All Yours (10 page)

“…”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

“Look, love, I’ll write my telephone number down for you. I’ll be back in two or three days. Call me – for whatever reason, OK? My handwriting’s bloody awful! Can you read those numbers?”

“Eight two five, eight three eight three.”

“Eight three, eight three, that’s it. And you put a four first, right?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Right, OK. And what’s your name, anyway?”

“Lali – well, Laura, but people call me Lali.”

“Bye, Lali.”

“Bye.”

“Call me.”

“Bye.”

25

Last Friday, at 17.00 hours, a plain envelope was delivered to police officers at station Number 31 containing a hand-drawn map which indicated the Regatas lake, in Palermo, as the place where the body of Alicia Soria, missing since the 30th of June, may be found. That same Friday, prior to receiving the aforementioned material, the police received several calls made from public phone boxes located in different parts of the capital, confirming the body of Alicia Soria could be found in this same lake. The police are studying the authenticity of this information, which would signify a 180-degree turn in the investigation of this unsolved mystery.

Copacabana is perhaps the reason why visitors to Rio de Janeiro fall in love with this city at first sight. Its inviting sea and white sand make it the ideal beach to sunbathe and unwind.

When the news was made public that Alicia Soria’s body might be in the Regatas lake in Palermo, a taxi driver presented himself at police station Number 31, claiming to have taken a woman to this location on the very night of Soria’s disappearance. It’s the first time since Alicia Soria’s family reported her missing that any witness has come forward with information relating to the case. Juan Migrelli, fifty-one years old, claimed not to have realized until yesterday that his passenger that night might have been the missing woman but, acting on his wife’s advice, decided to make a statement to police at station 31. “I remember saying to her, ‘Señora, do you think it’s wise to be hanging around here at this time of night?’ And she answered, ‘Don’t worry, someone’s coming to pick me up.’ You can’t go sticking your nose into your passengers’ business, so I collected my fee and went,” said the taxi driver.

Lucas, from the Latin “shining with light”. Other variations of the name include Luca and Lucca.

Guillermo, originally from the old German, William, meaning “protector”.

Late on Friday, after a long and gruelling day, the Soria family’s lawyers obtained an order from the judge presiding over their case for the Regatas lake in Palermo to be dragged in the early hours of this morning. The largest lake in Buenos Aires, Regatas covers an area of about twenty-five acres. However, it is also an artificial lake, a reflecting pool with well-defined edges, and mouths where water flows in and out, considerations that will make the search much easier. The search is expected to begin at the point marked on the map received anonymously yesterday at station Number 31, an area also indicated by the testimony of the taxi driver Juan Migrelli (see box). Meanwhile, experts in this field are warning of the complexity of the task, owing to the abundance of weeds. After a person drowns, a body may be expected to float for seventy-two hours, a period of time that would have elapsed long ago if Alicia Soria’s body is, indeed, somewhere in the lake. However, the current hypothesis is that her body may have become caught up and concealed in the weeds below the surface of the lake.

Ipanema is a beach that sets trends for the rest of the country and the world. This is where the first pregnant woman dared to don a bikini, where the first topless sunbather was spotted, along with the first string bikini – cheekily dubbed “dental floss”.

Trained divers from the Federal Police’s Special Rescue Team (SRT) were working in the area all day yesterday. The search began at 7.15 a.m. and continued without a pause until nightfall. A rope was attached to both banks of the river, enabling divers to search thoroughly one demarcated area before moving the rope three feet forwards, and proceeding to the next strip. “It is the only way to be sure that we aren’t missing anything,” said Fermín Lemos, who is heading the operation. The divers use a camera which beams images back to two monitors. At the moment that the search was halted, at 7.10 p.m., however, nothing more than weeds had been seen. In fact at the present time, practically the only tool available to the divers is touch. Visibility is so poor that the only way for them to conduct the search is to stand on the bed of the lake and walk forwards, moving their arms around them to feel for objects in the water. To prevent their bodies from floating upwards, they carry three-pound weights – several times greater than the weights usually used in these circumstances. If a diver gets into difficulties he can pull on the “lifeline”, a rope connected to a boat, alerting the ground team that he needs to come to the surface. Indeed, this was the case late last night, when one of the divers injured himself on the wreck of a buried kayak (see article below). The divers work in pairs, for forty-five-minute shifts. After each dive, they rest for an hour and a half out of the water. When they come to the surface, the divers emerge covered in a tangle of weeds sticking to their neoprene suits. For the men of the Special Rescue Team, this search is a feat of endurance. They appear downcast, describing the search conditions as “worse than in the jungle at night”.

Inés, from the Greek, “pure and chaste”.

Ernesto, from the Germanic, “serious, battling to the death”.

Laura, from the Latin, “victorious”.

At half-past two this afternoon, by order of the city authorities, Lake Regatas’s drain gates were opened, in spite of opposition from the Association of Friends and Neighbours of the Lake, who warned of the environmental impact of such a measure. “No ecological argument should take precedence over the disappearance of a person,” said Ricardo Soria, the father of Alicia Soria, in his only statement to the press. However, Luis Julio López, president of the aforementioned ecological group, countered that “It would be disastrous to drain the lake; they should flood it instead; the body, which is bloated with gas, would float to the surface, even allowing for the density of reeds. Draining the lake will kill much of the flora and fauna.” López was referring to the lake’s many varieties of birds and fish (there are five dominant species including the sand perch and wolf fish), otters and plant-life. Yesterday at around midday, the water company Aguas Argentinas, which for four years has been responsible for cleaning Palermo’s lakes and keeping them free of weeds, received the order from the Secretary of Production and Services to open the sluice gates which link the Regatas lake and the River Plate via the Medrano stream. The lake has two mouths, at the north and south ends. One feeds directly into a purification plant belonging to Aguas Argentinas; the other drains into the Medrano stream and flows towards the River Plate. The sluice gate at the north end is fitted with meshing that would, the theory goes, trap the body as it moves with the flow of water. Water runs through two thousand feet of subterranean pipes under the Figueroa Alcorta Avenue and enters the Regata over a stone waterfall, thus lessening the corrosive impact of the water on the lake bed. Aguas Argentinas is responsible for maintaining the equilibrium of plant-life. “If there was too much algae, the water would turn green; the current balance keeps the water oxygenated,” said the company’s spokesperson. If any of the lake-life is endangered by the drainage process, it will be moved into specially conditioned tanks in the nearby Rosedal rose garden. That has not yet proved necessary.

