The Seville Communion

II

Three Villains

When I arrive in a city, I always ask who are the twelve most beautiful women, the twelve richest men, and the man who could have me hanged.

Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen

Celestino Peregil, personal assistant to Pencho Gavira the banker, flicked bad-temperedly through Q amp;S magazine. He was on his way to the Casa Cuesta Bar in the heart of Seville's Triana district. There were several reasons for Peregil's bad mood: his recalcitrant ulcer, the delicate mission that now took him across the Guadalquivir, and the cover of the magazine he was holding. Peregil was a squat, nervous man. To hide his premature baldness he combed his hair over his head from a parting on a level with his left ear. He was fond of white socks, loud silk ties, double-breasted jackets with gold buttons, and hookers in hostess bars. But above all, fond of the magical pattern of numbers on the gaming tables of any casino that still let him in. This, together with the appointment he was grudgingly keeping, was why the ulcer bothered him more than usual. And the cover of Q amp;S did nothing to improve his mood. Even a man as unfeeling as Celestino Peregil couldn't but be worried by a photograph of his boss's wife with another man. Especially if he'd tipped off the magazine himself.

"The little tart," he said aloud, and a couple of passers-by turned to look at him.

Then he remembered the purpose of the appointment. He took a mauve silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his forehead. Before his eyes the numbers 7 and 16 danced nightmarishly on a green baize background. If I get out of this mess, he said to himself, I swear it'll be the last time. I swear on the Virgin Mary.

He threw the magazine into a dustbin. Then, turning the corner under a sign for Cruzcampo beer, he stopped at the door of the bar. He hated that kind of place, with its marble tables, tiled walls and shelves full of dusty bottles of Terry Centenario brandy. It stood for the Spain of castanets and guitars, stuffy, squalid and vulgar, so difficult to escape. He'd been a small-time private investigator specialising in sordid adultery and social security fraud until good luck brought him Pencho Gavira and the great bank. Now he hung out in fashionable bars drinking whisky on the rocks to ambient music; he frequented plush offices humming with faxes, air-conditioning and trilingual secretaries, where the Financial Times lay about and guys in expensive cologne casually mentioned Zurich, New York, or the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Just like in the ads.

The sight of Don Ibrahim, El Potro del Mantelete and La Nina Puftales soon brought him down to earth. They were already waiting for him, sure as fate. He saw them as soon as he entered, to the right of the dark wooden bar decorated with gilded flowers. Above them hung a sign that must have been there since the turn of the century: SEVILLE-SANLUCAR-COAST STEAM LINE: TRAINS DAILY BETWEEN SEVILLE AND THE GUADALQUIVIR ESTUARY. They were sitting at a marble table, and Peregil noticed that La Ina fino was already flowing. At eleven in the morning.

"How you doing?" he said, and sat down.

It wasn't a question. He didn't give a damn how they were doing, and they knew it. He could see it in the three pairs of eyes that watched him adjust his shirt-cuffs – a gesture copied from his elegant boss – and then carefully place his elbows on the table.

"I've got a job for you," he announced.

Peregil saw El Potro del Mantelete and La Nina Punales glance at Don Ibrahim, who nodded gravely and twirled the ends of his moustache – a thick, bristly, reddish-grey, handlebar moustache. Despite this rather fierce appendage, Don Ibrahim appeared good-natured and placid. He was tall, very fat, and he did everything solemnly. The Lawyers' Association of Seville had long ago discovered that his legal credentials were spurious, but the time he'd spent practising the law under false pretences had given him a grave and dignified presence. He carried a silver-handled walking stick and wore a wide-brimmed panama hat and a watch and chain curving between two pockets of his waistcoat. He claimed he'd won the watch from Ernest Hemingway in a poker game at the Chiquita Cruz brothel in Havana, in the days before Castro.

"You have our full attention," he said, his paunch causing him to sit at a distance from the table.

Triana and all of Seville knew that Don Ibrahim the Cuban was a con man and a crook, but also a perfect gentleman. For instance, only after a courteous glance at El Potro del Mantelete and La Nina Punales had he spoken for the three of them, indicating that he would be honoured to represent them.

"There's a church and a priest," Peregil began.

"Not a good start," said Don Ibrahim. In one hand – sporting a gold signet ring – he held a smoking cigar, while with the other he brushed ash from his trousers. From his misspent youth in Cuba he'd retained a taste for immaculate white suits, panama hats and Montecristo cigars. He looked like one of the Spaniards who made their fortune in Latin America at the turn of the century then sailed back to Seville with a roll of gold coins, a dose of malaria and a mulatto servant. All Don Ibrahim had brought back was the malaria.

Peregil looked at Don Ibrahim, confused. Was it a bad start because he'd dropped ash on his trousers or because the job involved a church and a priest?

"An old priest," he said, to probe Don Ibrahim and also to make the job seem less daunting. But then he remembered: "Well, two priests actually – an old one and a young one."

"Othu!" exclaimed La Nina Punales, using the Gypsy slang from the banks of the Guadalquivir. "Two priests."

Her silver bracelets jangled on her flaccid arms as she drained her sherry glass. Beside her, El Potro del Mantelete shook his head, apparently mesmerised by the thick mark of lipstick on the edge of La Nina's glass.

"Two priests," Don Ibrahim repeated anxiously as cigar smoke spiralled through his moustache.

"Well, actually there are three of them," Peregil added truthfully.

Don Ibrahim shuddered, dropping ash on his trousers again. "I thought you said two."

"No, three. The old one, the young one and another one on his way."

