“Dolores!”

She was immersing herself in the mirrors. “Hello, Silkleigh.”

“You stay pretty now. Where’s lover boy?”

The librarian nodded to a spot behind Silkleigh. Unable to whistle, Panteco was barking at Toribio. Failing to attract the dog’s attention, he stomped over to Dolores. His right hand sought a purchase on her hip as if to demonstrate his lordship over her, but her eyes slammed at him their independence.

“Now, Toribio, go over there,” said Silkleigh. “Don’t be a bore.”

Dolores cast her gaze at Queesal, beside her. Glumly, he noticed her perfect breasts. There was a flashed ankle in her smile. He didn’t have good in bed written on his face, she thought. But nor did Panteco.

Still not letting her go, the policeman had taken up position next to Silkleigh. His restless eyes fastened on the diver. Tomorrow Panteco would be travelling to Madrid with his chief, summoned to report on El Callado. His options were running out.

“What do we tell Madrid, Panteco? Who do you think he is?”

Who indeed? “Jefe, to be honest, I’m having trouble with Who.” Lacking a Who, Panteco had been concentrating on What.

“What the fuck you on about?” said his chief.

Panteco explained. The Ford Maclaren had slipped its berth. There was a rumour that El Callado was waiting for a valuable consignment. Panteco’s informant in El Hadu thought the consignment might be heading in from the Canaries. But Panteco was suspicious. He had an idea.

“Jefe, perhaps El Callado’s boat is a blind. Perhaps it’s a dumb boat.”

“How dumb, Panteco?”

“Perhaps it’s carrying not drugs at all, but illegal immigrants?”

Panteco badly needed a success. Apart from Mohamed the tobacco-smuggler, he had arrested no one in the past month save a boatload of Moroccans convinced they had landed in a different continent entirely. He found them on the beach, six gleeful Mohameds in their mid-twenties. They had been cramped in a hold and were straightening their arms and legs. He almost felt sorry for them, exercising like that, stretching away the stiffness, laughing. He stood over the leader, a small man with a barrel chest, dressed in a dirty orange T-shirt. “So, Mohamed,” he said, “What’s up?” But Panteco knew what was up. Mohamed had boarded with his friends at Cap Spartel. They’d been bobbed round the sea for few hours, then unloaded here. They’d come up the sand, throwing handfuls of it into the air, the free sand of Europe. Because that’s where they thought they had landed, somewhere near Barcelona, not horror of fucking horrors, in Abyla.

“You have reached Europe, Mohamed, in a manner of speaking. But not quite.”

“But we have permits. Look!” They clamoured round him, unfolding papers bought for a year’s salary.

“The papers are false, Mohamed.”

He had dropped them at the border.

“Anyway, it’s an idea, jefe. El Callado could be diversifying.”

“I see Madrid decorating you for this, Panteco.”

There was no other progress to report. Not with El Callado. Not with Sandra the Rapist who had affixed herself to the chairman of the antimony works in the gardens of the Republica Argentina, before vanishing into the shrubbery. Not even with the boat of Panteco’s friend, Emilio, who before he died had promised to take him mackerel fishing.