LITMIR.BIZ

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tendency as the rickety vehicle rocked round a particularly hairpin bend, or swayed dangerously near the lip of some ravine, for the passengers and the driver to cross themselves devoutly.

      Rachel could sympathise with this evidence of devotion, but she couldn’t help wishing at the same time that the driver would keep both hands on the wheel.

      She could understand now why the hotel clerk had stared at her in horror when she had enquired about buses, and strongly advised her to hire a car instead. Apart from her concern about the cost, she had not been keen to accept his advice. From what little she had seen of the drivers in Bogota, most of them seemed to regard a car as a symbol of their machismo and behave accordingly, Rachel possessed a driving licence, but she doubted her ability to compete, and now that she had seen the standard of the road up to Asuncion, she was glad she had not tried. She tried to imagine meeting one of these buses on one of those bends, and shuddered inwardly.

      The window she was sitting beside was covered in dust, but she couldn’t really be sorry. At least she was being saved those stomach-turning glimpses of some of the valleys they had passed—a sheer rocky drop down to a wrinkled snake of a river. And snakes were another feature of the journey that she did not want to contemplate.

      This whole trip was madness. She knew that now. What the hell did she think she was doing charging up a mountainside in company with a religious maniac masquerading as a bus driver, several crates of chickens and a goat?

      She had seen the look of horrified disbelief come into the hotel clerk’s eyes when she had asked him which was the nearest town to Diablo, and the most direct means of getting there. He had done his level best to dissuade her, protesting that such places were not for the señorita. Then he had tried to persuade her to hire a car, but had made the basic mistake of pointing out that at least then she would be under the protection of the driver. Something in the way he had said this had needled Rachel unbearably.

      She had said clearly and coldly, ‘I can look after myself, thank you, Señor.’

      It had been a briefly satisfying moment, but he still thought she was mad. She had seen it in his face as he turned away to deal with another guest. And now she tended to agree with him. She had never sat on a more uncomfortable seat, and she doubted whether the bus itself had any springs. If she survived the journey, it would probably be as a hopeless cripple, she decided, as the base of her spine took another hammering.

      It had been easier than she expected to persuade the Arviles family that she intended to return to England immediately, in pursuit of the errant Mark. Isabel had been disappointed that she would not even spend a couple of days with them, and Rachel regretted the necessity of deceiving the girl. But she wondered secretly if the Señor and the Señora might not have been quietly relieved at her departure, or could they genuinely have wanted yet another English visitor upsetting the smooth tenor of their life? Certainly she could not have faulted their hospitality.

      She had tied a coloured handkerchief over her shoulder-length honey-coloured hair, and donned an enormous pair of sunglasses, but even so she knew that her fair hair and skin were attracting more attention than she desired from the mainly mestizo and Indian passengers, and she guessed that few tourists must travel by this route—particularly blonde, female English tourists.

      She wondered if Mark had taken the same frankly death-defying route before her, and had tried to put a few halting questions to the driver before they had set off, but he had stared at her uncomprehendingly, so she had given it up as a bad job.

      The bus seemed to be descending again, and slowly as well. Peering down the bus, Rachel could detect a huddle of buildings ahead of them, and guessed they had reached Asuncion.

      At first it seemed to bear a depressing resemblance to other small settlements they had passed along the way, with groups of tumbledown shacks lining a small rutted highway, but with a triumphant blast of its horn the bus wound along the road, avoiding groups of children and animals apparently attracted from the shack doorways to watch its passing, and turned into a large square. Here some attempt at least had been made to paint and generally refurbish the buildings and there was a small market in progress. Presumably this was the final destination of the chickens and the goat, Rachel decided, watching their descent from the bus without a sense of overwhelming regret. They had not been the quietest or the sweetest-smelling of travelling companions.

      As she alighted in her turn, she found the bus had stopped outside a building which seemed to be Asuncion’s sole hotel. She glanced up at its peeling façade rather doubtfully. It wouldn’t have been her first choice as an overnight stop, but beggars could not be choosers, and besides, there was an outside chance that Mark might have stayed there.

      The reception desk was deserted when she got there. Rachel set down her small suitcase and looked around, then rapped impatiently on the desk with her knuckles. Almost as if her action had been a secret signal, a roar of masculine laughter broke out quite close at hand. Rachel jumped, then relaxed, moving her aching shoulders experimentally.

      ‘I wish I could share the joke,’ she muttered crossly.

      Just then a door down the passage from the desk opened, and a man emerged. He paused before closing the door behind him and tossed a clearly jovial remark in Spanish over his shoulder, which was greeted with yet another burst of laughter. Then he spotted Rachel standing at the desk and his face changed in a moment, becoming both surprised and solemn.

      ’Señorita?’ His tone as he approached was civil, but Rachel felt she was being very thoroughly assessed, and that there was a strong element of disapproval in his assessment.

      She produced her phrase book, and began to laboriously recite a request for a room, but he waved the book aside.

      ‘I speak a little English. You are an inglesa, Señorita?’

      ‘Yes, I am.’ Relieved that she did not have to converse with him in her non-existent Spanish, Rachel smiled. ‘I’m trying to trace another inglese, Señor—a man. My brother,’ she added hastily for some reason she probably could not have defined.

      ‘He has been to Asuncion, this brother?’ The man watched her impassively.

      Rachel sighed. ‘I’m not sure. I think so.’

      He hesitated, then he reached for the hotel register and swung it round so that she could see it.

      ‘Look for yourself, señorita. No inglese has been here apart from yourself.’

      Rachel scanned swiftly down the list of names. It had occurred to her that Mark might have travelled under an assumed name, but she knew he would not have bothered to disguise his handwriting and none of the scrawls in the register bore the least resemblance to his signature. She felt almost sick with disappointment.

      ’turistas do not come here, señorita,’ the man said almost placidly. He was turning away, when she halted him.

      ‘Then can I book a room for the night?’ she asked, braving his look of astonishment. ‘And a guide. I would like to hire a guide if that is possible.’

      ’Señorita,’ the man said very slowly, ‘I must tell you that I do not have unescorted women staying at my hotel.’

      She felt a slow tide of colour run up to the roots of her hair. She had never felt so helpless in her life.

      She said, trying to keep her voice calm and pleasant, ‘Then as this is the only hotel in this benighted town, I’m afraid you will have to make an exception for once. Unless you can provide me with a guide immediately, of course.’

      His look of astonishment deepened. ‘And where do you wish this guide to take you, señorita? Always supposing that such a person could be found.’

      She said baldly, ‘I want to go to Diablo.’

      If she’d suddenly produced a hand grenade and drawn the pin, she couldn’t have hoped to make a greater sensation. His jaw dropped, and he almost took a step backwards, she would have sworn to it.

      He

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