The Foreign Girls. Sergio Olguin
were some family photos on the walls. He went over to look at them more closely: Verónica as a girl with the woman who must be her mother, Verónica with two other women her age. There were also photos of children, of an older man. In the months Three had spent in prison he had been able to familiarize himself with Verónica’s face and physique. He had seen her in videos being interviewed about her journalism. He had found photos of her, too.
He knew you must never get distracted by ideas that have nothing to do with work. His task was to find Verónica Rosenthal and kill her. He mustn’t think about anything else. Whether she was pretty or ugly, strong or weak, these things were irrelevant. Even so, Three felt a certain thrill being in this woman’s room. He opened the closet and saw 68her clothes neatly ordered, opened a drawer and found her underwear. He didn’t want to rummage through it or take anything away. He closed the closet doors and went to the bathroom. He opened the cabinet, saw the array of bottles, shampoos, creams, soaps.
Something on the floor beside the bidet caught his attention. Some multicoloured item of clothing. He picked it up off the floor: it was a thong. Three took it in both hands and stretched it out, imagining Verónica with this underwear on. He felt himself getting an erection. He sniffed the thong, trying to imagine the smell of Verónica’s body. Why, considering how tidy she had left the place, had she left her dirty underwear on the bathroom floor? He thought of throwing it back on the floor where he had found it but didn’t. Instead, he tucked the thong into one of his jacket pockets. Verónica wouldn’t miss it. Come to that, she would never return to this apartment anyway if he managed to find her first.
When he came out of the bathroom, Nick was still busy on the computer.
“OK, I can give you a picture of the situation so far. The mail isn’t open, but the last thirty days’ browsing history is here. I’m making a backup of her computer’s cache, but I’ve already run into some interesting things. Before she left she bought a return ticket to Tucumán. We have the PDF with the reservation issued by the website. So we know which flight she’s coming back on in sixteen days. She looked at hotels in different parts of northern Argentina. She didn’t make reservations in any of them, but she did check the availability on different dates. The strange thing is that she didn’t look for a hotel in San Miguel de Tucumán, which might mean she already knew in which hotel or other place she was going to stay. The first place she looked up is Yacanto del Valle. After that she looked at places to stay in Cafayate, Salta, San 69Salvador de Jujuy, Purmamarca, Humahuaca and La Quiaca. She also rented a car in Tucumán, which has to be returned to the airport the day she returns.”
“And can we find out where she is now, or where she’ll be tomorrow?”
“Since she hasn’t booked any hotels, it’s hard to know whether she’s sticking to the itinerary she came up with when she was looking into availability. By the looks of things, she should be in Yacanto del Valle. Or perhaps in Cafayate, if she moved on earlier. I don’t think she’s still in San Miguel de Tucumán.”
“Is she travelling alone, or with someone?”
“The flight and internet searches are all for one person. I’m going to take everything away and I’ll make a summary of dates, hotels, possible routes. Anything that might be useful to you. Found anything over there, Bono?”
“Addresses of bookshops and music shops she goes to regularly. She quite often travels on line B of the Underground, and she uses the tickets as bookmarks. She speaks, or at least reads, English and French. She gets free books from publishers… She smokes and drinks coffee. She’s a bit clumsy.”
“We’re bound to have more information once we’ve analysed the data from her computer. Did you find anything, Three?”
“Just that she’s very tidy.”
“It’s not an inconsequential detail. That kind of woman makes no false steps.”
V
There wasn’t much more in the report Nick handed him in the McDonald’s on Avenida Caseros and Entre Ríos the next day, except for the names of several hotels, some of which 70were in the same town. Nick also gave him the subject of all the emails she had opened in the previous month, but without their contents, so what would have been most useful to him was missing. The strangest revelation in Nick’s report was that every so often Verónica visited a website where people posted pornographic stories, and another belonging to Club Atlético Atlanta. She must have a boyfriend or relation who was into soccer.
Three paid him what was still owing and Nick told him to keep in touch and to call if he needed any help while he was up north. They wouldn’t charge a peso more.
“It’s part of our customer service, Three.”
“That’s my name when I’m working for Doctor Zero. Now I’m working for myself. The name’s Danilo.”
And Danilo walked out of McDonald’s, leaving Nick and Bono to their burgers with fries and their Coke Zeros.
He couldn’t afford to lose time. Ideally, he would have flown to Tucumán, but it was impossible to travel by plane carrying a gun and ammunition and using his real name. He thought of getting a car, but driving more than eight hundred miles didn’t appeal, and there was always the possibility some provincial police officer would know about the arrest warrant surely hanging over his head. There was no option but to go by bus.
Three went back to the apartment and put everything he needed into a bag. He took out the thong and smelled it again. It reminded him of her. He felt like one of those dogs that are given an item of clothing to smell so they can follow the scent. He thought the thong could be a kind of amulet and threw it into the bag on top of his things. Its cheerful colours were like a scandalous stain on his dark clothes.
He went to the bus station in Retiro and tried to find the bus that took the least time to get to San Miguel de Tucumán. 71There was one that could do the journey in fourteen hours, between 8.30 at night and 10.30 in the morning. He could sleep in the bus and arrive refreshed. Then he would work out how to get to Yacanto del Valle on local transport. If he didn’t find Verónica in that town, he would travel on to Cafayate. He was confident of finding her quickly, but he knew patience would prove a necessary virtue in the coming days.
72
I
Sunbathing topless with the girls by the pool late one morning, Verónica had a sensation of déjà vu. They had spent the day before like this and presumably the next day would be the same, unless autumn suddenly descended and it started getting cold, or rainy. So she suggested to the others, as they ate their lunchtime salad on the veranda, that it would be a good idea to continue with their trip. Leave in two or three days, perhaps. Petra and Frida agreed. They wanted to go to Amaicha del Valle, Verónica to Yacanto del Valle. There wasn’t much difference between one town and the other, but there was a guy in Yacanto Verónica was keen to meet.
That compelling logic was enough to convince the others. Verónica told them what little she knew about the man: that he came from a wealthy family in Salta, like the wife of her cousin, who owned this house. That he was an art dealer – he owned a gallery in Yacanto – and that he was, at least according to the most recent reports, a bachelor.
“And it’s universally acknowledged that a millionaire bachelor must be in need of a good wife.”
Frida and Petra looked at her, puzzled.
“Are you husband-hunting?” Petra asked.
“No, girls, just paraphrasing Jane Austen. Relax.” 73
The last thing Verónica wanted was a husband, but the thought of going somewhere for the sole purpose of meeting a man amused her. It was almost like a game, another tourist attraction ticked off. And when they asked her what she had seen on her