ship. It reeks of iron or even blood. For a moment Erhard wonders if he’s bit his tongue, but it’s the deck that smells of metal, it’s the peeling containers, it’s the chains that form the railing in several sections, creaky, swinging in the wind. He walks along the railing in search of a door. Maybe the entire crew is having a meeting below deck. Maybe they’ve not reported to work yet. Find the ship’s bridge, Chris Jones had told him.

He sees a door under the stairwell leading up to the roof of the top deck. It’s a small door that’s raised twenty centimetres above the floor, so that it resembles a closet door, and he expects to find shelves filled with torches and ropes and various other equipment. Erhard doesn’t know much about the work, and nothing at all about life at sea. Since many of the seamen he’s met – including Chris Jones – are alcoholics, drug addicts, violent, or just plain odd, he figures it must be a depressing, demanding life: boredom, the constant pitching of the sea, the creaky hull, awful food served on pitiful metal trays. Not to mention all the horny seamen in too-small beds.

It’s not a closet but a long corridor that runs six or seven yards straight ahead and disappears into the floor. But he’s not going below deck. He walks straight ahead until he turns a corner and sees a steep stairwell up to the wheelhouse that rests like a bird house at the top of the windowless box that is the ship’s hull. It’s more or less what he’s looking for.

He climbs the stairs and peers through the door window. The room, which looks like what people would call the bridge, is filled with work tables and large, square computers. Sunlight filters through the tinted windows that run the entire length of one wall, allowing Erhard a view of the ship’s bow, the other ships in the harbour, and even the ocean as seen through a gauzy coffee-brown haze that makes the morning sun seem tired. Someone is sitting at a narrow table, his back to Erhard, leaning over a newspaper or some papers. Cautiously Erhard opens the door. The person at the table doesn’t seem surprised, and doesn’t even react. Somewhere a radio is tuned to a pop-music station.

– Good morning, Erhard says.

It turns out to be a short, Arabic-looking woman with silky-smooth hair and a hat. She glances down at Erhard’s shoes. They’re cheap trainers, he knows. Not the shoes of a director. Even though he’s promised Emanuel several times, he’s not bought himself a pair of proper shoes. – And you are?

– I’m looking for Simao.

She points to the corner, to another door. – He’s asleep in there. But he needs to get up. We sail in forty-five minutes.

She turns and goes back to her reading.

He pushes open the door. The little room is pitch dark. By the light from the door he sees a bunk bed and a small man with a full black beard. As Erhard enters, the man wakes up and shifts beneath his blanket, like a child. – Simao?

– I’m awake, Simao says, though he doesn’t sound it.

– I’ve never said anything like that, he says repeatedly.

Erhard has just tucked 200 euros into the pocket of his tattered shirt. Anything over 100 euros would get the asshole started, Chris Jones had said. He’s probably got debts he can’t pay back that have accumulated over the decades; his life is in the hands of the only ones in the gambling world who don’t actually gamble, the masterminds who sit in run-of-the-mill offices and move millions of euros between the islands and never pay taxes. The dog-racing sheet is poking out from under the mattress. Erhard had expected posters on the wall. Of a girlfriend or a child or topless women in mermaid costumes. Or dogs like at Chris Jones’s place. But maybe the bunk isn’t Simao’s, just a communal galley the sailors use when on duty. Simao has gone out on deck. To smoke, Erhard discovers, while he explains to Simao why he’s here.

– I’ve got a few questions for you. If you answer them all, I’ll give you two hundred more. I know what you’ve said about the
Seascape Hestia
. Just tell me the same thing, that’s all I’m asking.

Simao gazes across the harbour. – Has gettin’ beat up made that poof stupid? I told him that so that he wouldn’t feel bad about… About…

Erhard ignores this. – I’m not a policeman, and I’m not a government official. Nothing like that. I won’t tell anyone that I’ve spoken to you.

They’re standing in the shade between a line of containers. Simao lights a second fag even as he holds the first. He flicks the smoking butt over the railing and into the water, then pats his shirt pocket for the 100-euro note.

