There Are No Happy Loves E-Book

Sergio Olguín

• Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A NEW CRIME INVESTIGATION BY FEARLESS BUENOS AIRES JOURNALIST VERONICA ROSENTHAL Haunted by nightmares of her past, Verónica is soon involved in a new investigation. Darío, the sole survivor of a car accident that supposedly killed all of his family, is convinced that his wife and child have in fact survived and that his wife has abducted their child. Then a truck searched in the port of Buenos Aires on suspicion of drug trafficking, is revealed to be transporting human body parts. These seemingly separate incidents prove to be linked in a shadowy web of complicity involving political and religious authorities.

Leseprobe

Sergio Olguín was born in Buenos Aires in 1967. His first work of fiction, Lanús, was published in 2002. It was followed by a number of successful novels, including Oscura monótona sangre (Dark Monotonous Blood), which won the Tusquets Prize in 2009. His books have been translated into English, German, French and Italian. There Are No Happy Loves, following on from the success of The Foreign Girls and that of The Fragility of Bodies, is the third in a crime thriller series featuring journalist Verónica Rosenthal. Sergio Olguín is also a scriptwriter and has been the editor of a number of cultural publications.

THERE ARENO HAPPYLOVES

Sergio Olguín

Translated by Miranda France

To Elena Oshiro, Carlos Arroyoand Ignacio Palacios Videla

Contents

PROLOGUE: Three Stories

FIRST PART

1This Girl’s Life

2Certainties

3The Photograph Collector

4The Search for a Daughter

5The Two Verónicas

6Sentiment and Insensitivity

7Thirty-three

8Cecilia, Jazmín, Lucía

SECOND PART

9The Others

10Meetings

11Crossed Lives

12Blind Man’s Buff

13The Bonds of Love

14The Nuns

15Between the Walls

16Aarón Rosenthal

17Burnout

18On Loneliness

Too often he relived in the present the lapsed moments of his own past, not out of remorse or nostalgia, but because the walls of time seemed to have burst.

MARGUERITE YOURCENAR, The Abyss

‘It must have been murder. You don’t kill a man to hide anything less.’

GRAHAM GREENE, The Third Man

‘If it were sufficient to love, things would be too easy.’

ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus

Prologue

THREE STORIES

I

He thought it was the end of the summer and didn’t realize it was the end of everything. A few minutes from now, life as he had known it would fall apart once and for all. Nothing would ever be the same again.

White lines: double and continuous, avoid passing other vehicles; single and broken, accelerate and overtake the cars and trucks obstructing his steady progress towards the capital, Buenos Aires. That was all Darío saw: the white lines of Route 11, illuminated by the low beam of his car lights. Everything around him was black, dense and interminable. Like his mood.

The red lights in front of him gradually came into focus. Darío gently braked, shifted down a gear and fell in behind the car, which was travelling at less than sixty miles an hour. Double white lines on the asphalt indicated an approaching bend, so he couldn’t overtake. As he took the bend, Darío checked the opposite carriageway and saw no white light to show a vehicle coming the other way. He accelerated and overtook the car. Once they were a safe distance ahead, he got back in his lane, and the other car soon dissolved into the nothingness behind them.

It was the end of the vacation. A fortnight during which Darío had confirmed what he already knew but couldn’t yet bring himself to put into words: the relationship with Cecilia was over. They had to separate immediately. Those fourteen days had been a torment, barely mitigated by Jazmín’s happiness on the beach, watching her run to meet the breaking waves, her contagious laughter at each new discovery. The photos they had taken on vacation would likely be the last in which Jazmín appeared with both parents. Would she remember anything from those days? What hazy memory might she retain in the future? Her father and mother drinking maté in the beach hut, perhaps, or her dozing in the shade of a parasol, playing in the arcade with her cousin in the evening, or getting ice cream on the main street of La Lucila del Mar.

The five women travelling with him were all asleep. Cecilia was next to him, her head resting against the window. Behind them were his mother-in-law, his sister-in-law, with her daughter on her lap, and Jazmín. He couldn’t see her in the rear-view mirror, but Darío could picture his daughter sleeping peacefully, her sun-kissed face, her rhythmic breathing. He had always liked to watch Jazmín when she slept, a habit that began when she was a baby and he used to fear that she might succumb to sudden infant death syndrome. He would sit beside the cot while she slept, or keep going to check that she was breathing. It’s comforting, when you’re a parent, to watch your children sleeping, safe from pain and danger.

Cecilia woke up. Wiping the saliva from around her mouth, she scanned the road for some reference point that would show their progress.

“Where are we?”

“We’ve just passed General Lavalle, still a long way to go.”

Cecilia turned and looked at Jazmín. Seeing her asleep seemed to soothe some worry left over from her dreams.

“I think I had a nightmare,” she said, but didn’t elaborate.

Darío expressed no interest in his wife’s dream. For several days now their conversations had been as brief as possible. That policy was at least an improvement on their previous tendency always to be saying hurtful things to each other. In fact, their last screaming match (unwitnessed, thankfully) still induced a physical response in Darío. He felt nauseous to think of it, especially when he remembered his wife’s threat. He could still see her, her face burning as she said, “I’m going to take the girl and you’ll never see us again, you bastard.” She knew that Jazmín was his world, that nothing could hurt him like losing his daughter. What might Cecilia do to separate him from Jazmín? Make some false allegation? Anyone who knew him would testify that Darío was a good father, even his wife’s mother and sister, who were travelling with them now, pained witnesses to the destruction of their marriage.

Nobody would ever separate him from his daughter.

Nobody.