Peregil saw them exchange cautious glances. "Three priests," said Don Ibrahim, peering at the nail on the little finger of his left hand. It was as long as a spatula. "That's right."

"A young one, an old one and another one coming." "Yes, from Rome." "From Rome."

La Nina Punales jangled her bracelets again. "Too many priests," she said lugubriously. She touched the wooden table leg for luck.

"So we've run into the Church," said Don Ibrahim with gravity, as if his remark had been the product of lengthy pondering. Peregil suppressed the urge to get up and leave. This isn't going to work, he thought, looking at the three of them: the former bogus lawyer with ash on his trousers, La Nina with a beauty spot and kiss-curl on her withered forehead, and the former bantamweight with a squashed nose. Then he remembered the numbers 7 and 16 on the card table, and the photographs in the magazine. Suddenly it seemed unbearably hot. But maybe it wasn't the temperature in the bar but fear that was drenching his shirt with sweat and making his mouth feel rough and dry. Find a professional, Pencho Gavira told him. You've got six million pesetas to sort this out. It's up to you how you manage the money.

Peregil had indeed managed the money in his own way: six hours in a casino and he'd lost three out of the six million. Five hundred thousand an hour. He'd even spent what he got for the magazine tip-off about his boss's wife, or ex-wife. And on top of that, Ruben Molina, the loan shark, was about to set the dogs on him for another six million.

"It's an easy job," Peregil heard himself say. He knew he had no choice. "Clean. No complications. A million each." "Why us?" asked Don Ibrahim.

Peregil looked straight into his sad, bleary eyes and for an instant glimpsed the anxiety in their depths. Percgil swallowed and then ran a finger round the inside of his collar. He glanced again at the fat bogus lawyer's cigar, El Potro's deformed nose, La Nina's beauty spot. Three losers who should be locked up. Shipwrecks. Dregs. But with the money that was left, they were all he could afford. Blushing, he answered, "Because you're the best."

On his first morning in Seville it took Lorenzo Quart almost an hour to find the church. Several times he inadvertently wandered out of Santa Cruz and then had to find his way back. He realised his tourist map was useless in the maze of silent, narrow streets. Once or twice a passing car forced him to take refuge in cool, dark archways, their wrought-iron gates leading to tiled courtyards full of roses and geraniums. He came at last to a small square with white and ochre walls and railings hung with flowerpots. Tiled benches showed scenes from Don Quixote and there was an intense scent of orange blossom from the half-dozen trees. The church was small, its brick facade barely twenty metres across, and it formed a corner with another building. It looked in poor condition: the belfry was shored up by wooden struts, thick beams propped up the outer wall, and scaffolding partially obscured a tile depicting Christ, flanked by rusty iron lamps. There was also a cement mixer beside a mound of gravel and some sacks of cement.

So there she was. Quart stood and stared at the building for a couple of minutes. Seen through the orange trees and beneath a bright blue Andalusian sky on that perfect morning, it didn't seem remotely sinister. Two twisted Solomonic columns stood on either side of the baroque portico. Above it was a niche containing a statue of the Virgin. Our Lady of the Tears, he almost said aloud. Then he walked towards the church and, as he came closer, saw that the Virgin had been beheaded.

Nearby, bells began to ring and a flock of pigeons rose from the roofs around the square. He watched them fly off, then looked back to the church facade. Something had changed. Now, despite the Andalusian sunlight and the orange trees with their fragrant blossom, the church seemed different. Suddenly, the old beams shoring up the walls, the ochre paint of the belfry peeling in strips like skin, the bell hanging motionless from the crossbeam overgrown with weeds, all gave the place a sombre, dull, disturbing atmosphere. A church that kills to defend itself, Vespers' mysterious message had said. Quart glanced again at the headless Virgin while inwardly laughing at himself for feeling uneasy. There didn't seem much left to defend.

To Quart, faith was relative. Monsignor Spada had not been wrong to speak of him, if half-joking, as a good soldier. Quart's creed didn't consist of revealed truths; it rested, rather, on the assumption that one had faith and acted accordingly. In this light, the Catholic Church from the start was to Quart what the army was to other young men: a place where rules provided most of the answers as long as one didn't question the basic concept. In Quart's case, this self-discipline replaced faith. And the paradox, which the veteran archbishop had sensed, was that it was precisely the lack of faith, with all the pride and rigour needed to sustain it, that made Quart so good at his job.

Everything has its source, of course. The son of a fisherman who drowned at sea, Lorenzo Quart was taken under the wing of a rough village priest who helped him enter the seminary. A brilliant and conscientious student, to such an extent that his superiors took an interest in his progress, Quart was possessed of that southern clarity of mind that is like a quiet affliction sometimes brought on by the easterly winds and blazing Mediterranean sunsets. One day, as a child, he stood for hours on the breakwater of the port, lashed by wind and rain, while out to sea some helpless fishing boats fought the huge waves. In the distance they looked tiny and pitifully fragile in the mountainous foaming seas, their motors struggling to bring them back to port. One boat had been lost. And when one fishing boat was lost, that meant sons, husbands, brothers, fathers were lost along with it. Women in black with children clinging to their skirts stood by the lighthouse, moving their lips in silent prayer, trying to make out which boat was missing. And when the little boats finally entered the port, the men on board looked to where Lorenzo stood on the breakwater, clasping his mother's hand, and they took off their caps. The rain, the wind, and the waves roared on. No more boats returned. That day, Quart realised that it was no use praying to the sea. And he vowed that no one would ever stand in the rain waiting for him to return to port.

