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  ‘Okay, I’m sorry. They’ve gone now.’

  I backtracked across the balcony.

  I turned on my phone. Could I risk a call to Isabel?

  Three messages from Rangel.

  Call me. Urgent.

  Call me. Urgent.

  Call me. Urgent.

  I called Isabel’s number. Carlos answered.

  ‘Did you know that Francesca was going to Montevideo?’ I said.

  A long pause.

  ‘I had no idea,’ Carlos said.

  ‘Or that she was meeting Damien Kennedy?’

  ‘Damien?’

  Carlos sounded genuinely surprised.

  ‘What is it?’ Carlos said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  I hung up.

  I had no passport but I did have my DNI card. If I wanted to get that ferry to Uruguay I could. I could see where Francesca and Damien were going and get back to Buenos Aires the next day. I hurried down the steps to the lobby. The ticket staff was packing up. The ferry embarkation was closed. I ran toward the desk. If you have enough money you can get anything.

  It was then that my cell phone rang. It was still in my hand. I hadn’t turned it off again. The call was from Rangel. I hit the green button.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Juanma, where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get you all day.’

  ‘Incognito.’

  A pause.

  ‘Juanma, listen, I got some bad news for you.’

  ‘Is that news? You always got bad news.’

  ‘No, I mean it. Just listen, will you? Just a minute, now.’

  I stopped in front of the ticket desk. I motioned to the Buquebus clerk to come over. He shook his head. I waved him towards me again. I could see him blow, tilt his head. He started in my direction.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said to Rangel.

  ‘Pedrito Matas turned up again,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘He said that if you don’t contact Casares by noon tomorrow, Matas is going to pay a visit to your mother that you’d rather he didn’t.’

  ‘My mother? What the fuck is this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rangel said.

  The phone call from my mother just before I left… He told me to make you see sense, Juanma. Or we’d all be sorry… Do as he says, or something awful is going to happen, I know this. Believe your mother.

  What the fuck could they do to my mother? My stomach turned over. I didn’t know what was going on but some instinct kicked in that made me capable of murder. And my father was involved in this. He’d been to her apartment to threaten her. I’d kill the bastard if he hurt her.

  The Hook: It’s ugly and nasty and connected with butcher shops.

  Jesus Christ. My old man was involved in this with Casares… if anything happened to my mother I would fucking eviscerate him and Matas together. And Casares. If I got to live that long.

  The Buquebus clerk reached the desk. He had a sour look on his face. As if he wanted to go home.

  ‘I’ll call Casares,’ I said.

  I hung up.

  I stared into the space of the ferry terminal. I had to get back to Ciudad Azul. My father was prepared to let Matas loose on my mother to get my attention for Casares.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said to the clerk. ‘I can’t go anyway.’

  He nodded and joined a cute clerk with long dark hair.

  I’d seen what Matas had done to Maria.

  I hit the speed dial for my father. No answer. I left a voicemail message.

  ‘I want to see you, you son of a bitch. What’s all this about Matas and Ma?’

  I tried four times. He wasn’t picking up.

  Okay, I called Casares.

  I dialed the number that Rangel had given me.

  I don’t know who answered the phone but he asked me my name and he asked me to wait and then he put Casares on the line.

  ‘So Juan Manuel, you’re ready to meet,’ Casares said.

  ‘My office at noon tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Let’s make this a private affair, okay?’

  ‘I might have some friend around for insurance,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand.’

  ‘It’s a meeting to talk, Juan Manuel, I assure you, nothing more.’

  ‘All the same.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said.

  ‘Will my father be there?’

  ‘He’s out of town.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘You let him know that if anything happens to my mother because of you or anyone else, anything at all, he’s fucking dead.’

  ‘I’ll give him your message.’

  ‘And you, too, you son of a bitch.’

  ‘Juan Manuel, there’s no need for these kinds of threats. We just need to talk… to clear the air.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘You know…?’ Casares said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Juan Manuel Senior is very disappointed in you.’

  ‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Times have changed, Juan Manuel. This disappearance case that has you so obsessed… it’s best left to the police now. And we need to make sure you don’t talk about some other matters, too. You understand?’

  ‘What the fuck do I care about your business deals?’

  ‘Maybe a little.’

  ‘I’ll see you at noon.’

  I hung up.

  About now, the ferry would be leaving with Francesca and Damien on it. I’d lost them. So what? Francesca and Damien – a couple of ancient lovebirds – what had that got to do with me? What did it have to do with Fischer? Why did I want these people messing with my head? I didn’t need it. I came out of the ferry building. Sure enough the big catamaran was easing its way out of the dock. I got in a cab.

  ‘Talcahuano,’ I said.

  I called Isabel’s place.

  ‘Yes.’ Isabel’s voice.

  ‘Do you know anybody in La Colonia who would recognize Gerardo Fischer?’

  ‘La Colonia? No,’ Isabel said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘Is this to do with Damien and Francesca?’

  ‘Yes, yes, exactly.’

  ‘And they’ve gone there?’

  ‘To La Colonia, yes… maybe on to Montevideo.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Maybe if someone you know meets the ferry… and the transfer bus to Montevideo, if they take it… fuck… Look, I really can’t do anything about this now. I’ll call soon.’

  I hung up.

  I stared at the city through the glass of the cab window.

  Too late to get a plane, tonight, I could get a night bus to Córdoba. It was early enough for that. First thing in the morning, I’d pass by the Hotel Cristal and pick up my gun.

  Extract from the casebook of Juan Manuel Pérez

  January 16th 2006

  Hours: 06:30 to 11:30

  I had an expensive full-bed booking on the night bus from Retiro to Córdoba but I couldn’t sleep at all. From the bus station, I took a cab to the Hotel Cristal. I had a shower and packed my clothes. I got my .45 from the hotel safe. I hooked it on my belt. I checked out of the hotel. I got in my car and drove to Ciudad Azul and on to San Pedro. At my father’s house, I pushed through the gate and into the garden. The house was locked and shuttered up. The horses stared at me across the stream from the hillside paddock. I couldn’t do anything to hurt the horses.

  I drove back to Ciudad Azul. I was tired. So fucking tired. I hadn’t slept all night. I kind of hoped that one or more of Casares’s goons would be waiting for me at my apartment. None of them was. I let myself in. Turned on the air conditioning. Poured myself a whiskey. I lit a cigarette. Nine a.m. These might be my last few hours on earth. I was going to meet Casares. What was to stop him taking me somewhere quiet? I’m sure it had happened to other people. My father
had washed his hands of me. He was prepared to threaten hurt on my mother. I don’t believe in any God, but for some perverse reason, I do believe that consciousness continues in some way after death. Some other worlds out there. Other dimensions. Like some Borges story: The Secret Miracle; Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius; The Circular Ruins; death like a big sleep where we dream other worlds into being and share that world with other consciousnesses that are dreaming the same thing as we are. I thought: if you get a bullet in the neck, would you dream yourself into a nightmare? If I could believe that death brings oblivion, it would be easier. The idea of oblivion doesn’t frighten me at all. I enjoy sleep. It’s restful. There’s no pain. What frightens me is the actual process of death. The suffering that I’m sure it entails. What might come after if you fuck that up; what kind of vision your consciousness is going to dream up for you: heaven, hell or something entirely unknown and marvelous; or something nightmarish. But oblivion doesn’t frighten me at all.

  I drifted off. No sleep on the night bus, and then the whiskey. I dreamed that a rat had got into the apartment. It was a white and red-haired rat. Like a pet rat. Somehow, it didn’t bother me that a rat was running around free in my apartment. I got a rind of blue cheese off the kitchen countertop and I crumbled bits of it that the rat caught in its front paws and then ate while standing on its hind legs. I kept on feeding the rat. After it had finished eating, it used its front paws to brush away the crumbs on the carpet as if it was clearing up after itself. I woke up.