He gripped the steering wheel harder, trying to discharge the sensations of frustration and hatred that had completely engulfed him. Cecilia settled into a more comfortable position for sleeping. Gradually Darío felt calmer. He would have liked to put on the radio, but he didn’t want to disturb the girls’ peaceful sleep.

Behind their car, he saw a light in the distance. It came from a vehicle travelling faster than theirs. In a few seconds it would pass them and he would fall behind, watching its tail lights get smaller and then disappear. In the rear-view mirror he saw the light become two low beams on a car like his own. Looking ahead, he saw more lights coming towards him.

It took one second, maybe two.

The car behind them pulled out to overtake, with no consideration for the light rapidly bearing down on them. Darío dropped his speed, trying to facilitate the manoeuvre. But the other motorist’s mistake was compounded by a bad decision on the part of the approaching fuel truck. Its driver must have thought that the overtaking car would mount the verge to avoid a collision and that he could steer a middle course, taking his vehicle between the two approaching cars. Instead, he crashed into both of them.

There was nothing Darío could have done. A giant cleaver seemed to slice him in two and he heard a metallic noise, like thunder inside his head, and a howl, one single howl made up of all their separate cries; he saw a white light, a gigantic flash. Had the car flipped over? Was it a wreck? Was it crushed beneath the truck? After a few seconds Darío lost all consciousness. He had no idea how much time passed before someone pulled him out of the vehicle and dragged him a few yards away from it. Nor did he know how long it was between that moment and the explosion of the fuel truck. He heard the blast, felt heat graze his skin. He tried to move his body towards the fireball, pushing forward with one sole aim: Jazmín. But he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t stand up. And everything after that was a blank.

II

There’s something worse than nightmares: dreams. Verónica Rosenthal was in a rowing boat. She was alone and enjoying a sunny day on the river. On both sides the banks were close and covered in trees. It could have been the Tigre delta, or somewhere similarly verdant. She could hear birdsong and the swish of water with each stroke of the oars. A gentle sound, water lapping against wood. It must have been spring, because there was a pleasant breeze on her face. She could spend hours like this without wanting anything more from life.

The nightmare began when she woke up, when the dream faded and gave way to memories. Then she saw herself in a similar boat, on a lake, in the company of someone she would rather not remember. Nightmares end where real life begins, but what happens when waking from a dream is painful? She closed her eyes tightly, trying to banish the memories and go back to sleep.

Just as she seemed about to achieve that aim, she felt someone trying to prise open her eyelid. At first it was gentle, but then the finger became more insistent, almost gouging her eye. Verónica resolutely kept her other eye closed: she refused to be woken up like this. Meanwhile, the open eye saw a face, close up, and a pair of eyes that were looking into hers much as an ophthalmologist would. The eyes looked curious.

“I’m hungry.” Now a mouth was speaking into her open eye, perhaps confusing it with an ear.

“Yes,” said Verónica but sleepily, so it came out more like Yeeeh.

“There’s nothing to eat,” the mouth continued, still talking into her eye.

“In the cupboard.” She realized she should be more explicit, but it was hard to find the words when half asleep.

“I don’t want a cup, I want breakfast.”

Now Verónica felt someone kissing her neck, although kissing would be a generous way to describe the tongue licking and tickling her. She definitely wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep now.

She sat up in the bed, put Chicha down on the floor and lifted Santino, smoothing his ruffled hair. Her nephew looked seriously at her. The dog jumped back up on the bed.

“So what would you like for breakfast?”

“Chocolate milk and Oreos.”

“That’s a lot of chocolate.”

Santino kept looking into her eyes, as if waiting for a more solid argument. He was a child of few words and a steady gaze.

“OK, OK. Aunty’s going to get your milk. Go into the living room and put on some cartoons, and I’ll be right there.”

Santino went off and so did Chicha, who followed him everywhere, although it wasn’t clear if that was because she had adopted him as her new alpha male, wanted a playmate or was simply keeping watch over him. Dogs are like their owners, thought Verónica as she went to the bathroom. She was used to waking up with a hangover, but waking up with a child in the house had a much more detrimental effect on the brain than mixing drinks.

Verónica had been delighted by the prospect of spending two days with her youngest nephew, although she didn’t often look after her sisters’ children. Daniela and Leticia had two children apiece. Verónica had never spent much time with them beyond taking them to the odd Pixar movie or to the zoo (two activities she enjoyed even without children), but since distancing herself from her father she had grown closer to her sisters. Plus Santino was particularly devoted to Chicha, the dachshund that Verónica had brought back from her trip to Tucumán, and that endeared him to her, as it did anyone who agreed that the little dog was the prettiest pooch in the universe. She liked seeing Santino and Chicha play together.

“Like cousins,” she said and her sisters looked horrified, perhaps fearing that the youngest Rosenthal sister was turning into a dog lady.

But it wasn’t easy to look after a three-year-old. Verónica was already exhausted, and the time when she could hand him back to Daniela seemed impossibly distant. Since the little boy’s arrival the previous afternoon, Verónica hadn’t been able to shake him off for one minute. He wouldn’t even leave her time to shower. Santino had scattered the little toys he’d brought from home around the living room and bedroom, gone through her drawers, played with her CDs and even tried to insert sugar into a socket with a metal spoon (what goes on in the head of a child who does something like that?). Worst of all, he never stopped eating, drinking or going to the toilet and generally buzzed around like a cokehead unless he was watching children’s TV. And she hated children’s TV.

Verónica made breakfast, which Santino wolfed down before she got a chance to make herself coffee. She asked him to go and watch television again and even lent him a saucepan to put his toys in. It was still at least eight hours until her sister would come to pick him up. Those hours would last a century unless she found some activity they could do together.

