‘Qué?’

‘I said, is there another exit from this building? If two of my friends just went up in the lift, do they have to come out this way?’

‘Sí, señor.’

In different circumstances, in the salad days before Mikel Arenaza, I would have played this differently. I would have followed the girl home and endeavoured to discover the nature of her relationship with Saul and Julian by more subtle means. But the time for patience is over. If I am being used as a pawn in a CIA set-up then I will confront my conspirators and let them know that the game is up.

It’s exactly an hour before Julian comes back downstairs to the ground floor, alone and staring concentratedly at the ground. In that time I have worked through every possible variation of the situation, only to stumble at every turn. How does Saul fit into this? Was Sofía really telling the truth about the package at the Hotel Carta? Is Carmen herself a part of some sinister set-up? My life has become a Rubik’s cube which it is simply impossible to solve. Standing up from the sofa, hungry and angry and ready for anything that Julian might throw at me, I walk quickly towards him until we are just a few feet apart. He is utterly startled when he looks up and sees me.

‘Alec! Bloody hell!’ A kind of public-school bluster and charm instinctively kick in, an automatic reflex to protect himself. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

‘Who was the girl, Julian?’

‘What?’

‘The girl.’

‘What girl?’ He’s no good at this. He can’t lie. He has even started blushing. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The girl I saw you with. Tight jeans, suede jacket, expensive tits. You got into the lift together, an hour ago.’

He provides a snapshot of grace under pressure – ‘I’m not sure that’s any of your business’ – but the game is up. He walks away from me, stiff and straight, away from the lifts and out of the building. He knows, of course, that I will follow him and discover the truth. Perhaps he just doesn’t want our conversation to be heard by other people in the lobby. It has occurred to me that this might be the CIA station in Madrid. Three or four floors above our heads packed with Yank spooks.

‘You got into the lift together,’ I say again. ‘I saw you. You went upstairs with her.’

By now we are between the glass doors. I notice that Julian smells clean and freshly soaped. Have they just slept together?

‘She’s a client, all right? Endiom business. I’m doing some work for her. What the hell are you doing here?’

‘This isn’t about me. It’s about you. What’s her name, Julian?’

‘You’re behaving incredibly strangely. I really think you ought to head home. We can discuss this another time.’

‘Is it Sasha?’

His face cannot disguise its fear. Julian stops at the top of the car park staircase and looks right at me.

‘And?’

And what’s your relationship with her? What’s her relationship with Saul?’

He appears to remember Saul’s name, but only vaguely. ‘I’m still struggling to work out why this is any of your business.’

‘It’s my business because I’ve met her, Julian. I’ve seen her before. At my flat.’

And this causes him to hesitate. You can almost see the wheels turning behind his eyes. I would have expected a more polished performance from a professional liar, but if Julian has a cover story, it isn’t coming out. He just looks panicked and uncomfortable.

‘Then you’ll know what she does,’ he replies quietly, and suddenly it dawns on me. Sasha is not a CIA officer. Sasha is not a student studying art at Columbia University. Sasha is a Colombian hooker.

‘Oh Jesus.’ It is difficult to work out which of us is the more embarrassed. Julian’s expression has curdled into one of shame married to intense irritation. I am stuttering. ‘I’ve just put two and two together and got five, Jules, I’m really sorry. It all makes sense now.’

‘It does? Oh what a relief.’

But of course he won’t leave it. It is the final irony of our relationship, of my stupid, impulsive behaviour, that he now proceeds to take me downstairs to a mock-German beer tavern where he all but begs me not to say anything to Sofía.

‘It’s just that it would kill her,’ he implores, nursing a tankard of Weissbier. ‘She’s very old-fashioned,’ and I nod along, drink after drink, playing the friend and trusted confidant. How many hookers have you seen, Julian? How long has this been going on? Does it feel good to talk about it? We discuss the culture of prostitution in Spain – ‘an entirely different ethic over here’ – and how hard it is ‘to maintain an interest in one’s wife after one has been married for a few years’. Julian says it was easy to find Sasha on the internet and reckoned Saul must have found her the same way.

‘Of course I regretted the whole thing instantly,’ he says, five minutes after confessing to at least three other adulteries. ‘It was all so… impersonal. You can’t imagine being intimate with someone like that.’

Finally, I try to placate him with a rapidly assembled medley of platitudes. I have work to do with Carmen and can’t sit here all night trying to save my boss’s marriage.

‘The truth is I really don’t care, Julian. I promise. Show me a beautiful woman and I’ll show you a man who’s tired of fucking her. What a person gets up to in his spare time is his own business. Human sexuality is a mystery, for God’s sake. Who’s to know what people like and don’t like? It has no bearing on the sort of person they are. You’ve been really good to me. You gave me work when I needed a job, you’ve kept me in bread and water. I’m not going to pay you back by grassing you up to your wife. Jesus, what do you take me for? Besides, I barely know Sofía. I’m hardly likely to go and tell her something like this.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘You’re a good bloke, Milius,’ he says. You’re a bloody good bloke.’

39. Product

That night, Félix Rodríguez de Quirós Maldonado appears on national television in an advertisement for the Partido Popular. Carmen is watching TVE1 on her sofa in Calle de Toledo and wriggles quickly out of my embrace when her boss appears on screen. Watching his performance, I am reminded of a line from Updike, heard years ago on British radio: ‘Nixon, with his menacing, slipped-cog manner.’ It is one of the more interesting characteristics of Spanish public life that even the most mendacious-looking politicians – sharks with hooded eyes and slicked-back hair – nevertheless find themselves in positions of great authority. In the UK, a man of Maldonado’s appearance would struggle to make a living as a second-hand car salesman, yet Spanish voters seem blind to his obvious corruption. This bully, this suntan in a suit, has even been spoken of as a possible prime minister. Not if I have anything to do with it. Not if Six blow his cover.

‘What do you think?’ Carmen asks, taking the book I was reading out of my hands. I hate it when women do that, when they demand your attention.

‘Think about what?’

As I look up into her face I see that she has been disquieted by the advertisement, as if she knows something of the circumstances in which it was made. Her face looks drawn and a little worried and I struggle to think of something positive to say, even with the screen of deceit.

‘Well, he seems very charismatic, very calm. It’s hard to know without understanding what he’s saying. I was reading my book. What was the advert about?’

‘It’s saying that the Interior Ministry has the best record on crime of any administration of the last twenty years.’

‘And is that true?’

Without humour or irony she replies, ‘Of course it is true.’ She still looks upset by something.

‘What’s the matter?’

I have come to realize that Carmen Arroyo is stubborn and thick-skinned, despite appearances to the contrary, and will not easily admit to weakness. Ignoring me, she turns the book over and flicks idly through its pages.