Flashback sb-2

by Ian Hocking

  No-one said anything. Hrafn had touched the heart of their anxiety: that the fictions were deeper, more fundamental than even Cory knew. The silence drew on until Hrafn lowered his eyes to the table. There was something apologetic in the tilt of his head.

  Quietly, Jem said, ‘You only had words from me.’

  ‘And we believe you,’ said Hrafn. His face softened. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And me?’ asked Saskia. Another silence greeted this. Saskia let them wait. She was as indifferent as a teacher duty-bound to deliver a bitter lesson. ‘Your perception is correct. Cory’s identity was undoubtedly constructed by Jennifer Proctor. Who knows what half-remembered poems and songs inspired her?’

  She could see that they did not know what to say. There was a moment, though brief, in which she wanted to drop a cryptic remark. Instead, she pulled open a small drawer in the table and produced a newspaper. She pushed it towards Karel.

  ‘This is a copy of The Buenos Aires Herald, a daily newspaper. It’s an archive duplicate from 1947.’

  Karel began to thumb through the pages. His attentioned switched between the newspaper and Saskia.

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘STENDEC,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘STEN for stentor, the Latin for ‘herald’. That’s the newspaper.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Next, D for the fourth page of the classifieds.’

  Karel turned the newspaper over and worked his way from the back page. Hrafn, on his left, leaned in.

  ‘OK, I’m on the fourth page.’

  ‘E for the fifth column.’

  His finger slid across the page.

  ‘And C for what?’

  ‘C for the third entry.’

  Karel lifted the newspaper.

  He read, ‘To: J. Remember flowers for grave of Algie. Love, C.’

  The men looked at one another. It was clear that they did not understand the reference, and their gazes eventually settled on Jem, who was half smiling.

  ‘It’s a book,’ she said. ‘We had to read it for school. It’s the fictional diary of a janitor called Charlie. At the beginning, he’s got a really low IQ and gets chosen for experimental surgery that turns him into a genius. At the end of the book he goes back to being a simpleton. Algernon was, I think, the name of a laboratory mouse that underwent the surgery before Charlie. The mouse died. The title of the book comes from the last line of the diary, when Charlie asks the reader to put flowers on the grave of Algie. I guess he means he’d like someone to put flowers on his grave, too, when he dies. Hence Flowers for Algernon.’

  ‘A hollow joke, then,’ said Karel. ‘What was Cory, if not a similar experiment?’

  ‘It’s not a joke,’ said Jem. ‘It’s a message telling Jennifer that Harkes is dead, that’s all. Mission accomplished.’

  ‘Why would he send it aboard Star Dust?’ asked Hrafn.

  ‘He told us,’ said Danny. ‘It was to smoke Harkes out. Make him drop his guard.’

  ‘Are we going to smoke Cory out too?’ said Hrafn, looking at Saskia.

  She shrugged.

  ~

  An hour of conversation passed—the apartment, the investigation of DFU323, families, spare time—before Saskia turned to Hrafn and said, ‘I wish to accept your offer of a small expedition to Mount Tupungato. I will take care of the outlay.’

  ‘I’d love to. Genuinely. But what do you expect me to find? Another glove?’

  ‘There’s something else,’ she pressed. ‘I need you to locate a man in Santiago. He has details of a shotgun suicide in December of 1947.’

  Danny tugged an earlobe. ‘You think Cory tried to kill himself just a few months after the Star Dust hijack?’

  ‘No. I think he did kill himself.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Hrafn.

  ‘What do you see in my chair? A corpse or a woman?’ Saskia swallowed a fast mouthful of the Chianti. She had eaten little throughout the meal and the alcohol numbed her throat. ‘I reiterate that Cory knows exactly where we are.’

  ‘Let us put our hands on the table about this,’ said Karel. ‘We mean to kill him. Do we not? This is a conspiracy of murder.’

  ‘My hope, gentlemen and lady, is that he wishes for us to complete what he cannot.’

  ‘His suicide,’ said Jem. ‘Like in the poem. ‘Richard Cory went home and put a bullet in his head.’’

  ‘How did you come to that conclusion?’ asked Hrafn.

  ‘Turn over the parcel that glove came in and read the return address.’

  ‘I already checked. There isn’t one.’

