‘Ah, yes, the white city,’ Evelyn murmured. ‘I have been there.’

Quirke glanced at her, startled. It was news to him that she was familiar with other places in Spain besides this northern coast. She would never cease to surprise him, he thought, and for some reason his darkly cheery mood was further cheered. He pictured Evelyn, younger, slimmer, in khaki britches and a broad sombrero, astride a donkey and negotiating the tortuous passes on some far inland mountain range.

He sipped his wine and looked surreptitiously about the table. Was there not something entertainingly comical in their absurd predicament, sitting here like caricatures of themselves, waiting more or less expectantly for the arrival of Doctor Cruz’s rude and inconsiderate inamorata?

The wine was cool and soft, with the tiniest hint of a fizz on the tongue. Quirke’s glass was empty already.

Conversation, such as it was, quickly petered out, and another large and weighty silence settled on the table. Cruz’s glance kept flicking to the doorway, in what seemed to Quirke a mixture of impatience and apprehensiveness. However, he was forced to endure another twenty minutes before the missing guest arrived at last.

She entered in a flurry, as if she were fleeing from something or someone in the street and had plunged into the first open doorway she had come upon. She wore enormous dark glasses, the bulging lenses of which were gleamingly opaque – they looked to Quirke like the magnified eyes of a monstrously overgrown insect – and a mantilla of heavy black lace that covered her hair entirely. Her frock was a silvery silk sheath, with long sleeves buttoned at the wrists, and her shoes had four-inch heels. Her mouth was a wide slash of scarlet, the lipstick somewhat crookedly applied. Evelyn wondered afterwards why she had got herself up as Audrey Hepburn – all that was lacking was an ebony cigarette holder and a diamond tiara. She was to keep the mantilla on throughout dinner, and only lifted the sunglasses, and then by no more than half an inch, when she had to deal with something on her plate. Her perfume was intense. Like Cruz, she didn’t smile. They were a serious couple. Quirke had the impression they weren’t entirely present, but were listening instead for the sound of something that they knew was about to start up elsewhere.

The waiter came with his pencil and pad. It was not the torea dor this time, but a lazy-eyed young man with an insolent droop to the side of his mouth and oiled black hair that was moulded smoothly to a strikingly bulbous skull.

Quirke scanned the menu in some desperation – he worried he might by mistake order something that he would have to have Evelyn cut up for him. He had been trying to keep his injured hand out of sight under the table. Doctor Cruz had not asked him how it was. Indeed, Quirke suspected it had slipped from his mind.