The man lay spreadeagled on the broken cobbles, holding his arm over his throat. He stared at Harry open-mouthed, breathing in loud gasps. His trouser leg was torn and covered with blood.

‘Can you get up?’ Harry asked. The man stared up at him, his eyes wide with shock. ‘We’ve got to get away,’ Harry said gently. ‘They could come back, they’ve tasted blood now. Come on, I’ll help you.’

He took the man under the arms and helped him to his feet. He was light, no more than skin and bone. He stood on one leg, put the other to the ground then lifted it again, wincing. The Alsatian reappeared, watching them from the top of a pile of rubble. Harry shouted and it retreated again. He helped the man from the square, glancing back every few seconds. Once they were a couple of streets away he lowered him to the front step of a tenement. A woman looked out of a window at them, then closed her shutters.

‘Thank you,’ the spy said breathlessly. ‘Thank you, señor.’ His leg was still bleeding, there was blood on Harry’s trousers. He thought of rabies – if the dogs had it, the spy would die.

‘I thought I’d shaken you off,’ Harry said.

The spy looked terrified. ‘You know?’ His eyes widened. He was even younger than Harry had thought, little more than a boy. His pale face was quite white now, from shock and fear.

‘I’ve known for a while. I thought I’d got rid of you.’

The man looked at him sadly. ‘I am always losing you. I lost you when you went out this morning. Then later I saw you near your flat, but I lost you again before the square.’ He gave Harry a weak grin. ‘You are better at this than me.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Enrique. Enrique Roque Casas. You speak good Spanish, señor.’

‘I’m a translator. But you know that, I expect.’

He looked shamefaced. ‘You have saved my life. Believe me, señor, I did not want this job, but we need the money. Now I am ashamed.’ He laid his hand on his leg and drew it away covered in blood. His teeth began to chatter.

‘Come on, I’ll help you home. Where do you live?’ The reply was a mumble Harry couldn’t catch, there was a faint hissing in his bad ear. He bent his good ear towards him and asked again.

‘Only a few streets away, near the river. Madre de Dios – I had heard about those dogs, but I forgot. I did not want to have to report I had lost you again. They are not happy with me as it is.’ Enrique was shivering now, shock setting in.

‘Come on,’ Harry said. ‘Take my coat.’ He took it off and wrapped it round the thin shoulders. Supporting him, Harry followed Enrique’s directions through the narrow streets, ignoring the stares of passersby. He thought, this is ridiculous, but he couldn’t just leave the wretched man; he was in shock and that leg needed seeing to.

‘So who do you work for?’ he asked brusquely.

‘The Foreign Ministry, señor. Our block leader got me the job. They said they wanted me to follow a British diplomat, tell them everywhere you went.’

‘I see.’

‘All the diplomats are followed, except the Germans. Even the Italians. They said you were a translator, señor, you would probably only go to the embassy and the good restaurants in town, but I was to record it all.’

‘And they might get something useful. If I went to a brothel, say, I could be blackmailed.’

Enrique nodded. ‘You know how the business works, señor.’

Only too well, Harry thought.

They stopped before a broken-down tenement. ‘This house, señor,’ Enrique said.

Harry pushed the door open and entered a dank gloomy hall. ‘We are on the first floor,’ Enrique said. ‘If you could help me.’

Harry helped him up a flight of stairs. Enrique produced a key and opened a door with a shaking hand. It led into a small, gloomy hall. There was a close, fusty smell. Enrique opened another door and limped into a small salón. Harry followed, taking off his hat. A brasero burned under a table but the room was still chilly. A couple of scuffed wooden chairs were drawn up to a table where a small thin boy of about eight sat, scrawling dark shapes over and over again with a crayon on a copy of Arriba. At the sight of Harry he jumped up and ran to a sagging single bed in one corner. Curtains had been rigged round it but they were open. An old woman lay there, propped up against pillows, thin grey hair spilling round a wrinkled face that had one side twisted into a leering grimace, the eye half shut. The boy jumped on to the bed, wriggling against the old woman’s side. Harry was shocked by the fear and anger in his look.

The old woman heaved herself up on one arm. ‘Enrique, what has happened, who is this?’ She spoke slowly, her voice slurred, and Harry realized that she had had a stroke.

Enrique seemed to regain control of himself. He went over and kissed her cheek, patting the boy’s head. ‘It is all right, Mama. An accident, some dogs, this man helped me home. Please, señor.’ He pulled out one of the rickety wooden chairs and Harry sat down. It creaked under his weight. Enrique limped back to the old woman. He sat on the bed and took her hand. ‘Don’t worry, Mama, it’s all right. Where’s Sofia?’

‘Gone to the shops.’ The old woman leaned over to pat the boy. He had burrowed against her left arm, which was white and shrivelled. He sat up and pointed at Enrique’s leg.

‘¡Sangre!’ he shouted shrilly. ‘¡Sangre!’ Blood!

‘It’s all right, Paquito, it’s only a cut, it’s nothing,’ Enrique said reassuringly. The old woman stroked the child’s head. ‘No es nada, niño. It’s all right, it’s nothing.

She looked at Harry. ‘Foreigner?’ she said in a loud whisper to her son. ‘Is he German?’

‘I’m English, señora.’ She looked at him anxiously, and Harry guessed she knew what her son did for a living. He looked at Enrique’s tattered, blood-spotted trousers.

‘You should get that leg washed.’

The old woman nodded. ‘Water, Enrique, get water.’

‘Sí, Mama.’ Enrique nodded and limped to the door. Harry rose to help but Enrique waved him back.

‘No. No, stay here, señor, please. You have done enough.’ He picked up a bucket from the corner and went out, leaving Harry standing awkwardly. He supposed he could leave but he didn’t want to be rude. He remembered the Alsatian tearing at the spy’s arm, trying to reach his throat, and shivered.

The pair on the bed stared at him. It was hard to read any expression on the old woman’s face, but the boy’s was angry and afraid. Harry smiled awkwardly. He looked round the room. It was clean. If the old woman was here all the time it was probably impossible to avoid that fusty smell. There were dried flowers in vases and cheap pictures of country scenes on the walls, an effort had been made to make the room look cheerful, but Harry saw that the wall under the window was covered with black streaks of fungus where water dripped from a rotten windowsill on to a folded blanket. He looked away. There were photographs too, he saw, pinned to the wall. The old woman pointed at one of them. ‘My wedding,’ she croaked. ‘With my brother.’

Harry nodded politely and got up to look, the child tensing as he crossed the room. The photograph showed a young couple standing in the doorway of a church, a smiling young priest next to them. From the clothes it seemed to have been taken around the same time as his parents’ wedding. The woman smiled with the half of her face that could still move. ‘Dias mas felices,’ she whispered. Happier days.

‘Sí, mas felices, señora.’

‘Please, señor, sit down.’

Harry took his chair again. The old woman stroked the boy’s hair. He stared at Harry with frightened eyes.

The door opened and a girl in a heavy coat came in, carrying a shopping bag. She was in her early twenties, small and dark-haired, with a heart-shaped face and large brown eyes. When she saw Harry she stopped dead. He stood up.