The church door, made of oak and decorated with thick nails, was open. As Quart went inside, a cold breath of air came to meet him, as if he'd just lifted a gravestone. He took off his sunglasses and dipped his fingers in holy water. He felt its coolness as he made the sign of the Cross on his forehead. The gilded altar gleamed gently at the other end of the nave. Half a dozen wooden pews sat facing it. The rest had been piled in a corner to make room for the scaffolding. The place smelled of wax, stale air and the mildew of centuries. The entire church was in gloom, except for the top left-hand corner, lit by a spotlight. Quart looked up at the light and saw a woman on the scaffolding, photographing the leaded windows. "Good morning," she said.

Her hair was grey, but unlike Quart's not prematurely – she must have been well over forty, he thought as she looked down from the scaffolding. Holding on to the metal poles, she climbed nimbly to the ground. She had her hair in a small plait and she wore a polo shirt, jeans covered in plaster, and trainers. From behind she could have been a young girl.

"My name is Quart," he said.

The woman wiped her right hand on her jeans and gave him a firm, brief handshake. Her hand felt rough. "Gris Marsala. I work here."

She had an American accent. Her eyes, edged with lines, were bright and friendly, and her smile was easy and open. She looked him over curiously.

"You're a good-looking priest," she said at last, forthright. Her gaze rested on his dog collar. "We were expecting someone rather different."

"We?"

"Yes. We've all been waiting for the envoy from Rome. An anonymous little man in a cassock, with a briefcase full of missals and crucifixes."

"Who is all?"

"I don't know. All of us." She started counting on her plaster-covered fingers. "Father Priamo Ferro, the parish priest. His assistant, Father Oscar. The archbishop, the mayor, and quite a few others." Quart tensed his mouth. He hadn't realised his mission would be public knowledge. He thought the IEA had informed only the nunciature of Madrid and the archbishop of Seville. The nuncio wouldn't have told anyone, but Quart could well imagine the archbishop, Monsignor Corvo, spreading rumours. Damn His Grace.

"I wasn't expecting such a reception," he said coldly.

The woman shrugged, ignoring his tone. "It's not over you, but the church." She gestured at the scaffolding, the paint on the blackened ceiling coming away between patches of damp. "This church has aroused a lot of strong feeling lately. And nobody in Seville can keep a secret." She leaned towards him slightly and lowered her voice, parodying a confidence. "They say even the Pope is giving the matter his attention."

Dear God. Quart was silent a moment, his gaze on his shoes. Then he looked into the woman's eyes. This was as good a time as any to start untangling some of the threads, he thought. So he moved closer until he was almost touching her shoulder and looked round with theatrical suspicion.

"Who says so?" he whispered.

Her laughter was relaxed, like everything else about her. "The archbishop of Seville, I think," she said. "By the way, he doesn't seem to like you much."

I must be sure to repay His Grace's kindness at the first opportunity, Quart thought. The woman watched him mischievously. He was reluctant to be as open as she was, so he just raised his eyebrows with the practised innocence of a Jesuit. He had in fact learned the gesture from a Jesuit, at the seminary.

"You're very well informed. But you shouldn't believe everything you hear."

Gris Marsala laughed. "I don't," she said. "But the rumours amuse me. Anyway, as I said, I work here. I'm the architect in charge of restoring the church." She looked round again and sighed. "Doesn't say much for my skills, docs it? But it's been one long sorry tale of estimates not being approved and money not coming through."

"You're American, aren't you?"

"Yes. I've been working here for two years. I was appointed by the Eurnekian Foundation. It put up a third of the money for the initial restoration project. At first there were three of us working here, two

Spaniards and mc, but the others left… The work more or less ground to a halt some time ago." She looked at him to see what effect her next words would have. "And there were the two deaths, of course."

Quart showed no reaction. "You mean the accidents?"

"You could call them that, yes. Accidents." She was still watching him closely and seemed disappointed when he said nothing more. "Have you met the parish priest?"

"Not yet. I arrived only last night. I haven't even seen the archbishop. I wanted to see the church first."

"Well, here it is." She waved her hand, indicating the nave with the high altar at the end, barely visible in the gloom. "Seventeenth-century baroque, with an altarpiece by Duque Cornejo… A small treasure that's falling to pieces."

"And the headless Virgin at the door?"

"Some citizens of the town chose to celebrate the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931 in their own special way." She said it kindly, as if deep down she forgave the vandals. Quart wondered how long she'd been in Seville. Definitely quite some time. Her Spanish was perfect and she seemed very much at ease.

"How long have you lived here?"

"Nearly four years. But I visited the city lots of times before I settled. I came on a scholarship and never really left." "Why not?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. It happens to a lot of Americans, particularly young ones. They come here, and then they just can't leave. They stay and scrape a living somehow, playing the guitar or sketching in the squares." She looked thoughtfully at the patch of sunlight on the floor by the door. "There's something about the light here, the colour of the streets, that saps your will. It's almost like an illness."

Quart took a few steps up the nave and stopped. On the left the pulpit with its spiral staircase was half-obscured by scaffolding. The confessional was on the right, in a small chapel that led to the vestry. He ran his hand over one of the wooden pews, blackened with age.

"What do you think of the church?" she asked.

Quart looked up. A barrel vault inset with lunettes rose above the single nave and the short-armed transept. The elliptical dome, surmounted by a blind lantern, was decorated with frescoes that had been almost completely obliterated by smoke from the candles and by fire. Around the edges of a large soot stain he could just make out a few angels, and some bearded prophets covered with patches of damp that made them look like lepers.

