It wasn’t a grand cathedral, although it might have been once. There was a gaudy stained-glass window, some of its panes cracked and others missing, and by the Lady Chapel there was a glittering forest of devotional candles, most of them in memory of the dead, of which Panama City had more than its share. Several elderly women were kneeling in prayer, and, unaccountably, a man in a cream linen suit was sitting at a back pew, with a small mirror resting on the hymn-book rack of the seat in front, clipping the hairs in his ears with scissors.

Collis had never been into a Roman Catholic cathedral before, although he had an Irish friend who had once persuaded him to attend a Mass in New York. He shuffled uncomfortably into a pew and knelt down, glancing at the elderly women to see if Catholics prayed any differently from Protestants, and then he closed his eyes and said a prayer for Hannah.

It was a very plain prayer, but he addressed it to the Virgin Mary, because he knew that Hannah trusted and believed in Her. He didn’t ask that Hannah should live. That seemed to be out of everybody’s hands now. But he asked that she find happiness in heaven, and that she be reassured that she had been loved when on earth.

He bent his head forward and rested it on the hard wood of the pew. Under his breath, he whispered. ‘Please give her peace. She deserves that much. Please.’

He knelt there in silence for a while, and then he realised that he had nothing more to ask for. He stood up and left the cathedral, leaving a dollar he could ill afford in the poor box. Across the plaza, under the glaring sun, its skeletal outlines etched away by the heat and the brilliant light, the donkey trap waited. Collis walked towards it, his head lowered, the sun on the back of his neck.

Sister Agnes was waiting for him at the hospital gate. He could see her from a long way off as they scaled the hill. When the donkey trap drew up, she hurried closer and held the brass rail around the seats. ‘You must come quickly,’ she said.

‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘Is it Hannah?’

She nodded, without answering, and led the way into the hospital, her habit flying out behind her. Collis swung himself down from the trap and followed, through the double oak doors, across the hallway, and down the bare tiled corridor to Gethsemane Ward. He knew that Hannah was dead. He was sure of it. While he had been away fixing his ticket, the Lord God and the Virgin Mary had taken her away from him, and that was all there was to it. He turned into the doorway, and almost bumped into Father Xavier, who was on his way out to see where Collis was.