‘That feels a lot better,’ he says, tapping his face. ‘Now I can actually eat without storing up food for the winter.’

Neither of us feels much like going out, so we eat dinner on our knees and take out The Talented Mr Ripley from the rack to watch on DVD. Just as I’m putting the disc into the machine, the Telefónica mobile rings in my bedroom.

‘Do you have to answer it?’ Saul is mopping up sauce with a hunk of bread and wants to watch the movie.

‘Just give me two minutes. Hang on.’

It’s almost certainly Alfonso, the concierge at the Hotel Carta. Very few people have this number.

‘Señor Chris?’

‘Alfonso. Qué tal?’

He sounds relaxed, calling from a phone booth. I make sure that we speak in rapid Spanish in order to prevent Saul understanding.

‘I have the information that you ask for. Do you have a pen?’

‘Yes. Just one moment.’ I reach for the pad beside my bed and retrieve a Biro from my trouser pocket. ‘OΚ, go ahead.’

‘The guest staying in room 306 is registered as Abel Sellini. He has stayed at the hotel with us on many occasions. The licence number of his car is M 3432 GH, a grey Opel Corsa. I check with previous entries and this is always different.’

‘Meaning that it’s rented?’

‘Almost certainly sir, yes.’ Alfonso’s voice is very steady and I am surprised by his lack of anxiety. ‘He has a mobile telephone, Señor Chris, and I can also give you this number.’

‘Great. How did you get that?’

I close the bedroom door.

‘Señor Sellini asks me for information about puticlubs. He likes to take girls back to the room. So he told me to ring him with information on the first night he arrived. The number is 625 218 521.’

‘A Spanish phone.’

‘I suppose. He is travelling under an Irish passport.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I am sure.’ This almost condescending. Perhaps the money has gone to his head. ‘The passport number is 450912914. But Mr Sellini does not appear to me to be Irish. I have met many people in the course of my work and he is South American. His place of birth was Bogotá, Colombia, and his accent tells me this.’

‘Did you get a look at the passport?’ From the sound of it, Saul is watching a trailer from the DVD extras. ‘Any visas? Any customs stamps?’

‘No. It was handed back after registration. This is just information from our computer. He was born on 28 December 1949, if that is any help to you.’

‘Perhaps.’ I don’t want to sound too grateful in case Alfonso puts his prices up. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’

There is the sound of more change being pumped into the payphone, then a brief pause. The booth must be on a quiet street because I’m not picking up much in the way of background noise.

‘Well, of course Mr Sellini also left a credit-card imprint to confirm his reservation. A Visa card. But the information is in a part of our computer system that I am not permitted to access. Maybe you can find another way?’

‘Maybe.’

‘The only other thing I can tell you is that he asked to switch rooms last Wednesday night because he thought it was too noisy. That’s all, Señor Chris.’

It wouldn’t necessarily have occurred to the hotel management that Sellini might have been worried about audio surveillance.

‘That’s interesting. What room was he in before?’

‘I do not know. I would have to check this.’

I open the door as Saul walks past in the corridor carrying the empty plates from dinner. He looks at me, I smile back at him, and then indicate with my hand that the conversation will soon be over.

‘If anything else comes up you can reach me at this number. And of course we can discuss the financial arrangements at our next meeting. I’d like to make them more permanent.’

‘Vale,’ he says, without much enthusiasm. ‘Adiós.’

When I come back into the sitting room Saul has opened a second bottle of Ribera del Duero and rolled himself a joint. The picture on the television is frozen on the logo of Miramax International.

‘Who was that?’ he asks.

‘Just business. Just a thing about Endiom.’

‘Julian?’

‘No. Somebody else.’

I sit on the floor.

‘You all right down there?’

‘Fine.’

The opening credits start to roll. We probably won’t speak any more because both of us hate it when people talk during movies. A woman is singing a slow lament set to piano on the soundtrack. Graphics slice through Matt Damon’s head, revealing eyes, lips, mouth and hair until finally we see him sitting on a bed alone in a small room. Then he begins to talk:

If I could just go back. If I could rub everything out, starting with myself

And Saul says, ‘I know the feeling.’

22. Barajas

He is touched that I go all the way to the airport with him, but I want to make sure that Saul boards a plane. His flight is delayed, so we drink coffee for an hour in the arrivals lounge and he buys me a paperback of Ripley’s Game, in Spanish, at the newsagent. Later I see that Ripley’s wife is called Heloise.

At the security checks we embrace briefly but he continues to hold my arms when we break off.

‘It’s been good to see you, mate. Really good. I’m glad things have worked out. So just look after yourself, OK? Don’t do anything stupid.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You know what I mean. You’re missed in London. Don’t stay here for the rest of your life. This is not where you should be.’

‘I like it here.’

‘I know you do. It’s a great country. And Madrid is a great city. But it’s not home.’

He releases my arms and picks up his bags one by one from the trolley.

‘Saul?’

‘Yes?’

I am about to apologize for all my suspicion, all my tricks and paranoia, but I don’t have the guts. Instead I just say, ‘Good luck with everything,’ and he nods.

‘Everything will be fine. We’re still young, Alec. We can start again.’ He is grinning as he says this. ‘Don’t you think that everyone deserves a second chance?’

‘Absolutely. Have a good flight.’

And as soon as he is gone, waving just once before passing through into departures, I feel a great sense of loss. How long will it be before we see one another again? How long before I can go home? I have to find a bar and order a whisky to lift the gloom of sudden solitude. It feels as if I wasted his visit to Madrid, as if I misjudged Saul’s intentions and kept him constantly at arm’s length. He didn’t leave just one day after getting back from Andalucía because of Heloise. He didn’t leave because there was no connection with Julian or Arenaza. He left because something elementary in our relationship had shifted: what was once there is lost, and there was nothing Saul could do to get it back. The Alec he knew as a younger man is now a different creature, a creature whose true nature has been revealed. And if a friendship no longer gives you pleasure, then why remain loyal to that friend? Getting a cab back home I conclude that Saul will now move into a different phase of his life, just as I have done in mine. It’s ridiculous, really, speeding along the motorway in the taxi and thinking that, in all probability, I will never see my oldest friend again.