The Hermit by Thomas Rydahl

chunks of rock. He notices that his left boot is in tatters. He notices his sock through a slit between the sole and the leather. It’s been a long time since he’s spent money on that sort of thing. He doesn’t like to. Just the thought of trying on shoes makes him delay buying them. Maybe he can mend it with a little glue or some duct tape.
    The car was parked here, right here.
    He walks up and down the slope. It looks like soft sand, but there are actually rocks right beneath the thin layer. It’s hard to walk on. Suddenly he’s standing in the water, the beach disappearing into it. Tidewater is distinctive across the entire island, but because the sandy bottom is so flat, it seems stronger here. Here, napping girls or some family on a picnic are suddenly surprised by a wave that crashes all the way up the beach and against the first row of rocks.
    Erhard thinks about how the car must’ve gotten down the slope. Was it shoved? What did they want to happen to it? Did they want the car to sink into the sea? Was it supposed to have washed out into the waves and vanished? Why else would they push it down the slope? He’s seen some of the youths riding their ATVs down here. Was it a mistake that the car rolled down here? Had the mother somehow disappeared?
    Maybe Raúl was right. He’d said that it was probably a car thief having some fun. But Raúl didn’t know there’d been a child in the backseat. That made it much worse.
    Erhard gazes across the water.
    If a person wanted to drown, all they would have to do was walk 100 metres out to the sandbank. The undertow is so strong out there that a body would wash ashore in Lanzarote in two days. He’s heard that from his colleagues who discuss Los Tres Papas, who earn their money from dry-cleaning businesses, coat-check services, gambling, and prostitution. Now and then they cut ties with a member or two, and that member washes up on the beach in Lanzarote, disintegrating and tender. Some rumours even have it that Raúl’s involved, but Erhard has never seen or heard anything that gives him any reason to believe it. Raúl may not always be a clean-cut kid, but he’s no criminal. People say a lot of stuff. Even about Erhard. They say he’s driven clients out to Vallebrón, and buried them underneath two metres of rock. At the beginning of the aughts, several bodies were found down there. Beneath rocks on which were carved three small matchstick men.
    If the mother was the one who drove the car down the slope, then she must’ve been wracked with grief and shock. The boy lies dead or dying in a box in the backseat, she’s desperate, and maybe she’d drowned herself because there was nothing else she could do. That doesn’t explain the car. That it wasn’t registered. Or that it was wiped clean of fingerprints. A desperate mother wouldn’t clean fingerprints from her car. Besides, a tormented mother would leave behind an excuse, an explanation. To hurt a child is the most unforgivable act – that’s how it is in every culture the world over. Even in Catholicism, which otherwise revolves around forgiveness, it’s one of the sins one is least likely to forgive. But a mother from these islands would be unable to kill herself and her child without attracting attention. Too many things don’t add up. Erhard senses that the beach holds secrets. The car was abandoned here for a reason.
    It’s like having twenty pieces to a puzzle and not knowing whether the entire puzzle has twenty-one or one thousand pieces.
    In the supermarket he sees one of those kinds of boxes the boy was found in. Maybe not the exact same kind. But a simple, brown cardboard box with staples on the bottom along with a narrow slit. He removes the bags of rice and turns the box over.
    He stares at the bottom and can almost see the boy, folded up, emaciated, alone. The tiny body clatters around. The little boy with the big eyes. And he sees a pair of hands that either put him in the box or aims to lift