He handed over a fistful of crackling notes. The saleswoman produced a capacious paper bag with straw handles. Quirke was about to drop the new hat into it, but Evelyn took the old one from him and put it into the bag instead.

‘Wear the panama,’ she said. ‘See, outside, the sun is shining. That’s what a hat is for, to protect you from the sun, and make you look like a true Spanish gentleman.’

He took the hat from her and jammed it down on his skull again with both hands. This time it was Evelyn who reached up and tilted it at a rakish angle.

When they stepped out of the shop, a skittish breeze came swooping up from the ocean and snatched at the hat, lifting the brim of it and flattening it against Quirke’s crown. That was all he needed, he thought, to be turned into one of John Wayne’s comical sidekicks, Chill Wills, was it, or Smiley Burnette?

Evelyn was laughing at him. Her laughter didn’t make a sound but he heard it all the same.

‘I’m so glad I amuse you,’ he said.

‘So you should be. Humour, as you know, is an essential part of the psychiatric project.’

‘And am I your project?’

This she let pass.

‘Read Freud’s book on jokes,’ she said. ‘You will learn much.’

‘Oh, yes?’ he said, lobbing the ball swiftly back at her – ‘I seem to recall Mark Twain observing that a German joke is no laughing matter.’

But she was at the net, ready to pounce.

‘Freud was Austrian,’ she said, ‘not German. And so, please remember, am I.’ With an index finger she flipped down the wind-harried brim of his new hat. ‘Don’t sulk, dearest one.’ She pursed her lips in a cajoling smile and pretended to tickle him under the chin. ‘You look just like Victor Laszlo.’

‘Who’s Victor Laszlo?’ he growled.

‘In Casablanca, remember? He was the good-looking husband. I was always glad she stayed with him, rather than the other little fellow with the damaged lip and the funny way of speaking whom everybody loves.’

‘Poor Rick,’ Quirke said. ‘Imagine ending up with Claude Rains when you might have had Ingrid Bergman.’

And in that way the rally petered to a close, with a score of love-all.

Chapter 11

They went to the little bar on the square – by now it had become their bar, though Evelyn still insisted on calling it a café. They sat at a table outside, under the canvas awning. They drank the spritzy white wine and tried not to eat the complimentary nuts that came with it. Whenever Quirke reached out to the bowl, his wife slapped his hand away. ‘You will get fat, like me,’ she said, ‘and then I won’t love you any more.’

‘You said this morning you didn’t.’

‘Didn’t what?’

‘Love me.’

‘Ach, du Lügner.’

‘Du what?’