  ‘There’s the name of the sender.’

  ‘Is there?’ Hrafn peered closer. ‘I see it. ‘Mr Juan Pájaro… Rojo.’’

  ‘Two weeks ago, a small Buenos Airean newspaper filed a story that described how a man called Mr Pájaro Rojo contacted an elderly widow with details of a curious bequest: a house of her choosing. The man left following the purchase. Previously, the widow lived in the neighbourhood where Cory claimed to have stayed prior to his attack on Star Dust.’

  ‘How old is she?’ asked Hrafn.

  ‘Old enough to be the mother of Lisandro, the boy Cory killed. Lisandro wanted to buy her a house, remember?’

  ‘She must have had him very young.’

  ‘I think she did.’

  ‘But this is a coincidence,’ pressed Hrafn. ‘You think it’s Cory settling his debts?’

  ‘I feel him.’

  ‘I took Spanish at university,’ said Karel, ‘and, of course, I now have time. I’ll interview her to confirm it. If what you say is true, it will add weight to your argument about redemption.’

  ‘Thank you, Karel,’ said Saskia.

  ‘I’ll go with him,’ Danny said, looking at her, accepting the exile.

  ‘The glove is the start of a trail, Hrafn,’ said Saskia, ‘and it leads to Cory. It is a challenge. An invitation.’

  ‘To murder?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘To redeem? To avenge?’

  ‘Choose one.’

  ‘Which do you think Jennifer Proctor would have picked, given the murder of her father?’ His face had reddened. ‘How much value would she have placed upon the hundreds who died because of the chain of events she triggered?’

  Saskia steepled her fingers and pointed them at him. ‘It isn’t a chain, Hrafn. Understand that at least. It’s a snake swallowing itself. It’s fucked up. No-one at this table can understand because it is not meant to be understood. You want narrative. That’s something your brain applies to unconnected facts in the absence of meaning, because you can’t bear to live in a world without it.’ She felt the sharpening edge of a migraine, but she pushed through with what she needed to say. ‘I’ve prepared a safety deposit box for Cory’s ashes. Next to them, I will place the smart matter. And perhaps a flower, for Jennifer’s Algernon. For her Huckleberry. I will then draft instructions for a legal firm that both be made available to Jennifer Proctor years from now following David Proctor’s death.’

  ‘Saskia,’ said Jem. ‘Your nose.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, catching a blood drop on her knuckle. ‘Forget it.’

  Saskia raised her glass and the other diners joined her. Hrafn’s held fruit juice; Karel’s water. She watched the chandelier through the red liquid. ‘To–’

  Revenge.

  ‘The future,’ said Jem, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Both known and unknown.’

  ‘The future.’

  The last of the evening unwound. Saskia whispered her goodbyes and padded through the house and fell across her bed, exhausted. Before her precise, internal chronometer marked midnight, she imagined a reversal: Star Dust reforming from the closing flower of its destruction. She saw the power to turn all evil to good by simple rewind. How close she was to being Cory. He was her Harkes. She was Cory’s Huckleberry. In her stupor, she looked at the door and smouldered with a prayer for Jem to open it,
step through, and lie with her to soothe the aches and seal the cracks in her bones, the stresses of her death.

  ~

  Saskia awoke when it was still dark. There was a voice in her head.

  I said, can you hear me clearly? It’s Ego.

  She shifted. Her wrist hurt.

  I can hear you. Is this a dream?

  No.

  Where have you been?

  On loan, so to speak. However, I note that you were sleeping. My apologies. I wanted to test this connection immediately. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Sleep well, Saskia.

  She turned to her side. Jem was not in the bed.

  Good night.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Buenos Aires, some weeks later

  Karel Duczyński removed his Panama and fanned himself. He and Danny were looking along a colourful, hazy street. By unspoken agreement, Karel was in charge, and when he walked on, Danny fell into step. The cobblestones were shaded by jacarandas whose bluish corollas shuddered in the breeze. A boy burst from a doorway and joined the football game in the square opposite. Karel spotted an old man beneath an arch. The man nodded as Karel asked him directions. His toothless laughter made Danny turn away.

  At length, they passed beneath the arch and Karel said to his friend, ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  Danny gave him the sour smile of the heartbroken, which was an improvement.