"I don't know," he answered. "It's small. Very pretty. Old."

"Three centuries old," she said. Their steps echoed as they walked past the pews towards the high altar. "Where I come from, a three-hundred-year-old building would be a historical jewel that no one could touch. But around here there are lots of places like this falling into ruin. And nobody lifts a finger."

"Maybe there are just too many."

"That sounds strange coming from a priest. Although you don't look much like one." Again she regarded him with amused interest, this time observing the impeccable cut of his lightweight black suit. "If it weren't for your collar and black shirt…"

"I've worn a dog collar for twenty years," he interrupted coldly. Then, glancing over her shoulder, "You were telling me about the church and places like it."

She tilted her head, disconcerted, obviously trying to make him out. Quart could tell that despite her self-assurance she was intimidated by the collar. All women were, he thought, young and old. Even the most determined ones lost their confidence when a word or gesture suddenly reminded them he was a priest.

"The church, yes," said Gris Marsala at last. But her thoughts seemed elsewhere. "I don't agree that there are too many places like this. After all, they're part of our collective memory, aren't they?" She wrinkled her nose and tapped a foot on the worn flagstones, as if they were her witnesses. "I'm convinced that every ancient building, picture, or book that's lost or destroyed, leaves us bereft. Impoverished."

Her tone was unexpectedly vehement, bitter. When she saw Quart's surprise, she smiled. "I'm American, it really has nothing to do with me," she said apologetically. "Or maybe it has. It's the heritage of all humanity. We have no right to let it fall into ruins."

"Is that why you've stayed in Seville so long?"

"Maybe. At any rate, that's why I'm here now, in this church." She glanced up at the window where she'd been working when Quart arrived. "Did you know, this was one of the last churches built in Spain under the Hapsburgs? The work was officially completed on the first of November, 1700, while Charles II, the last of his dynasty, lay dying. Next day, the first mass celebrated here was a requiem for the king."

They stood before the high altar. The light fell diagonally from the windows and made the gilding high on the altarpiece gleam gently. Reliefs kept the rest in shadow. Through the scaffolding Quart could make out the central section with the Virgin beneath a wide baldachin, above the tabernacle. He bowed his head briefly before it. In the side sections, separated from the portico by carved columns, were niches containing figures of cherubs and saints.

"It's magnificent," he said with feeling.

"It's slightly more than that."

Gris Marsala moved behind the altar to the foot of the altarpiece. She switched on a light to illuminate it. The gold leaf and gilded wood came to life, and a stream of light poured through exquisitely carved columns, medallions and garlands. Quart admired the way all the different elements blended so harmoniously.

"Magnificent," he repeated, impressed, crossing himself. Then he saw that Gris Marsala was watching him intently, as if she thought it incongruous.

"Haven't you seen a priest cross himself before?" He smiled coldly to hide his embarrassment. "I can't be the first to have done that before this altarpiece."

"I suppose not. But they were a different kind of priest."

"There's only one type of priest," he said quickly. "Are you Catholic?"

"Partly. My great-grandfather was Italian." She looked at him mischievously. "I have a fairly precise understanding of sin, if that's what you mean. But at my age…" She-touched her grey hair.

Quart thought he ought to change the subject. "We were discussing the altarpiece," he said. "I said it was magnificent…" He looked her in the eye, serious, courteous, distant. "How about starting again?"

Gris Marsala tilted her head as before. An intelligent woman, he thought, but she made him uneasy. His instincts were well honed by his work for the IEA and he sensed a discordant note. Something about her didn't quite add up. He peered at her, hoping for a clue, but there was no way of getting any closer without being more open himself, something he was reluctant to do.

"Please," he added.

She seemed about to smile but didn't. "All right," she said at last. They both turned to the altarpiece. "The sculptor Pedro Duque Corncjo completed it in 1711. He was paid two thousand silver escudos. And as you say, it's magnificent. All the energy and imagination of the Sevillian baroque are there."

The Virgin was a beautiful polychrome sculpture in wood, almost a metre tall. She wore a blue mantle and held her hands open, palms out. The pedestal was shaped like a crescent moon, and her right foot rested on a serpent.

"She's very lovely," said Quart.

"Sculpted by Juan Martinez Montanes almost a century before the altarpiece… It belonged to the dukes of El Nuevo Extreme One of the dukes helped to construct the church, and his son donated the sculpture. The tears gave the church its name."

Quart looked more closely. From below he could see tears glistening on the face, crown and mantle.

"They are rather exaggerated."

"Originally they were smaller and made of glass. But now they're pearls. Twenty perfect pearls, brought from America at the end of the last century. The rest of the story lies in the crypt."

"There's a crypt?"

"Yes. There's a concealed entrance over there, to the right of the high altar. It's a kind of private chapel. Several generations of the dukes of El Nuevo Extremo are buried inside. In 1687, one of the them, Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija, ceded land from his estate for the church, on condition that a Mass would be said for his soul once a week." She pointed to a niche to the right of the Virgin, containing a figure of a knight kneeling in prayer. "There he is: carved by Duque Cornejo, as was the figure on the left, of the duke's wife… He commissioned his favourite architect, Pedro* Romero, also the duke of Medina-Sidonia's favourite architect, to design the building. That's the origin of the family's link with this church. Gaspar Bruner's son Guzman had figures of his parents added, which completed the altar-piece, and the image of the Virgin brought here in 1711. The family still has links with the church today, although they're diminished. And this has a great deal to do with the conflict." "What conflict?"

