The second book in the Bernard Samson series, 1984

Thanks are due to the following for permission to quote lines from 'Bye-Bye Blackbird':

The Remick Music Corporation, New York and Detroit, and E.M.I. Music Publishing, London. Copyright © 1926, 1948

'Some of these people want to get killed,' said Dicky Cruyer, as he jabbed the brake pedal to avoid hitting a newsboy. The kid grinned as he slid between the slowly moving cars, flourishing his newspapers with the controlled abandon of a fan dancer. 'Six Face Firing Squad'; the headlines were huge and shiny black. 'Hurricane Threatens Veracruz.' A smudgy photo of street fighting in San Salvador covered the whole front of a tabloid.

It was late afternoon. The streets shone with that curiously bright shadowless light that precedes a storm. All six lanes of traffic crawling along the Insurgentes halted, and more newsboys danced into the road, together with a woman selling flowers and a kid with lottery tickets trailing from a roll like toilet paper.

Picking his way between the cars came a handsome man in old jeans and checked shirt. He was accompanied by a small child. The man had a Coca Cola bottle in his fist. He swigged at it and then tilted his head back again, looking up into the heavens. He stood erect and immobile, like a bronze statue, before igniting his breath so that a great ball of fire burst from his mouth.

'Bloody hell!' said Dicky. 'That's dangerous.'

'It's a living,' I said. I'd seen the fire-eaters before. There was always one of them performing somewhere in the big traffic jams. I switched on the car radio but electricity in the air blotted out the music with the sounds of static. It was very hot. I opened the window but the sudden stink of diesel fumes made me close it again. I held my hand against the air-conditioning outlet but the air was warm.

Again the fire-eater blew a huge orange balloon of flame into the air.

'For us,' explained Dicky. 'Dangerous for people in the cars. Flames like that, with all these petrol fumes… can you imagine?' There was a slow roll of thunder. 'If only it would rain,' said Dicky. I looked at the sky, the low black clouds trimmed with gold. The huge sun was coloured bright red by the city's ever-present blanket of smog, and squeezed tight between the glass buildings that dripped with its light.

'Who got this car for us?' I said. A motorcycle, its pillion piled high with cases of beer, weaved precariously between the cars, narrowly missing the flower seller.

'One of the embassy people,' said Dicky. He released the brake and the big blue Chevrolet rolled forward a few feet and then all the traffic stopped again. In any town north of the border this factory-fresh car would not have drawn a second glance. But Mexico City is the place old cars go to die. Most of those around us were dented and rusty, or they were crudely repainted in bright primary colours. 'A friend of mine lent it to us.'

'I might have guessed,' I said.

'It was short notice. They didn't know we were coming until the day before yesterday. Henry Tiptree – the one who met us at the airport – let us have it. It was a special favour because I knew him at Oxford.'

'I wish you hadn't known him at Oxford; then we could have rented one from Hertz – with air-conditioning that worked.'

'So what can we do…' said Dicky irritably '… take it back and tell him it's not good enough for us?'

We watched the fire-eater blow another balloon of flame while the small boy hurried from driver to driver, collecting a peso here and there for his father's performance.

Dicky took some Mexican coins from the slash pocket of his denim jacket and gave them to the child. It was Dicky's faded work suit, his cowboy boots and curly hair that had attracted the attention of the tough-looking woman immigration officer at Mexico City airport. It was only the first-class labels on his expensive baggage, and the fast talking of Dicky's Counsellor friend from the embassy, that saved him from the indignity of a body search.

Dicky Cruyer was a curious mixture of scholarship and ruthless ambition, but he was insensitive, and this was often his undoing. His insensitivity to people, place and atmosphere could make him seem a clown instead of the cool sophisticate that was his own image of himself. But that didn't make him any less terrifying as friend or foe.

The flower seller bent down, tapped on the window glass and waved at Dicky. He shouted 'Vamos!' It was almost impossible to see her face behind the unwieldy armful of flowers. Here were blossoms of all colours, shapes and sizes. Flowers for weddings and flowers for dinner hostesses, flowers for mistresses and flowers for suspicious wives.

The traffic began moving again. Dicky shouted 'Vamos!' much louder.

The woman saw me reaching into my pocket for money and separated a dozen long-stemmed pink roses from the less expensive marigolds and asters. 'Maybe some flowers would be something to give to Werner's wife,' I said.

Dicky ignored my suggestion. 'Get out of the way,' he shouted at the old woman, and the car leaped forward. The old woman jumped clear.

'Take it easy, Dicky, you nearly knocked her over.'

'Vamos! I told her; vamos. They shouldn't be in the road. Are they all crazy? She heard me all right.'

'Vamos means "Okay, let's go",' I said. 'She thought you wanted to buy some.'

'In Mexico it also means scram,' said Dicky driving up close to a white VW bus in front of us. It was full of people and boxes of tomatoes, and its dented bodywork was caked with mud in the way that cars become when they venture on to country roads at this rainy time of year. Its exhaust-pipe was newly bound up with wire, and the rear panel was removed to help cool the engine. The sound of its fan made a very loud whine so that Dicky had to speak loudly to make himself heard. 'Vamos; scram. They say it in cowboy films.'

'Maybe she doesn't go to cowboy films,' I said.

'Just keep looking at the street map.'

'It's not a street map; it's just a map. It only shows the main streets.'

'We'll find it all right. It's off the Insurgentes.'

'Do you know how big Mexico City is? The Insurgentes is about thirty-five miles long,' I said.

'You look on your side and I'll look this side. Volkmann said it's in the centre of town.' He stuffed. 'Mexico, they call it. No one here says "Mexico City". They call the town Mexico.'

I didn't answer; I put away the little coloured town plan and stared out at the crowded streets. I was quite happy to be driven round the town for an hour or two if that's what Dicky wanted.

Dicky said, "Somewhere in the centre of town" would mean the Paseo de la Reforma near the column with the golden angel. At least that's what it would mean to any tourist coming here for the first time. And Werner Volkmann and his wife Zena are here for the first time. Right?'

'Werner said it was going to be a second honeymoon.'

'With Zena I would have thought one honeymoon would be enough,' said Dicky.

'More than enough,' I said.

Dicky said, 'I'll kill your bloody Werner if he's brought us out from London on a wild-goose chase.'

'It's a break from the office,' I said. Werner had become my Werner I noticed and would remain so if things went wrong.

'For you it is,' said Dicky. 'You've got nothing to lose. Your desk will be waiting for you when you get back. But there's a dozen people in that building scrambling round for my job. This will give Bret just the chance he needs to take over my work. You realize that, don't you?'