She smiled shyly, nibbled the end of her pen. ‘I think later. Yes, maybe later. Or tomorrow.’ She directed him across the street to a small internet café, but the power was down. He waited as the clerk started a loud petrol generator. By then the server was down.
For a brief period both power and server colluded. ‘Ingrid,’ he wrote with lightning speed. ‘All fine here in Reykjavik, though very, very busy at the conference. Don’t expect to have much time to phone or write. Hope you are well. Love, Paul.’
The driver was leaning against the car, waving his arms and smiling as if Strebel was an old friend. Strebel felt trapped. He wanted to pretend he couldn’t see the man, that his attention was diverted — a pressing phone call, for instance. But it was too late for that: the driver was now in front of him, giant hand out for shaking. Strebel shook back.
‘Yes, yes,’ the driver said warmly, then fished Strebel’s twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and pointed at the date. ‘Banks not okay this!’
In a flourish of bonhomie, Strebel swapped the driver’s bill for an acceptable version. The driver beamed, folded it carefully away.
‘Where we go?’ he said, still grinning. ‘Where we go, doctor?’
‘I’m not a doctor,’ Strebel replied, wondering what about him had a medical air. ‘Policeman.’
‘Polici?’ Now the driver wasn’t so sure. He even took a step back.
Strebel shook his head. ‘Not here. Back at home. Switzerland.’
‘Switz? Eh?’
‘Switzerland. Here,’ he pointed to the ground, ‘holiday.’
Was this the sort of holiday policemen took? To a foreign country to engage in some light, off-the-books investigating? He could just as well have gone to Sharm el-Sheikh with a couple of Sergeant Studer novels.
‘German War Graves?’ the driver asked. ‘Amboni Caves? Tongoni Ruins?’
Strebel took this moment to dig around in his bag, but, in fact, he was trying to level with himself. The lies he’d told to come here, the absurd risk to his marriage, his career: these had been battering at his brain since he’d left Switzerland, like flies against a window. And they were getting louder; soon they would be like pigeons, a Hitchcockian rain of them, hitting with terrible, insistent thuds.
He had told his boss he was visiting a sick uncle in Bruges. He had told Ingrid he was in Iceland. He had withheld evidence, the envelope with the little giraffe stamp. Because? Because? Because he wanted it to belong to him, wanted it to be a message from his lover intended for him. A summons: Come, I need to be rescued!
Because of the scent of her.
‘Pangani? Pangani good beach.’ The driver looked expectant.
‘Mama Gloria.’
‘Ah, yes, Mama Gloria!’ The driver clapped his giant hands and opened the back door with a flourish.
‘No,’ Strebel countered. ‘Price first. And I’m sitting in the front.’ He gestured to the ruined back seat. ‘There could be someone lost in there. Are you missing any customers?’
The driver didn’t understand, but peered inside, carefully examining the seat. When this show was over, he stood up and said to Strebel, ‘Twenty.’
‘Five.’
‘Twenty-five.’ The driver smiled.
‘Five,’ Strebel held up his right hand. ‘Five dollars.’
They settled on ten.
‘My name is Mr Tabu,’ the driver said.
‘Paul,’ said Strebel.
As Mr Tabu drove along the shaded avenues, past shops and shacks, Strebel realized he was looking for her, a slim, graceful girl, on a bicycle or walking along the roadside. ‘Pilgrim,’ he would call from the taxi, and she would turn, smile, run to him.
Counter-intuitively, he hoped he didn’t see her, because he was a grown-up, at least in part of his brain. He glanced at the vegetable plots out the windows, gradually replacing the little shops. He was indulging a fantasy. He could not really delude himself that he would find her and they would run off together and be happy. But the yearning felt good, like the transfusion of a young man’s blood. He wanted to be foolish enough to believe in such a romance, just for a moment, to suspend his relentless sense of duty. To be, yes, an old fool, undone, besieged by lust.
The taxi bounded down a dirt road. A pack of mangy dogs barked and chased the Corolla’s bald tires. The road led on through a field of dust-bedraggled corn and dead-ended in the open yard of a cement bungalow. Strebel, so lost in his thoughts, was confused as to where he was.
He got out and went to the door to find a large American woman standing with eyebrows raised as if she had been expecting him. She was overweight in the way Europeans expected Americans to be, from eating too much — fleshy, soft, undisciplined. She was also a smoker, he could tell from the smell of her. He introduced himself politely. ‘I’m a friend of Pilgrim Jones.’
‘Are you now?’
Strebel smiled benignly. ‘I’m hoping to find her. My name is Paul Strebel. Are you Gloria?’
‘No. I’m Bo Derek.’
He assumed that she’d invite him in and they would have a friendly, helpful chat. But her body blocked the door, her weight implied a bullying protection. She was definitely hiding something.
‘I’ve come a long way,’ he said. And gave her another smile.
‘Well, you’re out of luck, cowboy. You’ve just missed her.’
She was a hard-used woman, Strebel thought, like the wives of his father’s generation, left up in the mountains to cope with the ravages of storms and childbirth.
‘May I come in?’
Gloria tilted her head to survey him, then moved aside, ‘Sure.’
Her home was makeshift, as if she’d scavenged the furniture from departing expats. Nothing matched, but it was comfortable enough. He noticed the boxes of toys, the shelf of children’s books. Ah — the AIDS orphans. She offered him a seat but nothing else. He hoped for a glass of ice water. A very large glass. Preferably so large he could climb into it for a long soak.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘I got twelve kids arriving any minute now. So let’s cut to the chase. What’s this about Pilgrim?’
‘I’m trying to find her.’
‘So you said. You’ve just missed her, so I said. Do you want to have the same conversation all over again? I’d rather not.’ She fidgeted, tapped her fingers. She badly wanted a cigarette, Strebel was sure. But there were no packs or ashtrays in evidence. Had she just quit?
‘Pilgrim left Switzerland just over a month ago,’ he pushed on. ‘I have reason to believe she may be in danger.’
‘Here? Danger? From what? Falling mangoes?’
‘A man associated with her has also disappeared.’
Gloria made a shocked expression. ‘“A man associated with her.” What does that mean? Did they rob banks together?’
‘She was involved in a car accident in which the man’s daughter was killed. It’s possible he blames her and wants to harm her.’
‘That’s terrible, just terrible, Detective — is it “Detective”?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector.’
She gave him the look of a deeply impressed woman.
‘How did you know I was a policeman?’
‘Your shit-colored aura.’
Strebel wanted to laugh because he found this genuinely funny. The shit had stuck after all.
‘Long way to come as a policeman,’ she noted.
‘I’m not here in that capacity. As I said, I’m a friend.’ He gave her a neutral smile.
‘I won’t bother to argue that police can’t have friends, although, personally, I think that it’s impossible. So, yeah, I rented her a place out in Raskazone. The peninsula on the south end of the bay. Cutest little cottage.’