  What a fucking ridiculous dream. Is that what was waiting for me after death?

  I got up and showered. It was 10.30 am.

  I called Ana on my cell phone. I got her voicemail.

  ‘Call me,’ I said.

  I called Clara Luz Weissman.

  ‘What news?’ I said.

  ‘It’s going well,’ Clara said. ‘A friend of yours, from the police force, he came by today. He said he’d mobilize the provincial police and send a report to the Federal police, too. He’s promised to do everything he can to find Gerardo.’

  ‘Who’s the cop?’

  ‘Martín Vallejo.’

  ‘That’s good. He’s a good guy.’

  ‘How did it go with Isabel?’ Clara said.

  ‘No leads… Is Ana there?’

  ‘The company decided to leave for Buenos Aires early this morning… so they could concentrate on rehearsals. They left me to deal with the media about the disappearance. Since the flyers appeared, La Voz del Interior has agreed to run a feature. They’re coming up to Temenos at about eleven. It should run tomorrow. We’ve had requests for interviews from Clarín, La Prensa and the TV news. The company decided to go and rehearse in Buenos Aires… that it would be the best thing. I’ll join them there later. I’m going to drive down to Buenos Aires today, right after I’ve been to the TV studios in Córdoba. I have to be there by about one o’clock.’

  ‘I won’t see you?’

  ‘We’ll all be in Buenos Aires.’

  Why hadn’t Ana called me? Shit. My fault. I’d told her not to call, hadn’t I?

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Take care,’ Clara said.

  ‘You, too,’ I said.

  I called the office. Rangel picked up.

  ‘You okay?’ I said.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘I’m on my way to the office. I’ve got a meeting with Casares at noon.’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘You don’t need to.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘See you soon,’ Rangel said. And he hung up.

  Extract from the casebook of Juan Manuel Pérez

  January 16th 2006

  Hours: 11:30 to 14:00

  Rangel got up from his desk when I arrived at the office.

  He embraced me. Genuine warmth.

  ‘Casares and his goons should be here in half an hour,’ I said.

  Rangel didn’t alter his expression.

  ‘Do you have a weapon?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  We went into our small meeting room at the back of the premises. The white Formica-topped table gleamed and the room was full of a synthetic odor of pine. I guess the cleaner had been in. We had six chairs in there, blue tubular steel frames with polished wooden seats and backrests. Rangel and I smoked cigarettes, drank coffee and watched the hands of the clock drag along in slow motion. Smoke hung in layers above the table. Noon came and no one showed.

  But hey, who arrives on time?

  We heard footsteps on the stairs at 12:15.

  I went into the main office to meet and greet. Rangel stayed behind the long white table. Casares, Matas and Maria Dos Santos walked in through the front door. No sign of my father or Arenas. Maria was still in her dark glasses. Her chin was up, her eyes hidden by the blank lenses, and traces of the bruising still on her face. She had a kind of beige, low cut, macramé top and a khaki skirt. Her straw bag dangled from her hand.

  Casares, a short man, his skin glowing behind the dark glasses, the pale hair neatly trimmed, was obviously the man in command. He wore a light green cotton shirt with pockets and epaulettes, and pale khaki slacks over light leather shoes. The clothes gave him a casual military air. He nodded to me. I nodded back. The presence of Pedrito Matas, oiled hair slicked back, shades, charcoal gray suit and shirt, kept the whole affair on the dark side of shady.

  ‘Juan Manuel,’ Casares said.

  I thought for a moment he was about to approach me to kiss me on the cheek. He didn’t.

  ‘We can talk inside,’ I said.

  I led the way into the meeting room where Rangel was behind the white Formica table below the strata of smoke.

  ‘You know my partner,’ I said.

  ‘We’ve already had the pleasure,’ Casares said.

  Rangel didn’t stand up.

  ‘Have a seat,’ Rangel said.

