The Seville Communion

IV

Seville Oranges and Blossom

"Now you've seen a hero,' he said. 'And that's worth something.' Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe

"I believe you've met," said His Grace.

He sat in his armchair like a boxing referee who keeps well back so as not to get his shoes spattered with blood. Quart and Father Ferro looked at each other in silence. The parish priest of Our Lady of the Tears refused to sit when Corvo offered him a chair. Small and obstinate, he stood in the middle of the study, with his face that looked as if it had been hewn with a chisel, and his untidy white hair. As usual, he wore an old, threadbare cassock and a huge pair of scuffed shoes.

"Father Quart would like to ask you some questions," added the archbishop.

The priest's face, covered with wrinkles and scars, remained impassive. He stared blankly out of the window, where the blurred ochre outline of La Giralda was visible through the net curtains.

"I have nothing to say to Father Quart."

Corvo nodded slowly, as if he'd expected such an answer. "Very well," he said. "But I am your bishop, Don Priamo. And you owe me a vow of obedience." He took his pipe from his mouth and gestured with it to the two priests, one after the other. "So, if you prefer, you may give me your answers to Father Quart's questions."

For a moment there was uncertainty in Father Ferro's dark, dull eyes. "That's ridiculous," he said abruptly, half-turning to Quart, whom he held responsible.

The archbishop smiled disagreeably.

"I know it is," he said. "But this Jesuitical device will keep us all happy. Father Quart can do his job, I'll be glad to witness your conversation, and you will ensure that your incredible pride isn't compromised." He blew out a puff of smoke menacingly and leaned to one side. His eyes shone in anticipated amusement. "You may now begin, Father Quart. He's all yours."

So Quart began. He was harsh, brutal at times, getting back at Father Ferro for the cold reception he had been given at the church the previous day, and for Father Ferro's open animosity now towards Quart in His Grace's office. Quart no longer concealed the disdain he felt for Father Ferro the poor, stubborn country priest. The feeling was more complex, more profound than mere personal dislike, or than what was dictated by his mission here in Seville. To Corvo's surprise, and ultimately to Quart's own, Quart conducted himself like a public prosecutor entirely devoid of pity. Only he knew the source of the stinging cruelty with which he harried the old man. And when at last he stopped to catch his breath, aware of how unjust it all was, he was disturbed by the sudden thought that His Eminence the Inquisitor Jerzy Iwaszkiewicz would have given the entire performance his unqualified approval.

The two men stared at him; the archbishop frowning uneasily, his pipe in his mouth; Father Ferro motionless, his eyes, red and watery after an interrogation more appropriate to a criminal than to a sixty-four-year-old priest, fixed on Quart. Quart shifted in his chair and, to hide his embarrassment, made some notes. He'd been kicking the man when he was down.

"To sum up," he said, trying to sound slightly less harsh and looking down at his notes to avoid the priest's eyes, "you deny that you wrote the message that was sent to the Holy See. You also deny that you have any idea who sent it or any clues as to the author or his intentions."

"Yes," said Father Ferro.

"Before God?" asked Quart, feeling ashamed of himself – this was going too far.

The old priest turned to Corvo, in an appeal for help that the archbishop could not ignore. Corvo cleared his throat and raised his hand bearing the ring.

"Let's leave the Almighty out of this, shall we?" the prelate said through the smoke from his pipe. 'I don't think we need put anyone on oath in this conversation."

Quart accepted this in silence and turned once more to Father Ferro. "What can you tell me about Oscar Lobato?" he asked.

The old priest shrugged. "Nothing. Just that he's a fine young man and an honourable priest." His unshaven chin trembled slightly. "I'll be sorry to see him go."

"Does your assistant know computers?"

Father Ferro narrowed his eyes. His expression was wary now, like that of a peasant watching storm clouds approach.

"You should ask him." He jerked his chin at the door. "He's out there, waiting for me."

Quart smiled almost imperceptibly. He appeared confident, but there was something about all this that made him feel he was crossing a void. Something out of place, a wrong note. Nearly all that Father Ferro said was true, but there was a lie in it somewhere. Maybe only one, and maybe not a serious one, but a lie.

"What can you tell me about Gris Marsala?"

The old priest's lips tensed. "Sister Marsala has a dispensation from her order." He glanced at the archbishop as if for corroboration. "She's free to come and go as she pleases. Her work is entirely voluntary. Without her, the building would have fallen down by now."

"A piece of it did fall down," said Corvo, unable to-stop himself. He was obviously thinking of his secretary's death.

Quart went on questioning Father Ferro. "What kind of relationship does she have with you and your assistant?"

"Normal."

"I don't know what you consider normal." Quart's contempt was calculated to the millimetre. "You old village priests have always had a questionable notion of normality regarding your housekeepers and nieces…"

Out of the corner of his eye Quart saw Corvo nearly jump in his chair. Quart had been provocative but with a purpose.

Father Ferro's knuckles were white. "I hope you're not implying…" He broke off and glared at Quart. "Someone might kill you for that."

The threat did not seem incongruous, given Father Ferro's style of preaching, rough exterior and hard, dry body now shaking with fury. He seemed capable of violence himself, but his exact meaning was open to interpretation.

Quart looked back at him calmly. "Your church, for instance?" he asked.

"For the love of God!" the archbishop interrupted. "Have you both lost your minds?"

There was a long silence. The patch of sunlight on Monsignor Corvo's desk had shifted to the left, away from his hand. The copy of The Imitation of Christ now fell exactly within it and Father Ferro stared at the book. Quart observed the old man intently. He was reminded of that other priest he'd wanted never to resemble; the man he had almost managed to forget. Since Quart left the seminary, a letter or a postcard had come occasionally; but then, silence. And Quart remembered him only when the wind from the south revived smells and sounds buried in his memory. The sea pounding against the rocks and the humid, salty air, and the rain. The smell of the brazier and the mesa Camilla in winter, Rosa Rosae, Quousque tandem abutere Catilina, Nox atra cava circumvolat umbra. Water dripping on the misted window, bells at dawn, an unshaven, greasy face leaning over the altar and muttering prayers to a deaf God. Man and boy, officiant and server, turned towards a barren land edged by a cruel sea. And thus it was, after the Last Supper. For this is my blood. May you go in peace. And the muffled breathing, like a tired animal's, later in the damp vestry as the young Lorenzo helped him remove his vestments. The seminary, Lorenzo. You will go to a seminary. One day you'll be a priest, like me. You'll have a future, like me. With all his might and memory Quart hated the roughness, the poverty of spirit, the limited existence – Mass at dawn, naps in his smelly rocking chair, rosary at seven, hot chocolate with the pious old women, a cat in the doorway, a housekeeper or niece who one way or another eased the solitude and the passing years. And then the finale: senile dementia, a sordid, barren life ending in a nursing home, soup dribbling down his chin. For the greater glory of God.

"A church that kills to defend itself…" Quart made an effort to return to the present, to Seville; to what was rather than what might

have been. "I want to know what Father Ferro thinks this means." "I don't know what you're talking about."

"It was a sentence from the message somebody slipped into the Holy See. It refers to your church… Do you think there could be an element of Providence in all this?"

"I don't have to answer that."

Quart turned to Corvo, but the archbishop refused to get involved.