Gris Marsala gazed at the altarpiece as if she hadn't heard the question. Then she rubbed the back of her neck and sighed. "Well, call it what you like." She was trying to sound light-hearted. "The stalemate, you might say. With Macarena Bruner, her mother the old duchess, and all the rest of them."

"I haven't yet met the Bruners, mother and daughter."

When Gris Marsala turned to look at Quart, there was a malevolent gleam in her eyes. "Haven't you? Well, you certainly will."

Quart heard her laugh as she switched off the light. The altarpiece was once again in shadow.

"What's really going on here?" he asked.

"In Seville?"

"In this church."

She took a few moments to answer. "It's up to you to decide," she said at last. "That's why you were sent."

"But you work here. You must have some ideas on the subject."

"Of course I have, but I'm keeping them to myself. All I know is that more people would like to have this church pulled down than to keep it standing."

"Why?"

"That I don't know." Her friendliness disappeared. Now it was her turn to become closed off and distant. "Maybe because a square metre of land in this part of Seville is worth a fortune…" She shook her head as if to rid it of unpleasant thoughts. "You'll find plenty of people to tell you all about it."

"You said you had some ideas."

"I did?" Her smile looked forced. "Maybe. Anyway, it's none of my business. My job is to save as much as I can of the building as long as there's money for the work. Which there isn't."

"So why are you staying on alone?"

"I'm putting in some overtime. Anyway, since I began working on the church, I haven't found anything else to do, so I have a lot of spare time."

"A lot of spare time," repeated Quart.

"That's right." She sounded bitter again. "And I have nowhere eke to go."

Intrigued, he was about to ask more when the sound of footsteps made him turn. A small, motionless figure dressed in black stood in the doorway. It cast its compact shadow on the flagstones.

Gris Marsala, who had also turned, smiled strangely at Quart. "It's time for you to meet the parish priest, don't you think? Father Priamo Ferro."

As soon as Celestino Peregil left the Casa Cuesta Bar, Don Ibrahim began discreetly counting the banknotes that Pencho Gavira's assistant had left them to cover initial expenses.

"A hundred thousand," he said when he'd finished.

El Potro del Mantelete and La Nina Punales nodded in silence. Don Ibrahim made three bundles of thirty-three thousand, put one bundle in the inside pocket of his jacket, and passed the others to his companions. He placed the remaining thousand-peseta note on the table.

"What do you think?" he asked.

Frowning, El Potro del Mantelete smoothed the banknote and peered at the figure of Hernan Cortes on the front. "Looks real to me," he ventured.

"I mean the job, not the note."

El Potro stared gloomily at the banknote and La Nina Punales shrugged.

"It's money," she said, as if that summed it all up. "But the job looks dodgy, with all those priests."

Don Ibrahim waved his hand dismissively, dropping ash on his trousers again. "We will proceed with the utmost tact," he said, leaning with effort over his paunch to brush off the ash.

La Nina Punales said othu and El Potro nodded, still staring at the banknote. El Potro must have been about forty-five, and every one of his years showed in his face. In his younger days, between stints in the

Spanish Legion, he'd been a luckless apprentice bullfighter. It had left him with the dust of failure in his eyes and throat, and a scar from a bull's horn under his right ear. And all he got from a brief, obscure career as a contender for the bantamweight championship of Andalusia was a broken nose, lumpy scarred eyebrows and a certain slowness in combining thought, speech and action. When he was conning tourists in the streets, he was very good at playing the innocent. His vacant stare was utterly convincing.

"Very important to be tactful," he said slowly.

He went on frowning, as he did whenever he was thinking. This was what he'd been doing – frowning and pondering a question deeply -when he came home one day to find his brother, who was in a wheelchair, with his trousers down to his knees and his wife – El Potro's wife – sitting on top of him panting eloquently. Unhurriedly and without raising his voice, nodding as his brother assured him that there was a misunderstanding and he could explain everything, El Potro del Mantelete pushed the wheelchair almost tenderly to the landing and tipped it and its occupant down the stairs. His brother bumped down the thirty-two steps and suffered a fractured skull that turned out to be fatal. El Potro's wife got off more lightly: he beat her methodically, gave her two black eyes and then knocked her out with a left hook. Half an hour later, she came to, packed her bags and left for good.

The business with his brother didn't work out so well. It was only thanks to the skill of El Potro's lawyer that the judge was persuaded to change the charge from murder (with a possible thirty-year sentence) to involuntary manslaughter, resulting in an acquittal in dubio pro reo. The lawyer was Don Ibrahim. The Lawyers' Association of Seville didn't yet have doubts as to the authenticity of the diploma issued in Havana. But El Potro didn't care whether Don Ibrahim was a bona fide lawyer or not. The former bullfighter and boxer would never forget how Don Ibrahim had made an impassioned defence and won him his freedom. A home torn apart, Your Honour. A cheating brother, the heat of the moment, my client's intellect, the absence of animus necandi, the lack of brakes on the wheelchair. Since then, El Potro del Mantelete had been blindly, heroically, unfailingly loyal to his benefactor. And his devotion became even greater, if that was possible, after Don Ibrahim's ignominious expulsion from the legal profession. Faithful as a hound, silent and unswerving, El Potro would do anything for his master.

"Still too many priests for my liking," said La Nina, her silver bracelets jangling as she twirled her empty glass.

Don Ibrahim and El Potro exchanged glances. Then the bogus lawyer ordered three more fino sherries and some tapas of spicy pork sausage. As soon as the waiter put the sherries on the table, La Nina emptied her glass in a single gulp. Don Ibrahim and El Potro averted their eyes.

