Infinite Ground (13 page)

He hadn't realized how hungry he was. He tore into the fish, mixed with vegetables and rice. ‘Fresh,' the guide sitting to his other side commented, pleased at his evident relish, ‘fresh from the river.'

A bottle of hooch was passed discreetly; Charlie winked. The liquid burned and, gradually, began to settle him. Despite his frustrations, despite the people around him, he began to relax. He felt good and old in the forest. He loved the sweep of the sudden dark coming over him here, a sound as much as a disappearance. They gave themselves over at dark. The air was heavy, thick with millions of blood-filled points of light that somehow flew. Occasionally he sensed something greater, a different order of life above them in the trees or even many miles horizontal, and he felt a leap in the emptiness inside him, a thrill, a voicelessness and a wonder.

Occasionally he became conscious of how loud they were, but the amazing thing was just how easy it was to lose all sense of location. The paraffin lamps arranged in a row on the long, low table – the inspector, now, was propped up on a box – lit only their faces, their upper bodies, and the food they ate. The lamp created, as if intended, a very limited and discrete area. Nothing, you could almost believe, was beyond it.

The inspector set down his plastic fork and pushed himself up. ‘Excuse me a moment,' he said. Knut passed him a candle and a guide absently pointed past the rope. He waited a moment, almost expecting to be accompanied – was this, he thought, what had become of him? He couldn't even do this alone? Given the warnings about the dangers past the rope-lines it was a little strange that no one had showed him exactly where to go. Presumably he had missed something earlier, while he dozed. He stood several feet back from the group, the table, the lights, and realized how ridiculous he would appear if he asked for clarification. Even worse, what would almost certainly happen is that a guide would insist on escorting him, the whole business mortifying. When he got there, the guide standing by, he would have to mimic the action and then come back later, illicitly, alone. He turned away from the table, light in one hand, paper in the other, and ducked out under the rope-line into the dark.

He walked and the artificial sounds died away almost instantly. A rough path had been cut and he located the pit latrine without difficulty. He found the business easier in a squatting position. There was a shovel, a bucket of lime to throw. Walking back up to camp he reminded himself how quickly he had moved out of the range of voices. There was something a little unnerving about it, even with his light and the delineated path. He couldn't hear the group, couldn't see them. They would be back soon enough. He should appreciate the momentary isolation, enjoy the forest sounds.

He remained on the path, but was dully aware of the longer length of the return walk. It made sense, given he had marched out in something of a hurry, returning more calmly and with an awareness that he should at least try to appreciate his surroundings. The trouble with the candlelight was that it offered no distance, its reality had no depth. He saw little more than the immediate air, heavy with moisture, antic with mosquitoes and outsize moths, burying into his forehead and his exposed hands. Snuffing the light he would see more. He had stopped, stood still. Why hadn't he seen the camp yet? The path led directly, so nothing should have obstructed the image. Again, he put it down to the parochial effect of the light he carried, which he had been too afraid to put out. The danger, of course, was that if he did so he would see nothing. Darkness, the faint blues and greens of vegetal drift.

The path leading in one direction to the latrine may have branched off somewhere else, not merely leading the one way back to the camp. How much could the forest cover over? He was dimly aware of some of the measures taken in urban planning – unusually verdant media strips, say; a minimum number of city parks, however small – one of the benefits of which was apparently in noise reduction. As well as absorbing pollution, the green areas had the effect of storing sound. If a simple park could do that, then it shouldn't surprise him that he sensed no evidence of the party, even so close by in the forest. The forest would be loud with itself, beyond them. The light absence could be explained by a simple turn in the path he had been too preoccupied to notice, meaning that when he looked up, back towards where the camp doubtless was, it was hidden by the trees. He had solved the problem, but still he hadn't moved. He then asked himself if it were not possible that, in thinking this, in going over the possible explanations, he had turned himself around. He could not be certain either way. The moment he considered this, he lost confidence in the way forward. It was so easily done.

Something crashed into him, causing the inspector to lose his footing and drop the light, which immediately went out.

‘Whoa, easy!' a male voice said, as he was helped up. ‘You okay there?' It was Charlie. ‘I've been sent to find you.'

Quickly enough his eyes adjusted; the camp was less than thirty metres ahead. He had been walking the right way and would have arrived there any moment.

