Read Online No One Loves a Policeman by Guillermo Orsi, Nick Caistor - Free Book Online Page B

century our leaders used to dazzle millions of European immigrants with. They did not, of course, tell them that the really fertile land was already owned by others, most of them descendants of the soldiers who had robbed the Indians of it in the first place. All that was left to distribute was rough, parched land that needed a lot of brute strength and a great deal of money to make anything of.
    The immigrants, driven out of Europe because imperial wars had left them starving, supplied the brute strength. The rewards for all their hard work were waiting for them in their graves.
    â€œWhat exactly are you looking for?” the man in one of the last agencies I visited asked me exasperatedly.
    I told him my interest was not strictly commercial, for the moment at least. It could be a farm that had not been worked for a while, with a rundown or abandoned shack on it. I did not care because I was not going to live there. I wanted to buy something cheap.
    â€œYou’re not going to find anything cheap around here,” he warned me.
    He got out some maps and spread them across his desk. There werethree properties that might interest me: farms of less than a hundred hectares. On two of them there had been a building of some kind or other. One was in ruins; the other was very run-down, with the roof missing over half of its six or so rooms.
    â€œI’m interested in that one.”
    â€œThe owners live in Buenos Aires. I’m sure there’s no-one there. We could go now, it’s not far.”
    I asked him to tell me how to get there. We could go early the next morning, I suggested.
    â€œNo, the morning’s impossible for me,” he said. “Give me a call and we’ll arrange a time.”
    I shook his hand, looking as pleased as if we had just done a fantastic deal. He was obviously interested in selling something; I was more concerned about getting him off my back. I had the information I was looking for. If the two polite gentlemen had taken Isabel and Mónica to some out-of-the-way place, it could be the half-ruined ranch on a neglected farm. There would be no witnesses. On any working
estancia
, market garden or dairy farm there are farmhands, cows. If the estate agent was right, on this one there would be nothing more than thistles and a ramshackle wind-pump.
    I climbed back into the Renault and switched on the radio. As I did so I remembered I had left Bahía Blanca without checking to see if the car’s papers were in the glove compartment. As I opened it, the snub-nosed .38 fell onto the passenger seat like a cat escaping from a cupboard. On the radio they were forecasting a storm for that night.

    Debora
, I wrote on the steamed-up glass of the bathroom mirror. As I was combing my hair after the shower, the letters gradually faded, leaving only my face in view. If memory is a window on the past, I give up. All the glimpses of it I get are snatches of events seen throughshutters. I hear footsteps but have no idea whose they are, whether they are coming toward me or leaving me forever.
    â€œCall me Mireya if you like, Gotán. You’re really pathetic, but call me Mireya if it makes you feel good.”
    She had no idea I was a policeman when she allowed me to call her that, to talk to her as if we were in some cheap melodrama, exaggerating my lines, making fun of my own autumnal passion. I was in no hurry to tell her what I had once been, and anyway, she was delighted at my current occupation as a salesman of bathroom furniture, washbasins, bidets and toilets, together with all the fittings and pipes … “I don’t suppose you carry samples with you, do you?” she asked, laughing. “No, just leaflets. Don’t laugh, sweetheart,” I said. “Somebody has to make sure that people can perform their ablutions in modern, well-designed surroundings.”
    She liked my voice and the way I looked at her. “There’s something so old-fashioned about