Needle in a Haystack E-Book

Ernesto Mallo

• Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

"This is not simply a triumph of style; it is both a reflection on a time of bloodshed and a raw vision of human misery."—Guillermo Saccomanno, winner of the Argentine National Literature Prize "This man knows. He knows about guns, knows about women, knows about dead bodies. . . . But above all he knows how to narrate."—Ana María Shua, author of El peso de la tentación Superintendent Lascano is a detective working under the shadow of military rule in Buenos Aires in the late 1970s. Sent to investigate a double murder, he arrives at the crime scene to find three bodies. Two are clearly the work of the Junta's death squads, murders he is forced to ignore; the other one seems different. The trail leads Lascano through a decadent Argentina, a country poisoned to its core by the tyranny of the regime. The third corpse turns out to be that of Biterman, moneylender and Auschwitz survivor. When Lascano digs too deep, he must confront Giribaldi, an army major, quick to help old friends but ruthless in dealing with dissenters such as Eva, the young militant with whom Lascano is falling in love. Born in 1948, Ernesto Mallo is a published essayist, newspaper columnist, screenwriter, and playwright. He is a former anti-Junta militant who was pursued by the dictatorship. Needle in a Hay Stack is his first novel and the first in a trilogy with superintendent Lascano. The first two are being made into films.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

 

Title Page

 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

 

Copyright Page

Born in 1948, Ernesto Mallo is a published essayist, newspaper columnist, screenwriter and playwright. He is a former anti-Junta activist who was pursued by the dictatorship. Needle in a Haystack is his first novel and the first in a trilogy with superintendent Lascano. The first two are being made into films in Argentina.

Tomorrow or the day after, catastrophe will come, drowning us all in blood, if we haven’t already been reduced to ashes. Everyone is scared. Me included; I can’t sleep at night, overcome with terror, nothing functions, all we have is our fear… So what does Superintendent Bauer do? He does his job, tries to create a little order and sense where there is only chaos and irreversible disintegration. But he’s not alone…

Ingmar Bergman The Serpent’s Egg

1

I know that one must kill, yesbut kill who…Homero Expósito, 1976

Some days the side of the bed is like the edge of an enormous abyss. Day in, day out, doing things you don’t want to do. Lascano wants to stay in bed for ever or throw himself into the abyss. If only the abyss were real. But it’s not. Only the pain is real.

Lascano wakes up feeling like this today, and has done every day since his wife’s death. Orphaned as a child, he seemed predestined to solitude. Life granted him an eight-year respite in the form of Marisa, a reason to go on living, a fleeting joy that ended less than a year ago, and left him stranded again in the shallows of an island where he earned his nickname: Perro; the Dog.

He launches himself into the void. The shower washes away the last remains of sleep, which howl as they disappear down the plughole. He gets dressed, puts his Bersa Thunder nine millimetre into its holster. Lascano goes over to the birdcage, home of the only living reminder of Marisa, and adds a pinch of seed to the feeder. He heads out into the deserted early morning. Day has yet to break. The air is so humid that Perro feels he could swim to the garage. Fog envelops everything, playing tricks with lights and shadows. He sparks up his first cigarette of the day.

As he sets off, a military operation plays out on the corner. Two olive-green Bedford trucks block off the street. Soldiers with machine guns and Fal rifles. A bus with its doors open. Passengers are lined up along one side, their backs to the soldiers, hands on heads, waiting in silence for their turn to be frisked and interrogated by a lieutenant with the face of a cruel child.

Lascano passes them with indifference. A soldier looks at Lascano, turns to his lieutenant, as though seeking an instruction, then looks at Lascano again. Lascano stares back at him with a commanding glare, making full eye contact, and the soldier lowers his gaze. Slowly, dawn breaks.

As Lascano gets to the garage, a convoy of military trucks passes by. The first one carries a boy and a girl. She wears a flowery dress and must be the same age as Marisa was when he first met her. The girl throws Lascano a fleeting look of desperation, which sends a jolt up his spine like some torturous electric shock, and then she is swallowed up by the fog. Lascano enters the black mouth of the garage. The day begins.

