“Are you ready?” he asked her.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

Delores kept them waiting for fifteen minutes and, when she eventually made her way across the busy restaurant to them, she did so with a crippling insecurity and a look of the sheerest fright on her face. She was a small, slight girl, surely much younger than the twenty years she had claimed when they were chatting earlier. Caterina would have guessed at fourteen or fifteen; a waif. She was slender and flat chested, florid acne marked her face and she walked with a slight, but discernible, limp. She was dressed in a maquiladora uniform: cheap, faded jeans that had been patched several times, a plain shirt, a crucifix around her neck. Caterina smiled broadly as she neared but the girl’s face did not break free of its grim cast.

“I’m Caterina,” she said, getting up and holding out her hand.

“Delores,” she said, quietly. Her grip was limp and damp.

“This is my colleague, Leon.”

Leon shook her hand, too, then pulled a chair out and pushed it gently back as Delores rather reluctantly sat.

“Can I order you a drink? A glass of water?”

“No, thank you.” She looked around the room, nervous, like a rabbit after it has sensed the approach of a hawk. “You weren’t followed?”

“No,” Caterina said, smiling broadly, trying to reassure the girl. “And we’ll be fine here. It’s busy. Three friends having a meal and a talk. Alright?”

“I’m sorry, but if you think a busy restaurant would stop them if they had a mind to kill you, then you are more naïve than you think.”

“I’m sorry,” Caterina said. “I didn’t mean to be dismissive. You’re right.”

“Caterina and I have been working to publicise the cartels for two years,” Leon said. “We know what they are capable of but you are safe with us tonight. They do not know our faces.”

Delores flinched as the waiter came to take their orders. Caterina asked for two beers, a glass of orange juice and a selection of appetisers — tostadas, cheese-stuffed jalapenos, enchilada meatballs and nachos — and sent him away. She took out her notebook and scrabbled around in her handbag for a Biro. She found one and then her Dictaphone. She took it out and laid it on the table between them.

“Do you mind?” she asked. “It’s good to have a record.”

Delores shook her head. “But no photographs.”

“Of course not. Let’s get started.”

12

Lieutenant Jesus Plato decided that the two gringo college boys needed to cool their heels for the night. They were becoming boisterous and disruptive when he brought them back to the station to book them, and so, to make a point, he decided to delay the fine he had decided to give them until tomorrow. They could spend the night in the drunk tank with the junkies, the tweakers and the boozers; he was confident that they would be suitably apologetic when he returned in the morning. And, besides, he did not particularly want to go to the effort of writing them up tonight. He was tired and he had promised Alameda and Sanchez that he would go out with them for something to eat. The meal was a self-justifying camouflage, of course; the real purpose was to go out and get drunk, and he had no doubt that they would end up on the banks of the Rio Bravo, drinking tins of Tecate and throwing the empties into what passed for the river around here. Plato had been on the dusty street all day, more or less; he certainly had a thirst.

His shift had been straightforward after booking the two boys. He had pulled over a rental car driven by a fat American, sweating profusely through layers of fat and the synthetic fibres of his Spurs basketball shirt, a pimpled teen beauty in the seat next to him with her slender hand on his flabby knee. A warning from Plato was all it took for him to reach over and open the door, banishing the girl as he cursed the end of the evening that he had planned. The girl swore at Plato, her promised twenty bucks going up in smoke, but she had relented by the time he bought her a Happy Meal at the drive-thru on the way home. He had finished up by writing tickets for the youngsters racing their souped-up Toyota Camrys and VW Golfs, tricked-out with bulbous hubcaps and tweaked engines, low-slung so that the chassis drew sparks from the asphalt. They, too, had cursed him, an obligatory response that he had ignored. They had spun their wheels as he drove off, melting the rubber into the road, and he had ignored that, too.

Captain Alameda waved him across to his office.

“Your last week, compadre,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

“How was today?”

“Quiet, for a change. Couple of drunk gringo kids. Thought a couple of hundred bucks would persuade me to let them off.”

“They picked the wrong man, then. Where are they?”

“In the cells. I’ll see if they’ve found some manners tomorrow.”

“You heard about what happened at Samalayuca?”

“Just over the radio. What was it?”

“Six men. They didn’t even bother to bury them. Shot them and left them out in the desert for the vultures.”

“Six? Mierda. We know who they are?”

“American passports. The Federales will look into it.”

Plato slumped into the seat opposite the desk.

“Jesus?”

“I’m fine,” he sighed. “Just tired is all. How is it here?”

“Twenty-eight no-shows today. Worst so far.”

Plato knew the reason; everyone did. Three weeks ago, a wreath had been left on the memorial outside police headquarters on Valle Del Cedro avenue. A flap of cardboard, torn from a box, had been fastened around the memorial with chicken wire. It was a notice, and, written on it, were two lists. The first, headed by FOR THOSE WHO DID NOT BELIEVE, contained the names of the fifteen police officers who had been slain by the cartels since the turn of the year. The second, FOR THOSE WHO CONTINUE WITHOUT BELIEVING, listed another twenty men. That section ended with another message: THANK YOU FOR WAITING. The wreath and the notice had been removed as quickly as they had been found but not before someone had snapped them with their smartphone and posted it on Facebook.

The press got hold of it and then everyone knew.

It had terrified the men.

“Twenty on long-term sick now. Stress. Another fifteen won’t go out on patrol. It’s not safe, apparently.”

“Ten men for the whole district, then?”

“Nine.”

“Hijo de puta.”

“Halfway to last year’s murders and it’s only just turned Easter. You’re getting out at the right time, compadre.”

“Feels like I’m abandoning you.”

Alameda chuckled. “You’ve done your time, Jesus. If I see you here next week I’ll arrest you myself.”

“What about you?”

“If a transfer came up? I’d probably take it.”

“If not?”

“What else can I do? Just keep my head down and hope for the best.”

Plato nodded. It was depressing. There was a lot of guilt. He couldn’t deny that. But, and not for the first time, he was grateful his time was up.

“You ready for that beer?” Alameda asked.

“Let me get changed. Ten minutes?”

“I’ll get Sanchez and see you outside.”

Plato went into the locker room and took off his uniform, tracing his finger across the stencilled POLICIA MUNICIPAL that denoted him as a member of the municipio, the local police force that was — laughably, he thought — charged with preventing crime. There was no time to be doing any of that, not when there was always another murder to attend to, another abduction, and then the flotsam and jetsam like the two drunken college boys from this afternoon. Prevention. That was a fine word, but not one that he recognised any more. He had once, perhaps, but not for many years.

The cartels had seen to that.

He clocked out, collected his leather jacket from the locker room and followed Alameda and Sanchez to the restaurant.