“Come on, Pablo, one for Tromso.”

“What was that?” asked Asunción.

Zamora searched for a napkin. “A regurgitated Tromso,” he observed, and to Pablo: “You’ll find you’ll have to behave quite differently when you’re older.”

“When I grow up,” Pablo announced brightly, “I want to be a hairdresser.” So far Zamora had denied him the pleasure of a reaction.

“And do you know Clotilda?” he asked Wavery, affection returning in a rush to. his voice. Clotilda whose sighs should be bottled, who would not make old bones unless she soon found a husband. But what was he to do? When your daughter is grown up, you should treat her as your sister. He couldn’t tell Clotilda that Tromso’s Christmas present – a box of make-up from Dior’s theatrical line – was not a success. He couldn’t tell her she had used the same shade of red on her lips as he suspected Tromso’s actors of using to simulate bruises.

“I forget you haven’t met her. You’ll like her a lot. And she would enjoy meeting you.” But as always when he imagined Clotilda, her image came crowded with less happy thoughts. Such as the thought of Joseph Silkleigh.

Zamora had no evidence at all to suggest that Silkleigh was the new mystery figure in his daughter’s life, but she would fall for a man like that. She was an absolute prey to con men.

Zamora collected the metal jug from the hotplate.

“I must tell you about your English friend,” he said gravely.

But Wavery had to go. It was two-thirty already. He was expecting the Foreign Office Inspector.

2

One hour later the Consulate door was pushed open by a rubbed suitcase, made from imitation snakeskin. It was followed by a man of average height, wearing a brown suit. A tongue of white handkerchief with the initials G.Q. poked from his pocket. He had a pink face and thinning sandy hair which sweat had matted across his forehead in untidy strands. He inspected Asunción through a pair of thick glasses rimmed with wire.

“I’m looking for the Consul General,” he said and he gave her his card.

For a moment Wavery did not recognise him

“Surprise, surprise,” said Queesal, extending a hand.

Wavery apologised. “It’s the glasses.”

“The glasses?” said Queesal. “Weren’t you –” But Wavery had departed Peru by the time of Queesal’s ill-fated visit to Chimbote, the fishing town north of Lima where he first contracted the syndrome which encouraged his immunity system to attack tear ducts and saliva glands, mistaking them for viruses. “It’s similar to leprosy. I cannot cry. Not only can I not cry, I cannot wear contact lenses.”

The Foreign Office doctor had prescribed a course of royal jelly and oil of evening primrose and advised Queesal to eat a melon every day, and some onions and parsnips – but not vinegar or salt. “Because it attacks the saliva glands,” Queesal disclosed, “I also have bad breath.”

Professionally he was flourishing. He stretched out his cuffs. “Someone in Personnel Department must be smiling on me,” Once you had served as Inspector, an unpopular post, a good post would reward you as day followed night. Off the record, Queesal had his eye on Head of Department. Failing that, a minor post abroad. “You heard Wilbow’s lost his memory?”