The comandante lit a cigarette, studying him through a curling haze of smoke with his cold hazel eyes. Aranda had been in charge of the Tierra Muerte camp for nearly a year. He was a colonel, a veteran of the Civil War and before that the Foreign Legion. He enjoyed cruelty and even Bernie wouldn’t have dared be insolent with him. As always the comandante was immaculately dressed, his uniform ironed into knife-edge creases. The prisoners knew every line and curve of his handsome bronzed face with its waxed moustache. If he was frowning or wore his pouting childish look, someone could be in for a beating.

This evening, though, he looked amused. He blew smoke at Bernie; at once Bernie’s craving for tobacco returned and he found himself leaning forward slightly to catch another whiff.

‘They are doing a follow-up study, prisoners of special interest. Dr Lorenzo is waiting for you downstairs. And Piper, be sure to cooperate with him, ¿vale?’

‘Sí, señor comandante.’

Bernie’s heart was thumping as Agustín led him down to the basement room, opening the heavy wooden door. He had never been there but had heard the room graphically described.

The psychiatrist’s face was cold. ‘You may leave us,’ he told Agustín.

‘I shall be outside, señor.’

The psychiatrist waved a hand at a steel chair in front of the desk. ‘Sit down.’ Bernie slumped into it; he was very tired. An oil stove had been put in a corner and the room was hot. The psychiatrist ran a silver pen down the columns of a questionnaire. Bernie recognized his own writing. The lice in his beard stirred, roused by the heat.

The psychiatrist looked up. ‘You are Piper, Bernard, English, age thirty-one?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am Dr Lorenzo. Three years ago, when you were in San Pedro, you answered a questionnaire. You recall?

‘Yes, doctor.’

‘The purpose of the study was to determine the psychological factors that cause people to embrace Marxism.’ His voice was even, monotonous. ‘Most Marxists are ignorant working people of low intelligence and culture. We wish to look again at the people who did not match those criteria. You, for example.’ He studied Bernie keenly.

‘What brings people to Marxism is simple,’ Bernie said quietly. ‘Poverty and oppression.’

The psychiatrist nodded. ‘Yes, that is what I would expect you to say. And yet you can have been subject to none of those things; I see you attended an English public school.’

‘My parents were poor. I got a place at Rookwood under a scholarship.’ Bernie found his eyes straying to the corner of the room, where a tall object was covered by a tarpaulin. Lorenzo tapped the desk sharply with the silver pen.

‘Pay attention, please. Tell me about your parents – what did they do?’

‘They worked in a shop someone else owned.’

‘And you felt sorry for them perhaps? You were close to them?’

A picture of his mother came into Bernie’s head, standing in the parlour wringing her hands. ‘Bernie, Bernie, why do you have to go to this awful war?’ He shrugged.

‘They may be dead now for all I know. I’ve never been allowed to write.’

‘You would write if you could?’

‘Yes.’

Lorenzo made another note. ‘This school, this Rookwood, that would have brought you into contact with boys of a higher culture. It interests me that you rejected those values.’

Bernie laughed bitterly. ‘There was no culture there. And their class was the enemy of mine.’

‘Ah, yes, the Marxist metaphysic.’ The psychiatrist nodded reflectively. ‘Our studies show that when intelligent, privileged people are drawn to Marxism it is because of a character defect. They are unable to understand the higher values, like spirituality and patriotism. They are innately antisocial and aggressive. The comandante tells me, Piper, that you reject the camp’s rehabilitative efforts, for example?’

Bernie laughed quietly. ‘You mean the compulsory religious instruction?’

Lorenzo studied him as though he were a rat in a laboratory cage. ‘Yes, you would hate Christianity. A religion of love and reconciliation. Yes, that is quite clear.’

‘We get other lessons as well.’

Dr Lorenzo looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘This is the torture room. That cupboard behind you will be full of rubber truncheons and pails for mock drownings.’

Lorenzo shook his head gently. ‘Fantasies.’

‘Then take the tarpaulin off the thing behind you,’ Bernie said. ‘Go on.’ He realized his tone was becoming insolent and bit his lip. He did not want a complaint to Aranda.

The psychiatrist gave a little grunt of annoyance, then stood and lifted the tarpaulin. His face set as he saw the tall wooden stake with the metal seat, the restraining straps and neck collar, the heavy brass screw with its handles behind.

‘The garrote vil, doctor. They’ve had six executions since I’ve been here. They line us up in the yard, bring out the garrote and make us watch. You hear the man’s neck break, there’s a loud crack, like a shot.’

The psychiatrist sat down again. His voice was still calm. He looked steadily at Bernie, then shook his head. ‘You are an antisocial,’ he said quietly. ‘A psychopath.’ He shook his head. ‘Men such as you can never be rehabilitated; your minds are abnormal, incomplete. The garrote is needed, I am afraid, to keep those like you in check.’ He made a note on the questionnaire, then called out to Agustín. ‘Guard! I have finished with this man.’

Agustín led Bernie away. The sun had gone below the horizon and a red light bathed the wooden huts lining the earthen square. The searchlights in the watchtower above the barbed-wire fence would soon come on. Against the mess hut a large cross stood, six feet high, ropes hanging from the arms. It looked like a religious symbol, but it wasn’t: they hung men from the ropes as a punishment. Bernie wished he had mentioned that to the psychiatrist.

It was time for roll-call; three hundred prisoners were shambling into lines around the little wooden platform in the middle. Agustín halted, shifting his heavy rifle on his shoulder.

‘I have to fetch another five to the mad-doctor tonight,’ he said. ‘It will be a long evening.’

Bernie looked at him in surprise. The guards were not supposed to talk with the prisoners.

‘The doctor looked displeased,’ Agustín added.

Bernie looked at him, but the guard’s thin face was turned away. ‘Be careful,’ Agustín said quietly. ‘Better times may be ahead, Piper. I can say no more now. But be careful. Do not get punished now, or killed.’

BERNIE STOOD next to his friend Vicente. The lawyer’s thin face, surrounded by its shock of grey hair and matted beard, looked drawn and ill. He smiled at Bernie then coughed, a liquid gurgling sound deep in his chest. Vicente had been having chest infections since the summer; he seemed to recover but then they would hit him again, worse than before. Some of the guards let him do light work in return for helping them fill in forms, but this week the sergeant in charge of the quarry detail was Ramirez, a brutal man who had had Vicente sorting rocks all day. He looked as though he could hardly stand.

‘What happened to you?’ he whispered to Bernie.

‘They’ve got a psychiatrist here, he’s interviewing some of the people from San Pedro. He said I was an antisocial psychopath.’

Vicente smiled wryly. ‘Then that proves what I have always said, you are a good man even if you are a Bolshevik. If one of these people says you are normal, then is the time to worry. You’ve missed dinner.’

‘I’ll manage,’ Bernie said. He must be sure to get a good night’s sleep if he was to be fit to work tomorrow. The rice they fed the prisoners was awful, the sweepings of some Valencian storehouse mingled with gritty dust, but to be able to work you had to eat all you could.