Wine kills the pain and the memories…

Don Ibrahim, separated from the bar by his paunch, was smoking a cigar and dropping ash on his white jacket. Beside him, La Nina had progressed from Manzanilla to Machaquito anis. She raised the lipstick-rimmed glass to her lips. She wore silver earrings and a blue dress with white polka dots. Her eyes were heavily made up and a kiss-curl stuck to her withered forehead: a down-at-heel flamenco singer like the pictures on the covers of the old singles that Don Ibrahim hoarded like gold dust in his room at the boarding house. He had records by Nat King Cole, Los Panchos, Beny More, Antonio Machin, and an antediluvian Telefunken gramophone. The former bogus lawyer and La Nina turned to look at El Potro, who jerked his head towards the street. "There," he said.

The three partners went to the door and looked. The tall priest was walking away from the other one, past the mosque. "Some priest," said La Nina huskily.

"Not bad-looking," admitted Don Ibrahim impartially, inspecting him with narrowed eyes.

The drop of Machaquito made the flamenco singer's eyes shine mischievously. uOthu. I wouldn't mind getting the last rites from him."

Don Ibrahim exchanged a grave look with El Potro. When they were on a job, as now, such frivolity was out of place. "What about the old one?" he asked, to concentrate their minds.

"He's still inside," said El Potro.

The former bogus lawyer drew thoughtfully on his cigar. "Let's split up the armed retinue," he said at last. "You, Potro, follow the old priest when he appears. Once he's home, come back here and report to me. La Nina and yours truly will watch the tall priest." He paused and solemnly consulted Don Ernesto Hemingway's watch. "Before taking action, we need information: the mother of victories, and so on. Don't you agree?"

His companions must have, because they nodded. His eyebrows meeting in the middle, El Potro was grave, as if teasing out the meaning of a word pronounced five minutes earlier. With a faraway look, La Nina watched the tall priest walk away. She still held her glass and looked as if she was going to finish off the Machaquito. On the radio, Camaron still sang of wine and longing, and behind the bar the waiter, in white shirt and black tie, clapped quietly in time to the music. Don Ibrahim surveyed his troops and decided to raise morale with a few suitably stirring words. Something about Seville being the greatest place on earth. And this job's in the bag.

"He who dares, wins," he said after a little thought, drawing on his cigar.

"Othu."

La Nina finished her anis. Still frowning, El Potro shook his head and asked, "What does 'retinue' mean?"

Lorenzo Quart's extreme conscientiousness was the source of his composure. So, when he returned to his room, the first thing he did was to open his leather briefcase and take out his laptop. He spent an hour working on his report for Monsignor Spada. As soon as it was finished, he sent it by modem to the director of the IEA. In its eight pages Quart was careful not to draw any conclusions regarding the church, the people involved with it, or the identity of Vespers. He limited himself to a fairly faithful account of his conversations with Monsignor Corvo, Gris Marsala and Priamo Ferro.

Once he'd shut down the computer and gathered up the cables, he relaxed a little. He was in shirtsleeves, collar unbuttoned. He walked round the two canopied beds to the window that looked on to the

Plaza Virgen de los Reyes. It was too early to eat, so he flicked through some guidebooks he'd bought in a small bookshop opposite the town hall. He'd also bought a copy of Q amp;S on the recommendation of Monsignor Corvo. "So you can acquaint yourself with the situation," the prelate had suggested caustically. Quart looked at the cover and then the photographs inside. "A Marriage In Crisis" ran the headline. Alongside the pictures of the woman and her companion, there was one of a very serious, well-dressed man with perfectly parted hair. "Their separation is confirmed. While financier Pencho Gavira consolidates his position as the strong man of Andalusian banking, Macarena Bruner is out and about in Seville until the early hours." Quart tore out the pages and put them in his briefcase. He suddenly noticed that the copy of the Gideon bible was on his bedside table. He didn't remember leaving it there. He thought he'd put it in a drawer with all the other stuff he wanted out of the way: pamphlets, advertisements, notepaper and envelopes. He opened the bible at random and found an old postcard. The caption read: "Church of Our Lady of the Tears. Seville. 1895." A bleached halo surrounded the central image, but the church, although faded, was unmistakable: the portico with its Solomonic columns, the bell-tower and the figure of the Virgin in its niche, head intact. Everything looked in better condition than it did now. In the square in front there was a stall with a man in a wide belt and typical Andalusian hat selling vegetables to two women dressed in black with their backs to the photographer. On the other side, a donkey carrying two barrels of water was walking away down the narrow street that led off the square, the man on its back scarcely more than an outline, a ghost about to disappear from the picture into the surrounding white halo.

Quart turned the card over. There were a few lines written in a gently sloping copperplate hand. The ink had faded to a pale brown making the words barely legible.

I come here to pray for you every day and wait for you to return to the sacred place where you swore your love and gave me such happiness. I will always love you. Carlota

The stamp, showing Alfonso XIII as a child, had no postmark, and there was a stain over the date handwritten at the top. Quart could make out a 9 and maybe a 7 at the end, so it could have been 1897. The address, on the other hand, was perfectly legible: "Captain Manuel Xaloc. On board the ship Manigua. Port of Havana. Cuba".

He picked up the telephone and dialled Reception. The receptionist said that his shift had started at eight that morning and no one had been up to Quart's room or asked for him in all that time, but maybe Quart should ask the cleaners. Quart was put through to them, but they weren't much help. They didn't remember having moved the bible, and they couldn't say whether it had been in the drawer or on the bedside table when they cleaned the room. Nobody had been in except them.

He sat by the window and examined the postcard in his hand. A ship docked in the port of Havana in 1897. A captain called Manuel Xaloc and someone called Carlota who had loved him and prayed for him at Our Lady of the Tears. Did the message on the back of the postcard have any special meaning, or was it the picture of the church that was significant? Suddenly he remembered the Gideon bible. Had the postcard been placed inside at random or was it marking a specific page? He cursed himself for not having noticed. He went over to the bedside table and saw that by chance he'd left the book open face down. It was open at pages 168 and 169 – John 2. There was nothing underlined but he quickly found the relevant lines. It was too obvious.

And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;

And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

Quart glanced from the bible to the postcard. He thought of Monsignor Spada and His Eminence Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz – they wouldn't be very happy about this turn of events. He wasn't that happy about it himself. Somebody was playing disturbing games, breaking into papal computer systems and people's hotel rooms. Quart thought of all the people he had met, and wondered if the