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

out.”
    I did as he suggested. We had taken off our muddy shoes when we came in, so I walked over and sat in one of the chairs while Burgos served us both whisky on the rocks.
    â€œAt this time of day we should be having coffee and croissants,” he apologized, “but I don’t have any.”
    He sat in the other chair, folds of flesh spilling over the green chintz.Taking a sip of his breakfast, he began to tell me the story. As he outlined the details, I realized the maze I had got myself into, and how hard it was going to be to stay alive until I could find a way out.

8
    Isabel’s voice sounded agitated, as if she were speaking from a moving vehicle. Yet she was still at the hotel, waiting for me to come down and have breakfast with her. Burgos had advised me not to call her. Someone could trace the call, he said, and besides, it was his mobile I was using: “All I need is for them to think I’m your accomplice. I’ve only got a few more months before I retire.” In the end he relented: “It’s not 8:00 yet, which means the province’s entire security apparatus will be busy drinking
mate
.”
    The Imperio Hotel was carrying on as usual. Lorena’s dead body was probably still on the bed in my room, lying in the freezing shadows of death until a maid found it and ran screaming into the corridor. I warned Isabel that this would very soon happen: I did not want the news to take her by surprise, or for her to have the least suspicion I might be responsible for the murder.
    When I told her she went so quiet I begged her at least to breathe out so I would know she was still alive.
    â€œWhere are you now?” she whispered.
    â€œI’m safe, for the next thirty or forty minutes at least. You and your mother need to check out of the hotel. Pay the bill and take a taxi to Tres Arroyos.”
    â€œBut my car is in the hotel garage.”
    â€œLeave the key with the receptionist. I can’t explain now. I’ll sort it out later.”
    â€œMummy isn’t well, Gotán. She’s so sad. She’s in no state to play cops and robbers.”
    â€œThese people aren’t robbers, Isabel. They’re murderers. It wasn’t a heart attack that killed your father.”
    It was only to be expected that this would make her burst into tears. I prayed there was no-one else in the hotel breakfast room, or that if there was they were paying her no attention. Even though boyfriends rarely break off a relationship in the early morning, it’s the first thing curious onlookers think when they see a woman crying into the telephone.
    I heard another voice—Mónica’s—asking what was going on. “I’ll explain in a minute,” Isabel said, then, choking back her tears, asked what they were to do in Tres Arroyos.
    â€œTake a room at the Cabildo Hotel,” I said, following Burgos’ advice. “Wait for me there.”
    â€œWhat will happen if they arrest you?”
    â€œSomething terrible, I imagine,” I said, suddenly catching my breath. “If I’m not there by nightfall, take a La Estrella express bus to Buenos Aires. It leaves at 11:00.”
    â€œReclining seats with a stewardess,” the doctor said at my elbow.
    â€œWho’s that with you?” Isabel asked in alarm.
    â€œMy guardian angel.”

    A breakfast of whisky on the rocks seemed to have loosened the roly-poly doctor’s tongue. Serial killers apparently prefer cold climates, he said: southern towns and cities in a country like Argentina, northern ones in Europe or the United States. For some reason, these attacks are more prevalent in Scandinavia than in the Caribbean banana republics, he went on, as if setting out the introduction to a student lecture.
    â€œSo, that blond in your hotel room is the third in three weeks, Don Gotán. All following the same pattern: first the love-making, then after or during the orgasm a stiletto under