The Hermit (61 page)

Erhard sucks up great impatient gulps of air and feels something wet rolling down his forehead. He fingers his throat where the plastic strip was wound.

– Your car, Erhard stammers.

– You owe me, you sick old man. And we’ll never find those 875 euros you gave me in the wreckage.

– Where were you?

Ponduel explains. He’d been sick of waiting and was about to drive off, but then he saw Juan Pascual running along the rim towards Erhard. Ponduel had honked to warn Erhard. He couldn’t tell what was happening, and grew uneasy. He decided to go up to the crater to see what was going on, but he got lost on the way and came out in the wrong place, just in time to see that crazy asshole – Ponduel’s words – dragging Erhard down the hill. At first Ponduel thought Pascual was going to drive off with Erhard, and so he ran down the hill to block the van, but instead he watched him back the Lexus onto the road. That irked Ponduel, so he found a big rock and ran around the car to hammer it on the asshole’s head. But before he got there, Pascual had put the car in neutral and shoved it down the path. Ponduel slammed the rock in the man’s in the face, but the guy punched him like an angry bull and knocked him down twice. In the end, Ponduel managed to shove him off an outcropping. He struck his head and went out like a light, and then Ponduel ran after the car to save it. Save Erhard, of course.

– And not a moment too soon, Ponduel concluded. – You’ve got a little blood on your neck, because I had to put my Swiss Army knife under the plastic to cut if free. And I had to pound your chest once to get you breathing again.
Lo siento
.

– Where is he?

– Up there. He had another one of those plastic strips on him, so I used it to tie him up. He can’t get away. I would call the police, but my mobile’s in the car. You don’t have one, either.

– I saw him talking on his mobile. Erhard’s inhalation is returning to normal, and it no longer hurts to breathe.

– Maybe it’s in the van. I haven’t checked. But I have the keys right here.

Erhard sits quietly for a moment, then pushes himself onto his elbow and looks at Ponduel, shaking his head. – No police. Not yet.

Ponduel throws up his hands, but says nothing.

Erhard tries to stand. His body feels like fragments, wired and taped together but otherwise broken. He takes a few cautious steps, but can’t continue.

– I’ll get the van, Ponduel says, and starts briskly towards the road. Erhard has never seen him move that fast. A few minutes later the blue van noses down the path towards him. Ponduel parks and leaps out to help Erhard into the passenger seat, waving a black mobile phone that he’s found in the van. Then he turns the van around and drives ahead twenty or thirty metres. Erhard spots Pascual lying in a ditch at the foot of a small outcropping. He doesn’t seem to be awake, despite the awkward position he’s in: hogtied.

– What do we do with him? Ponduel asks.

– We have to take him to Corralejo.

Once again Ponduel has to climb out of the van. He drags Pascual from the ditch and up the hill, then dumps him in the back. Erhard can’t see the two men, but he hears Pascual groaning in protest.

Then they head back down Calderon Hondo. Erhard reclines in his seat, his body sore all over. Ahead of them, the sun is sinking below the horizon. The smashed Lexus irritates Ponduel more and more the closer they get to the city. He doesn’t know what he’s going to tell his wife, doesn’t know how he’s going to earn a paycheque the next few days. Erhard tells him to report the incident to the police as soon as he gets home. Tell them how that crazy Hermit took him hostage and stole his car. The police would believe him.

Ponduel’s not so sure. The wife’s got a sixth sense for lies like that. That’s how it is with
majoreros
. They know a lie when they hear one; it’s a skill they pass down from generation to generation. That’s women for you, Erhard suggests, but Ponduel just snaps at him, telling him that he looks like a homeless man with his buzz cut, like a fucking beggar.

They drive to Hotel Olympus and the unfinished car park. Ponduel slams the door and wanders off. Vanishing in the darkness, probably down one of the paths that run behind the luxurious villas to the block of flats where he lives with his young wife. Erhard isn’t sure what to do with the van or with Juan Pascual, who has begun to stir.

He flails about, cursing and shouting. – Hey, who’s there?

Pascual doesn’t know who knocked him out, Erhard realizes, or threw him in the van. The roles are reversed.

Erhard revs the motor by stepping on the gas. He pulls his t-shirt up to his mouth and barks above the din, impersonating Palabras. – Scream all you want, my friend. No one can hear you.

