“They haven’t, have they?”

“Oh, yes, they have. It’s stuck under the windscreen wiper.” Irritated, he banged the ground with his umbrella. “I don’t believe it. Right in the middle of the Rastro and the police spend their time giving out fines instead of doing what they should be doing, arresting criminals and other riffraff. It’s a disgrace!” He repeated it loudly, looking about him defiantly: “An absolute disgrace!”

Julia removed the empty aerosol can someone had placed on the bonnet of the car and picked up the piece of paper, which was in fact a small card, about the size of a visiting card. Then she stood utterly still, thunderstruck. The shock must have shown on her face, because Cesar, alarmed, hurried round to her side.

“You’ve gone quite pale, my dear. What’s wrong?”

When she spoke, she didn’t recognise her own voice. She felt a terrible desire to run away to some warm, secure place where she could hide her head and close her eyes and feel safe.

“It isn’t a fine, Cesar.”

She held out the card, and Cesar uttered a word no one would expect to hear from him. Because there, in a now all too familiar format, someone had typed the sinisterly laconic characters:

Pa7 x Rb6

As she stood, stunned, she felt as if her head were spinning. The alley was deserted. The person nearest to it was a seller of religious images, who was sitting on a wicker chair on the corner, about twenty yards from them, watching the people walking past the merchandise she’d laid out on the ground. “He was here, Cesar. Don’t you see? He was here.”

She realised that there was fear in her words but not surprise. Now – and the realisation came in waves of infinite despair – she was not afraid of the unexpected, her fear had become a kind of gloomy sense of resignation, as if the mystery player and his close, threatening presence were becoming an irremediable curse under which she would have to live for the rest of her life. Always supposing, she thought with lucid pessimism, that she had much life left to live.

Ashen, Cesar was turning the card round and round. He could barely speak for indignation:

“The swine… the blackguard.”

Julia’s thoughts were suddenly distracted from the card. What claimed her attention was the empty can she’d found on the bonnet. She picked it up, feeling, as she bent to do so, as though she were moving through the mists of a dream. But she was able to concentrate long enough on the label to understand what it was. She shook her head, puzzled, before showing it to Cesar.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“An aerosol for repairing flat tyres. You stick it in the valve and the tyre inflates. It’s got a sort of white paste in it that repairs the puncture from inside.”

“What’s it doing here?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

They checked the tyres. There was nothing odd about the two on the left. Julia walked round the car and checked the two on the right, which also seemed fine. But just as she was about to drop the can on the ground, she noticed that the valve on the back tyre was missing its cap. In its place was a bubble of white paste.

“Someone’s pumped up the tyre,” said Cesar, after staring at the empty container. “Perhaps it was punctured.”

“It wasn’t when we parked it,” said Julia, and they looked at each other, full of dark presentiments.

“Don’t get in,” said Cesar.

The seller of religious images had seen nothing. There were always a lot of people around and, besides, she was busy with her own affairs, she explained, laying out sacred hearts, statuettes of San Pancracio and sundry virgins. As for the alley, she wasn’t sure. A couple of locals had been past in the last hour, possibly a few other people.

“Do you remember anyone in particular?” Cesar had taken off his hat and was bending towards the seller, his overcoat over his shoulders and his umbrella under his arm. The image of a perfect gentleman, the woman must have thought.

“I don’t think so.” She wrapped her woollen shawl more tightly round her and frowned as if struggling to remember. “There was a lady, I think. And a couple of young men.”

“Do you remember what they looked like?”

“Just young men, you know the type: leather jackets and jeans…”

An absurd idea flitted across Julia’s mind. The limits of the impossible had, after all, broadened considerably in the last few days.

“Did you see someone in a navy blue jacket? A man about thirty with his hair in a ponytail?”

The seller did not remember having seen Max. She’d noticed the woman, though, because she’d stopped for a moment as if she were going to buy something. She was blonde, middle-aged and well-dressed. But she couldn’t imagine her breaking into a car; she wasn’t the type. She was wearing a raincoat.

“And dark glasses?”

“Yes.”

Cesar looked at Julia gravely.

“It’s not even sunny today,” he said.

“I know.”

“It could have been the same woman who delivered the documents.” Cesar paused and his eyes hardened. “Or Menchu.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Cesar shook his head, glancing at the people walking past.

“No, you’re right. But you yourself thought it might be Max.”

“Max… is different.” Her face darkened as she looked down the street, as though Max or the blonde in the raincoat might still be around. What she saw froze the words on her lips and shook her with the force of a blow. There was no woman answering the description, but amongst the awnings and the plastic sheeting of the stalls was a car, parked near the corner. A blue car.

From where she was standing, Julia couldn’t tell if it was a Ford or not, but the jolt of emotion she felt propelled her into action. To Cesar’s surprise, she left the seller of religious images, walked a little way along the pavement and then, skirting a couple of stalls, stood staring over at the corner, on tiptoe in order to get a better look. It was a blue Ford, with smoked-glass windows. Thoughts crowded into her head. She couldn’t see the numberplate, but there had been too many coincidences that morning: Max, Menchu, the card on the windscreen, the empty spray can, the woman in the raincoat and now the car that had become a key element in her nightmare. She was conscious that her hands were trembling and she thrust them into her pockets at the same moment she felt Cesar’s presence behind her.

“It’s the car, Cesar. Do you know what that means? Whoever it is, is inside.”

Cesar didn’t say anything. He slowly took off his hat, perhaps thinking it inappropriate for whatever might happen next, and looked at Julia. She had never loved him so much as she did then, his lips pressed together, his chin up, his blue eyes narrowed and in them a rare glint of steel. The thin lines of his meticulously shaven face looked tense; his jaw muscles twitched. His eyes seemed to say that, man of impeccable manners with little inclination for violence he might be, but he was no coward. At least not where his princess was concerned.

“Wait for me here,” he said.

“No. Let’s go together. You and me.” She looked at him tenderly. Once, when she was a child, she’d kissed him playfully on the mouth. At that moment she felt an impulse to do so again; but this wasn’t a game they were playing now.

She put her hand in her bag and cocked the derringer. Very calmly, Cesar put his umbrella under his arm, went over to one of the stalls and, as if he were selecting a walking stick, grabbed a huge iron poker.

“May I?” he said, pressing the first note he found in his wallet into the astonished stallholder’s hand. He then looked serenely at Julia again and said: “Just this once, my dear, allow me to go first.”

They set off towards the car, using stalls as cover. Julia’s heart was beating hard when she at last got a glimpse of the numberplate. There was no doubt about it: a blue Ford, smoked-glass windows and the letters TH. Her mouth was dry, and she had an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach as if it had contracted in upon itself. That, she said to herself quickly, was what Captain Peter Blood used to feel before boarding an enemy ship.