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

thought: half the roof missing, some of it tumbled down, and yet with plates and cutlery to hold a dinner party and stage a pleasant social occasion.
    The light from my torch, which I was shading with my hand, showed there were papers spread out on the table. They looked like maps: somebody must have been studying them when the lights went out.
    I could not make them out clearly because I did not have my glasses with me. Besides, it was so dark. They seemed to be diagrams of a military barracks. There were blockhouses and big open spaces; it could also have been a hospital, if an arsenal had some medical purpose, as there was an arrow pointing to one of the oblongs with a list of weapons written in the margin. These were not weapons like Isabel’s .38. They were the latest rifles with infrared sights, and helmets with cameras built into them, like the ones the Yanks and the Israelis use when they go on their tourist trips to the Arab world. Each category had its own column listing the technical details and quantities—hundreds in the case of the rifles, tens when it came to missiles, which were also listed.
    I was startled by what I took to be a cry of terror. It was like being at the local flea-pit as a child when the vampire appeared and, before sinking his teeth into the damsel in distress, turned to the camera licking his lips as if to say: watch out, kids, you’re next.
    The cry, which had nothing to do with terror, came from the bedroom with the roof. It was a woman, but almost at the same time a man’s groan raised the noise level to that of an operatic soprano’s
vibrato
. A thunderclap outside was like a roll of drums, and the crockery in the sideboard crashed like cymbals.
    I never discovered whether what shook the house to its foundations was the storm or the orgasm.

PART TWO
Paradises and Plots

1
    So, on one side there was arms trafficking. On the other, a serial killer of women who, if not exactly of loose morals, were not of very tight ones either. This seemed like two worlds from completely different systems, like Pluto and Ganymede. No way the two of them could meet. Even the existence of one of them was questionable, as if it had not yet swum into the astronomers’ ken.
    I left the ruined or half-built house the same way I had got in. I felt angry with myself for not having the courage or the lack of scruples to avenge the dog. The killer was sleeping peacefully while his colleague was enjoying himself in bed.
    I was still squirming out of the bathroom vent when someone opened the door. If I had waited a second to see the face of the person coming in, holding a candle stuck in the top of a beer bottle, I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble.
    I sell bathroom furniture. I am not a detective. When I was in the police force I was not one either, and I hate speculating over things I know nothing about. There are detectives with diplomas, philosophers, people trained at university to sniff out the unknown. The National Shame has its homicide and scientific experts; it is not Sherlock Holmes we need in Argentina, it is the will to investigate. If the greatest living criminals in our history are walking around freely, it isbecause somebody right at the top has decided they should not be punished.
    I strolled calmly away from the house beneath a heavy, steady rain, which helped dissolve and wash away the mud I was covered in. I drove back to the hotel in Isabel’s car. It was not a four-wheel drive, but coped splendidly with the mud-bath of the track, and when we reached the asphalted road it wanted more speed than I could risk because the town was so close.
    As soon as I woke the next morning I rang Mónica and Isabel’s number in Buenos Aires. Something told me that if anyone answered it would not be Isabel.
    â€œPablo, thank God! Where did you get to?”
    â€œWhere am I, you mean. I’m at the Cabildo Hotel in Tres Arroyos. We were supposed to meet