– I’ve done everything you asked me to do. Everything. I took care of the old man. Now I just need the woman. Let me finish the job. Give me a chance. I need my medicine, otherwise I’m going to be sick.

Erhard considers. – I’m not giving you anything until I know for certain that you won’t go to the police.

– I swear by Mother Mary. You can trust me.

– What if… what if the old man spoke to someone? Erhard ventures, pressing down on the gas until it’s nearly impossible to tell what he’s saying.

– What? Pascual says.

– What if the old man talked? he yells even louder. Must be the hearing aid, Erhard thinks, or maybe he lost it in the tumult.

– I’ve kept my eye on him.

– People have seen you, you stupid sailor.

– Who? When did they see me?

– When do you think?

– What?

– In the flat. When Beatrizia Colini was beaten up. A neighbour in the building across the street saw you.

Silence.

– I told you it wasn’t me. Raúl was upstairs making a phone call. After the incident with the whore. I waited outside after we returned, and he started to argue with Colini. I tried to stop him, but he didn’t let me in until it was too late. I told him I’d take care of the old man, who was lying upstairs. But Raúl said no.

Erhard’s head is swimming. – What did you do to the whore?

– What?

– What did you do with the whore?

– I’ve already told you that. You know what I did.

– Remind me.

Silence. Then a thump on the floor. – Fuck you. Who are you? Is it you, Palabras?

– You killed her.

– What the fuck? You know what…

Erhard revs the engine and quickly hops out of the van. He feels terribly nauseated, and expects to vomit his afternoon shrimp. But gasping for breath, he tastes the sea salt and inhales the smell of cool cement, and that helps. The nausea passes.

More pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place.

Of course Alina didn’t jump off the roof herself, of course she was pushed. Why hasn’t he considered that possibility before? He’d thought that no one knew she was out there, but Raúl knew. Erhard told him as much. A mixture of relief and anger tumbles around inside him. Erhard didn’t caused her to jump; it was Raúl or his friend Pesce. They let her hang herself like a hunter’s deer. With premeditation. They killed the confused, dumb girl, and they hoped Erhard would take the fall.

He walks away from the delivery van, then through the unfinished hotel. In many ways, the hotel is representative of the island’s grand ambition, its widespread corruption, terrible public administration, and planning. But it’s also a rather poetic feature: a pile of rubble revealing some poor architect’s late-night elbow grease and drawing-board ideas removed of varnish. By the glow of headlights, he catches a glimpse of what would have been a restaurant or a cafeteria with a stairwell, a landing, and a wall of windows facing the sea. German housewives and smug Russians could have circulated around the buffet table, while twenty or thirty West Africans and young Spaniards ran about filling the empty trays with fresh figs, steaming tortillas, and locally harvested shellfish. The guests could have sat in plush chairs drinking champagne as they enjoyed the view of the bay and the city. Because of the shrubbery and the giant rocks, it’s impossible to see the ocean from here, but surely those would’ve been blasted away with dynamite when the hotel was completed. In a changing world, it feels good to stand in the centre of something unchanging. A construction site: a work in progress that, in all likelihood, will never amount to anything. One day it’ll be razed to the ground.

He kicks at a crumpled-up plastic bag from HiperDino, the silly green dinosaur logo with its fiery-red tongue. What he really wants to do is to haul that bumbling fool Pascual out of the van and beat him senseless. Find an old pipe and flatten his head with it. But what good would it do? The sailor didn’t do anything but carry out orders, and those orders came from Emanuel Palabras. Must have.

I only need the woman, Pascual had said. The woman. He must mean Mónica. They must think Mónica knows something.

Erhard scoops up the bag and puts it over his head, testing how it feels. It smells musty. Then he jogs to the van, opens the door, and scrabbles in the back. Pascual’s a dark lump in one corner, and he hardly moves when Erhard climbs in. He swears once before Erhard grabs hold of his throat and pulls the bag over his head. – Why did you push the ship’s mate overboard?

– Who the fu—?

Erhard kicks him as hard as he can in the kidneys. The plastic bag rustles; it’s begun to expand and retract with Pascual’s breath.

– Why did you kill him? Tell me and I’ll remove the bag. Erhard can no longer see his face.