They were out of cookies and juice, and that presented the opportunity for an outing. There was a Jumbo supermarket a few blocks away and she thought she might stock up on some other items while she was there: seafood sticks, hamburgers, wholegrain rice – not that she was planning to cook at lunchtime. She was going to take Santino to a McDonald’s. With any luck he’d spend half an hour in the ball pit and another half hour eating and playing with the toy from his Happy Meal.

Two blocks from home, her nephew decided he was tired of walking and wanted to be carried. She tried reasoning that he was older now and that his aunt’s arms were too weak to carry such a big boy. If he walked, she would buy him some chocolate in the supermarket. The promise of chocolate propelled the child two more blocks. She refused to let Santino play on the escalator or climb into the shopping cart, for fear he would hurt himself.

At that time of day, and that point in the month, the Jumbo was nearly empty of people, as supermarkets often are in American movies. Santino’s shrill voice rang out loudly in that product-packed desert. Evidently her nephew had some experience of supermarkets, because he made straight for the dessert section and grabbed a packet of brownies. Verónica put it in the cart then failed to prevent Santino hanging off the cart’s side like a refuse collector on a garbage truck. Before her nephew could fill the shopping cart with sweets, she took off towards the delicatessen section, trying not to let the child fall beneath the wheels of his own vehicle. She had remembered that she’d run out of ginger and was fed up with takeout sushi always skimping on it. Here she also found a new brand of wasabi and a man of about forty – tall, slim, good-looking – who was considering the marvellous offerings on the shelf with the eye of a connoisseur. Santino let go of the shopping cart and nearly went flying into the Peppers, all varieties section. The man gave first him and then her a meaningful look. Then he returned his gaze to the shelf, picked up an item and asked Verónica:

“Any idea what maquereaux a l’ancienne might be?”

“Mackerel, traditional style. I think they come with lemon and maybe mustard, but it should say on the box.”

The man looked at her and smiled, like a teacher who has just awarded a good mark to a schoolgirl.

“Maquereaux sounds so much better than mackerel,” he said, putting the box back on the shelf. “I prefer our own sardines.”

“Actually, these tinned herrings are very good. I recommend them. Especially the ones in spicy sauce.” Verónica pointed at the highest shelf.

The man took a couple of tins and dropped them into his basket. “Quite the gourmet mother,” he said.

“No, he’s not my son,” she said quickly. “He’s my nephew.”

That would have been the right time for Verónica to stroke Santino’s head, showing what a good aunt she was. She looked around for the boy, but he had gone off somewhere out of sight. Verónica turned around, worried, and still couldn’t see him. She left the shopping cart and walked to the end of the shelving to look down the aisle. He wasn’t there. She ran to the other aisle. Her head started to feel as though she were at the bottom of a swimming pool. No. She couldn’t see him. Verónica turned abruptly, searching. She shouted “Santino”, shouted again. She saw a woman looking at her, horrified. The woman must be reflecting the horror on Verónica’s own face. Desperately, she ran towards the entrance. She couldn’t see, or hear, or breathe, as she sank deeper and deeper, in that swimming pool the size of the supermarket.

III

They had been freezing cold for more than an hour now. Autumn, conceding defeat, was giving way to an early winter. Friday, 3 a.m.: not the best day or time to be in the port of Buenos Aires. An icy wind was blowing, slicing into his face, although a collective anticipation warmed the atmosphere. They were all gathered, print journalists and photographers, together with the TV station that had been given an exclusive. Everyone was crouching, as if at a surprise birthday party for someone who never arrives on time.

Federico hated this kind of thing. He hadn’t organized it, but he was obliged to stay there and handle the press. Orders from above. And as a Justice Department attorney, he couldn’t play dumb. Luckily, the job of answering questions would fall not to him but to the official responsible for special operations in the Argentine Naval Prefecture. And this prefect was more than happy to talk to the media about Operation White Ham. His unit was poised to seize a shipment of cocaine due to be loaded into a container that night. The drugs were hidden inside some fake cured hams – they looked innocent enough, but each one was stuffed with the purest blow.

There they were, huddled behind the containers lined up in the Wilson storage section of the port of Buenos Aires – journalists, men and women from the Naval Prefecture, members of the commando group Albatross and, representing Argentine justice, attorney Federico Córdova, a rising star in the judiciary, universally seen by all as a judge-in-waiting. The journalists were irritable, cold and unimpressed by the drug-busting operation. This kind of thing happened often, and readers weren’t all that interested any more. So the newspapers had sent their second-string reporters, who viewed the assignment as a punishment. Some were leaning, smoking, against a Hamburg Süd container; over by a Maersk container, others were jumping up and down, trying to keep warm. One bored reporter asked Federico who he was. He answered her and returned the question, more out of courtesy than genuine interest.

“I’m María Vanini, from Nuestro Tiempo.”

“Right, I used to know someone who worked for that magazine,” he said, pretending to search his memory for the name. “She was called Verónica Rosenthal.”

“Ah, yes,” was the journalist’s terse response.

“Does she still work there?” Federico asked.

“Yes, she pops into the newsroom every now and then, when she’s not off sick.”

“Off sick? Is she ill?”

María Vanini whistled and made circular motions around her ear with her index finger. As if that gesture were not sufficiently clear, she added:

“Bit screwed up.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Hang on, you’re not her boyfriend or anything, are you?”

“No, no, definitely not.” His overreaction to the journalist’s question made him feel like an idiot.

