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  ‘Is that why you’re putting yourself forward as a candidate?’ I asked.

  Fracaso nodded. ‘I want to put right all the things El Hombrito has done to us.’

  For the first time in living memory, the opportunity was available for any citizen of San Doloroso to stand for president. Only those closely associated with the previous regime were excluded. It was a development long overdue in a country seemingly blighted by perpetual dictatorship. There were five days remaining in which to register as a candidate. The poll itself would be held early the following year.

  ‘Do you think the elections will be democratic?’ I asked.

  ‘I hope so. The Americans are putting a lot of pressure on the government not to interfere in the democratic process. Now we have a new constitution, there is a real chance of progress, but there are still elements acting against our best interests.’ He spread out his hands and gestured to the devastated office.

  A light bulb, which had been hanging precariously from the ceiling, finally gave up the fight and there was a crash of glass as it hit the floor behind me.

  Fracaso smiled sadly. ‘So far, it has been mostly intimidation. But things may escalate as polling draws near.’

  ‘Do you think the provisional government is responsible for the intimidation?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say. The Junta claims it is not interested in holding onto power; they are merely a caretaker government. But what steps have been taken to dismantle the Azulito organisation? What checks have been placed on the police and the army to prevent abuses of power? No one is being prosecuted and no one is being brought to book for the atrocities committed under the previous regime.’

  That was hardly surprising, given that the head of the armed forces under Ladrón – General Federico Hernandez Malvado – was now a member of the five–man provisional administration.

  ‘The government has stopped funding the Azulitos,’ I pointed out, looking up from Daniel Parr’s notes.

  ‘Officially. But the organisation persists. How can it do that without any money? Somebody must be funding them.’

  ‘But not the government,’ I said. ‘They didn’t lift a finger to protect the Azulitos after Ladrón died.’ The worst offenders had actually been lynched. I remembered seeing the footage on the Nine O’clock News a few months earlier. The BBC had devoted thirty seconds to it just before the football results.

  Fracaso nodded. ‘But that was public anger. It was understandable. The government were not involved. They are happy to let the Azulitos be.’

  ‘Do you condone the violence?’

  Fracaso hesitated. ‘I am committed to the rule of law. But if justice is not served by our own government, then I understand the compulsion ordinary people feel to take things into their own hands. There was a kind of natural justice in targeting the Azulitos. The predator becomes the prey. That is why I am convinced there will be free and fair elections. The people demand it. And now that the opportunity is there, we will not let it go.’

  Fracaso leaned forward. The conviction in his eyes was unmistakable.

  Two large police cars were parked outside the Casa de Doña Fulana. Three of the residents – all female – were standing by the entrance, idly observing the proceedings. The police were descending the stairway and moving out onto the street. If it was a raid, they had obviously not found anybody to arrest. One of the officers blew the girls a kiss as he climbed into his squad car. The young women watched as the battered vehicle sped away.

  I was approaching from the opposite direction, along Avenida 31. One of the girls saw me coming and started to wave. That was Lolita. I had met her the day before. It had taken me some time to wash off the lipstick. Lolita was more conservatively dressed now, in a green camisole and denim hot pants. I nodded to her awkwardly as I reached the doorway. She winked and said something I didn’t quite catch. The other girls laughed.

  I scurried past them as quickly as I could. My encounter with Lolita the previous evening was still fresh in my mind. Strange as it may seem, I am not used to random women launching themselves at me from metal doorways – especially not in their underwear – and I had no wish to encourage a repeat performance.

  In the reception area at the top of the stairway, Madam Fulana was admonishing a small boy. She was a large, buxom woman with a rounded face and sparkling eyes. She wore long, flowing robes cut deep at the neck and possessed a charming, vaguely middle–eastern air. Her body was bedecked with jewellery and her face was barely visible beneath several inches of make–up.

  The doña had a friendly but persuasive manner.

  That was part of the reason why I’d agreed to stay the night. It hadn’t taken me long to work out that the Casa was a brothel rather than a hotel – Lolita’s wandering hands were purely financial in nature – but there were rooms available and when Madam Fulana discovered I had been robbed on her own doorstep she insisted I stop with her for the evening. Admittedly, it was not an ideal place to bed down, but in the circumstances I’d had little choice.

  ‘Don’t you worry about a thing,’ she had informed me then. ‘I know Nacho. He’s a local kid. He’s a little devil but he has a kind heart. I’ll make sure he returns your luggage.’

  Madam Fulana had kept her word. My suitcase was now resting on the top of the reception desk. The little boy the doña was chastising was none other than Nacho himself.

  The lad caught sight of me and grinned. There was a glint in his eyes but not an ounce of contrition. He obviously didn’t expect any trouble from some crazy European.

  ‘Welcome back, señor!’ Madam Fulana beamed. She extended a hand and permitted me to kiss it.

  I took my eyes from her smiling, powdered face and glanced at the suitcase. ‘Is everything in there?’ I asked.

  ‘I bring everything back. You give me money now?’ Nacho held out his hand.

  I laughed, despite myself. ‘You shouldn’t go running off with other people’s property,’ I told him, pulling the suitcase off the desk and onto the floor. ‘One day you might get caught.’

