‘How do you know?’

‘There’s a lot of paperwork on it on the Nationalist side. I’ve been looking up anything with Jack Quincy’s name in it and it was clear from the report I saw that things had gone badly wrong. The unit was there only to assess potential screen barriers, guard cover and the area’s security. The orders from the FSC commander were logged as purely a preliminary survey of the premises—’

‘What’s FSC?’ Charlotte interrupted tersely.

‘Forward Support Company,’ Nathan muttered, as though that would mean anything to her. He looked at Mateo again. ‘They knew the church was being used by a militia group they had been tracking – Hijos de la Noche – but the FOB wasn’t in position to move. No one was supposed to die that night. It was information-gathering only.’

She didn’t bother to ask what FOB stood for.

Mateo stared at him. ‘So what happened?’

‘One of the soldiers somehow got inside the church and killed the two men in there: Jack Quincy and another man, his accomplice – Santiago Esperanza.’

‘Esperanza?’ Charlotte murmured, forgetting her hostility for a moment. ‘You’ve mentioned him before.’

‘Yes, he’s from around here. It was his father who was supposedly killed by Mateo’s uncles and, in turn, he was reputed to have had a hand in their deaths. He had worked closely with Quincy almost from the beginning and we’re pretty certain Quincy was involved in the midnight raid that saw them thrown from the bridge, so chances are Esperanza was in on it too.’

‘And this soldier broke into the church and killed these two men?’ Charlotte asked.

Nathan nodded. ‘The army brass were not happy they had been killed – they’d wanted the men taken alive, believing they had valuable information about planned Republican attacks.’

There was a silence, everyone’s minds whirring.

‘. . . What was the soldier’s explanation for disobeying his commander?’ Mateo asked finally.

‘That he had seen through one of the windows that they had taken a Nationalist woman hostage.’

Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. ‘Had they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was she killed too?’

‘No, she was pulled out in a pretty poor state though. She was hysterical. Mad even, which wasn’t particularly unusual given what she must have been made to endure. Sent to a psychiatric facility, the report said . . .’

Charlotte didn’t reply. She remembered all too clearly his words at the bullring, and the fate of any captured woman, red or white. Death would indeed have been preferable.

‘. . . But now I’m wondering if that was just a cover story,’ Nathan murmured.

A low drone came into earshot and they all looked up into the faultless blue sky, a tiny speck in the distance growing ever larger, drawing ever closer.

Mateo looked back at him. Time was short now. ‘What do you mean, professor?’

‘I don’t think the hostage was the reason he broke rank. Any soldier would have known that disobeying a direct order would risk his being shot for insubordination. But if revenge was what he had signed up for in the first place, if he had joined the recon squad with the sole aim of tracking and finding the men responsible for his family’s deaths . . . ? For him, that was probably a price worth paying. What else did he have to lose? His parents were dead, his brothers were dead, his sister was missing, probably presumed dead. I think this was personal.’