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stubborn dung beetle digging his own grave in the belief that he is burying others, and with them the answers to all the enigmas they could not discover while they were alive.

    â€œWhere’s the body?” the roly-poly doctor said. He did not sound in the least bit surprised.
    â€œIn my room at the Imperio Hotel.”
    â€œYou ought to be a thousand kilometers from Bahía by now. Abroad, if possible.”
    â€œI didn’t kill her.”
    â€œDo you think anybody is going to believe you? Here people are pardoned
after
they’re burned at the stake. I can’t remember your name …”
    â€œIt’s Pedro Martelli. People call me Gotán.”
    â€œDon’t go back to the hotel, Don Gotán. Whoever left the body there is trying to frame you. Do you have a car?”
    â€œThe dead woman stole it.”
    â€œNot good. Well then, take a taxi to the railway station and wait for me there. There are no police guards because hardly any trains reach Bahía Blanca these days, and there’s nothing left to steal because the place was stripped when they shut the railways down.”

    I stopped a taxi in the street and told the driver to pull up outside the hotel for a moment. The porter was surprised to see me back only five minutes after I had left.
    â€œHas anyone been here asking for me?”
    When the porter shook his head I plucked up the courage to go over to the receptionist and slide a hundred-peso note under the register.
    â€œThat’s for you to forget I asked about the doctor in the blue car.”
    His sphinx-like expression told me I could put about as much trust in him as an infant deer could in a lion reading her
The Jungle Book
. There was just the slimmest of chances he would not give me away.

    Bahía Blanca has a Victorian railway station, built by the British. Once upon a time express trains came and went from Neuquén, Bariloche and Zapala, dust-covered carriages filled with passengers from Patagonia, still wide-eyed from the vast desert lands. These were once the domain of Mapuches, Araucanians and Tehuelches, until in the nineteenth century they were all wiped out by the campaigns of a general called Roca, that same general who the Peronist government decided to honor by baptizing this railway line in his name.
    Nowadays the station was nothing more than a stopping-off place sunk in desolation and melancholy. As if by miracle, there was still onetrain a day to and from Buenos Aires, although most people preferred to take the bus because they could not trust the railway timetable. The train left at night, so my taxi driver was curious to know what I was doing at the station at 7:00 in the morning.
    â€œIf you want to buy a ticket, the office only opens at midday,” he said nosily.
    â€œI’m a photographer. I’m working on a series about Argentine railways.”
    His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he peered at me through the rearview mirror, looking for my camera. To avoid further scrutiny I got out of the taxi without waiting for my change.
    â€œBe careful, there are lots of delinquents around here,” he warned me as he pulled slowly away, still staring at me through his side window.
    Day had barely dawned. The ramshackle station did not seem like the ideal meeting place, but if the doctor had laid a trap for me, it was too late to back out now. I did not want to leave the city with the police on my heels and no idea of what was going on. The doctor was the only person I could think of who might help.
    Less than five minutes later I saw the sky-blue V.W. splashing its way through the mud along a side street, then turning into the station yard, where it came to a stop next to a goods van.
    â€œThe police never come here. They’re afraid of getting mugged,” he said. He did not get out of his car, but jerked his head to invite me to climb aboard.
    â€œWhat a night it’s been,” I said.
    â€œYou can say that