No One Loves a Policeman by Guillermo Orsi, Nick Caistor

winking at me as if we were on the same side, although I had no idea if he meant I should join in or carry on sitting there quietly without a word, like a penitent who has just left the confessional.
    Ayala pushed him aside and came over to the car. I have not carried a gun for years, but no sooner had I instinctively felt under my arm for my revolver than I was squinting down the barrel of the .38 that this provincial Quixote had stuck right between my eyes.
    â€œI’ve had it up to here with you, Martelli. What the fuck are you doing so far from home? At your age you should be wrapping up warm and going to bed early.”
    â€œI’ve already told you why I came here.”
    â€œI don’t like men who stick their noses into other people’s business,especially when it’s someone who’s been kicked out of the force, pushing his snout in where nobody’s asked him to.”
    â€œThe person who asked me was a friend. When I arrived, he had been murdered—something that doesn’t seem to bother you, but which explains why I’m pushing my snout in here.”
    â€œGet out of the car,” he ordered, taking a couple of steps back but still aiming the revolver at me.
    I did as I was told. I get hot under the collar when I have to deal with bureaucracy, and sometimes women drive me crazy, but I am never bothered by the sight of a gun. I have spent too long handling them, shooting and being shot at. Even though I no longer carry one, I accept my destiny. To be surprised that one day I might end up riddled with bullets would be as hypocritical as a habitual smoker who refuses to accept he has cancer because he gave up smoking at sixty.
    â€œI could arrest you right now, and you’d spend the rest of your life on remand, waiting to be tried for the murder of three women.”
    â€œBut he didn’t do it!” shouted Burgos. Rodríguez was filling him in on the rest of the game now that Ayala was busy threatening me.
    â€œYou could,” I said to Ayala, “but there are a few things I need to know so that my friend’s widow can hate him in peace without feeling any remorse.”
    â€œThat’s not going to be easy,” Ayala said, slowly lowering his gun. “Cárcano was a womanizer, but he wasn’t mixed up in any shady business.”
    â€œSo why did they kill him?”
    â€œWe had better talk in the waiting room of this magnificent Victorian-style railway station. It’s a pity it’s crawling with tramps and drunks, but I’ll get Rodríguez to clear it out for us.”
    He did not have to insist. Rodríguez had already broken off his match report and disappeared inside the station. We heard him call out a couple of times and then, perhaps because one of the occupants was taking his time getting up, a bullet whistled through the glasslesswindow. There followed shouts and the sound of running feet, and then I saw a pair of hobos leaping across the tracks in their socks and shredded underwear. One of them was whirling a pair of trousers round his head like a gaucho waving his poncho.
    â€œThey’ll be back,” Ayala said, with paternal concern. “Even if we get thrown out, we always return home.”

10
    We made an odd foursome following our meeting in the Bahía Blanca station waiting room. Three musketeers and a D’Artagnan who doubled as Don Quixote.
    Burgos had hardly anything to say, even though, as he admitted, the idea for our little “off-the-record” chat had been his. “I’m a doctor, not a policeman,” was his only contribution. “My profession is a priesthood. I cannot kill without betraying Hippocrates.”
    â€œGo and take a shit, then,” Ayala said, no doubt aware that the toilet in this splendid station would be a den of rats and cockroaches.
    All three of them wanted desperately to find the man who seduced beautiful young women and then sliced them like