  Matas reached for the door handle.

  ‘Leave the door open,’ I said.

  Matas shrugged. He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. I joined Rangel on the other side of the table and sat down. Casares and Maria sat down opposite me and Rangel. She took out a cigarette and lit it and the cloud above the table shifted as she blew more smoke into it. She didn’t take off the shades.

  Why had they brought her here?

  ‘Have you made any progress in your search for Fischer?’ Casares said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘You must be patient, Juan Manuel,’ Casares said. ‘How long have you been looking for Fischer? A week? I’ve had a word with your friend, Martín Vallejo. The police are taking this disappearance very seriously, now. He assures me he’ll do all he can to track down this Gerardo Fischer. The police will help you.’

  Martín? Had they corrupted him, too? I always thought of him as a clean cop. Casares was going to some length to make me doubt that he knew anything about Fischer’s whereabouts.

  ‘Maria has a file for you to see,’ Casares said.

  Maria leaned over and took a green cardboard file from her straw basket. The file had a flower pattern on it and the words Artemisia Adoption Agency.

  Why should she show me this?

  She slid the file across the white tabletop toward me. I was reflected in the lenses of her shades. She leaned back and took a deep drag on her cigarette so that her cheeks hollowed. The yellow and red bruising mottled on her grayish skin, the background for the red spider webs of her broken blood vessels.

  What did she see in that bastard Matas?

  I opened the gaily-decorated cover. In a clear plastic pocket at the front of the file was a birth certificate from Buenos Aires, section 20, in the name of Javier Alejandro Hernández, son of Don Guillermo Hernández and Doña Filomena Martínez Aramburu.

  The baby, Javier Alejandro Hernández, was born on August 21st 1976, my birthday.

  On the next page was a Photostat of a police identification form for Guillermo Hernández. He’d been picke
d up on an anti-subversive operation in the Palermo quarter of Buenos Aires on September 8th 1976. His photograph showed a young man in his mid-twenties with wavy hair swept back from his face, covering his ears and curling over the collar of his floral shirt. Hernández was a member of the E.R.P. He’d been handed over to military personnel at the Naval Mechanics School in Buenos Aires. He’d died of a heart attack, it said, while in custody. The following page was a police identification form for Filomena Martínez Aramburu who was arrested in Ciudad Azul on October 16th 1976. She was the wife of Guillermo Hernández and a suspected accomplice in a cell of the leftist E.R.P. being set up in the Province of Córdoba. The photograph showed a woman with rather straggly dark hair that fell to her shoulders. She had dark rings below her eyes, gaunt cheeks, rather thin lips. Her baby had been about two months old at that time. She’d given the baby up for adoption, it said. Nothing on what had happened to her.

  The next page was a form from the Artemisia Adoption Agency of Ciudad Azul with the date of birth, which was my date of birth, and the name of the child on the birth certificate: Javier Alejandro Hernández, parents defunct. So Filomena had died in prison, too.

  I could hear the words that my mother – my mother? – had said to me on the phone: He told me to make you see sense, Juan Manuel. Or we’d all be sorry… Juan Manuel, I beg of you. Do as he says, or something awful is going to happen, I know this. Believe your mother. I love you.

  A kind of hollow breeze whispered through the cavity of my skull.

  Juan Manuel, is that my name?

  It’s his name.

  Juan Manuel Senior is very disappointed in you.

  His picture was on the next page: the child’s adoptive father, Juan Manuel Pérez, police officer, Province of Córdoba. He was in his thirties then, about my age, handsome, the square jaw, bald already, his pale eyes that stared directly into the camera. His wife – the woman I’d always called my mother – was on the next page, her photograph showing her full face, the tumble of curly dark hair, a beaming smile: Inmaculada Concepción Guzmán Pérez. A medical note at the bottom of the page indicated that she couldn’t have children; this woman who had taken care of me through my whole life, fed me, clothed me, even loved me; at whose breast I’d always believed I’d suckled.