“Just as well. Although it wouldn’t surprise me. She seems – or seemed – to have a man in every port. Like a sailor. Is it a while since you last saw her?”

“A long while, more than a year,” he said, and mentally kicked himself again. Why was he even telling her all this?

His mobile vibrated. A text message. The reporter looked brazenly at his phone’s screen and seemed surprised.

“It says Vero.”

“Another Vero. My girlfriend, in fact.”

María Vanini eyed him suspiciously.

“You’re not Rosenthal’s new man, are you?”

“No, my girlfriend happens to have the same name, but she’s not a journalist. She works in PR.”

María was going to ask another question when some of the police officers called for silence. The truck carrying the drugs was about to arrive. Everyone assumed their positions. The boredom induced by their long wait gave way to tension. Twenty officers and sub-officers from the Prefecture and eight members of the Albatross Group prepared for action.

The lights of a vehicle came closer. It was a white, medium-sized refrigerated truck, the kind that takes meat to retailers. It was travelling slowly, less than ten miles an hour. As it reached the middle of the operation, searchlights came on and there was shouting from the police. Like a white whale in a sea of containers, surrounded by fake sailors, the truck ground to a halt. A television camera was filming everything, and the photographers were taking the first pictures that would illustrate articles the following day. The driver was an overweight man of about sixty, with a moustache. His face, illuminated by the flashlights and captured in detail by the TV camera, was that of a man in shock – which was understandable, considering the big surprise they had just given him. But the shock redounded on those present when the driver took his right hand off the wheel and reached towards the passenger seat: he had picked up a gun. A commotion ensued as some journalists ducked behind the containers, the chief of the operation ordered the driver to drop his weapon immediately and the Albatross Group prepared to mobilize. However, the truck driver didn’t point his gun at the law enforcement officers surrounding him, but at his own temple. Then he pulled the trigger. His body slumped over the wheel.

A few seconds of confusion followed as the officers and Federico went to the driver’s cabin to check that the man was dead. The television camera followed them and the reporters clustered around the driver, sensing that there was something more for them here than a standard drugs bust. Other officers attempted to break the lock on the truck. Finally, the doors were opened, and the swearing and cries of alarm were enough to draw those who had been inspecting the dead man to the back of the vehicle.

The cameraman, who was used to being first on the scene, got there before the others. Federico saw how he focussed his lens on the truck’s interior then immediately turned away and put down the camera. It was the first time he had seen someone in that line of work vomit.

The sub-officers who had opened the doors also turned away from the sight inside the refrigerated truck and only a few bystanders dared look at the scene inside, lit crudely by floodlights. Federico did the same, and saw not the expected cocaine-stuffed hams hanging there but human bodies. And not exactly bodies, either, but parts of them: legs, thoraxes, arms, all perfectly preserved. One of the Albatross Group commandos climbed into the truck, dodging the body parts, and levered open one of the two boxes in there. He studied the contents, then, without saying anything, quickly got out.

Federico climbed up to see what had shocked this last officer. Arranged in the boxes like plucked chickens, the naked bodies of several babies gave an illusion of resting in peace.

FIRST PART

1     This Girl’s Life

I

Daniela was stroking her forehead, as though she were a small child. The pills she had been given a little while before were beginning to take effect; having a doctor as a sister brought certain advantages. Meanwhile, Leticia was crashing about in the kitchen: she would probably break the Nespresso, dent the Essen pan and blunt the knives, but Verónica decided to let her sisters get on with things. The three of them hadn’t been together under one roof, with no children, husbands or parents, for a long time. It was a shame she was in bed, dosed up and nursing a guilt she couldn’t shift.

Leticia appeared, holding a coffee. How typical of her sister to make herself a coffee without offering to make one for anyone else.

“I remember when we were at the zoo and Benjamín got it into his head to go off to the monkeys’ enclosure while the rest of us were buying drinks. They had to call him over the PA system. There he was, happy as a clam, throwing trash at the poor chimpanzees.”

“Come to think of it,” said Daniela, “both Benja and Santino take after their Aunt Verónica. Don’t you remember that time you ran away from home and gave Ramira a horrible shock? How old were you? Six, seven?”

“Five,” said Verónica. “Where have you two left the kids?”

“With their fathers. Let them pull their weight for once.”

II

It was impossible now for Verónica to reconstruct the exact order of events. As soon as she had realized she couldn’t see Santino in either of the two supermarket aisles, she had panicked and lost control. She had screamed, run about, frantically tried to enlist the help of other shoppers. People around her took up the search. Santino was eventually found playing on the escalator, Kinder egg in hand. He was eating the egg without having paid for it, but that was a small detail in the greater scheme of things.

Verónica remembered that the first thing she’d done when Santino appeared holding the hand of a security guard was to run towards him and violently shake him. It was all she could do not to slap him. Santino had burst into tears – and so had Verónica.

Then everything had gone blurry, not because of the tears but because her blood pressure was dropping and she was about to faint. People got her to sit on the floor. Seeing his aunt on the ground made Santino cry even harder. The supermarket staff offered to call a relation. Verónica found her sister’s number and passed the phone to one of the people helping her, because she couldn’t even speak. She certainly didn’t feel able to take the boy back to her apartment on her own. Among the crowd gathered around Verónica and Santino had been the gentleman who preferred sardines to mackerel, and he offered to accompany them home, but she, still in a state of a shock, shouted at him:

“It’s your fault I lost the child!” – words which a shopper stumbling upon this scene might have taken to mean that Verónica had just suffered a miscarriage. The gentleman decided not to argue the point and discreetly withdrew without having bought anything and perhaps making a mental note not to talk to strange women in supermarkets.