"It's true," he said with a diplomatic smile, delighted by Quart's difficulties. "He wouldn't answer me either."

It was a waste of time. The IEA agent realised that he wasn't getting anywhere, but he had to follow the form. So, portentously, he asked Father Ferro if he was aware of what was at stake. The old man answered sarcastically. Impassive, Quart continued to work his way through the questionnaire: the necessity for a report, possible cause for serious disciplinary measures, etc. That Father Ferro was one year away from retirement was no guarantee that his superiors would be lenient. At the Holy See…

"I don't know anything about those deaths," the old priest interrupted. He obviously couldn't care less about the Holy See. "They were accidents."

Quart leaped in. "Convenient accidents, from your point of view?"

There was a slight tone of camaraderie, a hint of "Come on, man, open up, and let's sort this out". But the old priest didn't drop his guard. "You mentioned Providence earlier," he said. "Well, why don't you ask God the question and I'll pray that you receive an answer."

Quart took a couple of slow, deep breaths before trying again. What annoyed him most was the thought that His Grace must be enjoying this, wreathed in pipe smoke in his front-row seat.

"Can you state categorically, as a priest, that there was no human intervention in the two deaths at your church?"

"Go to hell."

"I beg your pardon?"

Corvo had again jumped in his chair. Father Ferro looked at him and said, "With all due respect to Your Grace, I refuse to answer any more questions."

Quart wondered if he was joking. In their twenty-minute meeting, Father Ferro had not answered a single question. Corvo just frowned and blew out more smoke; he was only the server here. Quart stood up, and the top of Father Ferro's head reached his chest. The wiry grey hair reminded Quart of another priest. Quart had been back once only since his ordination: a brief visit to his widowed mother, another to the dark shape crouching in the church like a mollusc in its shell. Quart performed Mass there, in the church where he'd been an altar boy for so long. And in the cold, damp nave, haunted by the ghost of the lonely little boy looking out to sea in the rain, he had felt like a stranger. He'd left and never returned, and the church, and the old priest, and the little white village, and the cruel sea had gradually faded from memory; a bad dream from which he'd managed to awaken.

The embodiment of everything he hated now stood before him. He could see it in the dull, stubborn eyes boring into him. "I have one more question. Only one," he said, putting away his cards and fountain pen. "Why do you refuse to leave Our Lady of the Tears?"

Father Ferro looked him up and down. Tough as old leather. That was the best description, though Quart could think of a couple more.

"It's none of your business," the priest said. "It concerns me and my bishop."

Quart expected the answer. He gestured to indicate that the absurd meeting was at an end. To his surprise, Corvo came to his aid. "Answer Father Quart please, Don Priamo." "Father Quart would never understand." "I'm sure he'll do his best. Please try."

The old priest shook his head stubbornly, muttering that Quart had never heard the confession of a poor woman on her knees seeking consolation, the cry of a newborn child, the breath of a dying man whose sweating hand he held. So even if Father Ferro talked for hours, nobody would understand a single damned word. And Quart, despite the diplomatic passport in his pocket, the official support of the Curia, the tiara and keys of St. Peter on his papers, realised that he didn't have the slightest authority over the hostile, wretched-looking old man, the exact antithesis of what any churchman would link with the glory of God. With a sudden stab of anxiety he saw the outline of a ghost from the past: Nelson Corona. He remembered the same distancing from officialdom, the same determined expression.

The only difference was that Quart had glimpsed fear as well as determination in the Brazilian's eyes, while Father Ferro's dull gaze was as firm as a rock. Before resuming his obstinate silence, the old priest concluded by saying that his church was a refuge. It sounded quaint, and the Vatican envoy arched an eyebrow derisively. In search of equilibrium, he tried to reawaken his old contempt for the village priest. Once again he was a dignitary confronting an underling, and the ghost of Nelson Corona faded. "That's an odd way to describe it."

Quart smiled, sure of himself, once more strong, firm and remorseless. Once more he saw only the priest's threadbare, stained cassock and unshaven chin. It was strange how calming contempt was, he thought. Like an aspirin, a drink, or a cigarette. He decided to ask another question.

"A refuge. From what?"

He knew even before he'd finished the sentence that he was going to regret asking. Small and hard, Father Ferro looked up and fixed Quart with a stare.

"From all the bullshit," he said.

Horse-drawn carriages, painted black and yellow, were lined up waiting for customers in the shade of the orange trees. Leaning against the window of a souvenir shop, El Potro del Mantelete watched the entrance to the archbishop's palace. His hands were in the pockets of his tight, checked jacket which he wore over a close-fitting white polo-neck jumper that showed off his hard, lean pectorals. He moved a toothpick rhythmically from one side of his mouth to the other. He narrowed his eyes beneath his scarred eyebrows, his gaze fixed on the gap between the twin columns of the baroque portico. Don't let him out of your sight, Don Ibrahim ordered before he went into the shop to browse. They would look too conspicuous if all three of them hung around outside on the pavement. But they'd had to wait a long time -Don Ibrahim and La Nina Punales had looked through all the postcards, T-shirts, fans, castanets and plastic models of La Giralda and the Torre del Oro under the suspicious gaze of the shopkeeper. El Potro was trustworthy, so they had decided to repair to the nearest bar, on the corner opposite. La Nina was already on her fifth Manzanilla. El Potro, lacking new orders, wasn't taking his eyes off the entrance. The tall priest had been inside a whole hour, and in all that time El Potro had looked away only twice – when a couple of policemen walked past him on their way up the street and back down again. Both times he stared hard at the tips of his shoes. A certain character had been imparted by four gorings in the bullring, two stints in the Spanish Legion and a brain that ran on fixed rails, stunned by blows and the ringing of bells in round after round. Had Don Ibrahim and La Nina forgotten about him, he would have stood there motionless day and night, come rain or shine, his eyes fixed on the entrance to the archbishop's palace until they came to relieve him or he dropped dead. Twenty years earlier, during an awful quarrel in a third-rate bullring, his manager said something like, "If the bull doesn't kill you, you creep, the crowd'll kill you at the exit," and El Potro, sweat on his face and fear in his eyes, went back out into the ring with his red matador's cape at his waist and stood motionless until the bull, known as Butcher, charged and gave him his fourth and final goring, ending his bullfighting career. Later, during similar episodes in the boxing ring, the Legion and prison, his body and brain acquired more scars. El Potro was an idiot, but he had the makings of a hero.

Suddenly the tall priest emerged from the palace. He paused for a moment at the entrance and looked back, as if someone had called him from inside the building. A young man with fair hair and glasses followed him out, and they stood talking at the door. El Potro glanced at the bar where Don Ibrahim and La Nina were waiting, but they were engrossed in their Manzanillas. So he spat the toothpick from his mouth and went to let them know. He walked round the square past the archbishop's palace, and as he came nearer, he got a better look at the priest. But for the dog collar and crew cut the man could have been a movie star. The young priest was scruffy, pale, and spotty, like a teenager. And he looked more like a priest than the tall one.

"Leave him alone," El Potro heard the fair-haired priest say.

The tall one frowned. "Father Ferro's crazy," he said. "He's living in a fantasy world. If it was you who sent the message, you didn't do him, or his church, any favours."

"I didn't send anything."

"We have to have a talk about that, you and I. A quiet talk."

