She had no schematic of the building’s interior, but made her best guestimate of the layout based on what she could see of the rough, L-shaped block. The door through which the two wandering guards, the smoker and the soccer expert, sometimes appeared undoubtedly led into the facility’s reception area. Caitlin couldn’t make out any details through the windows at that end of the building, but the fact that the windows were glass and unsecured told her there were no cells behind them. There might be an open-plan office perhaps, like a detectives’ bullpen. There might be a warren of rooms. But the cells where she would find Lupérico were undoubtedly at the other end of the structure. There, small, mean windows – just holes in the adobe no larger than a man’s head, all of them barred by iron grilles – looked out over a motor pool. Two of the vehicles there were civilian, but Caitlin noted an ancient-looking police car from the building’s previous life. The rust-streaked sedan had sunk down on deflated tyres and a thick bed of weeds. It obviously hadn’t moved in years.

As she took another sip of water, a new player appeared. His uniform was neat, and he moved with purpose and some grace. A thin man with a widow’s peak on a high forehead, he barked a few commands at the two guards on the front veranda. They scrambled from their chairs, one almost falling over as he lost his balance. Caitlin focused on the officer through her binoculars.

He was in an altogether different class from the men he was busy bossing around. She recognised the bearing of somebody used to giving orders and being obeyed, even feared. He lashed at his underlings with his voice, but never raised a hand in their direction. This guy was no former gang-banger, but he was a militia officer.

Ex-cop? Ex-military maybe?

She wondered if he was the facility’s commander or deputy. Or possibly an outsider come in to supervise the questioning of Ramón Lupérico.

She warned herself off personalising his back story. Just because Lupérico was important to her, it didn’t necessarily make him important to the regime in this part of the world. The fact that he’d ended up in this backwater, rather than being tortured by professionals down south at Puerto Belgrano, implied that the Seguridad had not clued in to Lupérico’s potential value.