Sour wine, so full of happiness,

though I drink to drown my sorrows,

I will never forget…

She sang low and from the heart, licking her red-painted lips moist with sherry. El Potro whispered ole without looking at her, gently tapping the rhythm on the table. As she sang the folk song her eyes – dark, tragic, rimmed with too much eyeliner – showed enormous in a face once beautiful. When she had too much sherry, she would recall how, as in the song, a dark man had once stabbed another to death over her. And she would search her handbag for a newspaper cutting she'd lost long ago. If it had ever really happened, it must have been when La Nina appeared on posters for shows in all her Gypsy glory, wild and beautiful, the young hope of Spanish song. The successor, they said, of Dona Concha Piquer.

Now, three decades after her brief moment of fame, she worked in seedy clubs and bars on the tourist circuit – dinner and a show included, Seville by night – the tired stamp of her dancing shoes making the rickety stages splinter.

"Where do we start?" she asked, looking at Don Ibrahim.

EI Potro glanced up too at the man he most respected in the world after the late bullfighter Juan Belmonte. Aware of his responsibility, the bogus lawyer took a long drag on his cigar and twice read the list of tapas on a blackboard behind the bar. Croquettes. Tripe. Fried anchovies. Eggs in bechamel. Tongue in sauce. Stuffed tongue.

"As Caius Julius Caesar said, and he put it well," Don Ibrahim said when he judged enough time had elapsed for his words to have greatest impact, u'Galia est omnia divisa in partibus infidelibus.' In other words, before taking any action, ocular reconnaissance is recommended.'' He looked round like a general before his staff officers. "Visualisation of the territory, if you see what I mean.*' He blinked doubtfully. "Do you see what I mean?''

"Othu."

"Yes."

"Good." Don Ibrahim stroked his moustache, satisfied with troop morale. "What I mean is, we have to go and take a look at that church and all the rest of it." He glanced at La Nina, knowing she was devout. "With due attention to the fact that it is a sacred building, of course."

"I know the church," she said in her gravelly voice. "It's old and always has the builders in. I go to Mass there sometimes."

Like a good flamenco singer, she was highly religious. For his part, although he professed to be agnostic, Don Ibrahim respected freedom of worship. He leaned forward enquiringly. Rigorous research was mother to all victories, he'd read somewhere – Churchill, perhaps, or Frederick the Great.

"What's he like, the parish priest?"

"Old-school." La Nina frowned in concentration. "Ancient, bad-tempered… He once threw out some tourists, young girls, who came in during Mass. He got down from the altar, in his chasuble and everything, and gave them a real scolding for wearing shorts. This isn't the beach, he said to them, off you go. And he chucked them out."

Don Ibrahim nodded, pleased. "A holy man, I see. A man of God." "To his fingernails."

After a thoughtful pause, Don Ibrahim blew a smoke ring and watched it float away. He appeared preoccupied. "So what we have here," he said, "is a clergyman of character."

"I don't know about character," said La Nina. "He certainly has a temper."

"I see." Don Ibrahim blew another smoke ring, but this time it didn't come out right. "So this honourable priest may cause problems. I mean, he may hinder us."

"He could ruin the whole thing." "And the young priest, his assistant?"

"I've seen him helping during Mass. Nice and quiet he looks. Not so tough."

Don Ibrahim glanced across the street, at the knee-high leather boots from Valverde del Camino hanging outside the La Valcnciana Shoe Shop. Then, with a melancholy shudder, he turned back to El Potro and La Nina. At any other time he would have told Peregil where to put his little job. Or, more likely, he would have asked for more money. But as things were, he had no choice. He stared sadly at La Nina with her fake beauty spot, her chipped nail varnish, her bony fingers clasping the empty glass. He looked to his left and met the faithful gaze of El Potro. Then he regarded his own hand resting on the table. The ring he wore was a fake. Every so often he managed to sell one – he had several like it – for five thousand pesetas to some sucker in a bar in Triana. El Potro and La Nina were his people, his responsibility. El Potro, for his loyalty in adversity. La Nina, because Don Ibrahim had never heard anyone sing "Cape of Red and Gold" the way she sang it, in a tablao, on his arrival in Seville. He didn't meet her until much later. She was playing a really seedy club and was already wrecked by alcohol and by the years, the embodiment of the songs she sang in a cracked, sublime voice that made the hairs stand on the back of your neck. "The She-Wolf", "Ballad of Bravery", "False Coin", "Tattoo". The night they met, Don Ibrahim swore to himself that he would save her from oblivion, to do justice to her art. For despite the calumny heaped upon him by the Lawyers' Association and the articles in the local papers when he was thrown in jail over an absurd diploma that nobody else gave a damn about, and despite the scams he'd had to set up to earn his living ever since, Don Ibrahim was not a scoundrel. He held his head high as he adjusted his watch chain. He was simply an honourable man who'd had no luck.

"This is merely a matter of strategy," he said thoughtfully, to convince himself more than anything else. He felt his companions' hopes pinned on him. Peregil had promised three million, but Don Ibrahim had heard that he worked for a banker who was really loaded, so there might be more money where that came from. And he and his companions needed funds to make a long-cherished dream come true.

Don Ibrahim had read extensively – how else could he have practised law for so long in Seville without being exposed? – if superficially, and he hoarded quotations as if they were gold dust. The best quotation about dreams came from that Thomas D. H. Lawrence, the one from Arabia who wrote Madam Butterfly, men who dream with their eyes open, will always succeed, or something like that. He doubted whether El Potro and La Nina had their eyes open, but it didn't matter, he'd keep his open for them.

