She smiled at him, wanting to get over the fact that they had managed to clash in their first few sentences. ‘A true pleasure to meet you. I’ve read several of your papers.’

‘Of course I’m in the wrong era for you. But I know most of the locations at least…’

‘Do you think we can get a breakfast?’ she asked as they walked towards his car.

‘Are you married? Got a family?’

‘Not married. Not a swimmer.’

‘Right.’

‘The bodies turn up weekly now. The height of the terror was ’eighty-eight and ’eighty-nine, but of course it was going on long before that. Every side was killing and hiding the evidence. Every side. This is an unofficial war, no one wants to alienate the foreign powers. So it’s secret gangs and squads. Not like Central America. The government was not the only one doing the killing. You had, and still have, three camps of enemies-one in the north, two in the south-using weapons, propaganda, fear, sophisticated posters, censorship. Importing state-of-the-art weapons from the West, or manufacturing homemade weapons. A couple of years ago people just started disappearing. Or bodies kept being found burned beyond recognition. There’s no hope of affixing blame. And no one can tell who the victims are. I am just an archaeologist. This pairing by your commission and the government was not my idea-a forensic pathologist, an archaeologist, odd pairing, if you want my opinion. What we’ve got here is unknown extrajudicial executions mostly. Perhaps by the insurgents, or by the government or the guerrilla separatists. Murders committed by all sides.’

‘I couldn’t tell who was worst. The reports are terrible.’

He ordered another tea and looked at the food that had arrived. She had specifically asked for curd and jaggery. When they were finished he said, ‘Come. I’ll take you to the ship. Let me show you where we will work…’