‘—Oh, it’s you,’ she said in surprise as Nathan leaned around the doorway.

‘I’m afraid so,’ he murmured.

There was a pause and she noticed his gaze managed to land everywhere but her. An awkward silence bloomed. What did he want?

‘I understand you’re flying out.’ She nodded, hoping he wouldn’t ask why. ‘Mayra’s asked me to drop you on my way. They’ve given me use of the car while I’m here.’

‘Oh.’ Wasn’t there a golf cart she could use? She could drive it there herself. ‘. . . Right.’

She picked up the bag and followed him down the cool dark hallway, their footsteps out of time with one another. They walked through the main hall, below the pardoned bulls, down the steps into the courtyard and over to a shiny red jeep.

The keys were hanging in the ignition. She got in beside him and busied herself with untwisting her seat belt as he turned the engine on and pulled away, the wheels back-spinning momentarily so that a cloud of dust obscured their departure from the house. The radio station had been left tuned to a channel playing obscure Euro pop hits but he, predictably, managed only a few minutes before switching over to a talk channel.

‘So where are you off to?’ she asked stiffly, feeling the need to pierce the silence between them.

‘Ronda. I’m going to check the local records for someone.’

‘Who?’

‘A man called Jack Quincy.’

‘. . . Marina’s husband?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Think so?’

‘There could be other candidates but I’m starting with the assumption that Quincy, which clearly isn’t a Spanish name, could be American, possibly British. Therefore I’ve checked the records for the International Brigades and found three Quincys – all American – who signed up to serve.’ His voice was flat and toneless. ‘One, Edward, died on the ship over. Another, Theodore, fought in Barcelona and returned to the States in early ’39. But I’ve ruled him out – he was gay and lived with his partner in San Francisco until his death in 1972.’

‘If he’s dead, how do you know he was gay?’

‘I spoke to his business partner’s son,’ he said shortly. ‘The last one, Jack, came by ship to Malaga and was killed in Madrid in the spring of 1937. He looks the most likely.’

‘What do you know about him?’

He shrugged. ‘Former Baptist minister from Oregon. Landed in Malaga as part of the first wave of international volunteers. Seems to have arrived in Ronda sometime in November ’36 and helped coordinate a local resistance group before moving on, probably up to the capital.’

‘When did he leave here?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out but it must have been early on. This region was one of the first to fall to the fascists. There had been various attempted uprisings against the Establishment in the years before the war and the subsequent reprisals were severe and, let’s just say, disproportionate. It was no place for the reds to hang around.’