The Hermit (55 page)

The guard raps on the door. Only a few minutes have passed since the papers were thrust at him.

– Just a moment, Erhard says. He glances at the box where he’s supposed to sign, then the pen he’d been given, and he scribbles the name Emanuel Palabras. He hopes that will delay the process enough that he can have another meal, get his head right, and find someone who can help him.

– I’d like to make a phone call, Erhard says to the guard when he hands the papers over. The guard doesn’t even glance at the signature, just takes the sheets and looks at him. Exactly what Erhard had hoped he would do.

– Sure, the guard says, as though his life just got a whole lot easier. He tromps off, and the corridor is silent.

Once again Erhard tries to think of people he knows, people who could help him, but there’s no one, not a single person.

He needs to call the doctor. They’ve confiscated his notebook, but he remembers the number. The doctor has got to check on Beatriz, and he’ll have to take care of her now; he’ll have to admit her to a hospital. Emanuel Palabras won’t be thrilled to discover that his daughter-in-law is still alive. That’s what she’d said:
Help me
. She was afraid of Ema, and for good reason. The man’s power stretches all the way into the prison.

Commotion outside the cell. They’re coming to get his real signature, they’re coming for the last time.

– Out, someone says.

Erhard recognizes the voice. It’s Bernal’s.

– I wish to speak to a solicitor, Bernal.

– You’ll be speaking to yourself, you will. You’re going to the basement.

– But I haven’t signed anything yet. That wasn’t my signature.

– Doesn’t matter, Bernal says, as if he hadn’t even heard Erhard. He opens the cell door. – Turn around.

Erhard turns. He tries to think of something to delay his transfer. But he can’t think of anything. Bernal handcuffs him, then shoves him down the short corridor and into the office area, where it’s suddenly quiet. Erhard doesn’t dare look up, just walks between the desks, ahead of Bernal.

– Now you’ll fucking learn what we do to people like you, Bernal hisses.

A murmur runs through the office, but Erhard ignores it.

– In, in, in, Bernal says, driving him into the lift so roughly that his shoulder strikes the wall.

Erhard tries again. – Bernal, I haven’t done any of this. I want a solicitor. I am entitled to a…

– Just shut the fuck up, Bernal says, strangely loud. The doors of the lift slide closed.

– I have the right to a…

Erhard feels Bernal’s hand firmly gripping the handcuffs as soon as the lift begins to move.

– Wake up, Hermit. Emanuel Palabras sent me. He wants to help you. In a moment we’re going to reach the ground floor, and I want you to punch me and run. One of your colleagues is waiting in the car park. Jump into his car and lie down flat on the backseat. Ask him to drive you to Raúl’s flat. You have ten minutes to pack your things and vanish.

– What the hell? Erhard says as the handcuffs loosen on his wrists. He turns to Bernal.

– Do you want to prove your innocence? Or stay here and prove your guilt? Now, punch me as hard as you can.

Bernal points at his nose. His fine, hooked nose.

Erhard’s not sure he has enough strength.

– Now! Bernal says, just as the lift prepares to stop.

Erhard doesn’t even think, just slams his knuckles into Bernal’s nose. Bernal stumbles backward and thumps his head against a rail affixed to one of the walls. Erhard’s not sure if Bernal is acting or genuinely injured, but he lies still, crumpled on the floor of the lift. The doors make a plinging sound, then glide open.

‌

‌LUCIFIA

‌23 February

69

It’s Gustavo, the taxi driver. Erhard doesn’t know what he’s been told, but as soon as Erhard crawls into the backseat and gives him the address, he snaps on his turn signal and tears off. He asks no questions, and doesn’t look at Erhard. He just drives. Erhard can’t bring himself to speak or explain; he wouldn’t know what to say.

There are no sirens. And after five minutes, when they’re on FV-10 heading towards Corralejo via Oliva, Erhard peers cautiously through the rear window. No one is trailing them. All that he sees is a dry, barren stretch of highway.

– There’s a duffel bag with a few trousers and shirts, a jacket, and a pair of sunglasses, Gustavo says.