"I have nothing to tell you," said the fair-haired priest, his voice trembling but defiant.

"People keep saying that." The tall priest smiled unpleasantly. "You're wrong. There's a lot you can tell me. For instance…"

The conversation faded out of earshot as El Potro moved past. He quickened his pace and entered the bar. Prawn shells and sawdust littered the floor, and sausages and hams hung over the counter. At the bar Don Ibrahim and La Nina drank in silence. On the radio, Camaron was singing:

Wine kills the pain and the memories…

Don Ibrahim, separated from the bar by his paunch, was smoking a cigar and dropping ash on his white jacket. Beside him, La Nina had progressed from Manzanilla to Machaquito anis. She raised the lipstick-rimmed glass to her lips. She wore silver earrings and a blue dress with white polka dots. Her eyes were heavily made up and a kiss-curl stuck to her withered forehead: a down-at-heel flamenco singer like the pictures on the covers of the old singles that Don Ibrahim hoarded like gold dust in his room at the boarding house. He had records by Nat King Cole, Los Panchos, Beny More, Antonio Machin, and an antediluvian Telefunken gramophone. The former bogus lawyer and La Nina turned to look at El Potro, who jerked his head towards the street. "There," he said.

The three partners went to the door and looked. The tall priest was walking away from the other one, past the mosque. "Some priest," said La Nina huskily.

"Not bad-looking," admitted Don Ibrahim impartially, inspecting him with narrowed eyes.

The drop of Machaquito made the flamenco singer's eyes shine mischievously. uOthu. I wouldn't mind getting the last rites from him."

Don Ibrahim exchanged a grave look with El Potro. When they were on a job, as now, such frivolity was out of place. "What about the old one?" he asked, to concentrate their minds.

"He's still inside," said El Potro.

The former bogus lawyer drew thoughtfully on his cigar. "Let's split up the armed retinue," he said at last. "You, Potro, follow the old priest when he appears. Once he's home, come back here and report to me. La Nina and yours truly will watch the tall priest." He paused and solemnly consulted Don Ernesto Hemingway's watch. "Before taking action, we need information: the mother of victories, and so on. Don't you agree?"

His companions must have, because they nodded. His eyebrows meeting in the middle, El Potro was grave, as if teasing out the meaning of a word pronounced five minutes earlier. With a faraway look, La Nina watched the tall priest walk away. She still held her glass and looked as if she was going to finish off the Machaquito. On the radio, Camaron still sang of wine and longing, and behind the bar the waiter, in white shirt and black tie, clapped quietly in time to the music. Don Ibrahim surveyed his troops and decided to raise morale with a few suitably stirring words. Something about Seville being the greatest place on earth. And this job's in the bag.

"He who dares, wins," he said after a little thought, drawing on his cigar.

"Othu."

La Nina finished her anis. Still frowning, El Potro shook his head and asked, "What does 'retinue' mean?"

Lorenzo Quart's extreme conscientiousness was the source of his composure. So, when he returned to his room, the first thing he did was to open his leather briefcase and take out his laptop. He spent an hour working on his report for Monsignor Spada. As soon as it was finished, he sent it by modem to the director of the IEA. In its eight pages Quart was careful not to draw any conclusions regarding the church, the people involved with it, or the identity of Vespers. He limited himself to a fairly faithful account of his conversations with Monsignor Corvo, Gris Marsala and Priamo Ferro.

Once he'd shut down the computer and gathered up the cables, he relaxed a little. He was in shirtsleeves, collar unbuttoned. He walked round the two canopied beds to the window that looked on to the

Plaza Virgen de los Reyes. It was too early to eat, so he flicked through some guidebooks he'd bought in a small bookshop opposite the town hall. He'd also bought a copy of Q amp;S on the recommendation of Monsignor Corvo. "So you can acquaint yourself with the situation," the prelate had suggested caustically. Quart looked at the cover and then the photographs inside. "A Marriage In Crisis" ran the headline. Alongside the pictures of the woman and her companion, there was one of a very serious, well-dressed man with perfectly parted hair. "Their separation is confirmed. While financier Pencho Gavira consolidates his position as the strong man of Andalusian banking, Macarena Bruner is out and about in Seville until the early hours." Quart tore out the pages and put them in his briefcase. He suddenly noticed that the copy of the Gideon bible was on his bedside table. He didn't remember leaving it there. He thought he'd put it in a drawer with all the other stuff he wanted out of the way: pamphlets, advertisements, notepaper and envelopes. He opened the bible at random and found an old postcard. The caption read: "Church of Our Lady of the Tears. Seville. 1895." A bleached halo surrounded the central image, but the church, although faded, was unmistakable: the portico with its Solomonic columns, the bell-tower and the figure of the Virgin in its niche, head intact. Everything looked in better condition than it did now. In the square in front there was a stall with a man in a wide belt and typical Andalusian hat selling vegetables to two women dressed in black with their backs to the photographer. On the other side, a donkey carrying two barrels of water was walking away down the narrow street that led off the square, the man on its back scarcely more than an outline, a ghost about to disappear from the picture into the surrounding white halo.

Quart turned the card over. There were a few lines written in a gently sloping copperplate hand. The ink had faded to a pale brown making the words barely legible.

I come here to pray for you every day and wait for you to return to the sacred place where you swore your love and gave me such happiness. I will always love you. Carlota

The stamp, showing Alfonso XIII as a child, had no postmark, and there was a stain over the date handwritten at the top. Quart could make out a 9 and maybe a 7 at the end, so it could have been 1897. The address, on the other hand, was perfectly legible: "Captain Manuel Xaloc. On board the ship Manigua. Port of Havana. Cuba".

He picked up the telephone and dialled Reception. The receptionist said that his shift had started at eight that morning and no one had been up to Quart's room or asked for him in all that time, but maybe Quart should ask the cleaners. Quart was put through to them, but they weren't much help. They didn't remember having moved the bible, and they couldn't say whether it had been in the drawer or on the bedside table when they cleaned the room. Nobody had been in except them.

He sat by the window and examined the postcard in his hand. A ship docked in the port of Havana in 1897. A captain called Manuel Xaloc and someone called Carlota who had loved him and prayed for him at Our Lady of the Tears. Did the message on the back of the postcard have any special meaning, or was it the picture of the church that was significant? Suddenly he remembered the Gideon bible. Had the postcard been placed inside at random or was it marking a specific page? He cursed himself for not having noticed. He went over to the bedside table and saw that by chance he'd left the book open face down. It was open at pages 168 and 169 – John 2. There was nothing underlined but he quickly found the relevant lines. It was too obvious.

And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;

And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

Quart glanced from the bible to the postcard. He thought of Monsignor Spada and His Eminence Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz – they wouldn't be very happy about this turn of events. He wasn't that happy about it himself. Somebody was playing disturbing games, breaking into papal computer systems and people's hotel rooms. Quart thought of all the people he had met, and wondered if the

person he was looking for was one of them. Dear God. He could feel his exasperation mounting, and he threw the book and postcard on to the bed. This was all he needed: a ghost playing hide-and-seek.