  The boy shrugged, gesturing across to the stairs. ‘I too quick for them. Bastardos.’

  The police cars had long since departed. Madam Fulana’s prostitutes were making their way back up into the hotel. There were three of them, including Lolita. The others would not arrive until the evening.

  ‘What were the police doing here?’ I asked. It was just after midday, hardly an ideal time for a raid. Besides, as the doña herself had told me, prostitution is legal in San Doloroso.

  ‘They come once a month,’ Madam Fulana replied, without embarrassment. ‘It is just their way.’

  ‘They look for crack cocaine,’ Nacho explained helpfully.

  That I did understand. The local police were partly funded by the US Government and, in return for the money, they were expected to be rigorous in their pursuit of drug–related crime. Searching the odd brothel every once in a while helped to demonstrate their commitment and so justify the funding.

  Madam Fulana nodded. ‘They like to take a few things away to examine. They do not bring them back. But it is never anything expensive. And they always let me know when they are coming. I have an arrangement, you see.’ She smiled warmly at her three girls. ‘The police inspector, he is very fond of Lolita.’

  Lolita screwed up her face. ‘He’s a pig,’ she spat. ‘Not like my pretty Englishman.’ She slid an arm around my waist and clutched my groin suddenly from behind. I jumped forward in alarm. The other two girls started to giggle and Lolita adopted an injured expression. ‘You no like me?’ she asked, sliding her thumbs into the belt loops of her denim hot pants. I stared at the floor in embarrassment. I had no idea how to respond to such aggressive sexuality. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen in England. The fact that Lolita was so attractive only served to exacerbate my discomfort. Her dark brown eyes and olive complexion were a striking contrast to the girl’s long and unnaturally blonde hair. ‘I like you.’ She grinned. ‘Handsome man
!’ She blew me a kiss and skipped past into the back room. The others followed behind her.

  ‘I must say, your girls are very well educated,’ I observed, after a few seconds of awkward silence. Lolita’s grasp of English was almost as good as Madam Fulana’s.

  The señora nodded, pleased at the compliment. ‘We get a lot of foreign clients. I make sure my girls can understand them.’

  ‘I speak English,’ Nacho volunteered. ‘You give me money?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not until I check my luggage.’

  I thumped the suitcase down onto the salmon–pink sheets of my Olympic–sized double bed. As far as I could tell, it hadn’t been tampered with. My clothes were all in place and if Nacho had ruffled through them he had managed to put everything back with surprising neatness. I folded the lid down and zipped up the case.

  Fleetingly, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: a slender, awkward fellow with an alarmingly red face. I frowned. My skin was already starting to burn and I’d only been out in the sun for a few hours. I really wasn’t used to a tropical climate.

  The hotel room was practically walled with mirrors; only the odd glimmer of plaster was visible between the glass. The largest of the mirrors was stretched across the ceiling. Lying on the bed looking up at it, nothing would escape your attention.

  I lifted the suitcase and placed it gently on the floor. There was nothing of any value in there. Nacho wouldn’t have brought it back if there had been. All my important documents – not to mention my recording equipment – were contained in the shoulder bag I had carried as hand luggage on the plane from Mexico City.

  The most important item was no longer in the bag. I had taken it out the night before and placed it carefully on the bedside table. There was a second reason behind my journey to San Doloroso. That was why I’d agreed to come. I was running a very important errand.

  I looked across at the table and my expression froze. I had left the vase next to the telephone. It had been sitting there quite comfortably when I’d gone to bed the night before and it was sitting there next to me when I’d woken up this morning. But it was not there now.

  For several seconds, my brain stalled.

  There were fresh sheets on the bed. A chambermaid must have entered the room while I was out. But why would she remove what on the face of it was an unremarkable piece of pottery?

  Then the truth hit me: it hadn’t been stolen, it had been taken away for analysis. When the authorities had raided the brothel, they must have spotted the vase on the bedside table. Even now, the contents were probably being examined in a laboratory somewhere.

  This was a disaster.

  The police had confiscated my mother.

  Chapter Three

  It was not a large cell. There was a bed and a small lavatory but not much in the way of creature comforts. It wasn’t the sort of place I’d anticipated finding myself that afternoon.

  The desk sergeant had greeted my arrival with lazy indifference. He was a large, balding man with a battered face and narrow hazel eyes. His short, stocky frame was covered in a crumpled, leaf green uniform which looked as if it hadn’t been washed in several weeks. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he summarised, in perfect but over–enunciated English. I had wanted to conduct the interview in Spanish but the sergeant had found my accent a little difficult to understand. ‘This morning we raided a brothel and confiscated an urn that contained the ashes of your late mother?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And you brought these ashes with you all the way from the United Kingdom?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The man gazed at me with a visible lack of understanding.

  ‘My mother was born in San Doloroso,’ I explained. ‘It was her final wish.’

  ‘And the first thing you do when you arrive in the country is book into the Casa de Doña Fulana.’

  ‘Er...yes.’

  ‘Which is a licensed brothel.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  The sergeant let out a sigh. ‘And you say you’re some kind of journalist?’

