He had reached the edge of the town when he heard a sound that caught his attention. More correctly, it was a mixture of sounds. Ones that didn’t go well together, and set off alarms in his mind. The throaty laughter of a group of men mingled with the frightened, high-pitched yelping of a dog. Wolf slackened his step and looked around him. The sound was coming from the other side of an old, partially ruined stone wall. Part of the wall had collapsed a little way further on. Wolf headed towards the crumbled gap, following the sound.

The other side of the old wall was a patch of waste ground, in which a group of six men had gathered and were standing around in a circle. They were a rough-looking bunch, the eldest maybe in his mid-forties, the youngest in his early twenties. Wolf remembered Sofia telling him about her father’s strong dislike for the gitanos, Romani gypsies, whom Pero Moncayo regarded as a criminal scourge living on the margins of decent society. Wolf didn’t know if these guys fitted that bill, and he didn’t care what or who they were. He only cared about what they were doing.

In the middle of the encircled group of men was a dog. It was a nondescript kind of mongrel mutt with brown and white markings, a crooked ear and only three legs. It looked undernourished, and Wolf guessed that it was probably nobody’s pet, but a stray that made its living foraging for scraps. The missing hind limb was an old injury, and the dog seemed to be coping fine hopping around on three legs. What it wasn’t coping so well with was the fact that the men had fastened a rope around its neck to prevent it from escaping while they kicked and beat the hell out of it. Which they seemed to be enjoying quite a bit, judging by their raucous laughter. Two of the men were whacking the yelping, howling, panic-stricken animal across the head and back with heavy sticks, while a third was brandishing a steel chain and whirling it around trying to get in a good strike.

The oldest of the men was standing back enjoying the show, his grizzled features split wide in a grin. He wasn’t taking part in the beating, but he had other plans. He was clutching a plastic bottle that Wolf realised was barbecue lighting fluid, and there was a large matchbox protruding from the back pocket of his jeans. He was unscrewing the bottle cap and clearly intended to spray the dog with the liquid. They were going to set the poor creature on fire, just for fun.

Except that wasn’t going to happen. No chance.