But … but like I said earlier, the seat belt wasn’t faulty! It was a lie! I lied. I even double-checked, remember? That’s the God’s Honest …

Or … or …?

(Dirty chuckle from Benny Hill.)

Did I …?

Did she …?

Did we actually just …?

BRAKE, RUSTY, YOU DAMN FOOL!

BRAKE, MAN, BRAKE!

Oh God, what the hell have you … I … we … us … me … we … you …?

23

Mr Franklin D. Huff

I was trained how to fall by the Vaqueros. This was pre-Tlateloco. Late 1967 or thereabouts. An entire month of riding and falling. All this to pad out a photo-story for the National Geographic which ultimately didn’t run (kind apologies from the editor – a tiny kill fee). Nothing wrong with the words, but the pictures were disappointing. Kimberly was off her game. Second month of pregnancy. Then the miscarriage. But I learned how to fall from the Vaqueros. And God only knows it came in handy. I’ve certainly done a fair old bit of it since then.

In fact, the editor who killed the piece was the same man who later put me in touch with Winston Scott (was it merely out of guilt or by design? I now wonder). Scott – former CIA Mexico City Bureau Chief – was writing his memoirs and needed someone ‘in the know’ to tidy them up a bit. But was that generous National Geographic assignment (which landed in Kim’s lap, quite out of the blue – a virtual Gift From God) merely part of some coordinated attempt to banjax my bumbling investigations into the pre-1968-Olympic socio-economic meltdown? I’d written several pieces for the English press about President Ordaz’s government’s brutal suppression of Mexican farmers and the independent labour unions. Now he’d set his sights on those poor students …

There are still no firm statistics on the number of people who died that day. But I saw with my own eyes the bodies piled up high on the pavements. How they just bundled them – like so much garbage – into the back of their trucks and sped off.

Strange that we should suddenly receive that call – just as things were really starting to hot up in Mexico City – to spend a month getting saddle-sore in the back of beyond. If I recall correctly, it was Kimberly who convinced me to take the commission. We were a team. She desperately wanted me with her on that job. I did it for her – against my better judgement. I did it for us.

Do I suspect Kim, too?

Yes.

No.

God. Who don’t I suspect?

(I barely even trust my devout Catholic housemaid, Juana. I’d do anything for her. She knows that. Anything. But I’ve still been known to carefully count every teabag left in the tin, just to be sure.)

Once burned, twice shy.

Scott was noxious and paranoid. He and I had history. It was Scott – he later confessed this to me in one of his many late-night drink-fuelled rants – who came up with the spiel about Chinese rifles being used at the Tlateloco massacre. My source had seemed legit. A social worker called Juan Manuel Reyes Vargas whose brother Paulino was in the military. And I ran with it. Oh, how I ran with it! Even though – perhaps even because – everything I had discovered under my own steam (the fruits of my own messy observations), added up to something entirely at odds with this theory.