Days of the Dead

‘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 later 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?’