"How you doing?" he said, and sat down.

It wasn't a question. He didn't give a damn how they were doing, and they knew it. He could see it in the three pairs of eyes that watched him adjust his shirt-cuffs – a gesture copied from his elegant boss – and then carefully place his elbows on the table.

"I've got a job for you," he announced.

Peregil saw El Potro del Mantelete and La Nina Punales glance at Don Ibrahim, who nodded gravely and twirled the ends of his moustache – a thick, bristly, reddish-grey, handlebar moustache. Despite this rather fierce appendage, Don Ibrahim appeared good-natured and placid. He was tall, very fat, and he did everything solemnly. The Lawyers' Association of Seville had long ago discovered that his legal credentials were spurious, but the time he'd spent practising the law under false pretences had given him a grave and dignified presence. He carried a silver-handled walking stick and wore a wide-brimmed panama hat and a watch and chain curving between two pockets of his waistcoat. He claimed he'd won the watch from Ernest Hemingway in a poker game at the Chiquita Cruz brothel in Havana, in the days before Castro.

"You have our full attention," he said, his paunch causing him to sit at a distance from the table.

Triana and all of Seville knew that Don Ibrahim the Cuban was a con man and a crook, but also a perfect gentleman. For instance, only after a courteous glance at El Potro del Mantelete and La Nina Punales had he spoken for the three of them, indicating that he would be honoured to represent them.

"There's a church and a priest," Peregil began.

"Not a good start," said Don Ibrahim. In one hand – sporting a gold signet ring – he held a smoking cigar, while with the other he brushed ash from his trousers. From his misspent youth in Cuba he'd retained a taste for immaculate white suits, panama hats and Montecristo cigars. He looked like one of the Spaniards who made their fortune in Latin America at the turn of the century then sailed back to Seville with a roll of gold coins, a dose of malaria and a mulatto servant. All Don Ibrahim had brought back was the malaria.

Peregil looked at Don Ibrahim, confused. Was it a bad start because he'd dropped ash on his trousers or because the job involved a church and a priest?

"An old priest," he said, to probe Don Ibrahim and also to make the job seem less daunting. But then he remembered: "Well, two priests actually – an old one and a young one."

"Othu!" exclaimed La Nina Punales, using the Gypsy slang from the banks of the Guadalquivir. "Two priests."

Her silver bracelets jangled on her flaccid arms as she drained her sherry glass. Beside her, El Potro del Mantelete shook his head, apparently mesmerised by the thick mark of lipstick on the edge of La Nina's glass.

"Two priests," Don Ibrahim repeated anxiously as cigar smoke spiralled through his moustache.

"Well, actually there are three of them," Peregil added truthfully.

Don Ibrahim shuddered, dropping ash on his trousers again. "I thought you said two."

"No, three. The old one, the young one and another one on his way."

Peregil saw them exchange cautious glances. "Three priests," said Don Ibrahim, peering at the nail on the little finger of his left hand. It was as long as a spatula. "That's right."

"A young one, an old one and another one coming." "Yes, from Rome." "From Rome."

La Nina Punales jangled her bracelets again. "Too many priests," she said lugubriously. She touched the wooden table leg for luck.

"So we've run into the Church," said Don Ibrahim with gravity, as if his remark had been the product of lengthy pondering. Peregil suppressed the urge to get up and leave. This isn't going to work, he thought, looking at the three of them: the former bogus lawyer with ash on his trousers, La Nina with a beauty spot and kiss-curl on her withered forehead, and the former bantamweight with a squashed nose. Then he remembered the numbers 7 and 16 on the card table, and the photographs in the magazine. Suddenly it seemed unbearably hot. But maybe it wasn't the temperature in the bar but fear that was drenching his shirt with sweat and making his mouth feel rough and dry. Find a professional, Pencho Gavira told him. You've got six million pesetas to sort this out. It's up to you how you manage the money.

Peregil had indeed managed the money in his own way: six hours in a casino and he'd lost three out of the six million. Five hundred thousand an hour. He'd even spent what he got for the magazine tip-off about his boss's wife, or ex-wife. And on top of that, Ruben Molina, the loan shark, was about to set the dogs on him for another six million.

"It's an easy job," Peregil heard himself say. He knew he had no choice. "Clean. No complications. A million each." "Why us?" asked Don Ibrahim.

Peregil looked straight into his sad, bleary eyes and for an instant glimpsed the anxiety in their depths. Percgil swallowed and then ran a finger round the inside of his collar. He glanced again at the fat bogus lawyer's cigar, El Potro's deformed nose, La Nina's beauty spot. Three losers who should be locked up. Shipwrecks. Dregs. But with the money that was left, they were all he could afford. Blushing, he answered, "Because you're the best."

On his first morning in Seville it took Lorenzo Quart almost an hour to find the church. Several times he inadvertently wandered out of Santa Cruz and then had to find his way back. He realised his tourist map was useless in the maze of silent, narrow streets. Once or twice a passing car forced him to take refuge in cool, dark archways, their wrought-iron gates leading to tiled courtyards full of roses and geraniums. He came at last to a small square with white and ochre walls and railings hung with flowerpots. Tiled benches showed scenes from Don Quixote and there was an intense scent of orange blossom from the half-dozen trees. The church was small, its brick facade barely twenty metres across, and it formed a corner with another building. It looked in poor condition: the belfry was shored up by wooden struts, thick beams propped up the outer wall, and scaffolding partially obscured a tile depicting Christ, flanked by rusty iron lamps. There was also a cement mixer beside a mound of gravel and some sacks of cement.

So there she was. Quart stood and stared at the building for a couple of minutes. Seen through the orange trees and beneath a bright blue Andalusian sky on that perfect morning, it didn't seem remotely sinister. Two twisted Solomonic columns stood on either side of the baroque portico. Above it was a niche containing a statue of the Virgin. Our Lady of the Tears, he almost said aloud. Then he walked towards the church and, as he came closer, saw that the Virgin had been beheaded.

Nearby, bells began to ring and a flock of pigeons rose from the roofs around the square. He watched them fly off, then looked back to the church facade. Something had changed. Now, despite the Andalusian sunlight and the orange trees with their fragrant blossom, the church seemed different. Suddenly, the old beams shoring up the walls, the ochre paint of the belfry peeling in strips like skin, the bell hanging motionless from the crossbeam overgrown with weeds, all gave the place a sombre, dull, disturbing atmosphere. A church that kills to defend itself, Vespers' mysterious message had said. Quart glanced again at the headless Virgin while inwardly laughing at himself for feeling uneasy. There didn't seem much left to defend.

To Quart, faith was relative. Monsignor Spada had not been wrong to speak of him, if half-joking, as a good soldier. Quart's creed didn't consist of revealed truths; it rested, rather, on the assumption that one had faith and acted accordingly. In this light, the Catholic Church from the start was to Quart what the army was to other young men: a place where rules provided most of the answers as long as one didn't question the basic concept. In Quart's case, this self-discipline replaced faith. And the paradox, which the veteran archbishop had sensed, was that it was precisely the lack of faith, with all the pride and rigour needed to sustain it, that made Quart so good at his job.