Don Ibrahim nodded, pleased. "A holy man, I see. A man of God." "To his fingernails."

After a thoughtful pause, Don Ibrahim blew a smoke ring and watched it float away. He appeared preoccupied. "So what we have here," he said, "is a clergyman of character."

"I don't know about character," said La Nina. "He certainly has a temper."

"I see." Don Ibrahim blew another smoke ring, but this time it didn't come out right. "So this honourable priest may cause problems. I mean, he may hinder us."

"He could ruin the whole thing." "And the young priest, his assistant?"

"I've seen him helping during Mass. Nice and quiet he looks. Not so tough."

Don Ibrahim glanced across the street, at the knee-high leather boots from Valverde del Camino hanging outside the La Valcnciana Shoe Shop. Then, with a melancholy shudder, he turned back to El Potro and La Nina. At any other time he would have told Peregil where to put his little job. Or, more likely, he would have asked for more money. But as things were, he had no choice. He stared sadly at La Nina with her fake beauty spot, her chipped nail varnish, her bony fingers clasping the empty glass. He looked to his left and met the faithful gaze of El Potro. Then he regarded his own hand resting on the table. The ring he wore was a fake. Every so often he managed to sell one – he had several like it – for five thousand pesetas to some sucker in a bar in Triana. El Potro and La Nina were his people, his responsibility. El Potro, for his loyalty in adversity. La Nina, because Don Ibrahim had never heard anyone sing "Cape of Red and Gold" the way she sang it, in a tablao, on his arrival in Seville. He didn't meet her until much later. She was playing a really seedy club and was already wrecked by alcohol and by the years, the embodiment of the songs she sang in a cracked, sublime voice that made the hairs stand on the back of your neck. "The She-Wolf", "Ballad of Bravery", "False Coin", "Tattoo". The night they met, Don Ibrahim swore to himself that he would save her from oblivion, to do justice to her art. For despite the calumny heaped upon him by the Lawyers' Association and the articles in the local papers when he was thrown in jail over an absurd diploma that nobody else gave a damn about, and despite the scams he'd had to set up to earn his living ever since, Don Ibrahim was not a scoundrel. He held his head high as he adjusted his watch chain. He was simply an honourable man who'd had no luck.

"This is merely a matter of strategy," he said thoughtfully, to convince himself more than anything else. He felt his companions' hopes pinned on him. Peregil had promised three million, but Don Ibrahim had heard that he worked for a banker who was really loaded, so there might be more money where that came from. And he and his companions needed funds to make a long-cherished dream come true.

Don Ibrahim had read extensively – how else could he have practised law for so long in Seville without being exposed? – if superficially, and he hoarded quotations as if they were gold dust. The best quotation about dreams came from that Thomas D. H. Lawrence, the one from Arabia who wrote Madam Butterfly, men who dream with their eyes open, will always succeed, or something like that. He doubted whether El Potro and La Nina had their eyes open, but it didn't matter, he'd keep his open for them.

He looked affectionately at El Potro, who was slowly chewing a slice of sausage. "What do you think, champ?"

El Potro went on chewing in silence for half a minute. "I think we can do it," he said at last, when the other two had almost forgotten the question. "If God gives us luck."

Don Ibrahim sighed. "That's the problem. With all these priests involved, I don't know whose side God will be on."

El Potro smiled for the first time that morning. His smile always seemed be a great effort for his face, battered by bulls and other boxers. "Everything for the Cause," he said.

La Nina Punales let out a low, tender ole:

A man without fear of death

swore his love to me…

She sang quietly, laying her hand on the hand of El Potro. Since his divorce he had lived alone. Don Ibrahim suspected that he silently loved La Nina but had never declared himself, out of respect. She, for her part, remained faithful to the memory of the man with green eyes still waiting for her at the bottom of every bottle. As for Don Ibrahim, nobody had definite evidence of his love affairs. On evenings of Manzanilla and guitar, he liked to talk vaguely of the romantic adventures of his youth in Cuba, when he was a friend of Beny More, the Brute of Rhythm, and of "Carafoca" Perez Prado, and of Jorge Negrete, the Mexican actor – until they had words, that is. He liked to talk of the time when Maria Felix, the divine Maria, the lady Maria, gave him an ebony walking stick with a silver handle, on the night she was unfaithful to Agustin Lara with him and a litre bottle of tequila. And slim and elegant Lara, devastated, wrote an immortal song to case the pain of being deceived. Don Ibrahim's smile became young again at the supposed memory of Acapulco, the nights, the beaches, Maria my love, pretty Maria. Between glasses of Manzanilla, La Nina softly hummed the song in which he was the guilty seducer. And El Potro sat there with his hard, silent profile.

After destiny had brought them together in Seville, a quaint friendship had sustained the three companions through the endless hangover of their lives. One peaceful, drunken dawn, they found a noble purpose, as they sat watching the wide, tranquil Guadalquivir: the Cause. Some day they would have the money to set up a sensational tablao. They would call it The Temple of Song, and there, at last, justice would be done to La Nina Punales's art, and traditional Spanish song would be kept alive.

Darling, he would say,

burning with passion…

La Nina sang quietly. Don Ibrahim called the waiter so that he could sort out the bill, and with a grandiose air asked for Pretty Maria's walking stick and his pale straw panama. He rose with difficulty while El Potro del Mantelete, who stood up as if the bell had just been rung, withdrew La Nina's chair, and they both escorted her to the door. They left the banknote with the picture of Hernan Cortes on the table, as a tip. It was, after all, a special day. And, as El Potro put it, humbly justifying the expense, Don Ibrahim was a gentleman.

The dark figure entered the church. The light behind him blinded Quart. By the time his eyes had readjusted to the darkness inside the church, Father Priamo Ferro had reached his side. And Quart saw that things were worse than he'd feared.

"I'm Father Quart," he said, holding out his hand. "I've just arrived in Seville."

His hand remained in midair while two piercing black eyes stared at him suspiciously.

"What are you doing in my church?"

Not a good start, Quart thought as he slowly lowered his hand and observed the man standing before him. Ferro's appearance was as rough as his voice. He was small and thin, and his white hair was poorly cut and untidy. He wore a threadbare cassock covered with stains and a pair of clumpy old shoes that looked as if they hadn't been polished in a long time.

"I thought it would be a good idea if I took a look round," Quart answered calmly.

The most disturbing thing about the old priest was his face. It was covered in marks, lines and small scars, which gave him a harsh, tormented look, like an aerial photograph of a desert. And then there were his eyes – black, defiant, deep-set, peering out at the world with little sympathy. He scrutinised Quart, taking in his cufflinks, the cut of his suit, and finally his face. He didn't look pleased by what he saw.

"You have no right to be here."

Quart thought of appealing to Gris Marsala, who had been listening to their exchange without a word. He realised immediately that she would be no help.