Pause. ‘Enough.’

‘And they’re local?’

‘Mostly.’

‘And they’re good?’

Duval reaches for his hat and puts it on, giving it a quick anti-clockwise turn, the way everyone does round here, as though important to screw it directly into the scalp in case of high wind or a rogue bird swooping down to snatch it off.

‘Why don’t we go down to the town and you can see for yourself.’

I choke on my coffee. ‘Now?’

‘Now,’ he says.

Men are swarming in and out of the bunkhouse, stripping the place clean like an army of red ants. One by one they push through the screen door carrying animal skins, galvanized buckets of stones, armfuls of cans and dismembered sections of rusted boiler. I count fifteen workers, the older men dressed in plaid shirts buttoned over jeans and slant-heeled cowboy boots, the younger men in faded sweatshirts, trainers and baseball hats.

They’re all Mexican, every one of them.

A boy no more than sixteen, with an angry red birthmark on the side of his neck, looks up as we approach. One or two others also glance in our direction but Duval shouts something in Spanish and they quickly look away, dumping their loads on the ground before heading once again back into the house. Duval watches the activity through narrowed eyes.

‘Isn’t it a little unusual to put men on a job before you’ve met the client?’ I ask him.

Pause. ‘Benjamín said you were in a hurry.’

‘Well yes,’ I concede. ‘But how do you know I haven’t contracted somebody else to do the work?’

Pause. ‘I can have these men cleared out of here in ten minutes flat, ma’am.’

‘Alice,’ I correct vaguely, still playing for time. Short of a total miscommunication from Benjamín it’s bizarre that Duval should have brought his men here and just started work. Bizarre and stunningly presumptuous, as though the idea that I might want to ask for references or get him to formally tender a bid was ludicrously nit-picky. Nevertheless the men were here. Moreover the figure I’d written down was 20 per cent less than the Tucson company had quoted for the job.

‘Are they the same lot that worked on the town originally?’

‘They’re a good crew.’

‘I’m sure they are, but are they ... I mean can th—’

‘Between them they can supply everything you need, from finished carpentry to roofing.’

‘They’re all Mexican.’

As I’m presumably stating the obvious, Duval makes no answer.

‘So how would it work? Who would my contract be with?’

‘You pay me, I pay them. Simple.’