Walking up the ramp reminds him, one by one, of all the cigarettes he has ever smoked. While the Ford Falcon warms up, he lights his second cigarette of the day and reaches for the radio transmitter.

Fifteen to base. Over. Bow-wow. Over. Quite the joker this morning, I see. Over. If you’d spent the whole night here, you’d be in a funny mood too, Perro. Over. What you got? Over. You’re to head over to the Riachuelo river. Over. Where? Over. Avenida 27 de Febrero, opposite the lake at the racetrack. Over. And? Over. Investigate a report of two bodies dumped by the hard shoulder, on the riverside. Over. Won’t they be military hits? Over. I don’t know, go and find out. Over. I’m on my way. Over and out.

First gear always crunches as he sets off, and does so more each time.

One of these days I’ll have to get the clutch fixed on this thing before it leaves me screwed in the middle of nowhere.

The call has put him in a bad mood.

To his left, a chemical smog rises from the Riachuelo waters, poisoning the atmosphere. Lascano drives with the window open as if wanting to punish himself with the river’s stench. Through the windscreen, the landscape blurs and reappears to the rhythm of the wipers. The radio is silent, the street deserted and the tyres, rolling across the tarmac, produce the monotonous tac tac of a train. Movement up ahead breaks his hypnosis. A Falcon Rural estate backs out of a track on the left. It has a dent in its rear door and the plastic cover on the right brake light is broken, so giving off white light instead of red. Lascano takes his foot off the accelerator, but the Rural pulls forward and tears away. Lascano gets to the track, which leads through muddy grass to a corrugated iron hut. He drives down it a few feet and makes out some shapes on the ground. He pulls to a halt, puts on the handbrake, gets out and sees the shapes for what they are: three dead bodies. He lights his third cigarette and approaches. Two of the bodies are wet with dew. Their features have been obliterated by countless bullets, their skulls destroyed. Lascano holds back a retch. He can tell that one is a girl, one a boy, and both are wearing jeans and polo necks. The third body is that of a tall man, around sixty, hefty, pot-bellied, thinning grey hair, dressed in a black suit and tie. He is bone dry and his head is intact, the wild scream of death frozen across his face. He wears no belt and at the top of his stomach a big bloodstain paints a flower on his light-blue shirt. Lascano spots a piece of red plastic lying close by. He picks it up and puts it in his pocket. He lights a fourth cigarette and slowly walks back to his car. On the way, he retrieves a belt, which doubtless belonged to the dead man. The buckle is broken. He coils it up in his hand, then, back at the car, he sits down sideways in the driver’s seat, with his feet out the door. He picks up the microphone.

Fifteen to base. Over. You there already? Over. How many stiffs, did you say? Over. Two. Over. Send me the ambulance, I’m moving them to Viamonte. Over. On its way. Over. I’ll wait for it. Over and out.

Lascano swivels in the seat, shuts the door, finishes his cigarette and throws the stub out the window. It has started to rain. He sits up straight, takes the wheel, sets the motor running and reverses up to the main road to make himself visible for the ambulance. He waits. A refrigerator lorry goes past. One of Fuseli’s old phrases comes to mind:

You never get over the death of a child; it’s something you just have to live with for ever.

Fuseli knew from experience what he was talking about. Lascano was particularly struck by this comment, because Fuseli had taken good care not to reveal to Lascano that Marisa had been two-months pregnant when she died. It was the last time either of them mentioned dead children. Fuseli knew that the scar was there, but he felt no need to lick his wounds. Both he and Lascano believe men should suffer in silence. Lascano had known Fuseli for years, but until Marisa’s death they had never talked of anything other than work. Fuseli is a forensic doctor, one of those people truly passionate about their job. He is short, a little fat and squat, his hair clipped, combed and gelled, face clean-shaven; everything suggests a very formal man. But when it comes to discovering a corpse’s secrets, Fuseli turns into a serious obsessive. He reaches out to the dead and they respond. Nobody has an eye for tiny details like Fuseli and nobody has his patience for spending a whole night disembowelling a body. But on the day of Marisa’s funeral, Fuseli dropped everything and accompanied Lascano to La Tablada, the Jewish cemetery.

