The voice came from behind him. Quart turned and saw Gris Marsala. She had come in noiselessly in her trainers.

"You creep like a cat," said Quart.

She laughed. As usual her hair was tied in a plait, and she wore a baggy sweatshirt and jeans spattered with paint and plaster. Quart pictured her applying makeup in front of a mirror before the bishop's visit, then her cold eyes multiplying in the fragments of shattered mirror. He looked for the scar. There it was: a pale line three centimetres long on the inside of her right wrist. He wondered if she'd meant to kill herself.

"Don't tell me you came to Mass," she said.

Quart nodded. She smiled indefinably. She noticed that he was looking at her scar, and turned her arm to hide it.

"That priest," said Quart.

He was about to add something but didn't – those two words said it all. After a moment she smiled again, as if at a private thought! "Yes," she said quietly, "that's exactly it." She seemed relieved and stopped hiding her wrist. She asked if he'd seen Macarena. Quart nodded.

"She comes here every morning, at eight," she said. "With her mother on Thursdays and Sundays."

"I would never have imagined she was so devout."

He hadn't intended it to sound sarcastic, but Gris Marsala stiffened and said, "Look, I really don't like your tone."

He took a few steps towards the altarpiece, regarded the Virgin, then turned to the woman again: "I'm sorry. But I had dinner with her last night, and she confuses me."

"I know you had dinner." Her blue eyes were fixed on him. "Macarena woke me at one in the morning and kept me on the phone for almost half an hour. One of the many things she said was that you would come to Mass."

"That's impossible," said Quart. "I came on impulse."

"Well, she was sure. She said that you would come, and would begin to understand." She stopped and looked at him with curiosity. "And have you?"

"What else did she tell you?" He tried to sound casual, ironic, but was afraid it was obvious that he wanted to know what Macarena had told her friend the nun. He was annoyed with himself.

Gris Marsala pursed her lips thoughtfully. "She said lots of things. That she likes you, for instance. And that you're not as different from Don Priamo as you think. She also said you're the sexiest priest she's ever seen." She smiled mischievously. "That was exactly how she put it."

"Why are you telling me this?" "Because you asked."

"Please, don't make fun of me. I'm too old for that. Look, my hair's grey, like yours."

"I like your hair that short. So does Macarena." "You haven't answered my question, Sister Marsala." She laughed, and her eyes crinkled.

"Drop the title, please." She pointed to her dirty jeans and the scaffolding against the walls. "I don't know if any of this is appropriate for a nun."

It wasn't, thought Quart. Nor was her part in the strange triangle formed by the two of them and Macarena Bruner. And maybe a fourth, Father Ferro, should be included. Quart couldn't picture Gris Marsala in a convent, in a nun's habit. She had come a long way since Santa Barbara.

"Will you ever go back?"

She took a moment to answer, looking down the nave at the pews piled up by the door. She hooked her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans, and Quart wondered how many nuns could have worn jeans like that – she was as slim as a young girl. Only her face and hair showed age. There was still something very attractive about her, about the way she moved.

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully.*Maybe it depends on this church, on what happens here. I think that's why I haven't left." She spoke without looking at Quart, squinting at the sunlight in the doorway. "Have you ever suddenly felt a void where you thought your heart was? The feeling lasts only a moment, then everything goes on as before, but you know that things aren't the same and you wonder what's wrong."

"And do you think you'll find the answer here?"

"I have no idea. But we search in places that may have answers."

Quart shifted uneasily from one leg to the other. He didn't like this sort of conversation, but he had to persevere – it might yield clues.

"I think," he said, "we spend our whole lives roaming round our tombs. Maybe that's the answer."

To make it sound less important, he smiled, but she wasn't fooled by the smile.

"I was right. You're not like other priests."

Quart didn't ask what that meant. They were both silent as they walked up the nave, past the walls with flaking paint and the cornices with tarnished gilding. At last she spoke again.

"There arc things," she said, "places, people that leave their mark on you. Do you know what I mean? No, I don't think you do yet. I mean this town. This church. And Don Priamo, and Macarena." She stopped and smiled mockingly. "You need to know what you're getting into."

"Maybe I have nothing to lose."

"It's strange to hear you say that. Macarcna says that's the most interesting thing about you. The impression you give." They were by the door now. "As if, like Don Priamo, you have nothing to lose."

The waiter turned the handle of the awning until Pencho Gavira and Octavio Machuca's table was shaded. A bootblack sat at the old banker's feet, polishing his shoes.

"Could I have the other foot now, sir?"

Machuca obediently placed his other foot on top of the box decorated with gold tacks and litde mirrors. The bootblack positioned the guards so as not to stain Machuca's socks and then proceeded conscientiously with his task. He looked like a Gypsy and was very thin, with tattoos all over his arms and lottery tickets sticking out of his shirt pocket. He must have been over fifty. The chairman of the Cartujano Bank had his shoes polished every day at 300 pesetas a time, while he watched the world go by from his table on the corner of La Campana.

"Some heat," said the bootblack.

He wiped the sweat running down his nose with a hand blackened with polish. Gavira lit a cigarette and offered him one. The bootblack placed it behind his ear without stopping the brushing of Machuca's shoes. With a cup of coffee and the ABC on the table in front of him, the old man looked down with satisfaction at the job the bootblack was doing. When the bootblack finished, Machuca handed him a thousand-peseta note. The bootblack scratched the back of his neck, confused.

"I don't have any change, sir."

The chairman of the Cartujano smiled and crossed his legs. "Well, charge me tomorrow, Rafita," he said. "When you get some change."

The bootblack returned the note, raising his hand in something that vaguely resembled a military salute, and headed off towards the Plaza Duque de la Victoria, his little seat and box under his arm. Gavira saw him pass Peregil, who was waiting at a respectful distance outside a shoe shop, a few steps away from the dark-blue Mercedes at the kerb. Machuca's secretary was going through some papers at a nearby table, quiet and efficient as always.

"How's that business with the church going, Pencho?"

It was a routine question, like asking after the health of a relative. Old Machuca picked up the newspaper and leafed through it vaguely, until he came to the obituaries, which he read with great interest. Gavira leaned back in his wicker chair and watched the patches of sun gaining ground at his feet and moving slowly towards the Calle Sierpes.

"We're working on it," he said.

Machuca was engrossed in the obituaries. At his age it was comforting to see how many acquaintances had died before him. "The members of the board are losing patience," he said without looking up. "Or, to be more exact, some of them are. Others are hoping you'll fall flat on your face." He turned a page, smiling wryly at the long list of relations praying for the soul of Mr Luis Jorquera de la Sintacha, illustrious son of Seville, Commander of the Order of Mafiara, who passed on after having received extreme unction, etc. Machuca and all Seville knew that the deceased had been a complete crook who'd made his fortune smuggling penicillin in the years after the Civil War. "There are only a few days left before the board meets to discuss your plans for the church."