That was Wavery’s first sight of Abyla.

The promontory had the shape of a young woman. She was lying on her back, with her head in the water and the mountain was her face. She had the features of a broken god, smashed by a power beyond a god’s.

PART TWO

Chapter Four

1

WAVERY STOOD IN the empty house. Asunción had left and he had never felt more isolated. He tried closing the door behind her, but there was something wrong with the lock. When he moved away, the door opened and smoke seeped into the hall. The smoke attacked his eyes and caught the back of his throat so he was unable to breathe without coughing.

“I’ll speak to the workmen on Monday,” insisted Asunción.

She had been on the quay to greet him. “Asunción Ortiz,” she said, not sure whether to shake his hand. She was nervous. Her hair was plaited into a bun and she wore a light-coloured trouser suit. He judged she was in her mid-thirties, although the clothes made her appear older. Her face was open, honest, good. A perfect secretary, he thought.

She drove him in an elderly blue Seat, parking outside a house less than three hundred yards from the port. The house stood on a corner facing the sea and was concealed by scaffolding. What you could see of it was painted yellow, like an old apricot.

He peered through the windscreen. “This is the residence?”

“Señor,” she said, holding onto the steering wheel. There was despair in her voice. “They promised me it would be ready for you. They promised – but what can I tell you? It is not ready.”

The residence was not only incomplete. It contained nothing but some building materials. Several times on her tour through the rooms Asunción apologised for the absence of furniture. London had told her it would be here in time for the Consul General’s arrival. Then, yesterday, London told her another fortnight. She had lent her own furniture for the moment, the pieces in Señor Wavery’s bedroom on the third floor.

“There is some food in the fridge. Halima comes in the morning. I wasn’t sure if you wanted someone to live in.”

“Thank you,” said Wavery, “I’ll be fine.”

She lived with her father in the lane behind the Residence. She wrote down her number. “Till Monday, then.”

Now that he was alone, he could explore the house. He had the weekend to pace out his boundaries. Outside in the smoke a bell struck six. He adjusted his watch. He had been on London time, but it was earlier than he thought. He looked about for something to jam the door shut.

2

For three days Abyla lay in her wrapping of bituminous smog. Then on Monday evening, wind. It blew from beyond the bay, whitening the sea, rubbing the stuccoed cheeks of the houses along Calle Zamora, rustling the political posters pasted to the bust of Leopoldo Zamora, quinologist (1822–96), slamming shut the windows in the asylum on Calle Silvestre and disturbing for a moment the concentration of the inmates who sat as they sat every Monday afternoon, reproducing the portrait propped on a chair, their renditions of “Lieutenant Zamora, the Death-Betrothed”, to be respectfully disseminated or disposed of as the superintendent thought fit.