The ambulance’s lights start to flash in the distance.

At the time, Perro was too broken to be surprised and he accepted Fuseli’s warm embrace and his few carefully chosen words like manna from heaven. They had been friends ever since, never judging one another, never competing. Not then, in desperate times, nor in their rare moments of happiness. They were also united in using fierce concentration at work as a placebo, although they didn’t talk much about this either, of course. Perhaps true friendship is better expressed by what’s not said than by what is.

When the ambulance arrives, Lascano signals the way. He follows slowly behind, then tells the driver and paramedic to start loading up the bodies. Lascano inspects the fat corpse again. He checks its pockets and finds only a few coins along with a business card for the Fortuna Sawmill, with an address in Benavídez, near Tigre. He moves out of the way and watches them put the body on a stretcher.

Lascano gets back into his car, sets off and is soon behind the ambulance.

KEEP YOUR DISTANCE.

There is little traffic at this hour, and a few minutes later they pull into the yard at the mortuary. While the stretcher-bearers move the bodies, Lascano heads off to the operations room in search of his friend Fuseli. Fully concentrated at his microscope, the doctor doesn’t notice Lascano’s entrance.

Fuseli, this is no time to be going around so distracted. Remember what happened to Archimedes. Perro! What are you doing here? I’ve brought you some presents, so you don’t get bored. What have you got for me?

The stretcher-bearers deposit the bodies on the dissection tables and leave. Lascano lights a cigarette. Fuseli carefully observes the three bodies and moves over to the fat man.

You got your Polaroid? Over there, in the cabinet.

Lascano goes over to the cupboard and takes out the camera, while Fuseli closely examines the corpse.

Is it loaded? It should be. The two kids were executed, but this one’s different. I thought so too. Hello big guy. Are you going to tell me your secrets?

Fuseli grips the body’s head and holds it up while Lascano lines up the camera and presses the red button. The machine hums, then spits out an image not yet ready to reveal itself. Lascano wafts it about in the air.

You get crazier by the day. Even a no-mark criminal knows dead men can’t talk. That’s because criminals are so ignorant. The dead talk to those who know how to listen to them. Anyway, people talk to plants, don’t they? Does this contraption work or what? There’s nothing coming out. Try it again.

Fuseli holds up the head once more. Lascano takes another photo.

What do you reckon?

Fuseli carefully examines the corpse’s hands.

This one put up a fight. Do you think he was planted there? What does it look like to you? Like it couldn’t be clearer if they’d left a trowel and a watering can. The ones who are executed always show up with their faces destroyed. The old boy’s is intact. Apart from these wounds. But I get the feeling he got them when he was already dead.

Lascano looks at the photo. As if returning from beyond the grave, the dead man starts to show himself.

I would say that they killed this one somewhere else. What else would you say? Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you. Done. Hey, why don’t you bring me a little weed from your pals in the drug squad? You still smoking spliff? You should be ashamed of yourself, you old hippy. I am, but then I smoke a joint and the shame passes. I’ll see what I can lay my hands on. My mind thanks you in advance. Now let’s see fella, where did they stick it to you?… mmm, here’s the little hole where death entered and life departed…

Fuseli goes into a trance, the rest of the world disappearing as he becomes totally immersed in his work and his intimate relationship with the dead. Lascano quietly leaves the room. A light but persistent wind has cleared the sky and a sullen winter sun pokes out between the clouds. A promising morning, thinks Lascano, as he sits at his wheel, waiting at the mortuary gate for a fellow driver to let him into the passing traffic.

