Days of the Dead

by David Monnery

  ‘I think he has the name of a man, an Argentinian living in Mexico. I’m not sure, but I think he wants someone to go and talk to this man.’

  ‘Why Jamie?’ Isabel persisted.

  ‘Gustavo is convinced this man will not talk to another Argentinian. But Jamie – he is both a foreigner and a soldier, someone both safe and simpático, yes? This man might be willing to talk to him, just man to man.’

  ‘Macho to macho,’ Docherty murmured.

  Rosa rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  ‘We should at least talk to Gustavo,’ Isabel interjected.

  It was Docherty’s turn to look at her. The word ‘Mexico’ had taken him back to a buried chapter of his own life, one that came before Isabel. ‘OK,’ he said quietly. ‘But no promises.’ He knew Isabel still had nightmares about her time in the Naval Mechanical School – he had been shot into wakefulness on enough occasions by her sudden screams – and if it looked like this was going to upset her, there was no way he was touching it.

  But there was always the chance it might have the opposite effect, he realized. Maybe something like this would help Isabel to finally exorcize her past.

  He was probably grasping at straws, rationalizing his own desire to see Mexico again. Or even worse, just grabbing at any excuse to leave the cursed word processor behind.

  The following morning, once Rosa had rung to make certain that Gustavo was well enough to receive them, Isabel and Docherty took the long drive across the city to the Macíases’ house in Devoto. ‘House’ was actually something of a misnomer – ‘mansion’ would have been a better choice. There was obviously quite a lot left for the daughters to inherit.

  Eva Macías, a handsome, white-haired woman in her seventies, greeted them and led them out to the conservatory, where her husband was soaking up the tropical humidity, rather like General Sternwood in the opening chapter of Chandler’s The Big Sleep. The General had also wanted to know the fate of a missing young man, though in his case the man in question was assumed to be still in the land of the living.

  Gustavo Macías was obviously not long for this world himself, but there was still life in the eyes and in the force with which he clenched his gnarled hands. It had taken him a year and a half, he told them, but he now had two names. Major Lazaro Toscono had supervised the operations of the arrest squads in Rosario for all of 1976 and most of 1977. Colonel Angel Bazua had commanded the Army base just outside the city, which served as both detention centre and place of executions, from late 1975 to mid-1978.

  Bazua was two years into a five-year prison term for drug trafficking, and would probably be impossible to reach, but Toscono was now an ostensibly legitimate businessman in Mexico City. His business was doubtless a front, but there was nothing to stop anyone knocking on his office door, and Docherty could name his price for doing so. ‘Just go and see him,’ the old man said. ‘Ask him about my son. He will remember. They always remember the names, because they know no other way of telling people apart.’

  Docherty looked at Isabel, then at Macías. ‘He may just refuse to speak to me, and you will have paid my fare for nothing.’

  ‘When I started this,’ the old man said, ‘I put half my wealth to one side for Eva – more than she could ever spend. Now money means nothing to me. I will pay you twenty thousand US dollars to make the journey, a hundred thousand if you bring me back the answer. And, of course, any expenses you incur. If you need more, just tell me.’

  Docherty was silent for a moment. They didn’t exactly need the money, but twenty thousand dollars would certainly come in handy, and all he had to do was travel to a country already etched deep in his heart and ask someone for a consequence-free conversation. It seemed a no-brainer, but…

  ‘He’ll go,’ Isabel answered for him.

  Docherty shrugged his acquiescence.

  In the car outside, still sweating from their immersion in the conservatory steam bath, Docherty and Isabel sat in silence for a few moments. The quiet street, with its luxurious mansions, perfectly coiffured lawns and ornamental palms, seemed far removed from torture chambers and mass graves, but both knew it for the illusion it was. The torturers might have come from all sections of Argentinian society, but the men who had delivered up their victims had come from streets like this one.

  ‘You’re not doing this for my sake, are you?’ Isabel asked.

  ‘No. And if this is going to be hard for you I won’t do it. We don’t need the money that much.’

  ‘I know.’ She sighed. ‘Sometimes it seems so long ago,’ she murmured. And sometimes it seems like yesterday, she thought.

  ‘Some wounds take a long time to heal.’

  She grimaced. ‘I’ll be fine. As long as you look after yourself. You’re not in the SAS now. If this pig Toscono refuses to talk to you, that’s it.’

  ‘As long as he refuses nicely,’ Docherty said with a grin.

  She wasn’t amused. ‘We need you back.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, leaning across and cradling her head in his arms. ‘I love you too.’

  The 727 from Cartagena touched down in Miami in the middle of the afternoon. Her parents had acquaintances in the city who would happily put her up, but the thought of explaining the reason for her visit to strangers was too daunting, and Carmen had already decided to ignore the list of telephone numbers her mother had written out. The money her father had given her would probably be enough for several nights in a cheap hotel, and if not she had a little of her own to fall back on.

  Her parents would be appalled, of course. Carmen knew they hadn’t really wanted her to come, though she was far from sure why. They had said they were worried for her – that losing one daughter was bad enough – but they obviously hadn’t been worried enough to accompany her. It was hard to believe that they weren’t desperate to know what had happened to their other daughter, but…Carmen shook her head and turned her attention to the business of disembarkation. She had come. Her parents’ feelings – or lack of them – were neither here nor there.

