She knew there were idealists in the Falange, people who genuinely wanted to improve Spaniards’ lives, but she knew there were many more who had joined to take advantage of the chance of a corrupt profit. She looked again at the yoke and arrows. Like the blue shirts they reminded her the Falange were fascists, blood-brothers to the Nazis. She saw one of the Falangists looking at her from the window and hurried on.

THE BAR WAS a dark, run-down place. The mandatory portrait of Franco, spotted with grease, hung behind the bar, where a couple of young men lounged. A big grey-haired woman in black was washing glasses at the sink. One of the men carried a crutch; he had lost half a leg, the trouser end crudely sewn up. They all looked at Barbara curiously. Usually only whores came into bars alone, not foreign women wearing expensive dresses and little round hats.

A young man sitting at a table at the back raised his hand. As she walked across he rose and bowed, taking her hand in a strong, dry grip.

‘Señora Forsyth?’

‘Yes.’ She replied in Spanish, trying to keep her voice confident. ‘Are you Luis?’

‘Yes. Please sit. Allow me to get you a coffee.’

She studied him as he went to the bar. He was tall and thin, in his early thirties with black hair and a long sad face. He wore threadbare trousers and an old, stained jacket. His cheeks were stubbly, like those of the other men in the cafe; there was a shortage of razor blades in the city. He walked like a soldier. He came back with two coffees and a plate of tapas. She took a sip and grimaced. He smiled wryly.

‘It is not very good, I am afraid.’

‘It’s all right.’ She looked at the tapas, little brown meatballs with tiny delicate bones sticking out. ‘What are they?’

‘They call it pigeon but I think it is something else. I am not sure what. I would not recommend it.’

She watched as Luis ate, picking the minute bones from his mouth. She had decided not to say anything; leave him to begin. He shifted nervously in his seat, studied her face with large dark eyes.

‘I understand from Mr Markby that you are trying to trace a man who went missing at the Jarama. An Englishman.’ He spoke very quietly.

‘Yes I am, that’s right.’

He nodded. ‘A Communist.’ His eyes still scanned her face. Barbara wondered with a flicker of fear if he was police, if Markby had betrayed her or been betrayed himself. She forced herself to stay calm.

‘My interest is personal, not political. He was – he was my – my boyfriend, before I met my husband. I believed he was dead.’

Luis shifted in his seat again. He coughed. ‘You live in National Spain, I am told you are married to a man with friends in the government. Yet you are looking for a Communist from the war. Forgive me, but this seems strange.’

‘I worked for the Red Cross, we were a neutral organization.’

He gave a quick bitter smile. ‘You were fortunate. No Spaniard has been able to be neutral for a long time.’ He studied her. ‘So, you are not an opponent of the New Spain.’

‘No. General Franco won and that’s that. Britain isn’t at war with Spain.’ Not yet, anyway, she thought.

‘Forgive me.’ Luis spread his hands, suddenly apologetic. ‘Only I have to protect my own position, I have to be careful. Your husband knows nothing of your – search?’

‘No.’

‘Please keep it so, señora. If your enquiries became known, they could bring trouble.’

‘I know.’ Her heart was starting to thump with excitement. If he had no information he wouldn’t be this wary, this careful. But what did he know? Where had Markby found him?

Luis eyed her intently again. ‘Say you were to find this man, Señora Forsyth. What would you wish to do?’

‘I’d want to see him repatriated. As he was a prisoner of war he should be returned home. That’s what the Geneva Conventions say.’

He shrugged. ‘That is not how the Generalísimo sees things. He would not like the suggestion that a man who came to our country to make war on Spaniards should simply be sent home. And if it were to be publicly suggested there were still foreign prisoners of war in Spain, such prisoners might disappear. You understand?’

She looked at him, meeting his eyes. Deep-set, unreadable. ‘What do you know?’ she asked.

He leaned forward. A harsh meaty smell came from his mouth. Barbara forced herself not to recoil.

‘My family is from Sevilla,’ he said. ‘When Franco’s rebels took the city my brother and I were conscripted and spent three years fighting the Reds. After the victory, part of the army was disbanded, but some of us had to stay on and Agustín and I were assigned to guard duties at a camp near Cuenca. You know where that is?’

‘Markby mentioned it. Out towards Aragón, isn’t it?’

Luis nodded. ‘That’s right. Where the famous “hanging houses” are.’

‘The what?’

‘There are ancient houses built right on the edge of the gorge that runs beside the city, so that they seem to hang over it. Some find them beautiful.’ He sighed. ‘Cuenca is high on the meseta – you boil in summer and freeze in winter. This is the only time of year it is bearable, frost and snow will come soon. I had two winters up there and, believe me, that was enough.’

‘What is it like? The camp?’

He shifted uneasily again, lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘A labour camp. One of the camps that does not officially exist. This one was for Republican prisoners of war. About eight kilometres from Cuenca, up in the Tierra Muerta. The dead land.’

‘The what?’

‘An area of bare hills below the Valdemeca mountains. That is what it is called.’

‘How many prisoners?’

He shrugged. ‘Five hundred or so.’

‘Foreigners?’

‘A few. Poles, Germans, people whose countries do not want them back.’

She met his gaze firmly. ‘How did Señor Markby find you? When did you tell him this?’

Luis hesitated, scratched his stubbly cheeks. ‘I am sorry, señora, I cannot tell you. Only that we unemployed veterans have our meeting places, and some people have contacts the government would not like them to have.’

‘With foreign journalists? Selling stories?’

‘I can say no more.’ He looked genuinely sorry, very young again.

She nodded, took a deep breath, felt a catch in her throat. ‘What were conditions like in the camp?’

He shook his head. ‘Not good. Wooden huts surrounded by barbed wire. You have to understand; these people will never be freed. They work the stone quarries and repair the roads. There is not much food. A lot die. The government wants them to die.’

She made herself stay calm. She must treat this as though Luis was a foreign official talking about a refugee camp she needed information on. She produced a pack of cigarettes and offered it to him.

‘English cigarettes?’ Luis lit one and savoured the smoke, closing his eyes. When he looked at her again his face expression was hard, serious.

‘Was your brigadista strong, Señora Forsyth?’

‘Yes, he was. A strong man.’

‘Only the strong ones survive.’

She felt tears coming, blinked them away. This was the sort of thing he would say if he was deceiving her, trying to appeal to her emotions. Yet his story seemed to have the ring of truth. She fumbled in her handbag and slid Bernie’s photograph across the table. Luis studied it a moment, then shook his head.

‘I do not remember that face, but he would not look like that now. We were not supposed to talk with the prisoners, apart from giving them orders. They thought their ideas might contaminate us.’ He gave her a long stare. ‘But we used to admire them, we soldiers, the way they kept going somehow.’

There was silence for a moment. The smoke from their cigarettes curled up, wreathing round an ancient fan that hung from the ceiling, broken and unmoving.

‘You don’t remember the name Bernie Piper?’

He shook his head, looked again at the photograph. ‘I remember a fair-haired foreigner who was one of the Communists. Most of the English prisoners were returned – your government tried to get them back. But a few who were listed as missing ended up in Cuenca.’ He pushed the picture back across the table. ‘I was given my discharge this spring, but my brother stayed on.’ He looked at her meaningfully. ‘He can get information if I ask. I would need to visit him, letters are censored.’ He paused.