Quart came out of the lift on the ground floor. He walked past the display case full of fans and along the corridor round the lobby. He looked slightly out of place in his dark suit. The Dona Maria was a four-star hotel, a beautiful building in the Calle Don Remondo, a stone's throw from Santa Cruz. The interior decorator had got slighdy carried away with the Andalusian folk motifs, bullfighters and pictures of dancers with mantillas and hair combs. At the door a tired-looking young woman tour guide, holding up a small Dutch flag, herded a brightly dressed group equipped with cameras. As he handed in his key at the reception desk, Quart read her name on the little plastic badge she wore: V. Oudkerk. He smiled sympathetically. The young woman smiled back resignedly and walked off at the head of the group. "There's a lady waiting for you, Father Quart. She's just arrived.'' Quart looked at the receptionist in surprise, then turned round. A woman, tanned, with black hair reaching to below her shoulders, sat on one of the sofas in the lobby. She wore sunglasses, jeans, moccasins, a pale-blue shirt and a brown jacket. She was very beautiful. She stood up as Quart came towards her and he noticed her ivory necklace – pale against her tanned skin – and her gold bracelet and the leather handbag beside her. She held out a slender, elegant and perfectly manicured hand. "Hello. I'm Macarena Bruner."

He'd recognised her a few seconds before, from the photographs in the magazine. He couldn't help staring at her mouth. It was large and well defined, lips slightly parted with very white teeth showing. Her upper lip was heart-shaped. She wore pale-pink, almost colourless lipstick.

"Well," she said, surprised, keeping her sunglasses on, "you really are very good-looking."

"So are you," answered Quart calmly.

She was only slightly shorter than he, and he was nearly one metre eighty-five. Beneath her jacket he could make out a generous, attractive figure. Uneasy, he looked away and checked his watch. She was staring at him thoughtfully.

"I'd like to talk to you," she said at last.

"Of course. You've done me a favour. I was thinking of coming to see you." Quart looked round. "How did you know where I was staying?"

uMy friend Gris Marsala told me."

"I didn't know you were friends."

She smiled and he saw her white teeth again. They echoed the ivory necklace against her caramel skin. She was sure of herself, because of her social standing and because of her beauty. But Quart could tell that she, like Gris Marsala, found his severe black suit and dog collar intimidating. They had that effect on women, whether beautiful or not.

"Could we talk now?"

"Of course."

They sat facing each other, she with legs crossed on the sofa where she'd waited; he in the armchair next to it. "I know why you're here in Seville."

"I hope you're not expecting me to be surprised," Quart said with a smile, resigned. "My visit seems to be public knowledge." "Gris said I should come to see you."

He looked at her with renewed interest. He wondered what her eyes were like behind her dark glasses. "That's strange. Your friend wasn't very helpful yesterday."

Macarena Bruner's hair slid over her shoulders, half-covering her face, and she pushed it back. It was very thick and black, Quart noticed. An Andalusian beauty like those painted by Romero de Torres. Or maybe Carmen of the Tobacco Factory, as described by Merimee. Any man, whether painter, Frenchman or bullfighter, could have lost his head over that woman. A priest could too.

"I hope you didn't get the wrong impression of the church," she said. After a pause she added, "Or of Father Ferro."

To dispel his uneasiness Quart resorted to humour: "Don't tell me you too are a member of Father Ferro's fan club."

His hand was hanging over the arm of the chair, and he knew, despite the dark glasses, that she was looking at it. He moved it discreetly and interlaced its fingers with the fingers of his other hand.

Macarena Bruner said nothing for a few moments. She pushed her hair from her face again. She seemed to be debating how to continue the conversation.

"Look," she said at last, "Gris is my friend. And she thinks your presence here might be useful, even if your view isn't sympathetic."

Quart realised she was being conciliatory. He raised his hand and saw her follow its movement with her eyes. "You know," he said, "there's something about all this that I find somewhat irritating… But what should I call you? Senora Bruner?"

"Please, call me Macarena."

She took off her glasses, and Quart was taken aback by the beauty of her large, dark eyes with glints of honey. Praise God, he would have said aloud had he thought that God bothered Himself with that kind of prayer. He forced himself to hold her gaze as if the salvation of his soul depended on it. And maybe it did – if there was a soul, that is, and a God.

"Macarena," he said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. As he did so, he smelled her perfume: gentle, like jasmine. "There's something irritating about this whole business. Everyone assumes I'm in Seville to give Don Priamo Ferro a hard time. I'm not. I'm here to write a report on the situation. I don't have any preconceptions. But Father Ferro won't co-operate." He sat back. "In fact, nobody will."

Now it was her turn to smile. "It's understandable. Nobody trusts you."

"Why?".

"Because the archbishop has been speaking ill of you. He calls you a scalp hunter."

Quart grimaced. "Yes. We're old acquaintances."

"Father Ferro could be made to see things differently," Macarena said, biting her lower lip. "Maybe I can help."

"It would be better for everyone, especially him. But why would you do this? What would you gain?"

She shook her head as if that was irrelevant, and her hair once more slid over her shoulder. She pushed it back, looking intently at Quart.

"Is it true that the Pope received a message?"

Macarena Bruner was obviously aware of the effect her eyes had on people. Quart swallowed. It was partly her eyes, partly her question.

"That's confidential," he answered, trying to soften his words with a smile. "I can neither confirm nor deny it."

"It's a secret that's being shouted from the rooftops."

"In that case, I don't need to join in."

Her dark eyes shone thoughtfully. She leaned on the arm of the sofa, which made her blouse move suggestively. "My family has the final say regarding Our Lady of the Tears," she explained. "That means my mother and I. If the building is condemned and the archbishop allows it to be demolished, the final decision about the land is left to us."

"Not entirely," said Quart. "According to my information, the council has some say."

"We'd take legal action."

"Technically you're still married. And your husband…" "We've been living apart for six months," she interrupted, shaking her head. "My husband has no right to take any action independently." "He hasn't tried to change your mind?"

"Yes." Macarena's smile was contemptuous now, distant, almost cruel. "But it makes no difference. The church will outlive all of this."

"Strange choice of words," said Quart, surprised. "You make it sound as if the church is alive."

She was staring at his hands again. "Maybe it is. Lots of things are alive and you wouldn't think it." She was lost in thought for a moment, then suddenly came to. "But what I meant was that the church is needed. Father Ferro is too."

"Why? There are plenty of other priests and churches in Seville."

She burst out laughing. A loud, frank laugh. It was so contagious that Quart almost laughed too. "Don Priamo's special. And so is his church." She was still smiling, her eyes fixed on Quart. "But I can't explain it in words. You have to go and see it."

"I've already been. And your favourite priest kicked me out."

Macarena Bruner burst out laughing again. Quart had never heard a woman laugh in such a forthright, appealing way. He realised he wanted to hear her laugh more. He was astonished at himself. In his well-trained brain, alarm bells were ringing. It was beginning to seem as if he had wandered into the garden that his old mentors at the seminary had warned him to keep a healthy distance from: serpents, forbidden fruit, incarnations of Delilah and the like.

"Yes," she said. "Gris told me. But do try again. Go to Mass and see what goes on there. Maybe you'll understand."

"I will. Do you go to eight o'clock Mass?"

The question was well-meaning but Macarena's expression suddenly became suspicious, serious. "That's none of your business," she said-, opening and closing her sunglasses.

Quart raised both hands apologetically, and there was an awkward silence. He looked round for a waiter and asked her if she wanted anything. She shook her head. She seemed more relaxed so he asked her another question. "What do you think about the two deaths?"