By the time Daniela had arrived fifteen minutes later, Verónica was already feeling better. Even so, her sister seemed more worried about her than Santino, who was still crying, but now because he was bored and wanted to leave, having consumed the Kinder egg, a cookie and a carton of juice someone had brought him. Daniela packed her sister and son into her car and, before getting in, made two phone calls. One to Leticia and the other to her husband, asking him to come and pick up Santino from Verónica’s apartment. And now the three sisters were reunited there.

As the tranquillizers took effect, and Verónica felt a powerful weariness come over her, she noticed her sisters exchanging meaningful looks, as though they had been talking about something earlier and were now preparing to tell her about it.

“Verito” – her sister hadn’t called her that for years, not since she was about ten years old – “Leticia and I are worried about you.”

“Dani, I’m so incredibly sorry about what happened with Santino…” She didn’t complete the sentence, sure that it would make her cry.

“Never mind that – kids are always getting lost. We ought to put him on a lead, like you do with Chicha. No. It’s you we’re worried about, because you haven’t seemed right for a long time. You’re not speaking to Dad, Fede wants nothing to do with you…”

“Is that what he told you, that he wants nothing to do with me?”

“It’s obvious. He doesn’t come to family parties any more, and we only see him if we ask him round to dinner on his own.”

“You guys invite Federico round to dinner?”

“You need to change your attitude, Vero,” Leticia chimed in. “You’re in a depressive rut, you’re alienated from everyone. You don’t even care about your appearance, you look untidy.”

“And you’ve always taken so much trouble over your clothes,” Daniela added.

“Plus there are empty bottles of alcohol all over the apartment,” said Leticia.

“So you’re checking my apartment to see how much I’m drinking? What else? Do you want to know where I keep my weed and my cigarettes? The condoms are in my nightstand. In case you want to count them.”

“What we want is for you to get better. You should go back to therapy, patch things up with Dad, get together with Fede, who’s always been so good for you,” said Leticia.

“Jesus, why don’t you fuck off and leave me alone? Do I stick my nose into your shitty lives, with your stupid husbands and stuck-up friends? Do I give you advice? You’d better just go. I want to sleep.”

Within five minutes Leticia and Daniela were gone. Verónica pretended to be asleep to hasten their departure, and in no time she had fallen asleep for real.

III

It was a deep, dreamless sleep. Verónica didn’t know if she crashed out for the whole day or a couple of hours. Groping for her phone, she checked the time: three in the afternoon. It was the day she was due back at the magazine, and she was already running an hour late. Verónica sent a message to her editor, Patricia Beltrán, to let her know she would arrive at around four. Her boss wrote back curtly: Hurry. We’re about to close the section. It was Tuesday. Society sent ten pages to press (plus sixteen on Wednesdays and another ten on Thursdays), and she was the deputy editor. She detested the role. Most of her colleagues saw it as a promotion, but Verónica and Patricia knew the truth. Verónica hadn’t written anything worthwhile since her series on femicide in north-eastern Argentina. She never came up with any interesting pitches (and the definition of interesting was very broad at Nuestro Tiempo); the pieces Patricia asked her to write she banged out with no enthusiasm and, while it was true that some articles could be written that way, others deserved an energy that Verónica couldn’t muster.

One afternoon, her editor took her for a coffee at the bar on the corner. Patricia asked what was wrong. Verónica answered, “I’m suffering from professional anorexia.”

Patricia looked surprised and said, “Where did you get that nonsense from?”

“All this… I just don’t find any of it interesting.”

“‘All this’, as you put it, is your profession, one you chose quite a few years ago. Look, I know better than anyone that it’s possible to get tired of your work, but bear in mind that this is the only world in which you’ll ever be comfortable. If you really think you might prefer working in a boutique or as a lifeguard, you’d better hand in your notice and sail off in search of your destiny.”

“You know that the only thing I can do well – OK, more or less well – is this.”

“So make a decision to come back. I can’t have a journalist who sits around like a houseplant. The intern’s got more energy than you.”

“He’s young, he’ll learn soon enough.”

“If you don’t want to write, then become an editor. I’m going to put you forward for deputy editor of the Society section.”

“I wouldn’t be any use as an editor.”

“Right now you’re even less use as a journalist. If one day you decide to go back to being what you were, I won’t stand in your way.”

Patricia requested the promotion. From now on, Verónica would have less time to write articles and would spend a large part of the day glued to a chair correcting basic journalistic mistakes made by her colleagues, something she could do in her sleep. It was a way to save her from the storm, although both women knew it was a punishment too. Verónica wasn’t cut out to be an editor but a reporter, nose to the ground, mixing with people, sniffing out the shit, as she liked telling Patricia.

And yet a year later Verónica was still deputy editor of Society. Patricia hadn’t tackled her on the subject again, and Verónica hadn’t written anything more than the odd rehashed wire story or one of those articles that only require a couple of quotes and an opinion piece from some celebrity or an expert on the subject covered in the piece.

She didn’t have time to shower or eat anything. She put on jeans, a T-shirt, a cardigan and the long coat she planned to wear throughout the coming winter. She washed her face, brushed her hair, which was getting too long and “untidy” – as Leticia would say – and tried not to look too closely at her face. She didn’t have enough time or enthusiasm for make-up.

Verónica reached the newsroom at ten to four. Patricia passed her the articles for editing without a word, not even a reproach. Deep down, this tight-lipped restraint bothered Verónica, a lot. She would have preferred the kind of scene other editors visited on their underlings, or even a dressing-down from the editor-in-chief, a renowned bully. And if Patricia was going to be nice, then let her be genuinely nice, offering back rubs and saying everything was going to be all right, that one day she would go back to being the journalist she always had been and not some cut-price zombie from The Walking Dead.

