He woke the Girl up, and this time it was fine. She had let him know, with gestures more than words, that she wouldn’t be charging him. He pressed some money into her dry little fist anyway. She was all right, for a tart. She called him Tirry, and said she liked his eyes. His eyes? As far as he knew they were the same as everyone else’s. Women were strange, he told himself, not for the first time. He got up and peered at his reflection in the bit of speckled mirror that hung on a hook beside the window. Percy, one night when he was half seas over and in an ugly mood, had told him he had the eyes of a ferret. He didn’t know how he had stopped himself from giving the fat old sot a good going over, which he richly deserved.

They stayed in that night, he and the Girl, and ate food that Terry had paid the kid to bring up. The Girl had a shift to work, but knocked off early and came back to the room. He was ready to do it again, but she smiled and said she was tired, and touched her fingers lightly to his cheek.

In the morning he walked around the city for a while. The area he was staying in was rough, but there were some nice places, especially on the seafront and along by the river. At noon he came to a square on one side of which was a building with cannons on it and a harmless-looking stone lion. He stopped at a bar and sat down at a table under a stone archway and ordered a beer. The sun was shining and the air felt just right, warm but not too warm. Springtime.

He had almost forgotten what it was he had been paid to come down here and do.

*

He finished his beer, threw some coins on to the table and headed back to the lupanar – that was the Spanish word for a whorehouse, the Girl had taught it to him, giggling and blushing. In the room, he changed into his fawn slacks and slip-ons with the gold buckles. He had bought a new shirt specially for the trip, with red and blue stripes in it, and floppy sleeves. He wasn’t sure about it, especially the stripes. He was worried it might make him look like a Spanish dancer or, worse, a queer. He took it off, then changed his mind and put it on again. What did it matter? – Spanish men all looked a bit iffy, with their tight trousers and built-up heels and pencilled-on moustaches.