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

to allow the dog to sniff my clothes and stick its nose into all parts of my muddy body. He cannot have found anything untoward, because at the end of his inspection he began to wag his tail and nuzzle me. I started stroking him, at first apprehensively and then determined to make sure he would be on my side. The dog soon rolled over and waved his legs in the air like an upturnedcockroach. I tickled his belly. I could feel the warmth of his affection, and this made me happy in a way I had not felt for a long time. If I had been taken by surprise and killed there and then, I would have died with a silly grin on my face.
    A blinding flash followed a few moments later by a crack of thunder jolted me out of my beatific state, and brought an abrupt end to the dog’s pleasure. We were both back on the alert. I went up to the only proper window in the house, followed closely by the dog, by now my firm friend.
    The light on the veranda which had been my guide suddenly began to flicker. The generator was on the blink or was running out of fuel. Inside the house, a voice asked what the fuck was going on, so I sneaked back as best I could to my hiding place next to the wind-pump. I was just in time to see two men emerge from the house, presumably the muscular but polite gentlemen the bus driver had told me about. Surprised by my retreat into the shadows, the dog hesitated midway between me and the house, staring toward my hiding place.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with that dog?” one of the men said.
    â€œHow the fuck should I know!” the other said gruffly. He set off round the back of the house, cursing the generator: “I told you to buy a decent one, not some cheap Oriental crap.”
    They had a brief argument, with one of them defending his decision because it had saved them a stack of money, the other one still going on about Chinese products: “This heap of shit is going to leave us in the dark any moment now,” he said. His words proved prophetic. The generator suddenly died without so much as a sigh.
    The weak, flickering light from the bulb was replaced by intermittent blinding flashes of lightning. The dog took advantage of all the confusion to come over to the wind-pump and sprawl at my feet. He wanted more stroking: he must have been autistic.
    â€œCan you see anything?” the man who had been concerned about the dog asked his companion.
    â€œThat’s why I brought the torch, asshole,” replied the other.
    The first man, who must have had some mastiff in his blood, still seemed more interested in the dog’s behavior than the electricity problem. He started toward me. He might not have a torch, but I was willing to bet he had a gun on him. The dog must have recognized him because when he was only two meters away from me, he roused himself and set off to greet him, wagging his tail.
    Two or three seconds at most must have passed between the flash and roar of the gun and the brief, heartrending yelp of pain. I flattened myself against the ground as the second man came running frantically toward where his colleague had fired the shot. The circle of light from his torch illuminated the massacre.
    â€œYou killed the dog, you idiot.”
    â€œSomething moved in the darkness and came for me,” the other man said.
    â€œYou killed the dog … you bought that Chinese crap, and now you killed a dog whose only fault was to wag its tail at everyone.”
    â€œWhat did you expect me to do? You had the torch. I thought someone was attacking me.”
    â€œWho’s going to attack you? Who else is out here? We’re in the middle of nowhere. You’re just paranoid, and I don’t want someone who’s trigger-happy alongside me. Next time you’ll take a pop at me. Get a transfer to headquarters, find a desk job and run the numbers game. Poor dog, look what you did to it!”
    The dog-killer tried to defend himself: “Don’t insult me like that or I’ll