He took out his phone and checked the location of Milton’s tracker once more. The flashing red dot had stopped moving fifteen minutes earlier, and Chase had hurried upward until he had reached his present vantage. He put the phone away, aware that the lit screen would be visible to anyone who might be standing sentry, and watched the street again. He was on Carrera 50, one of the main arteries of this part of the district. It was a two-lane road that wound left and right as it clambered up the side of the hill, eventually reaching the top. The buildings had been constructed on levelled-off slabs, each one taller than its predecessor, with the effect that they looked as if they were an ascending series of steps. Chase was standing in the lee of the buildings that bent around to the right, following the turn of the road. They looked as if they were residential, with concrete stairs offering access to front doors. The windows were barred, and thick lattices of telephone and electricity cables stretched between wooden poles. He watched as a green and white municipal bus rolled around the corner and descended the slope.

The building over which the red dot had settled was on the outside of the right-hand turn, fifty feet away. It was a three-storey concrete structure that looked as if it had been dropped into the neighbourhood. Its neighbours looked insubstantial by comparison, their pitched wood and tin roofs flimsy when stood against the brutal grey box. It looked like it might have been chosen for its defensive qualities: its bulk, the miserly windows, its position on the apex of the corner allowing clear lines of sight both up and down the hill. It put Chase in mind of the castles in the stories that his father had read to him as a child.

The thought of his father restored his focus. He was here because of him. The woman who was responsible for his murder was inside the building. She was close.

Another bus rumbled up from behind him, hydraulics wheezing as the platform lowered to allow a passenger to disembark. Chase glanced up at it and stared into the curious faces of locals who were heading up the hill after, he presumed, finishing late shifts at work. They stared at him as the bus pulled away, and he was reminded of the fact that this was not the sort of place where one would find a gringo, especially not as late at night as this.

He needed to get off the street.