No One Loves a Policeman
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Authors: Guillermo Orsi,Nick Caistor
No One Loves a Policeman
GUILLERMO ORSI
was born in Buenos Aires, where he still lives and works as a journalist. He was awarded the 2007 Premio Internacional de Novel Negra Ciudad de Carmona for
No One Loves a Policeman
. His previous novel
Suenos de perro
won the Semana Negra Umbriel Award in 2004, and
Holy City
, forthcoming from MacLehose Press, was awarded the 2010 Hammett Prize.
NICK CAISTOR
'S many translations from the Spanish include
The Buenos Aires Quintet
by Manuel Vázquez Montalban and novels by Juan Marsé and Alan Paul.
“The beauty of this novel is that it operates on many levels ⦠not just a detective novel or a thriller, but a search for truth ⦠Palpable in its oppressiveness, the backdrop itself transcends this novel above and beyond mere fiction to give a vivid depiction of Argentina's crisis years in the early 21st century”
Booktrust Translated Fiction
“The tough, cynical cast of this typical noir thriller are magnificently callous company and the wider picture of a country in chaos is chilling”
Metro Scotland
“From the halcyon time of Dashiell Hammett onwards, the detective story has been pressed into service for a pitiless dissection of a corrupt society; Orsi shows that the strategy still has plenty of mileage”
BARRY FORSHAW
,
Independent
“Orsi's mordant, reluctant detective is definitely a one-off”
JOAN SMITH
,
Sunday Times
“Martelli is not [Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth] Salander, but there is a sinuous black humour in his battles with police and political corruption that echo Larsson's heroine”
GEOFFREY WANSELL
,
Daily Mail
Guillermo Orsi
Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor
An imprint of Quercus
New York ⢠London
© 2007 by Guillermo Orsi
Translation © 2010 by Nick Caistor
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.
ISBN 978-1-62365-261-6
Distributed in the United States and Canada by Random House Publisher Services
c/o Random House, 1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual personsâliving or deadâevents, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Part Three Butterflies in an Album
Part Four Hired Brains, Unpunished Hearts
Small Mercies
1
Five years ago, when I lost the last person I cared about, I vowed never again to answer the telephone after midnight. Since then, my resolve has seldom been put to the test. At my age it is rare for male friends to stay up late, and the women are not permanent fixtures once you are persuaded you are all alone in the world. All of them widowed or separated, and in the early hours they are snuggled up in bed, smearing themselves with creams, or warming their toes on memories of happier times and better lovers (if they have anyone to compare with). If they feel lonely, they call girlfriends. Or the Samaritans.
On the night of December 14, 2001, I went to bed early even for me. Not so much because I was tired, more that I was weary of playing along with such an uninspiring day. There was not a single bit of news I could cling to, none of those hilarious excuses Buenos Aires can be so generous with: an armed bank robbery just when you are trying to withdraw your meager earnings, or paying the rent for the unheated apartment you have been living in for the past year. A demand from the tax people because you haven't paid the previous installment. A friend in his fifties confessing he has at last come out, and could you please recommend an analyst, preferably a young, good-looking one. I had nothing to stay up for, not even bad news on the T.V., apart from the usual ridiculous celebrity marriages, resigning ministers, chaos in the markets making
nonsense of the government's economic policies, and the inevitable run on banks. One of those days when midnight is a watery horizon and you suspect that your ship has sunk forever beneath the waves.
“Gotán, I need to see you as soon as possible.”
“I'm in bed, with the duvet round my ears. The thought of getting up and dressed, taking the car out of the garage and driving half an hour to your place makes me feel quite unwell.”
“Make that six hours. I'm not in Buenos Aires. And you have to leave right now, so that you reach here before dawn.”
It took me a quarter of an hour to dress, pack stuff for two days into a bag, and leave a note to ensure that Zulema, the cleaner who comes on Mondays, put fresh water in the bowl and fed my cat Félix Jesús his balanced diet. He was out that nightâwith my permissionâbut he was bound to be back before I was, demanding food and a place to curl up in peace.
Half an hour after Edmundo Cárcano's call I was driving across the city as fast as a patrol car taking the special giant-size mozzarella from the pizzeria to the police station. There was hardly any traffic as I sped along the highway heading toward the southernmost stretch of the Atlantic coast. I was aiming for a tiny village of not more than a dozen houses, side by side on a bare, windswept beach, with nothing but sand dunes and sea to look at. Mediomundo was its name.
“It was called that by the estate agent who deals in these remote properties. He's a fisherman, but he uses nets rather than a rod. He catches all kinds of fish and makes stews for the few lost tourists who turn up here,” Cárcano had explained. He reckoned the resort should be called Asshole of the World. The estate agent owned a bar on the beach called All Kinds of Fish. He was the one who told me on this cold, windy morning that he could not believe it. “Why, just yesterday he was here eating sea bream and drinking sherry. How can he be dead? Poor Edmundo,” he said, referring to my friend Cárcano, shot at point-blank and killed outright, which at the very least cast doubt on the suicide
theory put forward by the policeman who had arrived that afternoon from BahÃa Blanca.
Cárcano had built himself a simple, beautiful chalet with what he had saved from his oil-company salary. When I arrived, I could find no trace of the blond, almost an adolescent and nearly as lovely as the house, who he had said he loved and with whom he planned to share this seaside eyrie. Not a lipstick or a sanitary towel, never mind underwear or a toothbrush. It looked as though no-one was visiting or living with Cárcano in his marine hideaway. That was the conclusion of the inspector, detective or traffic policeman from the provincial force who turned up in Mediomundo to investigate what he termed “this unfortunate event.”
“If he called you at midnight it was probably because he didn't feel too good. Older people do get these bouts of depression at night,” the inspector said. He was little more than thirty, and his nose for sleuthing had already been dulled by easy money from gambling and prostitution.
I asked him if he was going to check for fingerprints, but he said the forensic team would do that when they got here the next day or the day after. “We're up to our ears in work,” he boasted, looking me straight in the eye. If the murdered Edmundo Cárcano was hoping for justice, he was not going to come by it by way of this bureaucrat, disturbed in his so-crowded routine eight long hours earlier by a friend of the victim. A friend who, rather than end up with the car wrapped round his head, had driven unhurriedly for six seemingly endless hours, and who as soon as he arrived felt sorry he had not once exceeded the speed limit, but had traveled singing a duet with Lucila Davidson on the radio, even allowing himself the luxury of closing his eyes for a few seconds so he could imagine her beside him, the two of them looking out over a sea of delirious fans. Closing his eyes up on stage with her, dreaming his erotic dream even if the car several times swerved onto the verge, blissfully unaware of what awaited him in this remote seaside village in the south-east of Buenos Aires province.
I knew I had arrived too late as soon as I opened the door of my friend's charming chalet. Day had dawned half an hour earlier, but even without touching the body, lying in a pool of blood, I could tell Cárcano had not lived to see its first pale light.
The house was clean and tidy; typical of my friend, for my taste a little too concerned with keeping things shipshape. No wardrobe door was open, and the only thing strewn on the floor was his body. The murderer appeared to have focused on what he had come for. He had not forced a door or window, so Cárcano must have known him and trusted him enough to let him in. Perhaps when he called me the man was already with him, pressing a gun to his head.