He looked affectionately at El Potro, who was slowly chewing a slice of sausage. "What do you think, champ?"

El Potro went on chewing in silence for half a minute. "I think we can do it," he said at last, when the other two had almost forgotten the question. "If God gives us luck."

Don Ibrahim sighed. "That's the problem. With all these priests involved, I don't know whose side God will be on."

El Potro smiled for the first time that morning. His smile always seemed be a great effort for his face, battered by bulls and other boxers. "Everything for the Cause," he said.

La Nina Punales let out a low, tender ole:

A man without fear of death

swore his love to me…

She sang quietly, laying her hand on the hand of El Potro. Since his divorce he had lived alone. Don Ibrahim suspected that he silently loved La Nina but had never declared himself, out of respect. She, for her part, remained faithful to the memory of the man with green eyes still waiting for her at the bottom of every bottle. As for Don Ibrahim, nobody had definite evidence of his love affairs. On evenings of Manzanilla and guitar, he liked to talk vaguely of the romantic adventures of his youth in Cuba, when he was a friend of Beny More, the Brute of Rhythm, and of "Carafoca" Perez Prado, and of Jorge Negrete, the Mexican actor – until they had words, that is. He liked to talk of the time when Maria Felix, the divine Maria, the lady Maria, gave him an ebony walking stick with a silver handle, on the night she was unfaithful to Agustin Lara with him and a litre bottle of tequila. And slim and elegant Lara, devastated, wrote an immortal song to case the pain of being deceived. Don Ibrahim's smile became young again at the supposed memory of Acapulco, the nights, the beaches, Maria my love, pretty Maria. Between glasses of Manzanilla, La Nina softly hummed the song in which he was the guilty seducer. And El Potro sat there with his hard, silent profile.

After destiny had brought them together in Seville, a quaint friendship had sustained the three companions through the endless hangover of their lives. One peaceful, drunken dawn, they found a noble purpose, as they sat watching the wide, tranquil Guadalquivir: the Cause. Some day they would have the money to set up a sensational tablao. They would call it The Temple of Song, and there, at last, justice would be done to La Nina Punales's art, and traditional Spanish song would be kept alive.

Darling, he would say,

burning with passion…

La Nina sang quietly. Don Ibrahim called the waiter so that he could sort out the bill, and with a grandiose air asked for Pretty Maria's walking stick and his pale straw panama. He rose with difficulty while El Potro del Mantelete, who stood up as if the bell had just been rung, withdrew La Nina's chair, and they both escorted her to the door. They left the banknote with the picture of Hernan Cortes on the table, as a tip. It was, after all, a special day. And, as El Potro put it, humbly justifying the expense, Don Ibrahim was a gentleman.

The dark figure entered the church. The light behind him blinded Quart. By the time his eyes had readjusted to the darkness inside the church, Father Priamo Ferro had reached his side. And Quart saw that things were worse than he'd feared.

"I'm Father Quart," he said, holding out his hand. "I've just arrived in Seville."

His hand remained in midair while two piercing black eyes stared at him suspiciously.

"What are you doing in my church?"

Not a good start, Quart thought as he slowly lowered his hand and observed the man standing before him. Ferro's appearance was as rough as his voice. He was small and thin, and his white hair was poorly cut and untidy. He wore a threadbare cassock covered with stains and a pair of clumpy old shoes that looked as if they hadn't been polished in a long time.

"I thought it would be a good idea if I took a look round," Quart answered calmly.

The most disturbing thing about the old priest was his face. It was covered in marks, lines and small scars, which gave him a harsh, tormented look, like an aerial photograph of a desert. And then there were his eyes – black, defiant, deep-set, peering out at the world with little sympathy. He scrutinised Quart, taking in his cufflinks, the cut of his suit, and finally his face. He didn't look pleased by what he saw.

"You have no right to be here."

Quart thought of appealing to Gris Marsala, who had been listening to their exchange without a word. He realised immediately that she would be no help.

"Father Quart was asking for you," she said reluctantly.

Father Ferro's gaze remained fixed on the visitor. "What for?"

The envoy from Rome raised his left hand slightly in a placatory gesture. He noticed that Father Ferro was looking disapprovingly at his expensive Hamilton watch. "I'm here to compile a report on the church," he said. He was now almost certain that this first meeting was a disaster, but he decided to try a little longer. It was his job, after all. "We need to have a chat, Father."

"I have nothing to say to you."

Quart breathed in and out slowly. His worst fears had been realised, and old, unwelcome memories were returning. In his worn cassock Father Ferro embodied everything Quart hated: the poverty and stubborn wariness of the rough village priest, who was capable only of threatening with the torments of hell, or hearing confession from pious old women from whom he differed only in that he had spent a few years in a seminary and had a smattering of Latin. If Father Ferro was Vespers, he was doing a brilliant job of hiding it. This would not be an easy mission.

"I'm sorry, but I think we have much to discuss," Quart insisted, taking an envelope showing the tiara and keys of St. Peter from his jacket pocket. "I'm the special envoy from the Institute of External Affairs. You'll find my credentials in this letter from the Secretary of State."

Father Ferro took the letter and tore it up without even looking at it. The pieces fluttered to the floor.

"I don't give a damn about your credentials."

