The following morning, Evelyn telephoned the hospital and asked to speak to Doctor Lawless. The woman on the switchboard, that surly nun, no doubt, was hard to understand. Evelyn thought perhaps she might be a native Basque, and that her mangled Spanish was a way of spitting upon the language of the oppressor. What she seemed to be saying was that there was no one of that name on the staff. Evelyn reminded her of their visit to the hospital the previous day, when they had encountered Doctor Lawless herself, but it made no impression. In the end she gave up, and requested to speak to Doctor Cruz instead.

She had to wait for him for a full five minutes, and was on the point of hanging up when at last he came on the line. She asked him to hold on, and passed the receiver to Quirke. He made a point of taking it in his bandaged hand. She smiled. As if she could forget how grievously he was wounded, and that it was in part her fault.

When Cruz heard Quirke’s voice, his tone became markedly guarded.

Indeed, he said coolly, he would be delighted to come to lunch with him and Señora Quirke – he pronounced the ‘e’ in Quirke – but at present he was extremely busy. The tourist season was under way and there was much extra work in the casualty department – foreigners were accident-prone to an extraordinary degree, he added, and made a sound that might have been a chuckle. Quirke took the gibe. He thought of saying something about Spanish oysters being rockier and more resistant than those on offer elsewhere, but knew it would be childish. He didn’t at all care for Doctor Cruz, that was certain; the fellow was altogether too suave and self-assured. But in that case, why was he suggesting the four of them should meet?

‘All the same, surely you eat lunch,’ he said, with a degree of truculence he hadn’t quite intended. What was that old music-hall song? I’ll raise a bunion on his Spanish onion if I find him bending tonight … Quirke grinned horribly into the mouthpiece, baring his incisors. Evelyn slapped him on the wrist reprovingly.

‘Certainly I take lunch,’ the doctor was saying, smoother than ever. ‘But usually a sandwich is all I have.’

‘A pintxo,’ Quirke said brightly, just to show he knew the word.

‘Yes, sometimes.’ Cruz had sounded bored; now he began to sound irritated. ‘There is a café here in the hospital. I go there.’

Quirke sighed. This was hard work, and for what? He was tempted to give up, say a polite adiós and put down the phone. Cruz was making it perfectly plain that he had no real wish to lunch with an Irish tourist and his Austrian tourist wife. However, there was something in the man’s tone, a hint of bland superiority, that made Quirke grit his teeth and keep on.