Her laugh this time was unpleasant. "The wrath of God," she said.

Quart looked at her seriously. "A strange point of view."

"Why?" She seemed genuinely surprised. "They, or whoever sent them, were asking for it."

"Not a very Christian sentiment."

She picked up her bag impatiently and put it down. She wound and unwound the shoulder strap round her fingers. "You don't understand, Father…" She looked at him hesitantly. "What should I call you? Reverend? Father Quart?"

"You can call me Lorenzo. I'm not going to be your confessor."

"Why not? You're a priest."

"A rather unusual one," said Quart. "And I'm not really here in that capacity."

As he spoke, he looked away for a couple of seconds, unable to meet her eyes. When he looked back, she was watching him with interest, almost, mischievously.

"It would be fun to say confession to you. Would you like me to?"

Quart took a breath. He frowned, as if considering. The cover of Q amp;S flashed before his eyes. "I'm afraid I wouldn't be an impartial confessor, in your case," he said, "you're too…"

"Too what?"

She wasn't playing fair, he thought. She was going too far even for a man with the nerves of Lorenzo Quart. He breathed in and out to calm himself, to keep his composure.

"Attractive,' he answered coolly. "I suppose that's the word. But you know more about that than I do."

Macarena Bruner said nothing, weighing his answer. She seemed pleased. "Gris was right," she said finally. "You're not like a priest."

Quart nodded. "I expect Father Ferro and I seem like different species…"

"You're right. And he's my confessor."

"A good choice, I'm sure." He paused, then continued, to make his words sound less sarcastic, "He's a very rigorous man." "You know nothing about him."

"Quite true. And so far I haven't found anyone to enlighten me."

"I will."

"When?"

"I don't know. Tomorrow evening. Join me for dinner at La Albahaca."

"La Albahaca," he repeated.

"Yes. In the Plaza de Santa Cruz. They usually require a tie, but I'm sure they'll make an exception in your case. You dress rather well for a priest."

He didn't answer for a few seconds. Why not? After all, that was what he was in Seville for. And he could drink to the health of Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz.

"I can wear a tie if you like, though I've never had a problem in a restaurant."

Macarena Bruner stood up, and so did Quart. She was staring at his hands again. "It's up to you," she said, smiling as she put her sunglasses back on. "I've never had dinner with a priest before."

Don Ibrahim fanned himself with his hat. He was sitting on a bench in the Plaza Virgen de los Reyes, and the air smelled of Seville oranges and blossom. Beside him, La Nina Punales was crocheting while they watched the entrance of the Dona Maria Hotel: four chain, miss two, one double and one treble. She moved her lips silently, as if in prayer, repeating the sequence, the ball of yarn in her lap, while the crochet grew and her silver bracelets jangled. She was making yet another bedspread for her trousseau. For almost thirty years now it had lain yellowing between mothballs, in a wardrobe at her apartment in the district of Triana. But she still added to it, as if she held time in her fingers, waiting for the dark man with green eyes to come for her.

A carriage crossed the square, with four English football fans in the back wearing sombreros. Real Betis was playing Manchester United. Don Ibrahim gazed after it and fingered his moustache, sighing. Poor Seville, he murmured, fanning himself more vigorously with his panama. La Nina muttered in agreement without looking up, intent on her crochet: four chain, miss two. Don Ibrahim threw away his cigar butt and watched it smoulder on the ground. He stubbed it out carefully with the tip of his walking stick. He hated those brutal types who ground out cigarettes as if they were murdering them. Thanks to Peregil's advance he'd treated himself to a whole, brand-new box of Montecristo cigars, something he hadn't done since Adam was a lance corporal. Two of the magnificent cigars were peeping out of the breast pocket of his crumpled white linen suit. He patted them tenderly. The sky was blue, the air smelled of orange blossom, and he was in Seville. He had a good little deal going, cigars in his pocket and thirty thousand pesetas in his wallet. All he needed to make his happiness complete were three tickets to the bullfight; three good seats in the shade to see Faraon de Camas, or that promising young bullfighter Curro Maestral. According to El Potro, Maestral's technique wasn't bad but there was no comparison with the late Juan Belmdnte, God rest his soul. The same Curro Maestral who was in the papers chasing after bankers' wives.

And, speaking of women, the tall priest had just emerged from the hotel talking to a pretty classy one. Don Ibrahim nudged La Nina, who stopped crocheting. The lady was still young, good-looking, and wore dark glasses and casual but stylish clothes with the relaxed elegance typical of upper-crust Andalusian women. She and the priest shook hands. Don Ibrahim and La Nina exchanged meaningful glances. This introduced all sorts of unexpected possibilities.

"A slight complication, Nina."

"You're right there."

With some difficulty, given his bulk, the former bogus lawyer got to his feet, placed his panama on his head, and grasped Maria Felix's walking stick resolutely. He told La Nina to go on crocheting while not losing sight of the tall priest. He himself set off after the woman with the sunglasses. She headed into Santa Cruz, turning down the Calle Guzman el Bueno and disappearing into a palace known as the Casa del Postigo. A renowned building in Seville, it had been the residence of the dukes of El Nuevo Extremo since the sixteenth century. Frowning and alert, Don Ibrahim walked past the obligatory orange trees in the little square in front of the building, which was painted ochre and white, to carry out a tactical reconnaissance of the place. The windows were protected by iron grilles. Beneath the main balcony an escutcheon presided over the entrance: a helmet with a lion for a crest, a bordure of anchors and heads of Moors and American Indian chiefs, a bend with a pomegranate and the motto ODERINT DUM PROBENT. Don Ibrahim translated it – "Smell before you touch," or something like that – and approved the message. He entered the dark portal casually and looked through the wrought-iron gate to the inner courtyard, a beautiful Andalusian patio of Mozarabic columns and large pots with plants and flowers around a pretty marble and riled fountain. A maid in a black uniform came up to the gate looking rather suspicious, so he smiled his most innocent smile, raised his hat and made his way back out to the street, as if he were simply a tourist who'd lost his way. He stood for a moment facing the building. Still smiling beneath his bushy, nicotine-stained moustache, he pulled one of the cigars from his pocket and carefully removed the band bearing the words MONTECRISTO, HAVANA around a tiny fleur-de-lis. He cut one end with the penknife hanging on his watch chain. The little knife had been a present, he claimed, from his friends Rita and Orson, a memento of an unforgettable afternoon in Old Havana when he took them to see the Partagas Cigar Factory on the corner of the Calle Dragones and Calle Barcelona. Later, Rita and he danced at the Tropicana until the early hours. Orson and Rita were there filming The Lady from Shanghai or something. They all hugged and kissed, and Orson got drunk as a lord and gave him the litdc penknife that Citizen Welles used to cut the tips off his cigars. Lost in the memory, or the fantasy, Don Ibrahim put the cigar between his lips and savoured the leaf of pure tobacco wrapped round the outside. The tall priest certainly had interesting lady friends, he thought. Then he held his lighter to the end of the Montecristo, looking forward to the half hour of pleasure he had before him. Don Ibrahim couldn't imagine life without a Cuban cigar. With his first puff, Seville, Havana – how similar they were – and his Caribbean youth, in which even he couldn't distinguish fact from fiction, all merged in a dream as extraordinary as it was perfect.