  ~

  The door opened the width of a shoe. Old, blue eyes stopped on the visitors. ‘¿Es usted policía?’

  Karel cleared his throat. In his most polite Spanish, he said, ‘A very good afternoon, Mrs Cifuentes. My friend and I are from Interpol.’ He pressed his BSG identification card to the gap. ‘We are investigating the financial dealings of Mr Juan Pájaro Rojo, and we would like to talk with you.’

  ‘This is my apartment now.’

  ‘We fully understand that, señora.’

  ‘You know it is siesta?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I did not. May we come back at a more convenient time?’

  The door closed. Karel looked doubtfully at Danny. Then the door opened again. The old lady wore a print dress and open sandals. Her eyes were set in deep, weathered sockets and she kept one arm behind her back for balance as she retreated into the apartment. ‘I don’t care about the siesta at my age. You will have some maté.’

  ‘Very kind,’ said Karel.

  She turned to look at him before continuing inside. The room held a deflated-looking sofa, a couch draped with an old blanket, and some rugs. Cardboard boxes had been stacked in the corner. Karel was drawn to a watercolour above the television. It showed a smartly-dressed young woman and her family. Behind them, a crowd of wedding guests stood before a rural church. The cars next to the church dated the picture to the first half of the twentieth century. Karel glanced down at the sepia photograph that showed the same scene.

  ‘I used to paint,’ said the woman, returning from the kitchen. ‘Now my hands are unsteady.’

  ‘Are you enjoying your retirement?’

  ‘Tell your friend he can sit.’

  ‘Danny, sit down.’

  ‘Retirement?’ She laughed. ‘I became a mother at fourteen and a grandmother at thirty. I have so many children that I forget their names. I will be retired when they forget mine.’ She nodded, gathered her thoughts. ‘I stopped hat-making when I was 65, in the winter of 1992.’

  ‘Which would make you twenty years old in 1947.’

  ‘Twenty-one when my boy died, in the August. Little Lisandro.’

  Karel passed a look of triumph to Danny, whose eyebrows were raised. The Brit had heard the name Lisandro but could not be sure of the context. Karel held out his hand and clicked his fingers. Danny passed him the article.

  ‘I read that your son contacted this newspaper. Is this true?’

  The woman stared at the paper in a silent snarl of concentration. ‘Javier was excitable when he was a little boy and he’s excitable as an old man. I told him to stay quiet. No newspapers.’

  ‘Why did you tell him that?’

  ‘Because Mr Juan Pájaro Rojo asked me to keep this between ourselves.’

  Karel nodded. ‘I would be grateful if you could tell me what happened, starting from the beginning.’

  ‘Very well.’ She nodded, as though she had always known there would be a reckoning. She settled on the chair by the kitchen. ‘He visited me one month ago. It was very wet. He came during the siesta, like you.’

  ‘Can you describe the man?’

  ‘Tall, white hair, faraway eyes.’ She smiled. ‘He spoke beautifully, like I haven’t heard in years.’

  ‘His age?’

  ‘Late sixties.’

  ‘Late sixties,’ said Karel. He looked at Danny and nodded. ‘That sounds like… Pájaro Rojo.’

  ‘He asked me if I had once lost a son called Lisandro, and I replied that I had.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Cifuentes, but can we go back one step? On what basis did you admit the man to your house?’

  ‘I didn’t. He was already inside. When I asked him how he had entered, he said that he must have walked through the wall.’

  ‘Did that worry you?’

  ‘At the time, it made me laugh.’

  ‘What did he ask next?’

  ‘He wanted to know if I had any proof of residency. I said that I did not. But I showed him my picture of Lisandro. That was enough.’

  ‘How, precisely, did he respond to the picture?’

  ‘He was very moved. Then he told me the story of the bequest.’

  ‘The bequest?’

  ‘It’s in the newspaper. You must have read it.’

  ‘Mrs Cifuentes, let me repeat that we are not here to take your apartment. That’s yours, and safe.’

  ‘Your companion is very quiet. Why?’

  ‘He’s British. He only speaks when he wants to apologise. The bequest, Mrs Cifuentes?’

