her shoulder to read.
‘Guzmán and Marín are common names,’ Carmen’s mother said in a small voice, as if she was arguing with herself.
‘Not that common,’ Carmen said gently. ‘And Victoria Marín and Placida Guzmán together – it’s too much of a coincidence. It even says that Victoria is twenty-three, which would be right.’ She looked at her parents, both of whom seemed to have been suddenly aged by the news. ‘Don’t you understand?’ she said. ‘This means there’s hope.’
‘We understand,’ her father said, and the look in his eyes seemed to add: we’ve lost her once and now we’ll get the chance to lose her all over again.
Carmen felt like slapping them both. ‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked her father abruptly.
He looked at her for a moment. ‘Talk to the Chief of Police, I suppose, and get him to contact the police in Miami.’
‘Don’t you think you should go there yourself? I’ll come with you,’ she added – his English had never been good.
He shook his head. ‘The police in Miami are more likely to listen to a fellow-officer than a Colombian civilian.’
Which might well be true, she thought. ‘So will you call now?’
He smiled wryly. ‘He won’t be in his office.’
‘His home then.’
‘I don’t have his home number, and even if I did…Carmen, the newspaper article is a week old. Putting the man’s back up to save a few hours is not worth it.’
‘And we’re going to be late,’ his wife added, earrings finally in place.
‘You’re still going out?’
‘What do you expect us to do – spend the evening wringing our hands?’ her mother asked.
‘No, I suppose not, but…You will ring first thing in the morning?’
‘I’ll go and talk to him in person.’
‘Good.’ She felt relieved.
‘There’s food in the kitchen if you want some,’ her mother told her, and once they’d gone she toyed with a plate of warmed-up fish risotto for a while before deciding to head back into town.
On the bus she found her mind running through the events of that fateful August. The five young women, all from good families, all in their last year at college, had taken a picnic a few miles down the coast, in an area which had always hitherto been considered safe. In the early afternoon they had been seen by several other picnickers, as well as joggers and courting couples, but after four o’clock the record of sightings came to an end, and the party had not returned to the college that evening.
No suspicious groups or vehicles had been seen in the area, but when after several days the women had still failed to reappear the assumption had grown that a new guerrilla group must be holding them to ransom. Once two weeks had passed without any demand for money being received, the betting had shifted in favour of either some catastrophic and completely unfathomable accident or what seemed an equally improbable mass rape and murder.
Now it seemed likely that they had been in the hands of drug traffickers all this time. Placida was dead and Victoria was ‘unable to help’, whatever that might mean. Where were the other three, and what had their lives been like for the last two years?
The answer to the last question was too horrific to contemplate.
Victoria would know, Carmen thought, and she was more likely to talk to a friend than a gringo policeman. If her father didn’t get anywhere with his contacts, she decided, then she would go to Miami herself, with or without her parents’ blessing, and find out what had happened to Marysa.
Docherty and Isabel didn’t discover the reason for Rosa’s summons until three days after their arrival in Buenos Aires. On that Tuesday Docherty and Rosa’s husband, Giorgio, a second-generation immigrant of Italian descent, had driven to the university, where the media unit’s satellite link-up was being put to good use, showing England’s final group game against Holland in Euro 96. England outplayed the Dutch and Docherty, a true Scot, duly lamented the Auld Enemy’s victory. But as they drove home to Recoleta he had to admit that England seemed to be playing football these days, rather than just kicking it upfield and running after it like headless chickens.
The two men arrived back to find the children running riot in the house while their wives were preparing the ingredients for a barbecue on the patio. Rosa gave the task of igniting the charcoal to Giorgio, collected a bottle of chilled white wine from the fridge and poured glasses for the four of them on the patio table. ‘A toast,’ she said. ‘The future.’
They all drank. Here it comes, Docherty thought.
‘Though it’s the past I want to talk to you about,’ Rosa began carefully. Behind her the evening sun glinted on the waters of the River Plate estuary, and the panorama of Recoleta’s famous brightly coloured houses seemed like a child’s drawing. ‘I have something to ask you – you, Jamie, though of course it concerns Isabel too.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t even know if I should ask you, but I promised I would. And you can always say no.’
His SAS bosses used to say that, Docherty thought.
‘Do you remember Gustavo and Eva Macías?’ Rosa asked Isabel.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Gustavo was a close friend of my father. He and his family used to visit us quite often when I was a child.’
‘I do remember one friend of your father’s,’ Isabel said. ‘A tall man, stood very straight. He had a beard, I think.’
‘That’s him. He and Eva had three children – two daughters and one son. The son’s name was Guillermo – he was about three years younger than us, I think. I probably didn’t pay much attention to him, but I seem to remember he was nice enough.’ She took another sip of wine. ‘He was arrested by the Army in 1976 – he was a student at the university in Rosario – and never seen again. He wasn’t interested in politics, apparently, and no one knows why they took him away.’
‘Except the Army,’ her husband said drily.
‘True. But I’ll leave Gustavo and Eva to tell you the details, if you’re willing to talk to them.’
‘Why now?’ Docherty asked. ‘After so long.’
‘Two reasons, as far as I can see,’ Rosa said. ‘Are you two aware of what’s been going on here the past couple of years? With the Disappeared, I mean.’
‘Only vaguely.’
‘Well, basically, when Menem became President he made a few noises and sat back to wait for the whole business to just fade away. But it didn’t, the Mothers were still at his gates, and then for reasons best known to themselves, a few of the beasts broke ranks and started talking. The old Navy commander not only admitted that up to two thousand people had been dropped in the Atlantic, but even went into details – how those who’d been weakened by torture had to be helped on to the aircraft, and were then given sedatives by Navy doctors before being stripped and thrown
