Werner nodded. The guitar player was still singing the catchy melody:

… Christ on your hill, on the mountain ridge of Cubilete, Console those who suffer, you're worshipped by the people, Christ on your hill, on the mountain ridge of Cubilete.

'It's a popular song,' said Werner. 'Did you know that the Cubilete is a mountain ridge shaped like a dice-cup? But why is life worth nothing?'

'It means life is cheap,' I said. The song is about the way that people are killed for nothing in this part of the world.'

'By the way,' said Werner, 'if you could let us have the return air fares you mentioned, I'd appreciate it.'

'Sure,' I said. 'I can do that on my own authority. Two first-class air tickets Berlin to Mexico City and return. I'll give you a voucher that any big airline will cash.'

'It would be useful,' said Werner. 'The peso is cheap but we get through a lot of money one way and the other.'

7

It was still night when we got to Santiago, but there was enough moonlight to see that Biedermann's gate was locked. I noticed that a new chain had been found to replace the one that had been sawn through on my previous visit. There was no response to pressing the button of the speaker-phone.

'If that bastard doesn't turn up…' I said and kicked the gate.

'Calm down,' said Werner. 'We're early. Let's stroll along the beach.'

We left Werner's pick-up truck at the entrance and walked to the beach to watch the ocean. The storms had cleared and the weather was calm, but close-to the noise of the ocean was thunderous. The waves hitting the beach exploded across the sand in great galaxies of sparkling phosphorescence. Everywhere the coast was littered with flotsam: broken pieces of timber from boats and huts and limbs of trees torn apart by the great winds.

Over the salty putrefaction that is the smell of the ocean there came a whiff of woodsmoke. Along the water's edge, at the place where a piece of jungly undergrowth came almost to the sand, there was a flickering light of a fire. Werner and I walked along to see it, and round the corner of the rocks we saw blanketed shapes huddled around a dying fire.

Here in the shelter of the rocks and vegetation there was less noise from the sea but I could feel the pounding surf underfoot and there was spray in the air that made beads of moisture on my spectacles.

Nearer to the fire, perched with his back against a rock, there was a man. Now and then the fire flared enough to show his bearded face and the hair tied in a pony-tail. He was a muscular youth, darkly tanned, wearing old swimming trunks and a clean T-shirt that was too small for him. He was smoking and staring into the fire. He seemed not to see us until we were almost on top of him.

'Who's that?' he called in English. His voice was high-pitched; he sounded nervous.

'We live near by,' I said. 'We're going out fishing. We're waiting for the boat.'

There was a snuffling sound coming from one of the huddled shapes. At first it was a soft warbling muffled by the blankets. 'Shut up, Betty,' said the bearded man. But the sound didn't cease. It became more nasal, almost stertorous, until it was recognizably a girl sobbing. 'Shut up, I say. There are people here. Try and go back to sleep.' The bearded boy inhaled deeply on his cigarette. There was the sweet smell of marijuana smoke in the air.

But the girl sat up. She was about eighteen years old, pretty if you made allowances for the spots on her face that might have been a sign of adolescence or bad diet. Her hair was cut short, shorter in fact than that of the bearded man. As the blanket fell away from her shoulders I could see that she was wearing only a bra. Her body was badly sunburned. She stopped sobbing and wiped the tears from her eyes with her fingertips. 'Have you got a cigarette?' she asked me. 'An American cigarette?'

I offered her my packet. 'Can I take two?' she whispered.

'Keep the packet,' I said. 'I'm trying to give it up.'

She lit the cigarette immediately and passed the packet to the bearded boy who used the joint he'd been smoking to light up a Camel instead. Behind him one of the other sleepers moved. I had the feeling that all of them were awake and listening to us.

'Have you just arrived?' I said. 'I don't remember you being here last week.'

The boy seemed to feel that some explanation was necessary. 'There were seven of us, four guys and three girls.' He leaned forward and used a piece of wood to prod the fire. There were tiny burned fragments of unprocessed film there and the boy prodded them into the ashes until they burned. 'We met and got together waiting for a bus way north of here in Mazatlan. We're back-packing along the coast, and heading down towards Acapulco. But one of the guys – Theo – slept under a manzanillo tree the night before last, and the sap is poisonous. That was at our previous camp, a long way up the coast from here. We made good mileage since then. But Theo was shook. He cut away inland to look for a clinic.' The bearded boy rubbed his arm where the dark suntan was made even darker by a long stain of iodine that had treated a bad cut on his forearm.

'Have you seen a power boat in the last few hours?' I asked.

'Sure,' said the bearded boy. 'It's anchored on the other side of the headland. We were watching it this afternoon. It's a ritzy son of a bitch. Is that the one you're going on? She came up the coast and tried to get into the little pier, but I guess the tide was wrong or something because finally they had to use the dinghy to land a couple of guys.' He turned his head to look at the waves striking the beach. They came racing towards us, making a huge, shimmering sheet of polished steel until the water lost its impetus and sank into the darkened sand.

'We haven't seen her yet,' I said. 'A good boat, is it?'

'That boat's a ship, man,' he said. 'What are you going after – marlin or sailfish or something?'

'We're after anything that's out there,' I said. 'Are you hiking all the way?'

'We thumb a ride now and again. And twice we took a Mexican second-class bus, but along this piece of coast the highway runs too far inland. We like to keep near the ocean. We like to swim, and catching fish to eat saves dough. But it's heavy going along this section. We've chopped our way through for the last five miles or so.'

They were all obviously awake now, all six of them. But they remained very still so that they heard everything being said. I could see that they'd made a little encampment here in the shelter of a rocky outcrop. There were seven back-packs perched up on the rocks and kept fastened against rats and monkeys. Someone had tried to build a palapas, the hut that local people make as a temporary shelter using the coconut palms. But making them was not so easy as it looks, and this one had fallen to pieces. The wood framework had collapsed at one end, and split palm fronds were scattered across the beach. Laundry was hanging to dry on some bushes: a man's T-shirt, a pair of jeans and underpants. A yellow plastic jug was rigged up in a tree to make a shower bath. Two tin plates were bent almost double.

'Someone's tried to eat their plate,' I said.

'Yeah,' said the bearded boy. 'We tried to dig a well without a spade. It's tough going. There's no water here. We'll have to move on tomorrow.'

'Where will you meet your friend?' I said.

The boy looked at me long enough to let me know I was asking too many questions, but he answered. 'Theo decided to head back home. He left his back-pack with us. He didn't want to go on down to Acapulco.'

'That's tough,' I said.

'Those manzanillo trees really burn a piece out of you, man.'