The light inside the brothel was red, and Julio Iglesias was playing on the stereo. Dolores la Negra put more ice in Celestino PeregiPs glass of whisky.

"You look great, Loli," said Peregil.

Dolores wiggled her hips behind the bar and ran an ice cube over her bare navel. Her enormous breasts, inside a very short T-shirt, swung in time to the music. She looked like a Gypsy; she was a large woman well into her thirties who'd had more men than were in the army.

"I'm going to give you the fuck of your life," announced Peregil, smoothing the hair over his bald patch. "It'll take your breath away."

Accustomed to such protocol and to Peregil's sexual prowess, Dolores took two dance steps, looking straight into his eyes. She stuck out the tip of her tongue, dropped the ice cube she'd rubbed over her navel into her glass, and went to pour another glass of Catalan champagne for one of the other customers. The girls had already brought out two bottles for the man and he was now well on his way to a third. Iglesias sang on. Peregil swallowed some whisky and eyed Arab Fatima, who was dancing by herself on the dance floor, wearing a skirt that barely covered her bottom, knee-high boots and a low-cut top that showed her merrily jiggling tits. Fatima was his second choice for the evening, and he seriously started to weigh the pros and cons of each girl.

"Hello, Peregil."

He hadn't heard them arrive. They came and leaned on the bar, one on either side of him, and looked straight ahead at the rows of bottles on the mirror-lined shelves. Peregil could see their reflections in front of him: to his right, the Gypsy Mairena, dressed in black, thin and dangerous, with the manner of a flamenco dancer, wearing a huge gold ring beside the stump of his little finger. He'd chopped it off himself during a riot at Ocafla Prison. To Peregil's left, El Polio Muclas, fair-haired, neat and slight. The cutthroat razor he carried in his left-hand trouser pocket made him look as if he had a permanent hard-on, and he always said "Excuse me" before slashing someone.

"Aren't you going to buy us a drink?" asked the Gypsy slowly, amicably. He was enjoying himself. Peregil suddenly felt very hot. With a despairing look, he called Dolores over. A gin and tonic for Mairena, the same for El Polio Muelas. Neither touched his drink. Both stared at Peregil in the mirror.

"We've come to give you a message," said the Gypsy.

"From a friend," added El Polio.

Peregil swallowed, hoping that in the red light of the bar they wouldn't notice. The "friend" was Ruben Molina, a moneylender from El Baratillo. For months Peregil had been writing IOUs, and he felt quite faint when he thought how much he owed Molina. Ruben Molina was well known in certain circles in Seville. He sent his debtors only two reminders: the first by word, the second by deed. Mairena and El Polio Muelas were his errand boys.

"Tell him I'll pay him. There's money coming in."

"That's what Frasquito Torres said."

El Polio smiled, menacingly sympathetic. In the mirror, the Gypsy's long, ascetic face was about as cheerful as if he'd just returned from his mother's funeral. Peregil saw his own reflection between the two of theirs. He wanted to swallow again but couldn't, the mention of Torres had made his throat dry. Frasquito came from a good family and was well known in Seville as an idler. For a time, like Peregil, he'd called on the services of Molina. But when the time came, he wasn't able to pay up. Somebody waited for him at the entrance to his house and broke every tooth in his head. They left him there, with his teeth inside a cone of newspaper tucked into his top jacket pocket.

"I just need another week."

Mairena put an arm round Peregil's shoulders, in a gesture that was so unexpectedly friendly that Peregil almost lost his head with terror. Mairena stroked Peregil's chin with the stump of his little finger. "What a coincidence," said the Gypsy. His black shirt smelled of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. "Because that's exactly what you have, my friend. Exactly seven days and not a minute more."

Peregil gripped the bar, trying to stop his hands from trembling. On the shelves the bottle labels merged. Life is dangerous, he thought. It always ends up killing you.

"Tell Molina that's no problem," he stammered. "I'm a man of my word. I'm about to clinch a good deal." He grabbed his glass and downed the drink. An ice cube crunched in a sinister fashion against his teeth, reminding him how Frasquito Torres had had to borrow from another moneylender to pay for a set of false teeth that cost him nearly half a million pesetas. The Gypsy still had his arm round Peregil's shoulders.

"That sounds so pretty," mocked El Polio Muelas. "To clinch."

Julio Iglesias sang on. Swinging her hips in time to the music behind the bar, Dolores La Negra came up to make conversation. She dipped a finger in Peregil's whisky and sucked it noisily, rubbed her stomach against the bar, and then shook the contents of her shirt with consummate professionalism before stopping to stare at the three men, disappointed. Peregil was as pale as if he'd just seen a ghost, and the other two didn't look at all friendly. They hadn't even touched their drinks. So Dolores turned and walked away, still moving her hips in time to the music. After a lifetime on one side of a bar or the other, she knew when to get out of the way.

V

Captain Xaloc's Twenty Pearls

I've also loved women who were dead. Heinrich Heine, Florentine Nights

Deputy Superintendent Simeon Navajo, head of investigations at police headquarters in Seville, finished eating his tortilla and glanced amicably at Quart.

"Listen, Padre," he said. "I don't know if it's the church itself, mere chance or the Archangel Gabriel." He paused and took a swig from the bottle of beer on his desk "But there's something sinister about that place."

Navajo was a small, thin, amiable man, constantly gesticulating. He wore round steel-rimmed glasses, and his bushy moustache seemed to sprout from his nose. He looked like the caricature of a seventies intellectual. This impression was emphasised by his jeans, baggy red shirt, and receding hair, worn long and in a ponytail. For the past twenty minutes he and Quart had been going through reports on the two deaths at Our Lady of the Tears. The police investigation had come to the same conclusion as the forensic reports: accidental death. Navajo was sorry he didn't have a handcuffed culprit to parade before the envoy from Rome. Just bad luck, Father, he was saying, a loose handrail, a chunk of plaster coming away from the ceiling. Poor devils, their number was up. Wham, straight to heaven. At least, the deputy superintendent assumed they'd gone to heaven, since they'd been in church.

"We know exactly how Penuelas, the municipal architect, died." Navajo walked two fingers along his desk to illustrate his account. "He spent half an hour wandering about under the roof of the church looking for evidence to support a condemnation order and then leaned against one of the wooden handrails up in the belfry. The wood was rotten and gave way. Penuelas fell and was impaled on one of the metal poles sticking out of the half-assembled scaffolding below, like a kebab." The deputy superintendent now held one finger up, as if it were the pole, and slammed the palm of his other hand down on it. Quart assumed the hand was meant to represent the skewered architect. "There were witnesses present when it happened, and on subsequent inspection the handrail didn't appear to have been tampered with."

The deputy superintendent took another swig of beer and wiped his moustache with the finger on which Penuelas had been impaled. Then he smiled enthusiastically. He and Quart had met a couple of years before, during the Pope's visit. Simeon Navajo had been acting as liaison for the Seville police, and the two had got along famously. The envoy from Rome let the policeman take the credit for all the spectacular successes, such as catching the priest who planned to stab the Holy Father or finding the Semtex hidden in the basket of laundry at the Convent of the Holy Sacrament. Navajo was personally congratulated by the minister of the interior and His Holiness himself. His photo was on the front page of the newspapers and he was awarded a special commendation. Now, nobody at headquarters dared call him Miss Magnum for wearing his hair in a ponytail. The magnum, a.357-calibre, lay among a pile of papers on his desk. He only wore it when he went to his ex-wife's house to pick up his kids. That way, he said, she respected him. And the kids thought it was cool.

