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

here.”
    Mónica fell silent, then a few seconds later started to sob. She had no idea I knew something of what had happened to her, and could guess the rest. Still sobbing, she began telling me about their ordeal: she and her daughter had been intercepted on the bus they had decided to take from Bahía Blanca to Tres Arroyos. Two men—“polite but all muscle” I was tempted to say, but did not—got on the bus after swerving in front of it to bring it to a halt. My hotdog driver had forgotten to tell me this particular detail.
    â€œThere was a woman driving their car.”
    â€œA young woman?”
    â€œYes, and very pretty. She looked like a T.V. presenter.”
    I wondered whether I was dealing with the illegal arms racket or the white slave trade. Perhaps it was both: after all, they are different markets, and modern marketing gurus tell us we should spread our portfolios.
    â€œIs Isabel with you?”
    Mónica broke down again. After a while, choking and spluttering, she tried to explain. No, Isabel was not with her: the men had taken her off somewhere else. As soon as they were forced into the car, the two ofthem had been blindfolded. Then the car sped off along what Mónica thought from the way it lurched and swayed must have been a dirt road. Finally they came to a halt and Isabel was literally yanked from her side. Mónica heard her shouting, desperately calling out to her:
    â€œMummy,” she shouted, “Mummy, help me.”
    Mónica was still sobbing, but there was no stopping her now.
    â€œâ€˜Let go of her,’ I screamed, ‘if you want someone, take me.’ Then somebody hit me on the head: I thought I was going to die, Gotán, but I must have only passed out. I could still hear her shouting, I was begging them to let her go, thrashing to and fro as if it was a nightmare. After that they must have given me a sleeping pill or something, I don’t know. When I woke up, I was in the Accident and Emergency department in Haedo.”
    â€œIn Haedo?”
    â€œYes, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. I asked them who had brought me there.”
    â€œLet me guess,” I said. “The police.”
    She could not deny it, and did not seem surprised at my magical powers of deduction. She had been taken there in a police patrol car. “We found her by the roadside,” the officers had told the duty doctor. “When she’s recovered, send her home, if she can remember where she lives.” None of the police had stayed to keep an eye on her, but one of the doctors was so concerned that he offered to take her home. Mónica accepted, but did not tell him anything about what had happened.
    â€œI don’t trust anyone, Gotán. I don’t know what’s going on.”
    To calm her fears, the doctor said he earned less than a housemaid, and so had to keep his mouth shut and get used to seeing very strange goings-on. Mónica timidly asked what kind of strange goings-on. The doctor, who had only been out of medical school for a couple of years, said his parents had told him all about what had happened in Argentina during the ’70s dictatorship. He had always found it hard to believe there could be criminals as vile as that in such a beautiful country, withits bountiful land packed with cows and soya, as well as hard-working people like his parents, who had slaved their asses off—he used a more polite term, because he was speaking to a lady—so that he could get to university, become a doctor, take an oath to save lives, all lives, including those that were not worth saving.
    But now he did not know what to think.
    â€œIt’s true the armed forces thought they could bring Nazism to the south of Latin America. But they were thrown out twenty years ago. In the ’60s, twenty years after the Second World War, you wouldn’t find a single Nazi in either of the two Germanies, not even in a museum. Here they