They had been told that, all being well, they could expect a meeting today. With a significant hike ahead, they should eat well at breakfast, but many of them had trouble keeping anything down. Nerves, Knut said. That's all. ‘Aren't you excited?'

The inspector was wholly uncomfortable, a sensation compounded by the fact that nobody seemed to share this feeling. They had been told at the start, as they set off, that they would ride for three days and hike for two. But there was no momentum. They started later and finished earlier on each day's sailing. The previous day, the first of the great ‘hike' days, had seen fitful walking at best, prolonged meal-times, extended rests. He didn't understand. Although the party was middle-aged, they all seemed in good health, and as Charlie had stressed they'd each passed medical tests confirming their fitness. So why weren't they doing it? Why weren't they going in? Why was everything still mitigated, compromised, deferred?

The gun fired. There were cries, branches breaking, leaves thrashing. Flashes of light, which he had taken to be further shots, somehow preceding their own noise, but which he later realized were cameras adjusted to the low light.

He couldn't construct a face. Everything had been a blur. He couldn't state how many of them there were or even how close they had come. He frantically tried to reconstruct everything – already passed. They had been tracked, Knut told them. Hunted. The tribesmen had followed them for a long time, perhaps hours, and were preparing an ambush. The shot wasn't intended to harm anyone – the group needed to be certain of this. It was a warning and had dispersed the attackers, who had dissolved back into the forest. They wouldn't make another approach, he stressed, but the guns would be readied as a precaution until they had made it safely back to the boat.

‘How will we sleep? How can we make camp, knowing they're right there?'

‘We will keep watch during the night. You will be looked over. You are safe.'

They resumed their walk quietly, intensely, still stunned by the experience. Within fifteen minutes, however, they grew animated again, talking loudly and making gestures. Several people remained quiet with their heads stooped. He was impressed, interested. It took the inspector some time to realize they were studying the footage on their cameras, walking in time to the footstep in front. He stepped back and watched them more. From his perspective the forest grew bigger the further out they got, made the figures small and thin under the weight of it. But they wouldn't see it like that. The camera light attached to each face looked like a charm, a preventative measure or super­stition, insulating them from or holding back the pressure above; it contracted the world.

Later they passed cameras around as they ate, ravenous. ­Several seconds of electric noise and bright light each.

‘You can see one, here, from the back—'

‘Here, look, he's leaping—'

‘Oh my God, she's naked—'

‘I think that one's carrying a child!'

‘Did anyone get a good shot of a face? Anyone?'

They discussed how they could combine the footage, the various angles, the different time periods, into a single comprehensive document. It seemed to him they were adding new things, affirming additional details.

Again, in the evening, they ate hungrily and talked over each other in rushes. They camped in the same clearing, and long into the darkness, long after they had been told it was no longer safe to talk, the inspector could see the faint blue light of their films playing privately, over and over again, held inches from the face.

Maria's café was set directly opposite the hotel; a small space, he thought, with a surprising capacity and terrific coffee and eggs. Maria wore an apron and her hair up, and she cooked and served. She seemed to mock all of them equally and none of them minded. He couldn't find out what she was doing there. A family to support? She didn't give much away. He had been humiliated by his complicity in the expedition episode and he could fool himself a while into believing it was the reason he stayed so quiet.

He wasn't sure what had happened, how much of it was real and how much invention. They had been theatrically guided, the adventure artificially framed. After all the anticipation, the weeks of investigation seemingly leading here, the forest, he was experiencing a shattering anticlimax. What did any of this have to do with Carlos, with the corporation? What had he expected to find in the interior? If something significant had indeed been there, what would it have looked like and would he have recognized it, would he have seen it for what it was? Preparing the trip upriver he had imagined picking up a trail, breaking off from the group, moving further in.

When he went for coffee in the morning he had found the tourists gone. Knut, Charlie, all of them, left on a flight before dawn to a famous trail.

‘Did you enjoy your adventure?' Maria asked, bringing him his order.

‘Why are you smirking?'

‘How much did you pay?'

‘Too much.'

‘You went eleven miles.'

‘No…'

‘You took a tributary and looped yourself. We heard your gun!'

‘Why? Surely you'd make just as much, if not more, from real excursions?'

‘Too complicated. Too much effort, and the reality would be uncomfortable for them, for you. The real experience would be sickness and disappointment. You'd never see anyone. Really, it's much better for everyone this way. And you know,' she said, smiling, ‘I quite enjoy playing the role of a young tribal mother.'

