He left his key at Reception and went out into the street, trailed by the journalist. The dark shape of La Giralda was visible against the remaining light of the sky. At that moment the streetlights came on in the Plaza Virgen de los Reyes.

"I don't think you understand," insisted Bonafe, pulling a copy of Q amp;S from his pocket. "I work for this magazine." He held it out but put it away again when Quart ignored him. "All I want is a short, friendly chat. You tell me a couple of things, and I'll be decent. I assure you, co-operation will benefit us both." On his pink lips, the word "co-operation" acquired obscene connotations.

Quart had to make an effort to contain his revulsion. "Please go away."

"Come on. Just the time to have one drink," he said, at once rude and friendly.

They were now under a street lamp at a corner of the archbishop's

palace. Quart stopped and turned. "Listen, Buenafe"

"Bonafe"

"Bonafe or whatever your name is. What I'm doing in Seville is none of your business. And in any case, I would never dream of telling the world about it."

The journalist protested, quoting the usual journalistic cliches: freedom of information, the quest for truth, the public's right to know. "And anyway," he added after thinking a moment, "better for you lot to be in than out."

It sounded like a threat. Quart was beginning to lose patience. "Us lot?"

"You know what I mean." Again the obsequious smile. "The clergy and all that." "Ah. The clergy."

"I see we understand each other," Bonafe said, his double chin wobbling hopefully.

Quart looked at him calmly, his hands clasped behind his back. "And what exactly do you want to know?" he asked.

"Well. Let's see." Bonafe scratched his armpit beneath his jacket. "What's the view in Rome on that church, for instance. What's the position of the parish priest in terms of canon law… And whatever you can tell me about your mission here." His smile was slimy. "That shouldn't be too difficult."

"And if I refuse?"

The journalist clucked his tongue, as if to say that wouldn't do, especially as they'd been getting on so well. "I'll write the article anyway, of course. And he that is not with me, is against me." He stood on tiptoe as he spoke. "Isn't that what it says in the Gospels?"

Quart stared at him for a moment without a word. He glanced to the right and left before moving closer to the journalist, as if to speak in confidence. But there was something in his demeanour that made Bonafe step back. "I really couldn't care less what your name is," said Quart quietly. "I can't decide whether you're rude, stupid, criminal, or all three. In any case, even though I'm a priest, I have a bad temper. So if I were you, I'd get out of my sight. Now."

The street lamp cast vertical shadows on the journalist's face. No longer smiling, he gave Quart an aggrieved look. "Not very priestly," he complained, his double chin trembling. "Your attitude."

"You think?" Now it was Quart's turn to smile unpleasantly. "In that case, you'd be surprised how unpriestly I can be."

He turned his back on him and walked away, wondering what he'd have to pay for his small victory. Clearly, he had to conclude his investigation before the situation became too complicated, if it wasn't already. A journalist rooting around in church matters was the final straw. Absorbed in these thoughts, Quart crossed the Plaza Virgen de los Reyes without noticing a couple – a man and a woman – sitting on a bench. They stood up and followed him at a distance. The man was fat and wore a white suit and a panama hat; the woman was in a polka-dot dress and had a strange kiss-curl on her forehead. They walked behind Quart, arm in arm like a husband and wife enjoying the cool evening air. But when they came to the Bar La Giralda, they exchanged looks with a man in a polo-neck sweater and checked jacket in the doorway. At that moment, bells began to ring throughout Seville, startling the pigeons dozing under the eaves.

When the tall priest went into La Albahaca, Don Ibrahim gave El Potro del Mantelete a coin and told him to telephone Peregil from the nearest call box and fill him in. A little less than an hour later, Pencho Gavira's henchman turned up to see how things were going. He carried a Marks amp; Spencer's plastic bag and looked tired. He found his troops strategically deployed about the Plaza de Santa Cruz outside the restaurant, a converted seventeenth-century mansion. El Potro leaned against a wall, motionless, near the exit leading to the Arab wall; La Nina Punales sat crocheting at the foot of the iron cross in the middle of the square; and Don Ibrahim's bulky shadow moved from one side of the square to another, swinging his walking stick, the ember of a Montecristo cigar visible beneath the broad brim of his pale straw hat.

"He's inside," he told Peregil. "With the lady."

He made his report, pulling his watch from his waistcoat and consulting it by the light of the street lamp. Twenty minutes earlier, he had sent La Nina into the restaurant for reconnaissance, pretending to sell flowers.. Later he himself exchanged a few words with the waiters when he went in to buy the cigar he was now smoking. The couple were sitting at a good table beneath a reasonable copy of The Topers by Velazquez. The lady had ordered scallop salad with basil and truffles, while the Reverend Father had chosen sauteed goose liver with honey vinaigrette. They were drinking uncarbonated mineral water and red wine, a Pesquera from the banks of the Duero. Don Ibrahim apologised that he hadn't been able to ascertain the vintage. But, as he told Peregil, twirling his moustache, excessive curiosity might have aroused the suspicions of the staff.

"And what are they talking about?" asked Peregil.

The former bogus lawyer shrugged. "That," he said, "is beyond the scope of my investigation."

Peregil considered the situation. Things were still under control. Don Ibrahim and his colleagues were doing well, and the cards they had given him looked good. In his world, as in almost every other, information meant money. It was a question of knowing how to get the best deal, the highest bid. Of course, he would have preferred to take all this back to his boss, Pencho Gavira, who was the principal interested party here, being both banker and husband. But the missing six million and Peregil's debt to loan shark Ruben Molina made it hard to think straight. Peregil had been sleeping badly for the last few days, and his ulcer was troubling him again. When he stood in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, constructing the complicated edifice that concealed his baldness, Peregil saw only despair in the sour face staring back at him. He was going bald, his digestion was wrecked, he owed his boss six million and almost twice that to a moneylender, and he very much suspected that his last glorious spasm with Dolores La Negra had left him with the alarming little itch in his urogenital tract. Just what he needed.

And there was worse. Peregil glanced at the rotund form of Don Ibrahim, who awaited instructions, at La Nina Punales crocheting in the lamplight, and at El Potro del Mantelete on the corner. To all the things complicating Peregil's life could be added another: the information obtained by the three partners was already circulating on the market, because Peregil needed cash urgently. Bonafe had slipped him another cheque, this time as payment for confidential information about the priest from Rome, Peregil's boss's wife (or ex-wife or whatever she was), and the business of Our Lady of the Tears. The next step was obvious: Macarena Bruner and the elegant priest would make the front page of every magazine in Seville. Their dinner at La Albahaca, rang the cash register in Peregil's brain. Bonafe paid well, but he was a dangerous and unpredictable character. Selling him one priest, or several, had its attraction. But blowing the whistle on Peregil's boss's wife for a second time was more than a little mischief – it was institutional betrayal.