Free The Dancer Upstairs by Nicholas Shakespeare Page A

and whose pavilion is raised each night. He was like El Cid, and they had strapped his carcass to his horse. He had, in short, been blown out.
    It was tempting to believe Quesada. But his bellicose message was as crude as the posters distributed by his Ministry, showing my photograph of Ezequiel prancing on cartoon cloven feet and embellished with the tail of a devil. If such a pivotal figure was dead, there would be some sign that he was no longer on the scene. If the army had killed him in a shoot-out, they would have flaunted the body. They would have treated him like Che Guevara.
    My own belief, which I had submitted in my latest report to General Merino, was that, on the contrary, Ezequiel had never posed a greater threat.
    I expected to hear back from the General, but three weeks after Quesada’s broadcast the police went on strike. None of us had been paid for two months. Outside the Ministry of the Interior a thousand policemen held up our symbol, a worn-out boot. The strike ended with Quesada giving his personal assurance that all salaries would be paid by the end of the week. Two days later the General summoned me. It was, the summons said, important.
    I never could predict what the General regarded as important. I hoped he wanted to discuss my report. But he might want to talk about Quesada’s pay settlement; or possibly he wished to know more about Hilda Cortado, a woman we had arrested the previous afternoon for distributing subversive leaflets. It was rare to catch someone red-handed like this.
    In fact, it was about none of these things.
    Preparing his tackle, he fiddled with a lure dangling with hooks. “Forget it, Tomcat. It’s over.” He rolled down his turtleneck and, with the lure, slit the air an inch from his neck. “Your pal Ezequiel, he’s dead.”
    He sketched the details for me brusquely. Skirmish on a dirt road above Sierra de Pruna. Lorry refuses to stop. Army opens fire. Lorry, packed with dynamite from copper mine, explodes. Body found. Ezequiel.
    Merino was annoyed. “We work on this for twelve years, then the army waltzes in. General Lache is going to be unspeakable.”
    â€œWhen did this happen, sir?”
    â€œA month ago.”
    â€œA month ago! Why weren’t we told before?”
    â€œLache wanted to be certain. He tells me Quesada’s very happy.”
    It was true I had observed a lull in Ezequiel’s activities. Normally during this period we might have expected forty, fifty incidents in the provinces. Since Quesada’s broadcast my unit had reported seven.
    Could Ezequiel be dead?
    I expected the story to lead the news on Canal 7, but it was transmitted near the end, after an item on the national women’s volleyball team. In the capital, Ezequiel remained virtually unknown. The announcement of his bandit’s end on a dust road a thousand miles away merited twenty seconds. There was film of a truck on its side and a plump corpse covered with an army blanket. An anonymous hand drew back the blanket, and the camera closed in on a man’s head, lingering over charred features and a body which resembled a burned sofa.
    Sucre looked to me for confirmation. “That’s him. Isn’t it, sir?”
    â€œIt could be.”
    You know how you look forward to something which you never believe will happen, and when it does you are overcome with exhaustion? That was my feeling on seeing the blackened mess which was Ezequiel’s face. With this fulfilment of my task, desire had faded. There was none of the anticipated elation. I felt stripped of my shadow.
    Quesada, a small dapper figure in a white suit, was filmed clapping the shoulder of General Lache, who looked massively pleased with himself. Delighted, the Minister knocked on the camera lens. “As of this moment, Ezequiel no longer exists.”
    General Merino would have attributed it to professional resentment, but I had no wish to see the body.

5
    â€œWhen