IV

Tuesday nights were for “dinner with friends”. In practice, that meant dinner with Paula. The weekly arrangement had originally been with Alma, Marian, Pili, Vale and a few others, but Verónica was increasingly intolerant of her friends, and several contretemps – nobody would describe these as actual fights – had led to them preferring to see each other sporadically at the odd birthday party rather than every week in her apartment. The only friend who had remained loyal, despite Verónica’s mood swings, was Paula. On Tuesdays they would order in sushi, or ceviche, or Chinese, they’d polish off a bottle of wine, sometimes a tub of ice cream, and talk about their favourite subjects: their friends’ character flaws, ex-boyfriends, the current and future men in their lives. Like some magic fountain, these subjects were never exhausted.

It was Paula who supplied the excitement and gossip, because Verónica had brought nothing to the table for a long time. Her relationships over the past year or so had been so fleeting that any commentary on them could be completed between the first and the third sip of coffee.

Paula generally talked about some current liaison, although she also liked to revisit previous relationships in search of comparisons or to draw parallels with potential lovers. Her capacity for analysis was like that of a professor who consults the collected wisdom of her library to explain a single book or event. Paula could have written a series of papers with enough citations on the masculine experience to make Harold Bloom wince with envy. And she didn’t limit herself to analysis but also dabbled in practices of dubious morality: a while back she had managed to hack into the email account of a boyfriend – who soon discovered the breach and became an ex-boyfriend.

Verónica, on the other hand, had a one-track mind: any topic of conversation could be used to bad-mouth Federico. A cup got broken? She remembered that it was Federico’s favourite. Her sister’s birthday? Federico would doubtless get her a present, because that’s how mixed up he was in Verónica’s life, still in touch with her sisters, brothers-in-law, nephews and nieces. The food delivery was late? Federico must have something to do with it. It was raining? Verónica could go on about Federico for half an hour, eyes glassy from bourbon, without Paula grasping exactly what the connection between him and the rain was – not that it bothered her much. They were friends. They didn’t have to be coherent.

On one occasion Verónica reminded Paula of her hacking skills. How, she wondered, had Paula got hold of her ex-boyfriend’s password?

“Social engineering. It was his own name and his birthday. The self-centred prick.”

After a second Jim Beam, Verónica confessed that she had attempted to get into Federico’s email account, but that after trying several different guesses, the page had seemed to freeze or crash and she couldn’t get in again.

Paula didn’t take her to task. In fact, the next day she called her and said: “The IT guy in our office has some nifty program that lets you try out thousands of possible passwords without the security system detecting it. I’ll email it to you. Good luck.”

The nifty program had some drawbacks. The antivirus software had to be disabled before it would work. Presumably during that time, the program would be busily sending Verónica’s information off into cyberspace, but she didn’t let that worry her; finding out the password to Federico’s email account was a greater good. The world could be divided into two: people who needed an explanation as to why she wanted to get into his mailbox (and these people merited Verónica’s absolute indifference and contempt), and those who understood without needing her to justify herself. That was the part of the universe to which Paula and she belonged.

After trying out dozens of variations, Verónica’s initial optimism drifted towards a violent pessimism. With every batch of ten wrong passwords, she hit the table, thumped the keyboard, threw a book, swore as though she were on the terraces in the Atlanta soccer stadium. Finally, she conceded defeat. A few days went by before Verónica tried the program again, once more without luck. Soon she was trying out different variations each time she got bored, like someone playing Candy Crush. She had tried every combination of birthday, ID numbers, family names, friends, ex-girlfriends (the ones she knew about), Boca players and those in the Argentina team, leading tennis players and even all the NBA players she could think of. The bastard had better security than Obama.

V

That Tuesday Paula seemed odd, as though uncomfortable. They had opened a bottle of wine, trotted through the usual topics and the conversation was in full flow when Paula finally decided to tell her friend what she had known since that morning.

“Vero, there’s something you should know. I found out that Federico has a girlfriend.”

Like a bad actress in an Argentine movie, Verónica drank her wine, placed the empty glass down on the coffee table, crossed her legs and, in the tone of a television reporter, asked: “Who is she?”

“Someone who does public relations for companies. She’s called Verónica Rinaldi.”

The bad acting gave way to a much more natural burst of fury.

“Wow, what a piece of shit – he went out and found a girl with the same name.”

“Just goes to show how he’s still obsessed with you.”

“Of course – he can’t get me out of his head. The fact she’s called Verónica is a provocation.”

“I know her. She studied sociology with me.”

“Is she your age?”

“Not exactly. I was in my final year when she started. I took my time graduating, remember?”

“So what does she do? Human resources?”

“No, public relations. She works – or used to – for Faena, and for IBM and I don’t know who else.”

“What an idiot. Dedicating her life to PR.”

“It’s like being a press officer, but you get paid more. She’s not so stupid.”

“Are there photos of her on the internet?”

“Bound to be. She must have Facebook.”

“Let’s look her up.”

In a short time, they learned a lot about the other Verónica. Pictures of her on various websites attested to a life spent at private views and corporate events. She looked young (younger than Verónica), no prettier (Verónica and Paula agreed on that), well dressed (this they had to acknowledge) and was clearly screwing all those old perverts who ran the companies she worked for (a conclusion reached by Verónica but not particularly endorsed by Paula). On close inspection, you might say she looked like Verónica, save for one, devastating difference: Federico’s new girlfriend had tits. Big ones.