Small and defiant, he glared up at Quart. Sixty-four years old, said the report lying on Quart's desk back at the hotel. Twenty years as a country priest, ten years as a parish priest in Seville. He and the Mastiff would have made a good pair at the Colosseum in Rome. Quart could picture Father Ferro with a trident in one hand and a net over his shoulder, circling his opponent while the spectators cried out for blood. In his work, Quart had learned to tell instantly whom to be wary of. Father Ferro was the character at the end of the bar who drinks quietly while everyone else is shouting, then suddenly shatters a bottle to slit your throat. Or the soldier wading across the lake of Tenochtitlan.holding a cross above his head. Or the Crusader massacring infidels and heretics.

"And I don't know what all that business about external affairs is," the priest added, not taking his eyes off Quart. "My superior is the archbishop of Seville."

Who, very obviously, had carefully prepared the reception for this tiresome envoy from Rome. Quart remained calm. He again put his hand inside his jacket and half-pulled out another envelope, identical to the one lying in pieces at his feet.

"That's precisely the person I see next," he said.

Father Ferro nodded contemptuously. "Then go and see him," he said. "I obey the archbishop, and if he orders me to speak to you, I will. Until then, forget about me."

"I was sent specially from Rome. Somebody requested that we intervene. I assume you know about it."

"I haven't requested anything. Rome's far away, and this is my church."

"Your church."

"Yes."

Quart counted silently to five. He could feel Gris Marsala watching them expectantly.

"This is not your church, Father Ferro. It's our church," he said.

For a moment, the old priest stared in silence at the shreds of envelope on the floor. Then he turned his scarred face without looking at any precise point, and Quart saw a strange expression, between a smile and a frown.

"You're wrong there too," Father Ferro said at last, as if that settled it. Then he walked off down the nave towards the vestry.

Quart forced himself to make one last attempt at conciliation. "I'm here to help you, Father," he said to Father Ferro!s receding back. He'd made the effort, now he could let things take their course. He'd done his bit for humility and priestly solidarity. Father Ferro didn't have the monopoly on anger.

Father Ferro had paused to genuflect before the high altar, and Quart heard him laugh briefly and unpleasantly. "Help me? How could somebody like you help me?" He turned to face Quart, and his voice echoed around the nave. "I know your type… What this church needs is a different kind of help, and you haven't brought any of it in those elegant pockets of yours. So leave now. I have a baptism in twenty minutes."

Gris Marsala walked with Quart to the door. He had to summon all his self-control to conceal his dislike of the old priest. He only half-listened to her attempts to make excuses for Father Ferro. He was under a lot of pressure, she said. Politicians, bankers, the archbishop, they were all circling like vultures. If it hadn't been for Father Ferro, the church would have been demolished long ago.

"Thanks to him, they may end up pulling it down anyway. With him inside," said Quart, venting his ill-feeling.

"Please don't say that."

She was right. Once more in control, Quart reproached himself. He inhaled the scent of orange blossom as they came outside. A builder was busying himself next to the cement mixer. Quart glanced absently in his direction as they walked through the orange trees in the square.

"I don't understand his attitude," he said. "I'm on his side. The Church is on his side."

Gris Marsala looked sceptical. "And which Church might that be? The Church of Rome? Or the archbishop of Seville? Or you yourself?"

She shook her head. "No. He's right. Nobody's on his side, and he knows it."

"He seems to be trying to make things more difficult for himself."

"They're difficult enough already. He's in open opposition to the archbishop. And the mayor is threatening libel action – he thinks Father Priamo insulted him a couple of weeks ago during the homily in the Sunday service."

Quart stopped, interested. Monsignor Spada's report hadn't mentioned anything about this.

"What did he call him?"

She smiled wryly. "He said he was an unscrupulous and corrupt politician and a vile speculator." She looked at Quart to see his reaction. "If I remember correctly."

"Is that the kind of thing he usually says in his sermons?"

"Only when he gets really mad." Gris Marsala became thoughtful. "I suppose lately it's happened rather often. He talks about the merchants in the temple, that sort of thing."

"The merchants," repeated Quart.

"Yes. Among others."

"Not bad," said Quart. "It would seem our Father Ferro is an expert at making friends."

"He does have friends," she protested. She kicked a bottle top and watched it spin away. "And he has parishioners. Good people who come here to pray and who need him. You shouldn't judge him by what you've just seen."

This sudden warmth made her seem younger. Quart shook his head, embarrassed. "I'm not here to pass judgement." He turned to look at the belfry, not wanting to meet her eye. "It must be others who are doing that."

"Of course." She stopped in front of him, her hands in her pockets. He didn't like the way she was watching him. "You're the type who writes his report and then washes his hands of the whole business, aren't you? You just take people to the praetorium and all that. It's up to others to say ibi ad crucem."

"I would never have imagined you so well versed in the Gospels."

"I think there are rather too many things you can't imagine."

Embarrassed, the priest shifted from one foot to another. Then he passed a hand over his grey hair. The builder next to the cement mixer had stopped and was leaning on his shovel, watching them. He was young and wore old army-surplus clothes covered with plaster.

"All I'm trying to do," said Quart, "is make sure there's a thorough investigation."

Still facing him, Gris Marsala shook her head. "No, you're not," she said, her blue eyes piercing into his. "Father Priamo was right: you've come to make sure there's a swift execution."

"Is that what he said?"

"Yes. When the archbishop announced you were coming."

Quart looked away, over the woman's shoulder. He could see a window with a grille hung with pots of geraniums and a canary in a cage. "I just want to help," he said in a flat voice that suddenly sounded alien to him. At that moment the church bell began to ring and the canary sang, glad of the accompaniment.

This was not going to be an easy mission.