  She had changed planes in Miami on all of her three trips to the United States, but the airport had never seemed quite so vast before. Immigration and Customs seemed to take for ever – no doubt flights from Colombia merited special attention. She had half expected the humiliation of a strip-search, but the officials were obviously as tired of the queue as its occupants and she was asked only a few cursory questions, her bag not even opened. With the aid of her guidebook she sought out the elevated Metrorail station just in time to catch an inbound train, and sat watching the sunlight reflect on the looming clutch of windowed towers which marked the city’s downtown.

  Beneath these towers she had a glimpse of an older and more elegant Miami, but it was getting dark and she had no time to explore. A local woman helped her find the right bus stop for Miami Beach, and when the bus arrived she was amused to see an English-speaking passenger trying, and failing, to communicate with the Spanish-speaking driver. It was like her friend Miguel had said: Florida, California and Texas had been taken from Spain by the gringos, and now the gringos were having to give them back.

  The bus drove east across a long causeway, giving Carmen her first views of the Miami which Miami Vice had made famous, and sooner than she expected they were driving up through the faded pastel splendours of Miami Beach. She had picked three hotels out of the guidebook, and struck lucky at the first attempt, finding a room that was clean, spacious and cheaper than the book had led her to expect. She showered, changed and sat on the bed, rereading the copy of the report which the Miami police had faxed to Cartagena, and which the local police chief had passed on to her father. The only new fact it contained was the name of the Miami Beach lieutenant in charge of the investigation, and she had an appointment with him the following morning.

  There was a small balcony to the room, and she stood out on it for a few minutes, looking down at the busy street, her nose twitching to the aromas of cooking food. She was hungry, she realized, and ten minutes la
ter she was ordering Orange Chicken in a Chinese restaurant recommended by the hotel receptionist. After eating she walked down to the beach, but in the darkness it looked more scary than inviting, so she made her way back to the hotel. She flicked through channels on the TV for a while but then decided it was time for bed, despite the earliness of the hour. She was exhausted, and with any luck tomorrow would turn into a big day.

  She was woken by the barely risen sun shining through the window, and after showering and dressing she made her way down to the empty beach and walked along it, a few feet from the gently breaking waves. She felt apprehensive about her meeting with the American police, but really glad that she had come. Whatever had happened to Marysa, she told herself, life was better than death.

  The small Cuban café which she chose for breakfast served the best coffee she had ever tasted, which had to be a good omen.

  Back at the hotel she smartened herself up, checked the directions she’d been given and set out for the police station. The walk took ten minutes, and once inside the incongruously modern building she was kept waiting for only a couple of minutes before being shown into Lieutenant Trammell’s office. He was a harassed-looking man well into middle age, with an argumentative jaw, big mouth and thinning grey hair. His greeting was warm enough, but he seemed to be having trouble keeping his faded blue eyes open. Fortunately, he was not personally in charge of the case – that honour belonged to Detective José Peña, whose overflowing desk in the squad room was her next port of call.

  Detective Peña also seemed harassed, but at least he was looking at her with wide-open eyes. ‘Coffee?’ he asked, once the introductions had been made and Trammell was back in his office.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Cream and sugar?’ He was speaking Spanish now.

  ‘Just one sugar,’ she answered in the same language, and examined him as he programmed the machine. He was in his early thirties, she guessed, with short, wavy hair and a face that managed to be both handsome and friendly. The photo of a woman and two children on his desk suggested he was also married.

  He presented her with the plastic cup of coffee, and she took a token sip. Pretty good, she thought – in two hours she’d had the best and worst coffee of her life.

  ‘Dreadful, isn’t it?’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

  They stared at each other for a couple of seconds. ‘So what is it you want to know?’ he asked.

  ‘Everything,’ she said shortly. ‘All I know is what was in the newspaper – that Placida was carrying drugs – inside her – and that one of the packets burst and killed her. And that you found out who she was from Victoria…How is Victoria?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s hard to say. I’ve tried talking to her several times and sometimes she’s almost lucid, sometimes she just stares at me as if she can’t understand a word I’m saying, sometimes she just can’t stop crying.’ He looked up at her, and she could see in his eyes that he’d found the experience a more than usually distressing one. ‘Whatever they did to her,’ he added, ‘it wasn’t pretty.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ Carmen asked.

  ‘She’s in a hospital. She’s pregnant too,’ he added. ‘So was Placida Guzmán.’

  Carmen bowed her head, then lifted it again. ‘Can I see her?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘I want to take her back to Cartagena with me. Her parents are both dead, but she has an aunt who’s willing to look after her.’

  Peña looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know when that will be possible,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m not sure what the legal situation is right now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, both surprised and alarmed.

  ‘She has admitted to bringing in about half a million dollars’ worth of heroin,’ he said mildly.

  Carmen was appalled. ‘But she can’t have been acting willingly,’ she said angrily.