  ‘Er...a newspaper correspondent, yes.’

  ‘Is it normal practise for newspaper correspondents from the United Kingdom to put themselves up in brothels when they visit Central America?’

  This was a fair question. I didn’t want the sergeant to get the wrong idea. ‘My car ran out of petrol,’ I said. ‘It was the only place I could find.’

  ‘Car?’ His eyebrows furrowed.

  ‘A rental car.’

  The sergeant shook his head. ‘All right, señor,’ he agreed, with considerable reluctance, ‘I’ll look into this for you. If we have confiscated your vase and there’s nothing untoward about it, I’m sure we’ll be able to let you have it back. But first of all I’ll need to take down a few personal details.’ He reached across the desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘May I see your passport?’

  ‘Of course.’ I reached into my jacket pocket. Not even I would be foolish enough to enter a police station without carrying some form of identification. ‘Erm...’ I looked up. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I seem to have left it back at the hotel.’

  The sergeant frowned. ‘You do realise it’s an offence for foreign nationals to walk about without proper identification?’

  ‘Yes. I’m very sorry.’

  ‘So am I, señor,’ he said, managing a smile for the first time. ‘So am I.’

  A few minutes later, a constable arrived to escort me to a holding cell. I would be kept there, under close supervision, until my identity had been properly established. Then, unless I could find a reputable character witness, I would be fined and deported.

  My editor was going to kill me.

  There had to be somebody who could vouch for my identity. I thought hard. Probably best not to ask Madam Fulana. Or Lolita. But who else did I know in Central America? I couldn’t exactly phone up Antonio Fracaso and ask for a character reference. Then another name popped into my head and I smiled.

  One man would definitely be able to help.

  ~ ~ ~

  Dick Carter was manoeuvring his car into the small parking lot of the Intercontinental Hotel on the other side of town. Acting on a tip–off, he had driven out of Toronja that morning to the small village of Batalla, some fifteen kilometres from the city centre. A fire had broken out in the village the previous night and the authorities were still mopping up the debris. Two houses had been burnt to the ground, each on opposite sides of the road.

  Dick had pulled up his Volkswagen Beetle and got out to survey the scene.

  An elderly villager sat calmly on a windowsill, watching the last wisps of smoke rising up into the air. A small radio by his side was blaring out music from Radio Libertad, a local station. Dick approached the man with the offer of a cigarette and soon got the bare bones of the story.

  Two youths had doused the buildings with petrol the previous evening. The men had appeared earlier on at a gas station half a mile from the village. They had purchased four canisters of sin plomo – unleaded petrol – and had then walked back to Batalla. Three people had died in the ensuing double blaze. Four more were being treated for burns.

  Dick drove out to the gas station and spoke to the attendant.

  ‘It was something to do with old man Garcia,’ the fellow said. ‘The one the villagers butchered a few months back.’

  Dick barely remembered the incident. Everyone had been killing Azulitos back then. Apparently, Garcia had been dragged from his home and hacked to death. It was nothing unusual. But it did point to the latest atrocity being some kind of revenge attack. The men who had died had apparently been involved in the lynching.

  ‘Did you recognise the two lads?’ Dick asked the attendant.

  The man was reluctant to say. ‘They were wearing the blue baseball caps,’ he admitted. ‘But they were a bit young to be Azulitos.’

  ‘Relatives, maybe?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, maybe. I’d heard one of them was due back from Mexic
o City. A nephew, I think. The other one, definitely.’ He shuddered. ‘You know, I honestly thought we’d seen the last of those bastards.’

  The Azulitos had been keeping a low profile in the six months since the death of El Hombrito. Evidently, that was about to change.

  ~ ~ ~

  It was taking a bit of a chance, but I used my one phone call to contact the Intercontinental Hotel, Dick’s home–away–from–home. My luck, which had failed me so completely up until this point, was suddenly in. Not only was he staying at the hotel but he had also just returned to his room. The lady on reception put me straight through.

  Two hours later, the man himself was sitting opposite me, shaking with laughter. ‘Bloody hell, mate, you don’t waste any time, do you?’ Dick Carter grinned. ‘You’ve only been here twenty–four hours, you’ve spent a night in a brothel and now you’ve got yourself banged up!’

  Dick was an old friend, a handsome scruff of a man with a mass of curly black hair and a lascivious smile. He was dressed casually in a multi–coloured t–shirt and green Bermuda shorts. I had been intending to catch up with him at some point on this trip, even if I hadn’t needed his help. Dick and I had worked together at the Daily Herald in London for some years, under Miranda Bullock. He’d always had a more casual approach to the job than I.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Dick.’

  He smiled broadly. ‘You too, mate.’ Dick had emigrated to Central America three years earlier and this was the first time I had seen him since. ‘I’ve spoken to old Rip Van Winkle on the front desk. Said what a fine chap you are. All the usual bollocks. And the good news is he’s agreed to let you go.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that.’

  Dick held up a hand. ‘The bad news is: there is going to be a fine.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three hundred Cambures.’

  I winced. That was just about all the cash I had, after renting the car and paying Madam Fulana. ‘What about...?’

  ‘The vase they’re going to hold onto.’