2

The room is in semi-darkness. What little light there is comes from the street lamp outside. Jolted by the wind, its faint glow dances around and throws Amancio’s shadow alternately onto the ceiling, the walls and the bookcase. Sitting beside the window, he drinks his fifth whisky. He’d rather be having a Ballantine or Johnny Walker Black Label, but he has to make do with an Old Smuggler because Amancio is no longer what he once was, or at least no longer has what he once had, which amounts to the same thing in the end. And so he drinks begrudgingly.

It’s past two in the morning and Lara went to sleep three hours ago. This did bring some relief, a respite from her continual reproaches, but it was also an affront to his expectations of companionship, of mutual understanding, of support, bah, of sex. But Lara is conditioned only to make demands; unless she gets something in return, she has nothing to give.

In the street below, the army has just set up one of its checkpoints. A jeep blocks the entrance to the street. Two soldiers with machine guns are positioned on each corner in the shadows. Three others have placed themselves a few feet further back and three more stop any car that happens by. The soldiers search the vehicle thoroughly, demand to see the identification papers of any passengers, split them up and bombard them with questions. The officers hunt for inconsistencies in their stories, for firearms, documents, evidence of something, whatever. The slightest grounds for suspicion means being thrown in the back of a van and driven to one of many clandestine military prisons spread across the city, to undergo a deeper, more pressing interrogation. Amancio catches himself wanting to witness an arrest. He feels like a circus-goer hoping to see the tightropewalker fall. Time passes by, but nothing else does, the streets are empty, the soldiers, trained for action, grow bored and distracted, until at last the approach of a car brings them to attention. They aim their guns at the heads of the civilians in a car, their trigger fingers twitching as they feel their own fear levels rise, fear being the food that nourishes the soldier.

Amancio finishes his drink in one violent gulp, throwing it down his throat as if wanting to hurt himself with this harsh liquor that his palate is growing accustomed to, and serves himself another.

Somewhat drunk, he inspects his hunting trophies and framed photos. His successful past now seems strange to him. There he is, proudly brandishing his rifle, its butt resting on his thigh, his foot on the horns of a tremendous cape buffalo. He used to love the feeling of power he got from killing these enormous beasts. At his side, his friend Martinez de Hoz. Crouched down, the guide, a little black guy, all eyes and teeth. Amancio is an excellent marksman; it’s his most notable skill, quite possibly his only skill. He feels nostalgic for the days of playing the white hunter, when he could happily blow a fortune on an African safari in the Okavango delta, for the lost splendour and indulgence of it all, because for some time now Amancio’s finances have been spiralling out of control. He was never taught nor felt the need to learn how to earn money, only to spend it. He was an awful student guided by an indifferent father, from whom Amancio inherited the sense of a life already accounted for, nails growing long like those of a Chinese mandarin. Work was not meant for the likes of them. Their distant ancestors had made fortunes appropriating Indian land in the wake of the desert campaign of General Roca. Back then, just as today, the army lived by a non-negotiable principle: that the good fight meant fighting for goods. The sacrifice, the massacre of one thousand Indians per day, wasn’t considered excessive in return for securing a family’s wealth for three or four generations. Amancio’s grandfather had been the sort who took his family to Europe for long holidays, travelling with his own cow on board the ship to provide fresh milk for his children, and a lover among the passengers on the lower deck to fulfil those functions that bored his aristocratic wife, who considered sex to be something for the working classes. In the salons of Paris they coined the phrase “as rich as an Argentine”. A plentiful childhood, summers spent on the estate at Rauch: twenty thousand acres of the best land in the country. Hereditary tradition ensured that money fell from heaven at the same rate that relatives rose up to it. Life revolved around travel, impressing one’s contemporaries in the salons, swanning around with beautiful, languid young women, gossiping about the “parvenus” and the fallen, mocking the nouveaux riches, scorning the poor, scoffing at the latest scandals and enjoying oneself in the eccentric company of aristocrats, the Beccar Varelas and the Pereyra Iraolas of this world.