  He sighed. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘and I’m on her side. But she and the Guzmán girl had been in Miami for three days before they were found. Even if they had been forced to ingest the drugs there was nothing to stop them telling the officials at the airport what had happened. If they had, both of them would have received immediate medical treatment, and Placida Guzmán would probably still be alive.’

  ‘They were probably too frightened.’

  ‘Probably. And don’t quote me on this, but I expect something can be worked out. It should be obvious to anyone that the girl needs help, not a jail cell.’

  Carmen took a deep breath. ‘Has she said anything about who did this to them? Or where they came from?’ And where my sister may still be, she thought.

  ‘Not yet. The plane they arrived on came from Bogotá via Panama City, but there’s no record of them getting on at either place. And whenever I’ve asked her about either place, or anything about the time before she arrived, she just started to cry. She was crying when the uniform found her on the beach,’ he added.

  ‘She told you where Placida was?’

  ‘Not exactly. “In the hotel,” she said, but she couldn’t remember which one. So we just started with the closest, worked our way outwards, and found the place the next day. Placida wasn’t there, but there was a lot of blood and…’

  He stopped for a moment, and she could see that he was picturing the scene.

  ‘The body was found in a canal about twenty miles away – they hadn’t done a very good job of weighting it down.’

  ‘In the hotel room, weren’t there any clues to where they’d come from?’

  ‘He’d cleared it out. Jesús, he told them his name was – Victoria remembered that in one of her lucid moments. He was young, Hispanic, medium height – one of a million.’

  ‘What about the passports?’ she asked.

  ‘The only stamps were ours. But the passports themselves are probably forged anyway.’

  She felt disappointed with the information she had gathered, but could think of nothing else to ask. ‘Maybe Victoria will find it easier talking to me,’ she said, mostly to bolster her own spirits.

  ‘Did you know her before?’

  ‘Only by sight. My sister was – is, I hope – five years younger than me, and we didn’t have the same friends.’

  ‘Well, I’ll try and arrange a visit for tomorrow, OK?’

  She managed a thin smile of gratitude. ‘I have no other reason to be here.’

  3

  John Dudley took his eyes off the lighted windows of the timber-yard office and turned to his partner. ‘Anything?’ he asked.

  ‘They just took a corner,’ Martin Insley told him from the armchair. ‘Seaman caught it.’

  ‘But how’s it going?’

  ‘Sounds pretty even so far. But you never know with Spain.’

  ‘He should have given Fowler a game,’ Dudley muttered as he put his eye back to the mounted telescope. Through the open window he could hear traces of the match playing on several TV sets, and over the gabled roofs to the south-west he thought he could make out the faint glow in the sky above Wembley Stadium. Everyone in London seemed to be watching the damn game – everyone but him and Insley. If only the damn boat had come in a day later.

  It had docked at Tilbury soon after dawn that morning and had begun unloading almost immediately. The four thousand logs of tropical hardwood from Venezuela had been one of the first shipments ashore and after a cursory customs examination the importers had been cleared to reload them on the waiting fleet of trailers. A thorough search would probably have resulted in the seizure of a large haul of Colombian heroin, but the British authorities were hoping for more than drugs to burn. MI5 and the Drugs Squad were eager to break the new and highly ominous distribution link-up between the Colombians and the local Turkish mafia, while MI6 were more interested in the foreign end of the pipeline, and the man who ran it.

  The logs had all been delivered to the timber yard in north-east London by mid-afternoon, no small feat consider
ing the state of the capital’s traffic, and had been stacked in no apparent order in the open-sided shed. Since then Dudley and Insley had been watching them from the upstairs room of an empty terraced house some seventy yards away.

  ‘We’ve got another corner,’ Insley reported.

  Dudley took one last look at the lighted windows, and walked across to grab the proffered earpiece.

  ‘It was a good save,’ Insley explained, as they waited for Anderton to take it.

  At that moment they were beeped.

  ‘Fuck,’ Dudley growled, grabbing the handset.

  ‘The fax is coming in,’ a voice told him.

  There was a pause, and in the background Dudley could hear the groan of the crowd. They were even listening in the communications room!

  ‘Five names,’ the voice said. ‘They all look Turkish. Beeper numbers and times. Amounts. Christ, there must be about two tons of the stuff in those logs.’

  ‘Did Six get their source?’ Dudley asked out of curiosity.

  ‘Yeah. The one they were expecting.’

  ‘Well, that should cheer the bastards up.’

  In the suite occupied by the British Consulate on the fourth floor of the Swissbank building in Panama City the English contingent were gathered round a borrowed portable, willing the half-time whistle to blow. David Shepreth was probably the least involved of the spectators, and it was with no great reluctance that he deserted the TV to take the incoming message from London. It was brief and to the point, containing nothing more than the source number of the fax which had just been received by the London timber-yard office.

  He placed it on the desk in front of him and punched out a number on the phone. Somehow he doubted whether the American Embassy would have closed down for Euro 96.

  It hadn’t, and a few seconds later he was talking to Neil Sadler, the head of the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s Panama Field Office. He didn’t know Sadler anything like as well as his opposite number in Mexico City, but they had a relationship of sorts and Shepreth was curious to see what reasons the other man would eventually come up with for refusing his request.