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At thefourth glass, he started talking about his mother. By the sixth, he was on to his mythical brother, his bosom pal. By the tenth, he was talking about what Carvalho wanted to hear. The bar was full of cheap plastic tables and calendars of chubby girls in bikinis. The floor was covered with a sticky layer of grime that not even Carvalho’s impatient heels could dislodge.
    ‘Ginés, if you were offered a thousand pesetas, couldn’t you find out tonight who that drowned man was?’
    ‘I’d do it for you, Pepiño. But I swear this is a bad moment. And my mother isn’t well. I don’t want her to suffer by getting banged up again. Try Bromuro. What he doesn’t know about this …’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Positive. And if he hasn’t told you anything, it’s because there’s nothing to know. Perhaps the cops are in the dark too.’
    ‘But the drowned man had fingers, and there’s something called an ID card.’
    ‘That’s true. But if they haven’t said a name it’s because they’re being extra careful … You’re not drinking, Pepiño. You’re making me talk, but you’re not drinking. Typical Galician, that’s what you are.’
    Ginés’s head was lolling back, and he was staring at Carvalho as though he wanted a fight. Carvalho ignored this, and thought everything over.
    ‘You seem very worried. Was the dead man close to you?’
    ‘No, but I’m interested in the case.’
    ‘Shit, you look just like a film star when you say things like that. Real style. But you’re a sly one. You haven’t had two glasses, and I’m on my fifteenth.’
    ‘Do you have to go back to work?’
    ‘I’ll say I’m sick and I won’t return. The house will getfinished just the same. Come on, let’s got and eat tapas in Calle Escudillers.’
    ‘I can’t. Really I can’t.’
    ‘Be off with you, then. I’ll stay a while longer. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to scare my mother to death again.’
    He was almost in tears.
    ‘The last time it was my brother. They caught him in bed with his boss’s wife and tried to beat the shit out of him. The boss and his sons. They attacked him with a hammer, but he fought back. You know what we’re like, we may be small but we’ve got balls. Six months. They gave him six months for vagrancy. And he was lucky. But you should have seen what it did to our mother.’
    ‘How’s your wife?’
    ‘She’s been got pregnant.’
    ‘Who did it?’
    ‘It could have been me. All I know is that’s she pregnant. This big.’
    Ginés held his hands out in front of him and burst out laughing. Carvalho recalled the dim outline of a tiny girl from Andalusia, bird-boned but with huge eyes, on the far side of the double wire mesh in the prison visitors’ room. Ginés had leaned towards him and said:
    ‘This is my wife. She’s a real beauty, though she doesn’t look it now. As soon as I get out I’ll spoil her a bit, she’ll come up a treat, and I’ll be in clover.’
    All that was ten years ago, and only Ginés had remained the same.

 
    C arvalho dined on tapas in Plaza Real, then headed for Charo’s apartment with two litres of beer in his stomach and heartburn from fried whitebait cooked in too much flour and oil. This time he used his key, and as he opened the door he was confronted with the scene exactly as he had imagined it. One of Charo’s companions was sitting on the sofa crying her eyes out, while a sharp, sallow-skinned young man paced up and down beside her. Charo was trying to comfort the crying girl; her Andalusian friend was in the kitchen.
    ‘What are you doing here?’
    ‘He’s her boyfriend,’ Charo tried to explain.
    Carvalho pointed to the front door. The young man’s sour expression gave way to the self-satisfied grin of a jumped-up mafioso. Carvalho glanced at the flashy rings festooning his hands.
    ‘Put your cheap jewellery away and get out of here.’
    ‘Why don’t I stuff it in your mouth?’
    Carvalho appeared to take no notice of this, but