Apart from Wavery’s residence and the red house opposite, the street was composed of nineteenth-century mansion blocks, in the smartest of which lived Genia Ortiz. A narrow gulley five feet across divided her building from his. Her apartment was across this gulley at the same level as Wavery’s terrace and had a balcony arrayed with cowrie-pink pelargoniums.

Asunción lived in the red-painted house opposite with her son Pablo, her younger sister Clotilda and her father Senator Zamora. Wavery supposed Senator Zamora to be the figure in the topmost room concentrating on a computer screen. Wavery had been invited for drinks later in the week.

A car bounced into the lane and halted outside the Zamoras’ door, its engine turning over. A girl stepped out, her corn-coloured hair in pigtails. She stooped to kiss the driver, then waited for the car – a white Renault with one headlight working – to accelerate away. Clotilda, thought Wavery, finishing his tea.

Back in his bedroom, he switched on a small television set, wiping a layer of dust from the screen. A stout party in a white suit was talking. It was the same man Wavery had called upon this morning, to present his improvised credentials.

When he said to Asunción, “Tell me about the Governor,” she said she was not the best person to ask. Her father and Menendez were bitter enemies. She knew how Senator Zamora explained away the Governor. Everything about him boiled down to a single unalterable truth: on the mainland he had been an actor, but as a voice on the radio. Even in those days, what Menendez had aspired to was television. He had not extinguished the hope that one day he would be discovered by a scout. His gestures remained extravagant in consequence. He behaved towards everyone, whether Don Ramon or Dolores, as if they might be plain-clothes emissaries paid by the powers that be in Madrid to uncover genius in Africa.

“He’s not a genius,” she added. “But I don’t think he’s evil either.”

“Ring me and we’ll have lunch,” said Governor Menendez, and laughed. He had a laugh that was not hard to provoke, but disappeared quickly. All weekend he had been preoccupied with the accident at sea. He had cut his upper lip shaving and he smelled of his second after-breakfast cigar. When he reached the stub, he held up the object and a man ran to collect it.

“So how do you like our city, Señor Wavery?”

“Lovely,” said Wavery. “Really lovely.”

“The pearl of the Mediterranean!”

He punched Wavery playfully in the stomach and the accreditation ceremony was over.

On television, Menendez leaned forward buttoning his white jacket in response to a question about the Grau. A slick of oil was shown washing ashore beneath La Mujer Muerta. The waves were lifeless humps. A sea gull walked in clogged hops across the black sand. There was no trace of the fisherman.

“I wouldn’t use the word panic,” he was saying. His fingers strummed his chest. “Or rather I would.” But moves were afoot to disperse the oil. The Health and Safety Executive were convening tomorrow in response to this afternoon’s emergency debate.