‘What? Oh, during the Civil War?’

‘Hit the garden by accident when the Germans were bombing Madrid. Sam’s had it put back in order. He has his good points. He’s a first-class organizer, the embassy runs like clockwork. You have to give the pink rat his due.’

‘The what?’

Tolhurst smiled confidentially. ‘It’s his nickname. He gets these fits of panic, thinks Spain’s about to come into the war and he’ll be shot, has to be persuaded not to run off to Portugal. D’you know, the other evening a bat flew into his study and he hid under the table, screaming for someone to take it away. You can imagine what Hillgarth thinks. But when he’s on form Sam’s a bloody good diplomat. Loves strutting about as the King-Emperor’s representative; the Monarchists all go soppy at anything to do with royalty, of course. Ah, here we are.’

Tolhurst had pulled up in a dusty square. There was a statue of a soldier in eighteenth-century dress on a pedestal in the middle, one arm missing, and a few fly-blown shops with half-empty windows. Tenements ringed the square, the windows behind the rusty iron balconies shuttered against the afternoon heat. The place must have had style once. Harry studied them through the window. He remembered a picture he had bought in a back-street shop in 1931: a crumbling tenement building like this, a girl leaning out of a window, smiling as a gipsy serenaded her underneath. He had it in his room at Cambridge. There was something romantic about decaying buildings; the Victorians had loved them, of course. But it was different if you had to live in them.

Tolhurst pointed to a narrow street leading north, where the buildings looked even more down at heel.

‘Wouldn’t go down there if I were you. That’s La Latina. Bad area, leads across the river to Carabanchel.’

‘I know,’ Harry replied. ‘There was a family we used to visit in Carabanchel when I came in 1931.’

Tolhurst looked at him curiously.

‘The Nationalists shelled it badly during the Siege, didn’t they?’ Harry asked.

‘Yes, and they’ve left it to rot since the Civil War. See the place as full of their enemies. There are people starving down there, I’m told, and packs of wild dogs living in the ruined buildings. People have been bitten and got rabies.’

Harry looked down the long empty street.

‘What else is there you should know?’ Tolhurst asked. ‘English people aren’t very popular generally. It’s the propaganda. It’s never more than dirty looks, though.’

‘How do we deal with Germans if we meet them?’

‘Oh, just cut the bastards dead. Be careful about greeting people who look English on the streets,’ he added as he opened the car door. ‘They’re just as likely to be Gestapo.’

Outside the air was full of dust, a breeze lifting little whorls of it from the street. They took Harry’s case from the car. A thin old woman in black crossed the square, a huge bag of clothes on her head supported by one hand. Harry wondered which side she had supported during the Civil War, or whether she had been one of the thousands without politics, caught in the middle. Her face was deeply lined, her expression tired but stoical; one of those who endured – somehow, only just.

Tolhurst handed Harry a brown card. ‘Your rations. The embassy gets diplomatic rations and we distribute them. Better than we get at home. A lot better than the rations they get here.’ His eyes followed the old woman. ‘They say people are digging up vegetable roots for food. You can buy stuff on the black market, of course, but it’s expensive.’

‘Thanks.’ Harry pocketed the card. Tolhurst went over to one of the tenements, producing a key, and they entered a dark vestibule with cracked flaking paint. Water dripped somewhere and there was a smell of stale urine. They climbed stone steps to the second floor, where the doors of three flats faced them. Two little girls were playing with battered dolls in the hallway. ‘Buenas tardes,’ Harry said, but they looked away. Tolhurst unlocked one of the doors.

It was a three-bedroomed flat, such as Harry remembered would often house a family of ten in crowded squalor. It had been cleaned and there was a smell of polish. It was furnished like a middle-class home, full of heavy old sofas and cabinets. There were no pictures on the mustard-yellow walls, only blank squares where they had hung. Dust motes danced in a beam of sunlight.

‘It’s big,’ said Harry.

‘Yes, better than the shoebox where I live. Just the one Communist Party official used to live here. Disgrace when you see how most people are crowded together. Left empty for a year after he was taken away. Then the authorities remembered they had it and put it up for rent.’

Harry ran a finger along the film of dust on the table. ‘By the way, what’s this about Himmler coming here?’

Tolhurst looked serious. ‘It’s all over the Fascist press. State visit next week.’ He shook his head. ‘You never get used to the idea that we might have to run. There have been so many false alarms.’

Harry nodded. He’s not really brave, he thought, no more than I am. ‘So you report directly to Hillgarth?’ he asked.

‘That’s right.’ Tolhurst tapped the leg of an ornate bureau with his foot. ‘I don’t get to do any actual secret work, though. I’m the admin man.’ He gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Simon Tolhurst, general dogsbody. Flats found, reports typed, expenses checked.’ He paused. ‘By the way, make sure you keep a careful note of everything you spend. London’s red-hot on expenses.’ Tolhurst looked out of the window at the central courtyard where patched washing flapped on lines strung between the balconies, then turned back to Harry. ‘Tell me,’ he asked curiously, ‘does Madrid look much different to when you were here under the Republic?’

‘Yes. It was bad enough then but it looks worse now. Even poorer.’

‘Maybe things’ll get better. I suppose at least now there’s strong government.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Did you hear what Dalí said – Spain’s a nation of peasants who need a firm hand? Cuba was the same, they just can’t handle democracy. Everything goes to pot.’ Tolhurst shook his head, as though it was all beyond him. Harry felt a spurt of anger at his naiveté, then reflected that it was beyond him too, the tragedy that had happened here. Bernie was the one who had had all the answers but his side had lost and Bernie was dead.

‘Coffee?’ he asked Tolhurst. ‘If there is any.’

‘Oh yes, place is stocked. And there’s a phone, but be careful what you say, it’ll be tapped as you’re Dip Corps. Same with letters home, they’re censored. So take care if you’re writing to family, or a girlfriend. Got anyone back home?’ he added diffidently.

Harry shook his head. ‘No. You?’

‘No. They don’t let me out of the embassy much.’ Tolhurst looked at him curiously. ‘What took you to Carabanchel, when you were here before?’

‘I came with Bernie Piper. My Communist schoolfriend.’ Harry smiled wryly. ‘I’m sure it’s in my file.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ Tolhurst reddened slightly.

‘He got friendly with a family down there. They were good people; Christ knows what’s happened to them now.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll get that coffee.’

Tolhurst looked at his watch. ‘Actually, I’d better not. Got to check some damned expenses. Come to the embassy at nine tomorrow, we’ll show you the ropes for the translators.’

‘Will the other translators know I’m working for Hillgarth?’

Tolhurst shook his head. ‘Lord, no. They’re all regular Dip Corps, just performers in Sam’s circus.’ He laughed and extended a damp hand to Harry. ‘It’s all right, we’ll run through it all tomorrow.’

HARRY TOOK OFF his collar and tie, feeling a welcome current of air playing on the damp ring around his neck. He sat in a leather armchair and looked through Forsyth’s file. There wasn’t much there: some more photographs, details of his work with Auxilio Social, his contacts in the Falange. Sandy was living in a big house, paying liberally for black market goods.