Quart looked around the office. Through a glass partition he could see a North African with a black eye. The man sat facing a thickset police officer in shirtsleeves. The officer was saying something to him and didn't look too friendly. It was like a silent movie. On this side of the partition, a framed photograph of the king and a calendar, its passing days energetically ticked off, hung on the wall. There was a grey filing cabinet with an Expo '92 sticker and a sticker of a marijuana leaf, a fan, a pin-board covered with photographs of criminals, a dart-board with holes in the wall all around it, and a poster of some American policemen beating the daylights out of a black man under the words TOUGH LOVE.

"What about Father Urbizu?" asked Quart.

The deputy superintendent scratched his ear. "It seems his death was accidental too, Padre. For him there weren't any witnesses, but my people went over every inch of the church afterwards. Maybe he leaned against part of the scaffolding or knocked it accidentally." He imitated the motion of swaying scaffolding with his hands so realistically that he stopped, as if it gave him vertigo. "The top of it could have knocked off a section of the cornice. The cornice might already have been loose, and by some miracle – if you'll excuse the word -only the scaffolding was keeping it in place. So when the scaffolding got knocked, ten kilos of plaster came down on his head. He must have heard the sound, looked up, and then splat."

He illustrated his story with the appropriate hand movements. At the end, he lay one hand palm upwards to show Father Urbizu passing to a better life. He looked for a moment at his dying hand, then took a swig of beer. "Another case of bad luck," he said thoughtfully.

Quart took out a couple of name cards, to take notes. "Why did the chunk of cornice come down?" he asked.

"Depends." Navajo glanced suspiciously at the cards. He brushed some tortilla crumbs from his shirt. "According to Newton, the attraction of the earth causes any unsupported object to acquire vertical velocity and fall on the heads of archbishops' secretaries who got out of bed on the wrong side that morning." He looked to see Quart's reaction. "I hope you've written that down. And people say the police don't base their work on scientific principles."

Quart got the message. He laughed and put his cards and pen away. "So, why do you think it happened?" he asked.

Navajo shrugged. None of this information was particularly important or confidential, but he obviously wanted to keep things on an official footing. Since the investigation confirmed that the two deaths were accidental, Our Lady of the Tears was still exclusively a matter for the Church. There were rumours that the council and the banks were bringing pressure to bear, and the deputy superintendent's bosses wanted to keep well out of it. Quart may have been a Spaniard, a priest and an old friend, but he was still an agent for a foreign state.

"According to our experts," answered Navajo, "the chunk of cornice was already loose. This was proved by an inspection after the accident. We found a pocket of damp behind it. The roof had been leaking for years."

"You've definitely ruled out human intervention?"

The deputy superintendent began to sneer but caught himself. After all, he was in Quart's debt.

"Listen, Padre, we're the police. We wouldn't even rule out a hundred per cent that Judas wasn't actually bumped off by one of his eleven colleagues. So let's say we're ninety-five per cent sure. It's hardly likely that someone said to the poor bastard, 'Hey, stand there a moment,' climbed up the scaffolding, pulled off a chunk of cornice, and dropped it on him while he just stood there looking up." Navajo's fingers illustrated the climb up the scaffolding and the cornice crashing down. Then a finger lay inert, waiting for the forensic people. "That only happens in cartoons."

When he left the deputy superintendent, Quart felt sure that Vespers had been exaggerating. Maybe the statement about the church killing to defend itself – freely interpreted, metaphorically, symbolically -was true. It was quite another thing to establish how a dilapidated three-hundred-year-old building could, either on its own or with the help of Providence, do away with anyone who threatened it. Establishing that was no longer a matter for Quart, or even the IEA. The supernatural was the province of another kind of expert, closer to Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz's sinister brotherhood than to the rough centurion embodied by Monsignor Spada. In the monsignor's world, and in the good soldier Quart's, two and two always added up to four.

He was turning all this over in his mind when he thought he heard footsteps behind him as he entered the narrow streets of Santa Cruz. He stopped a couple of times but could see nothing suspicious. He walked on, keeping to the narrow strip of shade provided by the eaves of the houses. The sun beat down on Seville, and the white and ochre facades shimmered in the heat like the walls of an oven. Quart's jacket felt as heavy as lead. If there really was a hell, he thought, sinning Sevillanos would feel quite at home – having already lived in an inferno for several months each year, here on earth. When he came to the little square with the church, he stopped before the railing hung with geraniums. He watched enviously as a canary dipped its beak into a bowl of water in its shaded cage. There wasn't a breath of air and nothing stirred, neither the curtains at the windows nor the leaves of the geraniums and orange trees. Sails on the Sargasso Sea.

It was a relief to cross the threshold of Our Lady of the Tears. Inside he found an oasis of cool shade that smelled of wax and damp. He stopped to catch his breath, still dazzled by the sun outside. By the door there was a small carved figure of Jesus of Nazareth. A tormented baroque Christ who'd been put through the third degree in the judgement hall: How many of you are there? Where do you keep your followers' gold and silver coins? What's all this about you being the son of God? Guess who ratted on you. His wrists were bound with rope, and large drops of blood dripped from his crown of thorns. He was looking up, hoping for someone to get him out of there on a habeas corpus. Unlike his peers, Quart had never felt a link with this man whose image he now had before him. Not even at the seminary, during the years of what he thought of as his breaking in, where his theology teachers meticulously took apart and reassembled the mechanisms of faith in the minds of young men destined for the priesthood. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was the question to be avoided at all cost. But for Quart, who had already posed the question by the time he entered the seminary and was convinced there was no answer, this theological programming was superfluous. Being a prudent young man, he said nothing.

He glanced at the carved figure again. The Nazarene certainly had had guts. Nobody need feel ashamed to carry His Cross like a flag. Quart often regretted not having another kind of faith. Men black with dust beneath their chain mail had once shouted the name of God as they charged into battle, to win eternal life and a place in heaven with their slashing swords. Living and dying had been so much simpler then.

Mechanically, he made the sign of the Cross. Around the figure of Christ, which was in a glass display case, hung fifty or so ex-votos: brass or wax models of hands, legs, eyes, children's bodies, locks of hair, letters, ribbons, notes, and plaques giving thanks for a healing. Even a military medal from Africa tied to an old bridal bouquet. As always when he came across such devotion, Quart wondered how much anxiety, how many sleepless nights by a sickbed, how many prayers or stories of hope, pain, life and death were summed up by each of those objects that Don Priamo Ferro, unlike other priests more in tune with the rimes, allowed people to place around the figure of Christ in his small church. This was old-style religion, with a priest in a cassock intoning Mass in Latin, the vital link between man and the great mysteries. A church of faith and solace, when cathedrals, gothic windows, baroque altarpieces, images and paintings depicting the glory of God served the same purpose as television screens nowadays: to reassure man confronted with the horror of his own solitude, death and the void. "Hello," said Gris Marsala.

She had climbed down from the scaffolding and now stood before him expectantly, hands in the pockets of her jeans. As before, her clothes were covered with plaster.

