Читать книгу The Foreign Girls - Sergio Olguin - Страница 17

They were arguing about the Argentina team: who should and shouldn’t be in it, strategies for playing at home and away, whether the coach should be changed or given another year. He didn’t actually know the two occupants of the front seats, just the one sitting beside him: Martínez. Chancha, or Snorter Martínez. Officer Martínez. Speaking for himself, Three wasn’t very interested in soccer. He preferred horses, poker, the lottery. So he spent the journey looking out at the city, not something he had seen much of in the last few months. He liked seeing how the other drivers gave way to their patrol car. That was the best thing about travelling in a police vehicle. Once they’d had a siren like the ones used by unmarked police cars, but it had attracted too much attention. They had to stop using it on orders of Doctor Zero.

Usually they didn’t take him in the patrol car, but in a van with any other prisoner who needed to go to hospital. This time, though, since he was the only one with a physio appointment, they were taking him by car. For five months now he had been having physiotherapy, as well as kinesiology and pain therapy. He had begun the treatment after they removed the plaster casts for the multiple fractures to his right arm and leg, and when the lacerations and internal injuries ceased to be a risk. The first months had been very hard. 52There was no lessening of the pain, even with painkillers, and his joints were stiff. He felt like a mummy, but without bandages (although he’d had those too, along with the casts, since leaving intensive care). He was much better now. His leg was responding correctly, despite a slight but noticeable limp, and his arm shook a little when he wanted to keep it firm. That didn’t worry him too much, though, because the right arm was the important one. He had never learned how to fire a gun with his left hand.

They arrived at the hospital and, as usual, drove round to the back, to the area reserved for ambulances and employees. The police sitting in the front of the car made some quip about the nurses and he smiled at them. Only two of them got out – he and Officer Martínez, who put a coat over his hands to hide the cuffs from view. Chancha had been accompanying him here for months and knew exactly where to take him. The reports described Three as a model prisoner. His behaviour on these trips had always been exemplary. Other prisoners required an escort of two or three police officers. He was a gentleman by comparison.

They arrived on the second floor and went into the room where Three was scheduled to see the physiotherapist, a female doctor, old, bad-tempered and smelling of cigarettes. It was still early. Their timings were spot on. They had deliberately arrived ten minutes before the appointment. Martínez closed the door so the two of them were alone in the brightly lit, antiseptic hospital room. He removed Three’s handcuffs and gestured for him to open and close his hands to increase blood flow and flexibility.

Calmly, Martínez told him, “You’ve got five minutes. Take the stairs on the left down to the ground floor. Walk out of the main entrance. Don’t rush, or dawdle, or do anything to attract attention. The policeman on duty at the door won’t 53even look at you. Hold your head high but don’t make eye contact with anyone. You might run into some of the doctors who treated you.”

“Chancha, I know what to do.”

Martínez walked out of the room, leaving Three alone. He waited a minute, put on the jacket and left. No sign of police in the corridor. He walked to the staircase that led down to the ground floor. It wouldn’t be the first or last time a prisoner had escaped from a hospital. That’s what the police authorities would say when the judge furiously demanded an explanation. It might not even get that far if the judge was also getting his cut from Doctor Zero, in which case he would simply instruct the clerk of the court to follow the relevant procedures, sending search and arrest warrants to all the country’s branches, which would then make little effort to find him.

He reached the ground floor without a hitch and continued, through a throng of people trying to be seen, towards the front door. Outside, the March sun hit him full in the face. It was hot. He removed his jacket, taking his time, as though he had all day to enjoy being outside. It was six months since Three had last walked along a street, and his first thought was the same one that had occupied him all that time. A fixed idea, a mantra that had sustained him through those long months in prison while he waited to recover physically and for Doctor Zero to get him out – because he never doubted that Doctor Zero would get him out of prison. That fixed idea, that recurring thought, was to commit a murder. He was going to kill Verónica Rosenthal.