Dyer was relieved when Gilles resumed his discussion with the person he’d been talking to, a short fleshy man of about forty, with curly orange hair and the hint of a moustache, and wearing a peaked blue baseball cap with ‘Cal’ stitched on to it in gold letters. As Silvi had reminded him, Dyer would anyway be seeing Gilles later. Better to keep dry till then what remained of their conversational powder.

Marvar, brimming, turned to Dyer: ‘Hey, I wanted to ask you something.’

Dyer waited, curious. Phoenix parents seldom asked him anything.

‘Ullswater, do you know it?’

‘In the Lake District?’

‘Tell me, what is it like?’

Dyer had once fished with his father near Pooley Bridge. ‘Extremely beautiful and surprisingly wild,’ and remembered his first trek in the Peruvian Andes. How the peaks and clear blue lakes above Huaraz carried him back to Cumbria.

When Marvar said that he had decided for the upcoming exeat to take Samir climbing in the mountains around Ullswater – a poem that Samir had had to learn by heart, composed there, had given Marvar the idea – Dyer looked at him in his long thick enveloping coat, and almost laughed.

‘But keep this to yourself. Please. I haven’t told anyone.’

‘Of course,’ said Dyer. Although why anyone should be interested in Marvar’s excursion to the Lake District, he couldn’t fathom.

‘I know I can trust you not to say anything.’

‘Really?’ said Dyer, amused. ‘And how can you be sure?’

‘Samir told me. About that policeman in Peru. You got this story out of him. This incredible, incredible story, and you didn’t tell it.’

Dyer gave an inward groan. Leandro. Shooting his mouth off.

‘Is it always so important to say everything? You never told me about your problem.’

‘Touché. But really. Why didn’t you tell it?’

‘Oh, lots of reasons.’

‘Give me one.’

‘It was too personal, too unhistorical to use as journalism.’

‘You only wanted to write historical stories?’

‘If you like.’

‘Another reason. Please …’ He wanted more, like someone holding out a glass to be refilled.

‘There was a woman.’

‘There’s always a woman.’

‘It was a great love. If I told his story, he was likely never to see her again.’

Marvar looked carefully at him. ‘And did he see her again?’

Dyer smiled, as back, back went his mind to the bargain that Rejas had forged with his government. Yolanda had been arrested for protecting the revolutionary leader Ezequiel in an apartment above her dance studio. Rejas had agreed not to stand for president, in a campaign he was favoured to win, on condition that she was given a quiet release after two or three years.

‘Quién sabe? After that, I stopped being a journalist.’