‘Oh, fine,’ I grit my teeth, ‘just shoot me now.’

Duval chuckles. ‘Not plan A but I might reconsider depending on how much of a pain in the ass you are.’

Nauseous, I hold on to the edge of the cot. Fainting once is excusable, fainting again, particularly in front of Duval, would be downright humiliating.

‘Put your head between your knees,’ he suggests, kneading his fingers up and down the flesh as though making home-made bread. The feeling of unreality is overwhelming. What time is it? What would the children be up to? Would Candy and Sharleen be bouncing off the walls? I try to picture Robert sitting in some legal office in Geneva, bored, tapping his leg while the lawyers pore over the legal minutiae of trust documents. By the time my head clears Sanchez has left and Duval is slowly winding a bandage round my leg.

‘Here,’ he hands me a mug, ‘drink this.’

‘What is it?’

‘Tea.’

I sniff it. ‘I hate tea.’

‘Don’t be so ungrateful.’

‘What happened to good old-fashioned whiskey?’

‘This isn’t High Chaparral. The tea has sugar in it.’

I take a few sips. He’s right. It’s thick with sugar, and its milky warmth is strangely comforting. The fire in my leg begins to subside and I remember for the first time why I came.

‘What are you running here? You, Winfred, the workers? A drug-smuggling operation?’

‘Living in these conditions?’ Duval looks amused. ‘I can’t be very good at it, if that’s the case.’ He finishes with the bandage and tucks the edges in.

‘So it is people then,’ I say flatly, and the feeling of disappointment is almost crushing. I hadn’t wanted to believe it of him but it’s the only explanation. Bringing Mexicans over the border, moving them through the town. Men slipping in and out of the clothes left by the workers before them, using the building project as a cover before disappearing on and up into the north.

‘You’re a coyote,’ I say hollowly.

Duval scratches his stubble and adopts a drawl. ‘Well, what with the increase of upwardly mobile immigrants, we in the coyote business prefer to be called guides.’

I look at him in disgust. ‘You trade in people. You make money out of their misery.’

‘And you, I presume, armed with self-righteous zeal, have taken it upon yourself to come up here and stop me?’ He unzips the top of my backpack and takes out the contents. ‘You’re not exactly well equipped for a citizen’s arrest, are you? One bottle of water, inadequate. One plastic compass, useless. One penknife, blunt. One map, tourist, and let’s see . . .’ he digs down to the bottom, ‘one Powerbar. “Made with love and soya”,’ he reads off the back. ‘Personally, I’d be tempted to shoot someone who offered me love and soya in the same sentence.’