In the event, drainage of the lake was interrupted when the water level had only dropped five feet, after “cat’s tail” algae glutted the bottom of the lake, making the job of the divers even harder.

The statue of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado mountain is, perhaps, the best-known image of Rio: a Christ with open arms, bestowing his blessing on the city below. Nobody should leave Rio without seeing it.

After two days of intense searching, yesterday, at nightfall, the lifeless body of Alicia Soria was recovered from Lake Regatas in Palermo. The body was found fifteen yards from the shore, in an area of the lake where the water is three to four yards deep. Its discovery was in great part thanks to sonar equipment lent by a friend of the family, something neither the fire brigade nor the coast guard possessed. The temperature of the water in the lake at that time was approaching 18 degrees centigrade. An ecographic probe of the kind used at Regatas costs 350 dollars in specialist fishing shops and is designed to detect shoals of fish. The diver who discovered the body said, on coming to the surface, “I’ve found it – it’s caught up in a tangle of weeds.” Doctor Ricardo Soria, father of Alicia Soria, was waiting on the bank. His wife, Beatriz Panne de Soria, collapsed and had to be taken away by medical personnel. Doctor Soria looked on as, just yards away, the body thought to belong to his daughter was zipped into a grey, plastic bag and taken away to the morgue. The grim task of identifying his daughter’s body still lies ahead. Meanwhile it was reported that his wife was wearing a medallion on her chest bearing the initials “A.S.” and Alicia Soria’s date of birth.

By this time, five hours had passed since the three boats and three dinghies set out, one of them carrying beside the wheel the ecographic probe belonging to Luis Mateua, personal friend of Doctor Soria and a keen angler. Firemen and divers, both from the Coast Guard and civilian organizations, took part in the operation. As soon as the probe identified the correct area, a diver was sent down and touched the head of the unfortunate woman. Immediately the other boats moved to the area and three more divers went down. After cutting and dragging the weeds away, they were able to retrieve the body. On three previous occasions the probe had given erroneous signals. These errors came about because the probe is designed to detect fish, transmitting images of them to a four-inch liquid crystal screen. The equipment classifies the fish as medium, large and small. When the apparatus detected the body of Alicia Soria, it reported the existence of four large fish and a small one, all together.

26

Ernesto returned home. Thus abrogating question number 3 of Possibility Number 3 on my diagram. That Monday, at five o’clock in the evening, he opened the door with his own keys and said, “Hello, Inés.” He came over to the armchair where I was sitting and gave me a peck on the cheek. He left the suitcase to one side.

“I’ve got a pile of stuff to wash in there.”

“Just as long as you don’t expect me to wash her bra,” I thought.

He apologized for not having stopped to buy me something in the duty-free shop. “I’d promised to get Lali some perfume, but I’m whacked, I wanted to get straight home.”

“Was it a very busy weekend?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe…”

Several times I nearly interrupted him to tell him about the body that had been found, but each time I steeled myself to tell him he took off on a new tangent. He asked after Lali, as he always does.

“I don’t know; she spent the whole weekend at a friend’s country house and didn’t even call home, so she must be OK. If she had needed something she would have called, wouldn’t she?”

No news is good news
– my mother hates that expression. Of course, in the case of my father it was almost a bad joke. Then Ernesto said some other stuff, the kind of things that any man would say on his return from a trip: did anyone call, how was the weather here, etc, etc, etc. If he didn’t ask about the dog it was only because we don’t have one. All these platitudes began to disorientate me. I had spent the weekend preparing for anything to happen when Ernesto returned. That “anything” included Ernesto not speaking to me, or coming to collect his things and leaving for ever, or simply saying “I’ve fallen in love with someone else.” Even that he might not come home at all. The one thing I had not prepared for was so much normality. Ernesto was behaving the same as usual – and that made me think that there must have been other weekends of illicit passion. With Charo or maybe another woman. And that was when something clicked and I began to see things more clearly. If there had been other trips, that was very good, it meant that our marriage must be stronger than his hygienic escapades – for isn’t that the best way to describe them? Some people go to a spa for three days for massages, others to do detox, others to bathe in mud, or wrap themselves in turtle placentas. There’s no accounting for tastes. And it seemed that Ernesto just needed a different sort of release. Who is so free of sin that he can condemn Ernesto’s behaviour as any worse than getting stressed, smoking or over-eating? Not to mention other addictions. They are all just different kinds of vice. A woman has a duty to try to understand. Besides, in spite of his vice, Ernesto had always come home. Like that Monday.

The final straw was when he said to me: “Inés, did you remember to get my grey suit from the dry-cleaner?” And the question caught me completely off guard; I couldn’t find an answer.

“I told you that I must have it for tomorrow, without fail, Inés!”

There he was: the same old Ernesto. Mummy would have said, “A leopard doesn’t change its spots, my girl!” But she’s very negative, she’s been so badly treated in life. Not me. And in the midst of so much darkness, to see the light and realize what was important really scared me, because I had played a part in bringing disaster closer.