He couldn't believe he'd been there ten days already. Time was different in Santa Lucía, that was the only explanation. His flight had been delayed, landing past midnight at the tiny riverside settlement – all rotting, temporary wooden buildings and rusted motorboats – and he'd walked, eagerly, with his suitcase and his hat, dramatized by the thick velvet dark and the binary transmission of the cicadas, to the Terminación reception.

Three children, no more than eight or nine years old, played at the counter, picking up and dropping receipts and laughing, exchanging nonsense words. He waited to be acknowledged.

‘I would like to speak to the proprietor,' he said eventually. The children continued playing so he spoke again, louder and more insistent. ‘Excuse me. Is there an adult present?'

One of the kids looked at him, a boy in shorts with long black hair.

‘You would like a room,' the boy said.

‘Yes, but may I speak to the manager?'

‘How many nights? He's not here.'

‘I don't know yet. Not many, I shouldn't think.'

‘Fill these in and I'll give you your key. Welcome to the Terminación.'

The first thing to establish was that none of the population, at any point in their lives, had had any dealings with Carlos. The name meant nothing to them. The photographs were sub-standard and he knew he was asking a difficult, even impossible question; distorted in transit, the colours running and smudging despite his determination to keep them sealed. He dried them out in his room. No one would ever recognize Carlos from these, he was sure. The image could have been anyone. He tried describing Carlos – height, weight, features – but soon gave up.

He brought out the maps he'd sourced from the district headquarters, huge sheets representing barely differentiated tracts. They spread them at the small, dank hotel bar – local gins, warm beer bottles and boiled eggs – pointing, disputing and resolving nothing. People crowded around. Fishermen could take him upriver, but where exactly did he want to go? He would have to be specific. They didn't need to tell him how huge the area was; he should bear in mind the amount of food and water necessary, and for two people, of course, there and back.

It would cost him. His guide would be with him the whole time – given the fuel premium, going out twice wasn't an option. They would require full payment in advance. And there was the matter of insurance: not only must he waive any right to compensation himself, he would have to assume responsibility for the guide and for the guide's family, as well as for the vessel. All of this had to be agreed in advance and put in writing.

Officially the settlement capacity was four hundred, although it wasn't possible to say, at any one point, exactly how many people lived in Santa Lucía. Some, including the missionaries, would be further inland; others would be temporarily back in the city, arranging supplies. The settlement's buildings were elegant and functional, although in a faded state. The Hotel Terminación was the only two-storey structure.

Even the residents admitted there was little reason for it being there. Not any more. Dug out thirty years ago, it was initially conceived of as a temporary base in the construction of a timber route. But the road had never been extended and Santa Lucía remained cut off. It profited from tourism, from religious missions, from fish farming – until recently, river fish had been harvested in pools just to the south.

Nobody really stayed here for long, Miguel explained. Miguel – wire-thin, frizzy hair sometimes tied back in a band, shorts, colourful long shirt, cheap plastic sandals – ran the Terminación. He did not, the inspector thought, seem particularly reliable. Well meaning, affable enough. Rarely at reception, Miguel instead spent his days in a hut of oil and parts. He played old cassettes, smoked and worked on boat engines, there from the start of the bright still mornings till the sudden temper preceding night, sleeping for the most part in the hammock strung from his hut to a tree.

He could tell immediately that Miguel was happier occupied, when he could focus on something else while they talked. He built and rebuilt engines and took them apart. He asked the hotelier about it: I thought you were fixing that up. I thought you had it. I thought it worked.

Miguel appeared to have dismantled an entire functioning engine, spread it flat and separate, atomized over his work-bench surface.

Everybody in Santa Lucía, Miguel said – down to the cleaners and the fishermen – held a residency permit allowing a maximum stay of two years. The population was in flux. Miguel had been granted dispensation, but he didn't particularly like the arrangement. The permits were a deliberate ploy, he claimed, prohibiting the development of a real community. There was no hospital, no school. You weren't supposed to live here, not really. He admitted his children were there unofficially – a long story, he sighed. The point was that they didn't want anyone to be born. Equally, there were no provisions for the dead.

‘They? Who, the government, you mean?'

Miguel shrugged.

‘Say I want the bigger history: business interests, trading relationships, general comings and goings. You're the man to ask, right? You'll have the records, the accounts? I'd like to see them, when you have a moment.'

