Road traffic accidents, while lacking the deliciously sinister flavour of a good murder have challenges of their own and can sometimes offer the advantage of a grandiose scale.
        
Our driver takes us to the site. The junction of two roads on the outskirts of the city. Here a truck carrying agricultural machinery has collided with a car. Several more cars have crashed into the back of this. There are many fatalities, the bodies trapped in situ, crushed into steering wheels and one passenger has come through a window screen to land broken on the road.
        
I take all this in. The black tarmac of the road bordered by leafless trees. The mud encrusted truck and the cars, like nearly all such here black or grey. It all serves to create the potential for an interesting grisaille effect. Even the blood is drying to a rather satisfying dun colour.

As I get out of our car I feel a drop of rain.
        
"For God's sake get an awning over all this," I shout.
        
"A little bit prima donna there," Bream says in a stage whisper.
        
But all is in hand and the crew begin to roll out a large tunnel awning.

When I can finally focus again. I can see that what this scene cries out for is volume.
        
"Manikins," I tell Bream, "get them to order manikins."

#

After this there is the prostitute murder near the city docks and a rather challenging scene of the partial collapse of a slum dwelling. Both are received to great acclaim.
        
Towards the end of the week, the term of our tour drawing to a close, Melk announces that we were to have a formal dinner. There is an assemblage of dignitaries, men in their black suits, women in dresses of brown or dark green. This time the restaurant is of much higher quality, and the ambassador from our own country is present. It seems our success has been noticed there, finally.
        
The food is more palatable, the wine imported. Melk overuses the word 'triumph' and becomes bombastic as the night wears on. Then as the meal becomes more of a drinks party with guests moving and mixing, he comes over and leans on me.
        
"So you depart in three days," he says, "Tomorrow you will rest and the day after there shall come your finale, your ultimate…" he hunts for a new word and fails, "triumph.
        
"And you know," he adds, patting my shoulder, "You have been noticed. Yes noticed. By those who matter most in our country."

#

I sleep in and Bream has to call on me to let me know that the restaurant will soon stop serving breakfast. I am rather jaded from the night before, but Bream has already eaten and is voluble as he sits opposite me with his coffee.
        
"…does seem good to make such an impression after all this time on the side-lines back home. I thought at first, you know, that it's because they're quite cut off here, you know, culturally."
        
He goes on. I gather that he has collected all the press clippings and is planning to put together an album or scrapbook. The evening he has spent with so many strangers paying attention to him has filled him with an enthusiasm that I find irritating in my current state.
        
"What shall we do today?" he says.
        
"Pack. Rest."
        
But he persuades me that we should at least have a look around the city, even if only the area around the hotel. In our constant coming and going from engagements we have hardly noticed even our immediate environment. So we go out and find a few shops that could be considered quaint or decrepit depending on the mood. There are bodegas with windows covered in wire mesh, second-hand clothes shops with black suits hanging in the windows, a dealer in surgical appliances where trusses and slings hang alongside artificial limbs. Here, and then in the residential streets we enter, there are very few people around. Women in scarves who ignore us as they walk quickly away. Soldiers who glare before growing bored. Once a little boy and girl stare at use from a front yard before being busied inside by their mother. Everywhere though there is the face of the President on the wall posters. His bland impassive face, his eyes that are at once dead and all seeing.
        
We slip into back streets and these are like the one we had been taken to on our first night here, mouldering terraces that seem to form an endless grid pattern.
        
"Let's go back," I say, "I think I've seen enough."
        
"Just in here," says Bream, pointing out a small park beyond rusted railings.
        
The park occupies little more space than five or so of the houses would have. A piece of scrubby lawn with some sort of statuary in the centre, a path around the perimeter with benches. An arm of the path leads us towards the centre and what is revealed to be a tiered plinth with a figurine on top.  The plinth is obviously used as an additional seat and there are bottles and cans scattered around. There is a smell of rancid wine and urine.
        
The statue is of a winged woman holding a spear. At her feet are a bunch of long dead flowers, black and brittle with age.
        
"There's a plaque," Bream points.
        
The familiar dates.
        
"I didn't know they'd been in the war here," he says.

"Yes," I say, "Although I don't think there was much fighting. They were occupied. Quite brutally. And then after the war came the President. There were rumours of camps and internment. Rounding up dissidents and the like."
        
"Well," says Bream, "It's all history now isn't it."
        
Later we sit in the hotel bar and drink the most expensive and still indifferent wine. Melk telephones to reception to remind us to be ready bright and early.
        
In the morning he comes himself to collect us once again wearing his chain of office. He travels with us, talking about how honoured we should feel. Today the car has a muted odour of pine. Through the city we head towards the Central Square.
        
Melk tells us that any resource we need will be at our disposal, any equipment, tools or labour. As we drive into the square and the car halts I can see the immensity of our task. We get out, crowds cheering as we don our white scene suits, our gloves. The corpses are strewn across the square. At the far end, near the Presidential Palace, soldiers are still not quite finished with the work, driving at bayonet point people into the square. Screams and shots ring out as the newcomers are despatched.
        
"Of course," says Melk, "we will have a canopy put up in case it rains."
        
He is as good as his word about this and about the assistance we get. By evening the scene is complete. The bodies have been removed and the taped outlines we have put in their place pave the square in complex tessellations. The blood splatter markers are colour coded producing a dazzling pointillist accompaniment.
        
The lighting erected around the periphery sets it all off perfectly.
        
At the far end of the square a red carpet has been laid from the palace gates to the edge of the scene. Our work is to get presidential approval and we wait along with the press and crowds of spectators.
        
The first thing that strikes me about the President and his wife is how brightly dressed they are. She wears a gold brocaded gown glittering with encrusted sapphires and around her shoulders is an ermine trimmed cloak of purple. The President is in a bright white uniform with multi-coloured military ribbons and medal on his chest.
        
The lights are shifted to illuminate their progress as they enter the scene beneath the awning.
        
"A triumph," Melk whispers to me, "yes, my friend a triumph."

#

At breakfast the next morning there is a call put through to reception. As Bream has already polished off his food he goes to take it. I assume it is some final detail of our return trip.
        
"Well," says Bream when he comes back, "you'll never guess who that was. Good news travels fast."
        
My mouth full I wave my fork at him to continue.
        
"Only the secretary to the Minster of Arts back home."
        
I chew and swallow a piece of gristly sausage.
        
"Well?"
        
"Oh you know what they're like. They can't have this lot here being ahead of them in anything. They have to do better. Now they want us. They've already started to plan the engagements, talking about doing a tour, bigger and better than anything here."
        
So, in the end, it couldn't have worked out better and I feel a warm satisfaction that stays with me as we drive to the airport through the dull grey streets of the city.