“They’re fake,” was Paula’s rapid assessment.

“I should get some too.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

By the time they had finished their research, Verónica seemed in a better mood. She had never been the type to cry in a corner and wasn’t going to start now. Later, on her own with Chicha, she looked through the images again and read everything she could find about the other Verónica. She took the little dog in her arms and showed her the screen.

“Look, Chicha, we have to get this bitch out of the way. What do you think?”

But the dog didn’t answer. She didn’t even deign to look at the screen.

VI

Verónica woke up listless and hung-over. She got dressed, ate a slice of cold, two-day-old pizza and went to work without even looking in the mirror. She had no idea that her life was about to recover a range of forgotten tones: emotion, memory, the feeling that life could still touch her somehow. Perhaps not in a good way, but providing a connection all the same – or, more than that, a shudder in the soul.

At Nuestro Tiempo she got stuck into some editing. Wednesdays were usually heavy-going. That was submission day for investigative pieces, interviews and op-eds. Thursdays were for late submissions, last-minute pieces and the occasional press release, hastily rewritten to plug a gap.

One of the articles she had to edit was by María Vanini, a reporter she didn’t like. This woman had caused a scene with Patricia when Verónica had sent in her series of articles on femicide in north-eastern Argentina. María Vanini usually covered any stories concerning the struggles and injustices of womanhood. Patricia hadn’t put her in charge of this area – nobody “owned” any aspect of Society – but whenever something related to the subject came up, Vanini promptly asked to be given the piece and Patricia let her have it. When Vanini had found out about the femicide articles, she’d hit the roof. Not content with making a complaint to Patricia, she marched to the magazine’s editor to demand he send her to Tucumán to cover the murder of the foreign tourists. The editor replied that it wasn’t his place to decide who wrote which article in each section of the magazine – Patricia Beltrán ran Society. Then he had taken Vanini by the shoulders, led her to the door of his office and shouted over to Patricia: “Beltrán, can you control your writers, for the sake of my blood pressure?”

Ever since then, Vanini had loathed Verónica, and Patricia had mistreated Vanini, sending her to cover crime stories at all hours of the day or at weekends. Her last assignment had been to report on the seizure of a shipment of cocaine in the port of Buenos Aires. Vanini had returned with some crazy story about a narco who had committed suicide during the operation and a truck that was carrying drugs hidden inside dead bodies. Verónica was editing the piece, grappling with its unintentional surrealism, when the first hammer blow of the day fell: in the middle of the article appeared the words “attorney Federico Córdoba”. Lifting her gaze from the screen, she sought out Vanini, who was sitting almost opposite, on the other side of the Society desk.

“María, the attorney Federico Córdoba – shouldn’t that be the attorney Federico Córdova, with a v?”

“I don’t know. Crime’s not my specialism.”

Verónica considered giving this the response it deserved, but restrained herself and said simply: “You also haven’t made clear what kind of attorney he is, in what field he works. Could you find that out and put it into your piece?”

Vanini responded with a snort and started making phone calls. Verónica was left thinking of Federico. She had a strong urge to call him, to ask if he was enjoying his job in the Justice Department, if he was happy with the stupid PR woman, if he missed her at all. The temptation to call him, to go and see him, had struck her often in the last year and a bit. But her friends could never have forgiven such a faux pas, not even Paula. Now seeing his name (misspelled) in the article she was editing gave Verónica the stupid sensation of being connected to him again. She wondered if he ever thought of her.

The second hammer blow was harder and caught her even more off guard. Verónica had finished editing Vanini’s implausible article, the writer having checked her material, and was starting to edit another piece on La Salada, the biggest bootleg market in Latin America. She had gone to get a coffee from the vending machine and, while she was waiting for the cup to fill up with that dark liquid only distantly related to coffee, Adela, the receptionist, had appeared.

“Verónica, I’ve been calling on your line and getting no answer.”

“That’s because I have it on silent so nobody will bother me.”

The receptionist let this comment pass and told her that somebody was waiting for her in the entrance hall.

Verónica took her plastic cup from the machine. It wasn’t unusual for someone to turn up every now and then asking for one of the journalists. All kinds of people came. Crackpots who could communicate with extraterrestrials and wanted to tell the world their story; desperate people who needed medication or a wheelchair for their child and thought the magazine could help them; activists lobbying for (or against) a particular politician; press officers keen to promote an artist; out-of-work journalists who wanted to write for the magazine and didn’t know who to approach. Verónica wondered which one of these assorted characters might be looking for her today.

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“No, just that he wanted to speak to you. He’s called Darío Valrossa.”

“Valrossa?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Are you sure?”

It was a long time since she’d last heard that surname. Valrossa. The name instantly transported her to the past: to her love affair, a few years previously, with Lucio Valrossa, the train driver who had died while helping her on an investigation. Was this merely a coincidence? How many people had that surname? She put her coffee down on the nearest desk and went to reception. There was the man waiting for her: tall, slim, short black hair. At first glance, this man bore no resemblance to Lucio. But when she stood next to him and looked into his eyes, she realized she was wrong: he had the same expression as Lucio. Verónica introduced herself. The man looked confused or lost.

“I’m sorry to bother you at work. My name’s Darío Valrossa.”

“It’s no bother, Darío. How can I help you?”

“Everything I’m about to tell you is going to sound insane. But please listen until the end. I’ve come to ask for your help.”

