It came to Quirke, and again he couldn’t have said how, that Jeronimo Cruz and Angela Lawless were not only not father and daughter, they were also more than colleagues, probably much more. It was not by what they did but what they didn’t do, Quirke reflected, that men betrayed their sexual secrets. Cruz was altogether too determined to let drop the topic of Angela Lawless.

He was probably old enough to be her father. Ah, yes. Daddy’s little girl.

‘This will sting,’ the doctor said. ‘Perhaps you would wish me to give you some local anaesthetic?’

He might have been offering an aperitif. Quirke declined the offer with a shake of the head, and a moment later was sorry he had.

*

That evening, out of consideration for the sufferings Quirke had endured, Evelyn did not object when he decreed that there was to be no question of their going out to a restaurant – they would stay in and eat in the hotel’s dining room, even if it did feel like a mortuary.

‘You can take yourself off somewhere on your own, if you like,’ he said with morose vengefulness. He was feeling sorry for himself, and thoroughly enjoying it.

His hand, under the bandage that Cruz had applied, was throbbing like a tom-tom. How could a nail scissors, so small and seemingly harmless, have penetrated so deep into his flesh? The pain too, though, was enjoyable, in a perverse way.

Evelyn remarked how fortunate he had been to have damaged his left hand. Quirke scowled.

‘Fortunate?’ he said, with lifted eyebrows.

‘You know what I mean.’

He did, but he would not be comforted. His brain felt fuzzy, as if his skull were stuffed with some warm, soft stuff, like the bloodied wad of cotton wool he had clutched in his palm at the hospital.

They went into the dining room and were shown to a corner table, by the window. Cod stew was the special of the even ing. Quirke spurned it with a disparaging snort – they had eaten cod for lunch, hadn’t they?

‘That was salt cod,’ Evelyn reminded him.

He ignored her, and ordered a steak, well done, and a bottle of, as he said, the filthy house Rioja. No txakoli for him, no sparkles tonight, thank you.

When the steak arrived, Evelyn had to cut it for him into manageable chunks. This was another of the many small humiliations he had not reckoned with. It made him even more incensed against his wife, his wound, and the world. He counted it fortunate, at least, that they were seated at a corner table, where the rest of the room wouldn’t see him being tended to like a child.