Aranda jumped off the platform and marched over to where the big man lay. ‘You insult Our Lord!’ he cried. ‘The Virgin in Heaven weeps as you spit on her child!’

The words were outraged but his tone was still mocking. Aranda took his crop and began methodically beating the Anarchist, starting with his legs and ending with a blow to Tomás’s head that drew blood. He called a couple of guards to carry him off, then turned to Father Jaime. The priest had shrunk back, clasping the doll to his breast as though sheltering it from the scene.

Aranda bowed. ‘I am sorry for that insult, sir. Please continue. We shall bring these men to religion if the effort kills us, shall we not?’ Aranda nodded to the next man in line. Bernie was pleased to see a little fear as well as anger in Father Jaime’s eyes as the prisoner shuffled forward and bent his head to the doll. No one else resisted.

‘I REMEMBER how that doll smelled,’ Bernie said to Vicente. ‘Paint and saliva.’

‘Those black beetles, they are all the same. Father Jaime is a brute, but that Eduardo is more cunning. He will be in the sick Pole’s hut now, sniffing out whether he is about to die, whether he is weak enough to be browbeaten into taking absolution.’

Bernie shook his head. ‘Eduardo’s not so bad. Remember he tried to get a doctor for the camp? And the crosses for the graveyard?’ He thought of the hillside, just outside the camp, where those who died were buried in unmarked graves. When Father Eduardo came in the summer he had asked for crosses to mark the dead. The comandante had forbidden it; those inside the camp had been sentenced to decades of imprisonment by military courts; in practice they were already dead. One day the camp would close and the huts and barbed wire would be removed, leaving no sign on the bare windswept hill that it had ever been there.

‘What do crosses matter?’ Vicente replied. ‘More symbols of superstition. Father Eduardo’s kindness is fake, it is all to an end. They’re all the same, the black beetles, they’ll try to get you when you’re dying, at your weakest.’

It was dark outside now. Some in the hut played cards or sewed their tattered uniforms by the light of weak tallow candles. Bernie closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He thought about Tomás’s beating; the Anarchist had died a few days later. He himself had trod on thin ice with the psychiatrist this afternoon. It was lucky the man seemed to see him only as a specimen. Part of Bernie wanted to make some fierce gesture like Tomás’s, but he wanted to live. If they killed him that would be their final, irrevocable victory.

Eventually he slept. He had a strange dream. He came into the hut with a whole crowd of schoolboys from Rookwood, led by Mr Taylor. The boys examined the wooden pallets then stood around the table made of old packing cases in the middle. They said if this was their new dorm it was jolly rough, they didn’t think much of it. ‘Don’t be downhearted,’ Taylor said reprovingly. ‘That’s not the Rookwood way.’

Bernie woke with a start. The hut was completely dark, he could see nothing. He was cold; he moved the thin blanket down to cover his feet. It was the first really cold night. September and October were the easiest months: the frying heat of summer fading by a few blessed degrees each week, the temperature at night comfortable enough to allow you to sleep easily. But now winter was here.

He lay awake in the darkness, listening to the coughs and mutterings of the other men. There were creaks as some tossed uneasily on their pallets, perhaps feeling the cold too. Before long there would be frosts each morning; by Christmas people would be dying.

There was a whisper from the next bunk. ‘Bernardo, are you awake?’ Vicente coughed again.

‘Yes.’

‘Listen,’ His voice was urgent. Bernie turned but he couldn’t see him in the thick darkness.

‘I do not think I will last through the cold weather,’ Vicente said.

‘Of course you will.’

‘If I don’t, I want you to promise me something. The black beetles will come at the end; they will try to give me absolution. Stop them. I might weaken you see, I know people weaken. It would betray everything I have lived for. Please stop them somehow.’

Bernie felt tears pricking at his eyes. ‘All right,’ he whispered back. ‘If it ever comes to it, I promise.’ Vicente reached across, found Bernie’s arm and clutched it with his thin hand.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You are a good friend. You will help me make my last defiance.’

IN MADRID November the first dawned cold and damp. Harry’s flat was gloomy, despite the watercolours of English landscapes he had borrowed from the embassy to cover the blank walls.

Sometimes he thought of the vanished commissar. He wondered what sort of a commissar Bernie would have made if he had lived and his side had won. Harry’s job had been to encourage Barbara to talk about Sandy when they met, and they had hardly mentioned Bernie’s name; he felt oddly ashamed, as though they had written him out of their pasts. Bernie might have made an efficient commissar, he thought, he had had a hard angry streak along with the social compassion. But he couldn’t see him becoming one of those he had heard about, who during the Civil War sentenced soldiers to be shot for grumbling.

He took his tea, Liptons supplied by the embassy, over to the window. He had lit the brasero and a welcome warmth stole from the little stove under the table. Rain dripped slowly from the balconies opposite. He had hated asking Barbara questions about Sandy, ferreting for information, and had been relieved when she didn’t seem to know anything. He supposed that didn’t make him much of a spy.

Harry had a session translating at an Interior Ministry function that morning, then another appointment with Sandy at the Café Rocinante. He had telephoned Sandy the day after his walk with Barbara. He said things were quiet at the embassy, did Sandy fancy meeting up again? He had accepted eagerly.

Harry went down to the street and set off for the cafe. He looked around him carefully, as usual, but there was no sign that Enrique had been replaced by another, more efficient spy.

SANDY WAS already at the Rocinante when Harry arrived, sitting at a table with his foot on a wooden block as a ragged ten-year-old boy cleaned his shoes. He waved an arm at Harry.

‘Over here! Excuse me if I don’t get up.’

Harry sat down. The cafe was quiet this afternoon; perhaps the rain and fog were keeping people indoors.

‘Filthy weather, eh?’ Sandy said cheerfully. ‘Like being back home.’

‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘It’s all right, I’ve only been here a few minutes myself. Winter’s coming, I’m afraid.’ The boy sat back on his haunches and Sandy inspected his shoes.

‘OK, niño.’ He passed a coin to the boy, who turned big sad eyes to Harry. ‘I clean your shoes, señor?’

‘No, gracias.’

‘Oh go on, Harry, it’s only ten centimos.’

Harry nodded and the boy placed the wooden block under his foot and began polishing the black shoes Harry himself had cleaned an hour before. Sandy beckoned the waiter and they ordered coffee. The boy finished with Harry’s shoes; Harry passed him a coin and he moved on to other customers, whispering, ‘¿Limpiabotas?’ in a sad wheedling tone.

‘Poor little bastard,’ Harry said.

‘He tried to sell me some dirty postcards last week. Awful things, middle-aged whores lifting their knickers. He’d better watch out if the civiles catch him.’

The waiter brought their coffees. Sandy studied Harry thoughtfully. ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘how did Barbara seem when you saw her?’

‘Fine. We went for a walk in the Casa de Campo.’ She hadn’t seemed fine at all; there was something closed and reserved about her he’d never seen before but he wasn’t going to talk to Sandy about that. It was one loyalty he could avoid betraying.