Bobby called round later that afternoon to hear his conclusions, Carriscant sat behind his desk as he relayed them, while Bobby paced thoughtfully to and fro, smoking another small ill-lit cheroot, occasionally setting a big haunch down on the desk corner and letting the freed boot swing as he listened.

'You're not Spanish, are you?' Bobby said suddenly.

'No. Well, my mother is half Spanish, my father was British.'

'So, you have British nationality.'

'Yes… Why do you ask?'

'It makes it easier, when I report to the Governor. Especially if we're going to work together.'

Carriscant did not respond to this, though he was curious about what manner of collaboration Bobby was talking about; but, as collaboration was being mooted, he decided to enter into the spirit of the arrangement.

'There was one thing,' Carriscant began, slowly, 'it was impossible to be sure, but I had the impression that the organs in the gut – the intestines, liver, kidneys, stomach – had been… I don't know, had been displaced or manipulated.'

'I don't follow.'

'Have you ever opened a dead body?'

'I came here from the Boxer rebellion,' Bobby said. 'I've seen a lot of dead and mangled men.'

'Not the same thing. When you open the abdominal lining and reveal the organs below you wouldn't believe how… ' Carriscant stopped and searched for a word. 'How neatly it all fits together. How astonishing the design, how compact.' He stood up and clapped his hands on his chest, his side, his belly, pushing his fingers into his stomach. 'They call it a "trunk" and the word is apt. Everything is packed in, held. It can move but it's secure. Everything in its place, working. And the jobs being done… I won't go on, but there was something about Ward's organs, even though the blood and the fluids were gone. It didn't look -'

'Someone been poking around, sort of thing?'

'Possibly.'

'Where does that get us?'

'You're the sleuth. I'm just a surgeon.'

Bobby had to leave to make his report to the Governor. His own hunch, he told Carriscant, was that Ward had been killed by a man in his own unit, a fight had got out of hand, a blow had been struck. Filipino insurgents often mutilated their victims, he said, the guilty party in this case probably wanted it to seem as if a rebel had done the deed.

'They don't usually mutilate in that fashion,' Carriscant said.

'Sure,' Bobby said. 'Then you go and cut your buddy's pecker off and stick it in his mouth. Kinda hard. Simpler to make some, you know, L-shape or something.'

'Why sew it up, then?'

'I don't know, Carriscant, I don't know,' Bobby said, a rasp of irritation in his voice. 'Yet… I'll try and find out, but we got so many crackers in this army I don't count on being successful.'

'Crackers?'

'Southern boys. They all seem to be from Mississippi, or Texas, or Kansas. Patriots all. Stick together.'

Carriscant smiled. He could see the quality of robust intelligence behind Bobby's vulgar confidence, sense the energies that stirred beneath the corpulent ease.

'I got to go see Governor Taft. Been a big help, Carriscant.'

Carriscant showed Pantaleon the body in the morgue. They had postponed their fistula operation designated for that afternoon.

'An American?' Pantaleon said dispassionately, walking round the head. He took hold of it and moved it to and fro as if to obtain a better angle on the man's slack features. 'At least they can't make any reprisals, now.'

'They think another American did it.' Carriscant told him about Bobby's theory, but Pantaleon seemed uninterested. The dead American soldier seemed to have preoccupied him and he began to tell Carriscant a rambling story he had heard from an uncle about a company of American soldiers who had been pursuing General Elpidio in Batangas. One of the soldiers had fallen into a pit, the base of which had been lined with bamboo spears. In retribution every inhabitant of the nearest two villages – men, women and children-had been shot and their bodies burned.

'I think about two hundred people paid with their lives for that one man's life… ' He shrugged. 'It seems very unfair. I mean -'

'I would rather you didn't talk about it,' Carriscant said abruptly; he stood very still, stiffly, like someone who has just put his back out and is terrified to move.

Pantaleon was upset and very apologetic. 'I'm so sorry, Salvador,' he said, 'I forgot. I'm very sorry, please forgive me.'

Carriscant recovered himself. 'It's been a strange day,' he said. 'Normally, I'm fine. I think the American-' He stopped talking and managed a kind of smile. 'Pantaleon,' he said, 'could I come home with you? Just for an hour or so. I don't feel ready for work, and -'

'Of course,' Pantaleon said, hiding his surprise. 'In any case I've been meaning to ask you back for a while, now. I've got something I want you to see.'

Dr Salvador Carriscant and Dr Pantaleon Quiroga boarded a horse tram at the Plaza Magellanes, crossed the Pasig at the Bridge of Spain and made their way towards the suburb of Santa Cruz. The tram was crowded with Indio workers returning from their jobs in the city and Carriscant was conscious of their candid stares as they tried to divine what these two kastilas in their suits and ties were doing on this poor man's mode of transport.

The two men left the tram at Calle Azcarrega and walked to Pantaleon's house, a two-storey adobe and lumber building in a relatively smart street. Pantaleon occupied half the rooms, sharing the rest with an American couple, teachers, who were setting up the reformed educational programme at the local school. They paused only long enough to collect a key and then walked down a dirt lane through kitchen gardens and out on to an area of waste ground on the north bank of an estero, one of the Pasig 's many meandering arms. Ahead of them was a line of trees that marked another wormy loop in the river's progress and over to the left Carriscant could make out the galvanised iron roofs of Sampaloc; He had not realised Pantaleon lived quite so close to Sampaloc; he filed that piece of information away in his mind.

The afternoon sun was obscured by a layer of hazy clouds and the heat was going out of the day, and from time to time the breeze from the south carried the rich yeasty smell from the San Miguel brewery. Pantaleon was striding out with genuine enthusiasm and Carriscant had to stretch his legs to keep up with him.

They pushed through a gap in a plumbago hedge and beyond that, on the edge of an elongated meadow of sun-bleached grass, he saw a recently built nipa barn, unusually broad, its bamboo walls still green and its palm leaf thatch only partially faded.

'What's this?' Carriscant said.

'It's mine,' Pantaleon said. 'I had it built. I own this land here.' He gestured at the blond meadow stretching in front of them.

Pantaleon unlocked the padlock on the barn doors and swung them open. Carriscant peered into the gloom and saw what he took to be a curious assemblage of wood and wires that was raised from the earth floor on numerous wooden trestles. It looked, at first glance, as if Pantaleon was constructing a giant hollow cross, laid out horizontally, but, as his eyes became accustomed to the murky light, he began to make out other details that were less easy to explain: various wheels, levers with wires attached to them and what looked like two large bicycle saddles set in tandem. Carriscant wandered around the construction, touching the tightly strung wires, plucking at them with his fingers. It made no sense at all.

'You made this?' he asked Pantaleon.

'Local carpenters. To my specifications.'

'A kind of dwelling? A prefabricated shelter?'

Pantaleon laughed, high-pitched, delightedly.