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a bit of trouble, you know, back in Vancouver. Dad told me best thing to do would be to lie low for a few months, you know, for it to blow over.’
    ‘For what to blow over?’
    Kieran took a bite into his cheese empanada and spat it out again just as quickly.
    ‘There’s fuckin’ meat in here! I told him I was a vegetarian. Fuckin’ loser!’
    Kieran passed me his packets of empanada flypaper.
    ‘Fuckin’ South America!’
    In sympathy I waited for my empanadas to cool a little more.
    ‘What trouble?’ I asked him.
    ‘Oh, the usual.’
    ‘I’ve never been in trouble.’
    ‘You stick with me, we’ll have an awesome time.’
    I tried to envisage what we looked like, two young men sitting on a bench at one o’clock in the morning with lousy empanadas, staring at the lights, thinking about tomorrow. I don’t think we looked like we were having an awesome time, as Kieran had put it. I think we looked like we didn’t have a clue.
    ‘ What trouble?’ I asked again.
    ‘ You really wanna know, huh?’
    ‘ Yes. I’m…interested. I won’t tell anyone, Kieran –‘
    He put his head between his legs and took a deep breath.
    ‘ I was arrested. For dealing a little bit of grass, you know, nothing big, just a bit here and a bit there, nothing fancy.’
    ‘ Still not legal in Vancouver then?’
    ‘ Nope. And they found some coke on me too, which really fucked me up. That’s when dad had to get in the hotshot lawyers to say I was having a nervous breakdown, that I’d undergo treatment at a clinic in Europe, that sort of shit.’
    ‘ But they went for it?’
    ‘ Yup. They surely did. Right now, Ryan, I’m meant to be at a facility somewhere in the Swiss fuckin’ Alps, walking round like a frickin’ Moonie.’
    Kieran had such an unusual expression on his face that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, and I thought he was going to hit me but then he put his arm round me and laughed even louder.
    ‘ I like you Ryan’, he said. ‘You’re good-looking, for a man.’
    ‘ You too.’
    ‘ We need to get ourselves laid by two pretty girls, wouldn’t you say?’
    ‘ I agree.’
    We looked around the square. A fat old woman, about four feet tall, waddled out of an alleyway and crossed the square not far from us.
    ‘ You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?’ asked Kieran.
    ‘ Well, she is the perfect height’, I said in our redneck accent.
    We both started to chuckle and then I got out the bottle of aguardiente I’d stolen from the bar where we got our empanadas.

4
    Honesto

    A few days after the hit, Suares called Juan Andres Montero Garcia to the eleventh floor for a meeting. The two men sat at one end of the rectangular room, Juan Andres on the black leather sofa, hands clasped, head down, Suares in his tall black swivel chair, arms folded.
    ‘You are troubled by recent events, yes, Juan Andres?’
    ‘Of course I am. When I think of Pepe – ‘
    ‘Pepe did not follow procedure. That is why he was killed.’
    ‘Do we know who killed him?’ asked Juan Andres.
    Suares shrugged, as if to say it could have been any one of a hundred individuals or organizations.
    ‘ I would have called in, Mr Suares, but I didn’t know Pepe was going to buy such an expensive car. I knew he couldn’t have the money for it. I knew –‘
    ‘ Listen to me, Juan Andres. There is no point being clever about this or trying to analyse what he knew or what you think you know. Sometimes there are no answers. This is Colombia, not Disneyland.’
    ‘ Yes sir.’
    ‘ We have all lost people close to us. You have already lost your father.’
    ‘ Mr Suares?’
    Suares’s eyes lost their iciness and his arms slid gently to his sides.
    ‘ I also lost my father, Juan Andres. It was a terrible experience, the worst thing that could have happened to my family.’
    ‘ I’m sorry, sir.’
    ‘ My mother tried to kill herself. Just like he was killed. With a knife, by three of his compatriots, three men who had given up their