Pascual gasps for breath. – He couldn’t sail, a… fucking liar, a junkie. Take it off, take it off. The bag tightens across his mouth.

– He tried to keep you from moving the containers.

– He was useless, and he kept shouting incoherently about the boy. It was all so chaotic, and we had work to do.

Erhard kicks him again. – The woman, what will you do with her?

– What do you mean?

Erhard unleashes his fury on the lump, shouting, – What will you do with the woman?

Finally the lump goes quiet. One of the plastic strips he’d tied around Erhard’s throat lies on the floor of the van. Erhard picks it up and considers returning the favour. But instead he sticks the strip in his back pocket, rips the bag off Pascual’s head, and hops out of the van.

Only one person can stop things going any further.

Pascual’s mobile is beneath the handbrake. Erhard opens it with a click and stares at all the buttons. He inputs Emanuel Palabras’s number, but nothing happens. Then he presses the large green button, the one with the telephone symbol, and hears the line beep.

It beeps six, seven, eight times. Then someone answers.

– Yes.

The voice is simple and clear. It’s Palabras. Measured, waiting.

– You fucking bastard, Erhard says. He can’t think of a better way to start the conversation.

– Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone? Why did you have to play the hero?

– I wanted to expose you. You and your fucking sick game.

– Well, I’m glad you called. I was wondering when I would hear from you.

– Shut up, you hypocrite. I have your henchman right here.

Palabras is quiet a moment. – I don’t know who you mean, he says.

– He’s filled me in on a lot of interesting details.

– Trust me when I say that I don’t know who you mean.

– Shut your—

– I advise you to listen now, Piano Tuner. I have our little, what shall we call her, girlfriend here. I’ve heard the entire story, and it’s very moving.

Erhard doesn’t budge. – You… you better not…

– I’m not going to do anything. But unless you don’t start acting sensibly, I’ll seriously consider putting an end to her miserable existence.

– Let me talk to her.

Palabras laughs. – You’re too good to be true. She’s not very talkative, but if she were, she would doubtless miss your company. Now, for the time being, please do as I say.

– I’ll do whatever you ask. Just don’t harm her.

– I want you out here. Now. The harbour in Corralejo. And take that fucking boat this time. It’ll sail you over here. Then we’ll talk.

– Over here? Erhard manages to say before Palabras hangs up.

He walks along the water. He’s kicked off his shoes and now feels the cool sand against his bare toes. The city and the bay are illuminated by colourful chain lights, and music of various kinds floats up beneath wispy white clouds. With each step he has to convince himself to continue; his body is worn out beyond all reason, and he can’t imagine returning to his previous self again. It’s like driving on petrol fumes with a motor that needs oil and tyres that are flat. If he arrives on time, it’s only because he can’t stop thinking of Mónica. For some reason, the image of her pale belly and the broken clay pots keeps cropping up in his head, and he lumbers forward, forward, as fast as he can.

He left Pascual in the delivery van, and doesn’t figure he’ll go anywhere. He needs to keep him around, like a trump card he can throw down if necessary. That Palabras refuses to admit he knows the man only serves to underscore just how much Erhard needs proof. He would have taken the van, but it would do no good to try to drive through the city during Virgin del Carmen. Most of the city is closed off to vehicles, and the harbour is teeming with people.

They’ve constructed pavilions on the beach where visitors at some of the coastal hotels can dine with a tremendous view, chatting excitedly and loudly. They’re waiting on the high point of the evening: Carmen’s final journey on the flotilla, followed by a massive display of fireworks visible all the way out in Majanicho. Walking along, he probably resembles one of the sand sculptors, and several euphoric people say hello to him, calling out
Holy Carmen
.

The beach leads up to the packed, chaotic promenade. Adults raise their wineglasses, kiss over empty plates, slurp the last sips of their daiquiris. Children crawl among chairs with dogs and cats, and street hawkers tie bracelets to tourists’ wrists. There’s more noise here, but also more light, and for a moment he fears being seen by a policeman standing hatless along the wall beside the jeweller’s shop. But before long Erhard merges with the throng, and any interest in him as a person dissolves. A few hundred metres down the street, he walks past Azura and spots the Bitch standing behind the bar. Then he shoves his way forward and zigzags towards the harbour.