not been produced.’
‘They’ve probably lost them,’ Isabel said scornfully.
‘I doubt it,’ Giorgio said. ‘They may not be very good at fighting other soldiers, but they know how to keep records.’
‘The Eichmann syndrome,’ Docherty murmured.
‘Something like that. A lot of people have claimed that the military kept meticulous records of each and every person they tortured and killed.’
They all sat silent for a few seconds. All these years on, it was still hard to accept the enormity of what had happened.
‘Anyway,’ Rosa said, ‘the other thing that happened was that the graves started coming to light. A group of young people calling themselves forensic anthropologists have started digging in many of the rumoured locations, and they’ve already found several mass graves. One of them was outside Rosario, and I think that was what set Gustavo off. From what I can gather, both he and Eva have been busy pretending that they never had a son for most of the past twenty years, but the discovery of that grave…’ She sighed. ‘And then there’s the fact that he’s dying himself. Some sort of cancer, and I don’t think he’s expected to last many more months.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘But whatever his reasons – mostly guilt, I suppose – he seems hell bent on making up for lost time. Over the last year – and much to his daughters’ annoyance, I might add – he’s spent a small fortune trying to find out why Guillermo was arrested and what happened to him. It’s become an obsession. He has to know.’
Docherty looked at Isabel, whose face in the shadows seemed drawn with pain, and he knew that she was reliving the traumas of her own arrest and torture, the loss of so many friends. For her sake he wanted to leave the surface of the past undisturbed. ‘Death will heal the man’s need to know,’ he said, the words sounding harsher than he intended.
Isabel looked up at him. ‘What does he want from Jamie?’ she asked.
‘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