‘Whatever you want. How far back? And you're in luck: I record every guest.'

‘Businesses, particularly the larger operations, whose representatives have visited the site. I want to know what goes on here. I mean, I don't see tracks, logging routes…'

Miguel nodded. ‘There were delays – I'm not quite sure what the problem was. Much of the land around was taken, bought up, but then there were legal challenges, which led to more delays in constructing the rest of the route. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but operations were suspended, anyway.'

Miguel had a low focus, always looking down, close, whether as a consequence of living so long in what could seem a depthless forest or from years adjusting parts, working on leads, batteries, boards.

‘What about recently – anything happening? Commercial research, representatives passing through. I don't know, people collecting samples?'

‘Timber samples?'

‘Timber, plants, anything really.'

‘It's been quiet for some time.'

‘So no one working in any kind of commercial capacity has been through recently?'

‘Well, when you put it like that, I mean… Of course, there's business going on locally, small-scale stuff. There's the tourist groups, for instance. A lucrative business. The boats are always ready for them. Some filmmakers, working on documentaries – it's not unusual to see them, either. The abandoned fishery involved a bit of work.'

‘Nothing else?'

‘Not to my knowledge. Well, there were the two individuals, but they weren't here on business, I don't think, that's why I didn't say.'

‘Who?'

‘Their names are here somewhere. I'll dig them out, along with the rest of the records. Bear in mind we can only take cash here, so…'

‘When was this? You didn't mention it earlier.'

‘Five, six weeks ago, I think. Though it's difficult to tell sometimes. Stayed six, seven nights. Unfortunately, Marcelo is no longer with us. He took them by boat.'

‘The man is dead?'

‘What? No, no. He left. He works seasonally.'

‘What were they doing? Where did they go?'

‘I can give you Marcelo's details. Track him later, he has all the information. I don't know anything about them.'

‘Nothing?'

‘Well, they were young, I guess, a bit sullen. I don't think they really wanted to be here. And I mean, I know you don't like them either, but they really didn't take to the kids. Dressed oddly, too.'

‘How?'

‘I don't know. Just not quite right. Didn't fit.'

‘Miguel, this might sound silly, but the names – Mengano, Beltrano? Mean anything to you?'

‘What? No, nothing at all.'

‘What did they have with them, what did they bring?'

‘Nothing really. Just the usual, suitcases. And there was the crate. Marcelo, I remember, mentioned something about a crate. I don't know what it was for. It wasn't made up in the end. Maybe I heard him wrong. They didn't leave with a crate.'

‘You're sure? They didn't leave with anything other than their original luggage?'

‘I don't think so. I can't say for sure.'

‘This crate: I want it clarified. They didn't arrive with a crate?'

‘No, I didn't say that. I didn't see anything. Marcelo only, he said something about a request, building a crate. Look, I'm pretty busy here, we can do this later?'

‘Just a moment more. So the crate was not built; they didn't take it in or out?'

‘I guess not.'

‘Nothing else you remember? Nothing at all unusual?'

‘There was one thing at the hotel, not particularly unusual.'

‘Well?'

‘Sometimes people, they'll book an additional room. The rooms aren't expensive, I'm sure you'll agree: good rates. They do it for privacy. I do what I can, but I can't stop people making a bit of noise, coming in late from the bar, fumbling with the lock on their door, that kind of thing. And the walls aren't the thickest, I'll admit. You might hear people walking around, pouring water down the toilet, coughing or whatever. So people do it to help them sleep, I guess: they buy up additional rooms.'

‘How many rooms did they book?'

‘Three.'

‘Three rooms together.'

‘No. I didn't say that. That's what was a little odd. They stayed in adjacent rooms, but the other room, the third room booked, that was on the other end of the hotel, facing the forest. Actually, if you look at the plans, you'll see the third room couldn't have been any further from theirs.'

‘Well, what for? What was the room used for?'

‘Nothing. No one came in or out, as far as I know. When the cleaner went in after they checked out, she said it hadn't been touched.'

‘Isn't that strange?'

‘Yes, it's strange. But there's nothing illegal in it, is there?'

‘Miguel, I'll need as full a physical description of these two men as possible. I'll need their names, their bills, receipts. Every piece of information that they left. Additionally, I want you to show me to the other room, the empty one.'

‘That won't be necessary.'

‘Why won't it?'

‘The third room, the additional room, Inspector. It's yours.'