Doctor Cruz, spurred by his hostess’s efforts, and aware of his position as a man of consequence and a native Spaniard, made a wan attempt to breathe a little life into the table talk. He bemoaned the annually swelling number of tourists coming to Donostia – a number, it was tacitly though pointedly indicated, that Quirke and his wife were this year adding to – and the resulting seasonal increase in the price of everything. This was followed by yet another interval of silence. He tried again. General Franco, he said, kept a holiday home here, over in the western hills above the bay. It wasn’t that he loved the place, however – he came only to make the point that the Basque country was as Spanish as any other part of Spain. The doctor chuckled drily.

Evelyn, encouraged, mentioned the two Basque rebels whose lives the Generalissimo had refused to spare.

‘Yes,’ Doctor Cruz said, with smooth unconcern, ‘they were to be executed on Sunday, but the Church stepped in, complaining that it would be an insult to the Sabbath, so it was put off for a day.’

He was eating, and did not look up from his plate.

Angela Lawless seemed to pay not the slightest heed to any of this. She had ordered nothing but a salad, which she didn’t eat, only pushed the greasy leaves about the plate listlessly with her fork. She had developed by now the defiantly sulky demeanour of a spoilt and rebellious daughter surprised by her parents in some rash and compromising situation. Towards Cruz she displayed no sign of affection, or even, Quirke thought, of interest. He might not have been there, for all the attention she gave him.

Quirke asked her where in Ireland she was from. She turned to him with frowning incomprehension, whether real or otherwise it was hard to say. She appeared to be affronted, not by the question, but by the fact of his having dared to address her at all.

‘Oh, Dublin,’ she said dismissively.

‘Yes, I guessed that,’ Quirke said. ‘But what part of Dublin, exactly? North? South?’

She went on staring at him – at least, he assumed she was looking at him, for he couldn’t see her eyes behind those bulging lenses – with a kind of concentrated indifference, like a princess regarding an insistent footman. Evelyn and Doctor Cruz stopped eating and turned to her, waiting for her to speak. Something seemed to thrum above the table, like a stretched piano wire.

The young woman stirred herself at last.

‘I haven’t lived in Dublin for a long time,’ she said, and went back to fiddling with her salad. And that, it appeared, was that.