Hilde sniffed, and pushed back her hair. ‘Even if that’s true, he knew what you were running from. He knew all it would take was for the British police to liaise with the Spanish, and then …’ She looked at me. ‘I’m so sorry, Alejandro. I never dreamed.’

I went to her, and we held each other tight, until our tears subsided and we were able to turn our burning eyes to the mess before us.

The days that followed were terrible. We leapt every time the telephone rang; we broke into cold sweats when a fist hammered on the gate. Police came at any hour of the day, not just the British, but gendarmes, guardia, polizei, even. It was clear that Langham’s activities stretched far, far further than any of us had imagined.

Cabrera had thought of Langham as an easy catch; he obviously had no idea what kind of person he was dealing with.

Then came the news of Langham’s boat, abandoned on the strait, and a call from the station, a few hours later, to say that a body had been recovered. Hilde was the one to identify it. She came back shaken and pale, but strangely excited.

The corpse was almost unrecognizable, she said, battered by the rocks. Most of the hair was gone, as well as the eyes. But it was wearing the remains of Langham’s clothes, the white flannel suit, the saffron shirt, torn and spoiled, his gold ring, which for some reason was jammed above the knuckle, as if the fingers had swelled.

Neither of us said what we were thinking: that it didn’t matter at all whether the body was Langham’s or that of a man with yellow, goat-like eyes. In that moment, we made a silent pact to keep it a secret, to never mention his name to anyone. Even if somewhere in the world, someone was walking around wearing his face, the man we had known as Arthur Langham – the man we had loved – was dead to us. Our silence would ensure he stayed that way.

Langham had been clever in some ways, and rather stupid in others. He had left Hilde in charge of Dar Portuna, counting on her loyalty, perhaps intending to reclaim it from her one day, when the British had moved on to other targets, and her anger had faded enough to forgive him. A mistake. The very day Hilde returned from the coroner’s office, we set about securing our future. We made a good team, Lady Bailey and I; she beyond reproach with her title and fine manners, me with my knowledge of the streets and petty scams.