– It’s been weeks now. I was fucking stuck in Casablanca. Waiting for my buddy Ramón, who had promised me he’d be there, innit. But he doesn’t show up. I’m at some bar, and I run into a ship’s mate I know. He’s pissed and high, you know. We have a few shots, and we discuss how to find him a woman. But he’s not really into it, tells me his wife will skin him alive if he cheats on her, and so we end up at some local guy’s. Smoking, innit. All of a sudden he tells me he’d been part of the crew that had sailed out to empty that Canary ship that everyone was talking about. Everyone’s looking for that ship’s crew who had all sailed on to West Africa, but no one knows this guy was on board that other ship and he’s totally whacked wondering if he should tell somebody. But I tell him he shouldn’t, cause then he’d be mixed up in some serious shit.

Erhard’s not surprised. – Why did you believe him? What if he was just making it up?

Simao looks at Erhard as if he’s an idiot. – You just know. When a sailor’s pissed enough, he don’t lie.

– What if he was just trying to be entertaining?

– Entertaining? Simao tilts his head back as if deeply offended. – Are you implying something?

Erhard doesn’t know what the man means. – No, I’m just saying he might have lied to you.

– He wasn’t lying, old man.

– What did you say his name was?

– I haven’t told you his name. How should I know?

– You were drinking together, and you’ve sailed with him before, but you don’t know his name?

– Shit, what’s it matter what his name is?

– Is he Spanish?

– Yeah, for fuck’s sake.

– Did he meet others there? Was he alone?

– We had some shots with a few locals, a few blacks, but otherwise no.

– And you say the pirates abandoned them in West Africa?

– The pirates, yeah.

– What?

– Yeah, the pirates abandoned them in Casablanca.

Erhard suddenly understands the man’s slightly off-kilter body language. The way his middle finger rubs his right-hand thumb. He’s not talking about a drinking buddy, he’s talking about himself. He was the one on board the ship. But Erhard decides not to press too hard yet. – There weren’t any pirates, were there?

– Yeah, bloody hell. I’m telling you’re there were lots of pirates.

Erhard sizes up Simao. He’s still a young man. A boy, really. Thirty-something. That could work to Erhard’s advantage – that Erhard seems like a strict father figure. He stares directly into the boy’s eyes.

Simao covers his face. – Stop that. I don’t know fuck all about what happened to Chris. I swear I don’t know who beat him up or who pushed the fake Chris overboard.

He seems to be telling the truth, but Erhard is sceptical. – But there were no pirates?

– Fuck me. No, there were no pirates. Never was.

– Only the crew?

– It was supposed to seem like the ship had been seized by pirates. Some of the
Hestia
’s crewmembers punched each other to make it seem like the pirates had done it. We laughed about it at first. Until Señor P decked one crew member so hard that he lost a tooth.

– What about your buddy? Did he punch someone too?

– No, he didn’t. There were four on board. They would’ve been offed if not for the ship.

– What do you mean?

– The ship they were on was a different kind of ship, and none of the crew were familiar with it.

– So what happened to the cargo?

– Most of it ended up here. The crew was dropped off in Casablanca.

– The crew went to port in Casablanca, but the cargo came back to Tenerife?

The man nods, then inhales so that the cherry on his cigarette turns bright red. – Except for Señor P. He went back to wherever he was from.

– Is it even possible to transfer cargo when not in port?

Simao chuckles. – You’ve sure got plenty of questions
,
old man.

– I told you as much. Remember my contribution to the dog track.

Simao eyes Erhard distrustfully. – If you’re not Chris’s good friend then he owes me a fucking apology. He tamps out his fag and lights a new one. This time he takes a normal breath before raising the cigarette to his mouth. – You can move cargo, sure, but it’s not easy. It’s dangerous, innit.

– How so?

– Out on the open sea the ships sway and might ram into each other, the cranes too, and you might drop your cargo into the water. It’s not good.

– Sounds difficult. Does it take a long time?

– Yeah, if there’s a lot that needs to be transferred.

– If there weren’t any pirates, what happened to the engineer they thought was Chris Jones? The guy the fishermen found? The newspaper wrote that he resisted the pirates.

– They wrote Chris was the one who’d been thrown overboard, and I believed it. But I hadn’t even seen Chris on board. I mean, I, uh, my friend said it was total chaos. It was New Year’s Eve. Fireworks were going off along the coast, and you could hear the explosions above the wind. The water over there was fucked up. That’s why Señor P was called in. He knows the sea better than anyone, innit.

– So Señor P was the one who pushed the engineer overboard? The fake Chris Jones?

– That’s what they said. He arrived on the ship right before it happened. He was drunk as a skunk, muttering strange things.