Free No One Loves a Policeman by Guillermo Orsi, Nick Caistor

everything you do,” she told me. “You’re like one of those old 78s transferred to a C.D.,” she insisted, clinging to me, incredulous and fearful.
    I did not have to wipe her name from the mirror. The draft between the bathroom door and the window saved me the trouble.

    I called Buenos Aires. When I heard Isabel’s voice on the answering machine I caught my breath. While I was enjoying the happy hour in Cabildo Hotel, she might be dead, and Mónica with her.
    My next call was to my own apartment. I do not like calling when I’m not at home, out of respect for Félix Jesús’s feelings, because every time the telephone rings he arches his back and spits as if he is being threatened by an Alsatian. But it was night already, so he had probably already slipped off through the cat-flap I had made for him in the basement.
    After two rings, the recorded messages kicked in. I heard a voice saying: “The girls are fine, but don’t even think of looking for them or they’re dead meat. Wait for news.” There were no insults, and the tone was like an astronaut resigned to the idea he would never get back to earth. I hung up and had to go and sit at the bar until I stopped sweating.
    I ordered a mineral water and while the storm they had forecast began to make its presence felt, I thought things over.
    Edmundo was dead, so there was nothing I could do for him. Nor could I help the three murdered young women. But Isabel and Mónica were still alive, if I was to believe the emotionless bulletin of the person who had called me in Buenos Aires. I was determined to head back there at first light. I had the suspicion that somebody had deliberately dismantled a jigsaw puzzle, but that all the pieces were still there. Of course, the universe is a whole, but as we thread our way through it between lucidity and madness we all have to fit the pieces back together as best we can.
    I could not allow myself the luxury of going to sleep that night, even though I was tempted by the freshly made bed, the T.V. in my room, a film I could watch until I fell asleep halfway through, and outside my window the rain, lightning, and perhaps even hailstones crashed against the streets of the town like the horses’ hooves of an army of occupation.
    It seemed a pity to take Isabel’s new Renault out of the hotel garage where I had left it and expose it to the rain that was lashing the roofs of Tres Arroyos. If there are hailstones it could ruin the paintwork, I thought. It is normal to exaggerate the danger when you are about to face the unknown, to think, for example, how silly it would be to catch a cold, when in all likelihood the night was going to end with bullets flying.
    Two and a half kilometers up the highway, turn left onto the side road until you reach a fork, then left again. Another nineteen hundredmeters down what is little more than a track you come to a gate, and beyond that is the property, the estate agent’s map told me.
    If the storm carried on much longer, it would soon be impossible to reach the place. I drove out onto the highway. It was easier to see into my conscience than through the windscreen. I drove slowly, aware I could be hit by a truck or a bus traveling at more than a hundred driven by someone who loved hotdogs and cheap wine. A flash of lightning showed me where to turn off to the left.
    At least I was safe from the insomniac madmen on Argentina’s main roads. I speeded up along the deserted side road until I reached the fork. I bore left again, and suddenly had to slam on the brakes to avoid colliding with the farm gate.
    This was not a good time and an even worse situation in which to go visiting a farm of less than a hundred uncultivated hectares. I switched off the engine and the lights. I could only see my hands when I lit the cigarette I decided to smoke before getting out. The condemned man’s last moment of pleasure.

13
    My last puff on the cigarette