"You didn't tell me you were a nun," Quart said reproachfully.

She suppressed a smile, smoothing her grey hair tied in a plait. "True, I didn't," she said, surveying him with a friendly expression, as if she wanted something confirmed. "I assumed a priest would sense it without anyone's help."

"I'm a rather slow-witted priest."

There was a brief silence. Gris Marsala smiled and said, "That's not what I've heard." "From whom?"

"You know… Archbishops, angry priests." Her American accent was more pronounced with certain words. "Attractive women who ask you out to dinner."

"You can't possibly know about that," Quart said, laughing.

"Why not? Haven't you heard of the telephone? You just dial and speak. Macarena Bruner's my friend."

"Strange friendship. A nun and a banker's wife who's the talk of Seville…"

"That's not at all funny."

He nodded placatingly, realising he'd gone too far. His remark, no matter what tactical purpose it might have served, was unfair. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

"You're right. I'm sorry," he said looking away, embarrassed by his faux pas. He wondered why he'd been so rude. He could see Macarena Bruner, the ivory necklace against her brown skin and those eyes of hers.

"You don't know her as well as I do," said Sister Marsala sadly. "That's true."

Quart took a few steps up the nave and again looked at the scaffolding along the walls, the pews pushed into a corner, the blackened ceiling. At the far end, in front of the altarpiece in gloom, burned the candle of the Holy Sacrament. "What have you got to do with all of this?" he asked.

"I told you. I work here as an architect and restorer. Fully qualified. I have degrees from UCLA and Seville."

Quart's footsteps echoed in the nave. The nun walked beside him noiselessly in her trainers. The remains of pictures were visible between the damp and soot stains on the vault: the wings of an angel, the beard of a prophet.

"They're lost for ever," she said. "It's too late to restore them."

Quart looked up at a cherub that had a crack across its forehead as if it had been struck with an axe. "Is the church really falling down?" he asked.

Gris Marsala looked weary. She'd heard that question too many times. "The council, the bank and the archbishop all claim it is, to justify demolishing it." She waved her hand, taking in the nave. "The building is in a bad state. It's been neglected for the last hundred and fifty years. But the basic structure is still sound. There aren't any irreparable cracks in the walls or the vault."

"But part of the ceiling came down on Father Urbizu's head," said Quart.

"Yes. There. Do you see?" The woman pointed at a gap almost a metre long in the cornice all round the nave ten metres up. "That chunk of gilded plaster missing above the pulpit. An unfortunate accident."

"The second unfortunate accident."

"If the municipal architect fell from the ceiling, it was his own fault. Nobody said he could go up there."

For a nun, Gris Marsala didn't sound that sympathetic towards the dead. She seemed to be implying that they'd deserved it. He wondered if she too, like Macarena Bruner, sought absolution from Father Ferro. It was rare to find a flock so faithful to its pastor.

"Imagine," said Quart, eyeing the scaffolding, "that you had nothing to do with this church and I asked you to give me a technical assessment of it."

She answered immediately, without hesitation. "It's old and neglected, but not in ruins. The damage is mostly to the internal walls, because of the leaking roof. But we've repaired that now. I carried nearly ten tons of lime, cement, and sand fifteen metres up with my own hands." She held them up. They were strong, calloused, with short, broken nails encrusted with plaster and paint. "And Father Oscar helped. Father Ferro's too old to go clambering about on the roof."

"And the rest of the building?"

The nun shrugged. "It won't fall down if we get the essential repairs finished. Once we've got rid of all the leaks, it would be a good idea to reinforce the wooden beams, which have rotted in places. Ideally they should be replaced, but we don't have the funds." She sighed. "That's for the actual structure of the building. As far as the ornamentation goes, we just have to restore, gradually, the most damaged parts. I've found a way of doing the windows. A friend of mine works in a stained-glass workshop, and he's promised to make me some pieces to replace the damaged ones, for free. It'll be a slow process, because the leadwork also needs to be restored. But there's no hurry."

"Isn't there?"

"Not if we win this battle."

Quart looked at her with interest. "It sounds as if you take it very personally."

"I do," she said simply. "I stayed in Seville because of this. I came here to try to solve a certain problem, and this is where I found the solution."

"A personal problem?"

"Yes. You could call it a crisis, I suppose. They happen from time to time. Have you had yours?"

Quart nodded politely, his thoughts elsewhere. I must ask Rome for her file. As soon as possible.

"We're talking about you, Sister Marsala."

She screwed up her eyes. "Are you always so detached, or is it a pose? By the way, call me Gris. 'Sister Marsala' sounds ridiculous. I mean, look at me. Anyway, as I was saying, I came here to put my heart and mind in order, and I found the answer in this church." "What answer?"

"The one we're all searching for. A cause, I suppose. Something to believe in and to fight for." She said nothing for a moment, then added, more quietly, "Faith."

"Father Ferro's."

She looked at him without saying anything. Her plait was coming undone. She re-plaited it without taking her eyes off Quart.

"We all have a kind of faith," she said at last. "And it's something we all very much need, with this century ending so disreputably, don't you think? All those revolutions made and lost. The barricades deserted. The heroes who fought as one are now simply loners clinging to whatever they can find." Her blue eyes rested on him curiously. "Have you never felt like one of the those pawns forgotten in a corner of the board, with the sounds of battle fading behind them? They try to stand straight but wonder if they still have a king to serve."

As they walked round the church, Gris Marsala showed Quart the only picture of any worth: a painting of the Virgin, attributed without too much conviction to Murillo, hanging over the entrance to the vestry from the nave, next to the confessional. Then they went to the crypt. It was closed off by a wrought-iron gate at the top of marble steps descending into darkness. The woman explained that small churches such as this didn't usually have a crypt. Our Lady of the Tears, however, was specially privileged. Fourteen dukes of El Nuevo Extremo lay there, among their number some who died before the church was built. After 1865 the crypt fell into disuse, and members of the family were buried in the family vault in San Fernando. The only exception was Carlota Bruner. "Who?"

Quart was resting a hand on the arch at the entrance to the crypt, decorated with a skull and crossbones. The stone was like ice.

"Carlota Bruner," Gris Marsala said, surprised by his surprise. "Macarena's, great-aunt. She died at the turn of the century and was buried here in the crypt."

"Could we see her tomb?"

The anxiety in Quart's voice, though concealed, was evident. The woman stared at him, unsure.

"Of course," she said and went to fetch a bunch of keys from the vestry. She unlocked the gate and flicked a very antiquated light switch. A dusty bulb cast a dim light over the steps. Quart had to bow his head as he went down. At the bottom he came to a small square area with walls covered with flat stones laid out in three rows. There were large patches of damp on the brick walls, and the air smelled musty. One of the walls bore an escutcheon, carved in marble, with the motto ODERINT DUM PROBENT. Let them hate me, so long as they respect me, he translated to himself. Above it was a black cross.

"Fourteen dukes," said Gris Marsala beside him. Her voice was hushed, as if the place made her feel awkward. Quart read the inscriptions on the stones. The oldest bore the dates 1472-1551: Rodrigo Bruner de Lebrija, conquistador and Christian soldier, first Duke of El Nuevo Extremo. The most recent was by the door, between two empty niches. In a vault occupied by explorers, statesmen and warriors, it was the only one with a woman's name: