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chair. He was like a blank page, if a bit grubby round the edges. Prepared to give it one last go, Carlyle rubbed
his neck and consciously let a cloak of dispassionate formality descend over him.
    ‘Did you and your wife have an argument, sir?’ he asked.
    ‘No!’ Mills jerked out of the chair, accidentally kicking his empty glass across the floor. He watched it roll towards the inspector’s shoes and stood up, as if mesmerized,
unsure of what to do next.
    Slowly, Carlyle bent down and picked up the glass. Stepping away from Mills, he placed it carefully on the mantelpiece. Happy Hour was over. The two men stood there silently for a few seconds,
waiting for something to happen. Finally, Carlyle turned to his sergeant. ‘Call a car, please, Joe, and take Mr Mills back to the station.’

 
SEVEN
    Cerro Los Placeres, Valparaíso, Chile, September 1973
    I t was time.
    His Term of Grace was over.
    The dogs of the Lord were coming.
    T he dogs of the Lord were coming and he did not want them to find him naked. Tired but alert, William Pettigrew tugged a shirt over his head and pulled on a pair of torn
Wrangler jeans. Stepping out of the bedroom, he counted the six steps to his front door, trying to ignore the tightening knot in his stomach. Hopping from foot to bare foot, he mumbled the lines of
a prayer by a Trappist monk called Thomas Merton: ‘My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going . . .’
    T he Domini canes arrived in a flurry of engine noise and exhaust smoke. There was the squeal of rubber on tarmac, the crunch of boots on gravel, angry shouts and fearful
cries. When they finally stopped outside the house, Pettigrew felt a wave of serenity wash over him. ‘There is no point,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘in hiding under the bed when a
man with a machine-gun knocks on your door at two o’clock in the morning. Instead, you answer it.’
    A soldier jogged towards him, rifle raised. He looked little more than a boy – seventeen, eighteen at most. Catching the youth’s eye, Pettigrew acknowledged the sadistic twinkle in
it, the almost pantomime menace in his voice. He breathed in the smell of body odour and refried beans mixed with Torobayo Ale.
    Dropping his gun to his side, the boy jumped in front of the priest and spat in his face. Pettigrew flinched, but didn’t wipe it off.
    The first blow sent him crashing to the ground. He tried to breathe slowly, through his mouth, trying to ignore the fire alarm going off in his brain and the fire in his crotch as the pain raced
round his body on a surge of adrenaline.
    In the shadows, someone laughed. A callous voice cried: ‘That’s got to hurt!’
    ‘ Bienvenido a la Caravana de la Meurte ,’ the young soldier said grimly. Another gob of phlegm splattered on the ground in front of Pettigrew’s face. He looked up. The
slack grin on the soldier’s face said it all.
    Welcome to the Caravan of Death.
    Enjoy the ride.
    P ushing back his shoulders, Pettigrew stood up straight in front of the new Inquisition.
    From his studies at the Catholic University in Santiago, he knew that, in these parts, the first Papal Inquisition officially ended only in 1834. It had lasted for more than 600 years.
    Now it was back.
    ‘It is time for me to die.’
    Death, however, is not a specific moment. It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning. In this case, he knew that it was
going to be a long, slow, painful process. He had shown the insolence and malapertness of the heretic, and now his false designs were to be crushed. The prophet, the dreamer, must be put to death
and the execrableness of his false doctrines purged.
    He didn’t possess the apostolic humility, austerity, the holiness required for anything remotely approaching salvation.
    It was too late for zealous preaching.
    It was too late for voluntary confessions.
    Now there was nothing to do but embrace the pain.
    I nstinctively, in their