  ‘He told me that a rich businessman had once befriended my son, Lisandro, and invested some money on his behalf. The businessman had long since died, but his grandson had recently discovered documents relating to the investment, and wished to locate Lisandro or his next of kin. As part of that process, he had hired a private detective, Mr Pájaro Rojo. The bequest was very simple. I was to choose a house and it would be bought for me.’

  ‘Mrs Cifuentes, concerning your son, Lisandro. Do you remember the circumstances of his death?’

  She lost her smile. ‘Of course. He was murdered in an alleyway not far from our home.’

  ‘Who was suspected?’

  ‘Mr Whatever-your-name-is, let me tell you something. My grandmother was in her forties when she died. She once gave me a piece of advice after I found her outside our house with a fat lip and her favourite knife at a whetstone. She told me that quick revenge is for the weak, while the strong remember until the time is right. And guess what, Mr Whatever-your-name-is?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She was wrong.’

  ‘Señora, the suspect?’

  ‘He vanished.’

  ‘And what of Mr Pájaro Rojo?’

  Mrs Cifuentes smiled. ‘Oh, he vanished too.’

  ‘Mrs Cifuentes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and her gaze settled on the watercolour of her long-dead son. ‘Like a… like he was never here.’ She turned to the kitchen. ‘Ah, and now the water has boiled. We must wait. For good maté, it must be hot, but not too hot.’

  ‘Mrs Cifuentes.’

  ‘A moment, please.’

  Danny was picking at the skin around his thumb. Karel summarised the conversation in English. Mrs Cifuentes returned with an almost spherical cup. A silver straw protruded from the small hole in the top.

  ‘Here,’ she said to Danny, patting his knee. ‘This will help you forget all about her.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Tupungato, The High Andes

  The air did not satisfy Hrafn’s breath. It was emptier than the wet winds of Snæfellsjökull,
the Icelandic glacier whose slopes Hrafn and his brother Ragnar had bested as teenagers. Hrafn waved down to Ragnar, who did not wave back. Their guide, Guillermo, touched his hat and smiled.

  Hrafn removed his sunglasses and considered Mount Tupungato.

  They were two days out from Laguna del Diamante. The Lagoon of Diamonds had been Hrafn’s first experience of air at 10,000 feet. He regarded himself as a fit fifty-year-old. He ran and swam before breakfast. But the rarified airs had slowed his movement, and Guillermo had mooted a return to Mendoza. One look was all it took: one look between Hrafn and his younger brother. The old competition returned. They grinned.

  ‘Onwards,’ Hrafn said.

  ‘And upwards,’ said Ragnar.

  That first night, they had made camp in the boulders near the lagoon. The constellations were inverted. Guillermo explained that tupungato meant ‘place to observe the stars’ in the tongue of Huarpe Indians. He made hot chocolate andinista style and gave them oatmeal bars. He told them about his travels on the mountain. In return, Hrafn offered the story of an aeroplane called Star Dust. Guillermo knew it well, he said, but stopped when he saw the despair and sadness on Ragnar’s face. All eyes turned to the hot chocolate and the conservation ended with quiet bids good night.

  Ragnar and Hrafn slept side by side as though decades of absence from Iceland had been spliced out and they were boys again, bored on their aunt’s farm near Akureyri, looking for trolls.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him about your bogeyman, Hrafn?’

  ‘I’m not sure he was there.’

  ‘Is it related to the German plane crash?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You know, you should go back to air-crash investigation. You’re good at it.’

  ‘I tried to get back into it and I couldn’t. It’s over.’

  ‘Why are we really here?’

  ‘Because I promised you a birthday present.’

  ‘Plus you hate not being sure.’

  ‘That too. Now go to sleep.’

  They left the lagoon in a Land Rover brought by Guillermo’s brother, who spoke less Spanish than Hrafn. They bounced in silence to San Carlos. In a basement shop, Hrafn remained silent during the fitting of his gear while Guillermo outlined the itinerary. If they made no discovery at the foot of the glacier, they would attempt the high ice fields, perhaps the summit zone itself. Hrafn nodded as his straps were tightened. From San Carlos, they travelled to Santa Clara, and from there to the Portezuelo del Azufre. Ragnar raised an eyebrow as Hrafn translated the name: Brimstone Gorge.