Is this part of the grand plan? Is this what Julian wants?

‘With Julian and Sofía?’

‘Sure. But the two of us as well. Rosalía has to go home at night so I have a lot of time in my hands. We go to Huertas, we go to La Latina. I know a wonderful Basque restaurant in Madrid, the best cooking in the city. Two men with no cares in the world. I would like to leave all of my problems behind. I have no responsibilities for five days. And we find you a girl, Alec. You have a girl?’

His hand slaps onto my biceps as I reply, ‘Nothing regular,’ and shake my head. ‘Julian doesn’t know anything about this?’

‘Julian?’

The idea seemed to take him by surprise.

‘Julian. Julian Church.’

‘I know who you mean. No, he must know nothing. Nobody knows anything, and you must speak to nobody about it.’ He starts grinning again, wagging his finger. ‘Can you imagine telling Julian this, anything that I have told you? He would not understand. He would be English about it and wave his hands in the air, trying to make it all go away. They do not understand sex or politics in your country. You do, Alec, I can see that. Maybe it is because of your family’s history, the suffering in Ireland and the Baltics.’

‘What? That helps me to understand sex?’

He laughs. ‘Of course, of course. But I tell you this. I once shared a room with Julian and he was asleep as soon as he turned out the light. No dialogue in his brain, no conscience or worry. Just a flick of the switch and – Boom!’ – Arenaza chops his hand through the air – ‘Julian Church snores. Can you imagine such a person? So peaceful. No struggle in his soul.’

Why were Julian and Mikel sharing a room?

‘That does sound like him, yes. Yes it does.’

‘But of course it was not always this way. Like all of us, he has also had troubles in his relations.’

‘Yes.’

He obviously thinks that I know Julian far better than I do.

‘For example when he was living in Colombia.’

‘ Colombia.’

‘All the problems with his wife.’

‘Oh yes.’

Sofía has never mentioned anything about living in Colombia. Arenaza looks at me doubtfully, but he’s too drunk to make the connection.

‘You know about his time in South America? You know about Nicole?’

‘Of course.’ I have never heard Julian speak of any woman of that name, nor of any time spent in South America. It certainly didn’t come up when I ran checks on him three years ago. ‘He told me over lunch one day. It must have been difficult for him.’

‘Of course, of course. Your wife runs off with your best friend, this is more than “difficult”. I think it nearly killed him.’

I am grateful for the low light and the din of the taverna, because they help to smother my reaction. Julian had a wife before Sofía?

‘You obviously know him a lot better than I do,’ I respond. ‘You and Julian have a history. I don’t think he would reveal something as personal as that to an employee, no matter how close we are. It’s very private.’

I try to work out the implications. Has Arenaza spoken out of turn? I need to put the pieces together without appearing ignorant of the facts. Yet I cannot even work out whether Sofía knows the truth about her husband’s past. Is she an innocent party in this, or has she been playing me all this time?

‘Another whiskey?’ I ask, assuming that alcohol will help to lower Arenaza’s defences.

‘Sure.’

And the brief respite at the bar allows me time to conceive a strategy, a question designed to discover what Julian was doing in Colombia.

‘I forget,’ I ask, returning with two tumblers of Jameson’s. What was Julian’s job title out in South America?’

‘In Bogotá? His job title?’ He looks perplexed. ‘I think he was just teaching English. That was the whole problem.’

‘The whole problem.’

‘Well, Nicole is the reason they are there, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I mean, she works at the embassy all day and Julian has nothing to do but teach English to businessmen and students…’

I experience a thump of shock, a tightening through the upper part of my body. ‘The embassy,’ I manage to say.

‘That’s right.’

‘Yes. For some reason I thought Julian was connected to that.’

But which embassy? US or UK?

‘Are you all right, Alec? You look worried.’

‘I’m fine. Why?’

‘You sure?’

‘It must be the drink. We’ve had quite a bit.’

He shrugs. ‘Yes I think so.’

‘So where did they meet?’

‘Julian and Nicole?’

‘Yes.’

He is starting to look uninterested. ‘In the United States. Julian was working for a bank in Washington and they meet through work.’ Does that make Nicole a Yank? ‘But he gives it all up for love. Follows his new wife to Colombia where she falls for this other man. Why?’

‘Well, maybe that’s why Julian prefers marrying foreign girls,’ I suggest, adopting an ambiguity in the hope of discovering Nicole’s nationality. Arenaza duly obliges.

‘Sure. But I don’t think he will marry any more Americans, no? I think one is enough for a lifetime.’

Maybe it’s all coincidence, but at the very least Julian’s wife worked for the State Department. Yet in what capacity? The fact that neither Sofía nor Julian has ever mentioned her would surely suggest a connection with the Pentagon or the CIA – and that means a link to Katharine and Fortner. But why would Julian put me in touch with someone who had access to that information? Is it because he knows that I will not be able to prevent myself from investigating?

‘I’d forgotten all this,’ I tell him. ‘I’d always assumed that Julian had been with Sofía for longer. I guess that explains why they don’t have any children.’

‘I suppose.’ He is starting to look tired, glancing at his watch. I try to keep the conversation going, but his answers about Julian’s past are either evasive or ill-informed. Only when questioned directly about Nicole’s adultery does he become animated.

‘Look, the infidelity is not so rare, yes? We are all guilty of it. I was like Nicole. I get married very young and we make mistakes. Both of us.’

But this is surely self-serving, words designed to lessen his feelings of guilt over Rosalía. Within moments, Arenaza is looking at his watch again, finishing his whiskey and announcing that he has to leave. I invite him to stay for one more drink, but his mind is made up and he is determined to head for home.

‘It was my wife I was speaking to before,’ he explains. ‘She likes me to be home by midnight. The women, they keep their claws in us, no? But I give you my card, Alec. We call each other when I come to Madrid.’

And that’s it. Any further information will have to wait for a week, when I can ply Arenaza with drink over dinner and tour him around the bars of Madrid. At the edge of the Parte Vieja he waves me off, sinking into the back seat of a cab, and half an hour later I am back in the hotel running through three years of encounters with Sofía and Julian, trying to piece them all together. There’s a bad American movie on TV and I have five miniatures of Scotch for company, but nothing makes any sense. In the end, I get into bed, resign myself to a night without sleep and switch off the light.