He wonders why he should change his clothes. Possibly so that he won’t be easily recognized if his description goes over the police radio. His shirt is stained, and his trousers smell of urine. Those are good reasons. Removing his trousers and tugging on a new pair, however, is nearly impossible. They fit him well enough, they’re a just little too large for him. The sunglasses are the cheap kind that can be purchased on the street for five euros, and the jacket is a sports jacket, maybe Gustavo’s own. This escape was better planned than he’d first thought.

– There are too many people out today, Gustavo says, so I’ll have to drop you off near Escámez.

– What? Why? Erhard doesn’t want to walk very far if the police are after him.

– Virgin del Carmen. It’s already begun.

Erhard realizes that he’s been at the Palace for three days. He’d counted his meals and thought it’d been two days, but apparently he’d been given only one meal per day. The festival is the biggest in Corralejo. It begins early in the morning and ends around midnight with fireworks on the beach. Last year, he watched the fireworks from Raúl’s rooftop terrace with Raúl and Beatriz. It’d been a peaceful evening with one-too-many vodka-tonics. They had watched the sunset, gobbled grilled shrimp, and gotten pissed.
For Carmen! Every man’s favourite whore
, Raúl had shouted from the roof.

He pats Gustavo on the shoulder and climbs out of the taxi, his filthy clothes bundled in his arms. Then he merges with the throng of people. All around him, children walk hand-in-hand with their parents, and Erhard has to continually dodge them and stay oriented so that he doesn’t wind up near the stage, where there is some sort of song competition going on. Children perform, their parents applaud. Farther down the street, people stand even more densely packed, clustered around a troupe of dancers, jugglers, and dice-throwing Moroccans who pound sticks against buckets made of sheet metal. There are also small booths selling cheap mobile phones in transparent cases or figures of Carmen in every shape and size: mermaid Carmen, buxom beach-blonde Carmen, mother Carmen with her little boy on her lap, Carmen with dolphins. He feels an urge to buy a figurine for Aaz. Erhard may not believe in the guardian of sailors or her saintly peers, but Aaz does. Automatically, he reaches into his pocket to see if he’s got enough cash to buy the Carmen as mother. And it’s then he realizes that his keys to the flat and his wallet are back at police headquarters. They’d emptied his pockets and confiscated his things before he’d been led into the first cell. He’s locked out of his building.

All at once he needs air. He tries heading down one of the smaller streets, thinking there’ll be fewer people, but it’s even worse and he pauses in a doorway to catch his breath. Since hopping into the taxi at the Palace, he’d almost forgotten how tiring the past few days have been, but now he’s overcome with exhaustion. He’s about to sink to the floor of the stairwell, giving up right here and now, letting the police capture him, when his fingers touch something in his jacket pocket. He unzips the liner pocket and shoves his hand in. Someone has stuffed a stack of fifty euro bills in there. He glances around while counting the money. The noisy street is teeming with people and dogs, but no one notices him. He’s not sure what’s going on. He’s got 3,000 euros. When he returns the notes to his pocket he discovers a yellow slip of paper sticking to the reverse side of the stack. There’s a note in handwriting that he recognizes:

Leave the island. Find the
Lucifia
. EP.

Emanuel Palabras is a criminal and a liar. Why would he suddenly help Erhard? He wants to accept Emanuel’s assistance. Unless he intends to sit in prison for something he hasn’t done, he
needs
to accept Emanuel’s help. Growing hot, Erhard feels the confusion and anger swirling in him. He forces his way through the throng and up the street towards the flat, the current strongest near the harbour because everyone is eager to score good seats to watch as Carmen is sent out to sea, and the fireworks that follow. Swiftly, without a glance inside, he walks past Silón’s shop. Since he doesn’t have the key to the building, he hurries to the basement and takes the lift to the fifth floor.

Underneath the stairwell he finds his extra key.

Cautiously he unlocks the door, listening for the slightest sound. The flat is stranger, more dangerous for Erhard than it has ever been. The rooms seem forsaken, and there’s a smell of autumn soil and chestnuts – insistent odours on this island. He inspects the living room, the office, the kitchen, and the dining room he’s never used, then the bathroom – the most luxurious of all the rooms – and finally the bedroom where Beatriz is lying exactly as he left her. He repositions her, scrubs her catheter, and inserts a clean bag containing a nourishing grey substance on the IV stand.

He changes his shirt, taking for the first time one of Raúl’s from the large wardrobe, then tugs on a new pair of trousers. He packs a bag, as Bernal suggested, a little backpack that seems to have been Bea’s. He doesn’t want to bring much: a short-sleeved shirt, an undershirt, underwear, comb, toothbrush, and some practical kitchen items like tinned food, a tin opener, a sharp knife. He can’t think of anything else. They’re ridiculous items, especially since he doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s taking a boat, but to where? He’s reminded of that day almost eighteen years ago when he packed a bag and left the house on Fuglebjergvej. Now he’s running again. Patterns first become patterns when they’re repeated. Why is he doing this? Why do all roads end like this for him? With a cheap backpack filled with random objects and no idea where he’ll be a month from now, or a year? He’s been content here on this island, he knows now, as he stares through the window at the harbour. In the bay are hundreds of boats of every shape and size, including children in rubber dinghies and families in row boats. On the deck of a huge speedboat, two young women sunbathe, while their boyfriends dance in the cockpit behind them. Probably pissed, high as kites. He sees Isla de Lobos beyond the speedboat. On the window sill in front of him, the desiccated husk of a basil plant, charred nearly black.

Far and near.

It doesn’t feel right, it feels wrong.

He’ll never return to the island. Life as he knows it is over; he’ll live in Morocco, or wherever they’re sending him, like some common beggar. The two or three thousand euros in his pocket won’t help him any. He won’t be able to send money to Annette and the girls. He’ll have to break off all contact with them.

A clear vision of his life on a chute towards hell emerges. Life is tapering into something very narrow, the pattern writhing, distorted. His exile to Fuerteventura made him lonely, a pariah of sorts, and yet he retained a certain dignity and strength. Now he’ll travel to Africa with neither dignity nor strength. He’ll be a finished man. Something more ridiculous and miserable than a poor black man – namely a poor white man. A man given every opportunity to succeed, but who wasted them one after another. He can’t step on board that cutter, but that’s what he must do.

He has no other choice.

If he stays in Fuerteventura, the police will nab him. Although the judicial system is supposed to be a relatively fair arbiter, it wouldn’t be able to overlook his confession, his escape attempt, and a whole shitload of bizarre circumstances. Even if he were capable of explaining the boy in the cardboard box and Beatriz and Alina so that the connection between them was clear.

But why would Palabras let him go? Because he knows that Erhard has gotten too close to the truth. If Erhard could continue his investigation, he would discover that Palabras had stolen his own cargo – God knows why – and people had been killed. The fake Chris Jones was thrown overboard when he tried to stop the hijacking, and maybe Raúl was disposed of when he began to suspect his father was involved. They probably took Raúl somewhere and killed him, leaving Beatriz for dead in the flat.

Palabras had first tried to pin Raúl’s murder on Erhard, but perhaps he’d worried that Erhard might tell the police about the boy and the hijacking, and so he chose to help him escape prison and the country instead? The more he considers the situation, the more he thinks one of Palabras’s thugs is probably on the
Lucifia
. A pair of strong hands to force Erhard’s head under the water. His corpse would float on the current around the Cape of Good Hope, and it would never be found. Case closed.

Since his choice is between going to prison and drowning, he decides it’s better to risk the latter and get dropped off in Agadir or, more likely, Tarfaya, which is four or five hours away by boat. But if he is to survive the journey, Erhard will need some insurance. Something that can stay Palabras and his goons’ hand from burying him at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. He doesn’t have the strength to write the entire story; with his poor, cumbersome handwriting, it would take too long. He considers contacting Solilla again, not her young journalist friend. She would ask the sharp, irritating questions that dredge the details from Erhard’s thick head, and she could stitch together an article. That would take time too, more than Erhard has. What he needs is a video camera to record everything. One of those new kinds customers sometimes use when they sit in the taxi filming the beach and the surfers. Surely Raúl has one of those things lying around – he was always obsessed with the latest in modern gadgetry – but Erhard probably wouldn’t even know how to turn it on. Too many buttons. He drops the thought.

Unless.

He hustles to gather his things, so that he can get down to the street. He’s already spent too much time in the flat.

He needs to call the doctor and convince him to assume responsibility for Bea, but to also keep her concealed. Maybe Michel with his network and his resources can get her away from this island and to a hospital elsewhere. Under the name Angelina Mariposa, Alina’s real name. An available identity.