Her eyes grew tired with watching the moving crowd. At last, she decided it might be better to go down to the port herself and study the yachts. With her sore hip seeming to make the walk very long, she pushed her way through throngs of people gathered around the living statues. She stopped to watch a man posing as a statue of Julius Caesar, wondering how he could manage to remain so motionless.

The sun was warm as she reached her goal and strolled along looking at all the yachts and motor cruisers.

By early evening, Agatha was beginning to feel tired, hungry and defeated. She found a restaurant and ordered a small jug of red wine and a plate of roast rabbit, noticing with pleasure the large glass ashtray on the table in front of her. Unlike the French and British, the Catalans were happy to flout the cigarette ban.

She decided to stay just one more day. Then she would take Olivia’s scrawled note back to the police, although she would need to think up a good reason as to why she had kept it so long.

Fortified by a good dinner, she decided to take a taxi back up to the Calle Miro and have one last look around.

The tall buildings reared up on either side of the narrow street. It was hopeless, she decided after half an hour of gazing up at windows.

She turned away towards the Ramblas and was passing a dark alley when she was suddenly grabbed and a pad of something was thrust over her mouth. She kicked and struggled, feeling herself losing consciousness.

When Agatha came to, she opened her eyes cautiously. Her hands were bound behind her back with duct tape and her ankles were bound as well and she was wearing a bathing suit.

So this is it, thought Agatha, trying not to cry. I’m to be dumped at sea.

She was lying on her side. Apart from the bed on which she had been placed, there was only one hard chair and on the wall, a badly executed painting of the Virgin Mary.

Agatha felt nausea rising in her throat and rolled over to the edge of the bed and vomited violently on the floor.

The door opened and a woman came in. She had a gypsy appearance: swarthy skin, large brown eyes and masses of coarse dark hair.

She muttered something and came back with a bucket and mop and began to clean the floor. ‘Help me,’ croaked Agatha.

The woman continued mopping. Agatha stared at the painting and said desperately, ‘Madre de Dios.’

The woman started, crossed herself, but left the room, carrying the bucket and mop with her.

Agatha drifted off into unconsciousness again. When she recovered, the room was dark. A solitary candle burned under the portrait of the Virgin. Agatha’s face was stinging and burning. Chloroform, she thought bitterly. My face will be a mass of sores.