2     Certainties

I

Time was reduced to a single moment, animated by voices, by the sensation of someone touching or moving him. Every now and then he heard the pip of electronic equipment, instructions from nurses or doctors, a male voice giving orders. Nothing worried him, not even the fact that no one seemed to hear him. He was talking to himself. He didn’t need anyone or anything. He was at the centre of a perfect whiteness.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the face of a nurse, watching him with a sombre expression. Darío closed his eyes. The next time it was another nurse: she was checking his drip and noticed him looking at her. It didn’t occur to him to try to talk. He must have gone back to sleep, because when he opened his eyes again there were several doctors standing around his bed. The one checking his eyes with a small flashlight asked if Darío could see him. Darío made an effort to speak, and was unsurprised to find that he could. Why wouldn’t he have been able to? And yet his voice sounded weak, like that of an old person, when he said yes.

After many sleeping and waking cycles – he wasn’t sure exactly how many – Darío saw his parents. They were there beside the bed, watching him. Neither of them was crying, but they weren’t smiling either. To reassure them he said, “I’m fine”, then drifted off again.

He felt that he was back to life when he managed to tell a nurse that he wanted to defecate. All his movements were painful.

For a long time (but how long? He found it impossible to measure this period in hours or days), his body was something that hurt, that he could hardly move or touch, that other people manipulated with patience and understanding.

A doctor explained that he’d had two operations.

A nurse told him about the fortnight he had been in a coma.

He went to a physiotherapist who told him about the fractures to his ribs and his left arm.

Another nurse treated his wounds and burns, and that was how he found out he had injuries and cuts that still needed attention.

Darío never asked anyone anything, not even how he had arrived at the hospital. Nor did he have any recollection of what had happened, apart from a vague sensation of having been in an accident.

He opened his eyes and saw his mother, watchful, waiting.

“Jazmín. Where’s Jazmín?”

His mother squeezed his hand. Hard enough to hurt it. She was crying and couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes but couldn’t sleep. Tears burned his tightened skin.

II

One by one, the tubes to which Darío had been connected all this time were removed. The wounds on his chest gradually became scars. A burn on his left wrist took on the shape of a watch that had calcified on his skin. Once he was able, despite the pain of swallowing, to take food by mouth, they put him in a private room. Now his parents could spend more time with him.

The answer his mother hadn’t been able to give, when he asked about Jazmín, was finally provided by Doctor Anselman, the clinician in charge of his treatment. She told him that he had been the only person to survive the accident. His daughter, wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, niece, the two people travelling in the other car and the driver of the truck were all dead. Doctor Anselman spoke with a calm and resolve that combined to transmit serenity. Darío gave no reaction until a few minutes later, when they brought him lunch and he sent the tray spinning. His mother held him tightly to prevent him getting up; his father wept, not daring to come closer. And Darío howled. He was a wounded dog in a land of the dead.

Then the questions started. What had happened to Jazmín’s body? Where had she been buried? How could he have survived and not the other occupants of the car? Had Jazmín died in the crash, the fire that followed it, on the way to the hospital, inside the hospital?

He asked everyone – the nurses, physiotherapists, doctors, Doctor Anselman, his parents, his maternal uncle, even his maternal uncle’s wife when she came to visit him.

There were few answers, and none of them were satisfactory. Jazmín, like the rest of the family, had been burned to death. He had managed to get out of the car and drag himself away, avoiding the explosion that had carbonized the injured – or already dead – occupants and left him with first- and second-degree burns. How he had managed to get away from the site was something nobody could explain. Nor could they say why he hadn’t tried to save his daughter. The answer most often given was that he had been suffering from trauma or shock.

Reconstructing the accident and identifying the bodies had proven very difficult. The investigators had to be guided by information given by the families and some forensic analysis at the scene, including the suitcases and bags that were stored in a roof box and had been thrown clear on impact. That was how police were able to establish who was travelling in the car.

Jazmín’s remains had not been found. Nor had Cecilia’s.

There was still a month to go before Darío could be discharged. He was now able to walk along the hospital corridors, but every so often he needed to go back to his bed and rest, or submit to more examinations. One of these required a general anaesthetic and, a few seconds before he came round from it, he saw Jazmín. She was alive. She was smiling at him and calling papa-papa-papa, like she had when she used to go running up to him for a hug. He knew that it was a dream. For Darío there was no confusion between waking and dreaming states; he didn’t believe in premonitions or anything like that. And yet the evidence of those few seconds seemed clear and irrefutable. He woke up from the anaesthetic convinced that his daughter was alive. He had to get better as quickly as possible and go and find her.

III

Darío’s parents tried to persuade him to go and live with them for a while, but he wanted to go back to his apartment in Caballito as soon as he was discharged. All the same, they went with him to his house and spent most of the day there. They bought food in the supermarket and his mother made a couple of pizzas along with some schnitzels and empanadas to put in the freezer. Darío quietly accepted everything. He knew it would be worse to put up a fight and that it was better to let his parents do as they wished.

By nightfall he was alone, and only then did he take possession of the house. He went to Jazmín’s room. There were her toys, arranged as she had left them before they set off for La Lucila del Mar. A few little figures were scattered across the floor – Jazmín must have left them there just before their departure. The princess-themed bedspread, the lampshade covered with little fishes, the multicoloured rug her aunt had brought back from Peru, the children’s books he had bought her himself, the precariously balanced pile of soft toys, the little jackets hanging on a clothes rack, the family photos, the photos of her on the walls, on the bedside table. Darío touched her things, stroked them, seeing them as if for the first time.

The smallest toys were in a basket. It had always been a struggle getting her to put away all those unicorns, princesses and fairies, the little figures collected from McDonald’s. Darío picked up the basket and emptied it over the carpet. Now the room looked as though Jazmín was in the house.