'We've made a real start,' Carriscant said, with genuine enthusiasm, 'a real start. I'll look into that shop daily. I'll find out others in the city. We should begin to build up a list of names.'

I felt indescribably weary at the prospect of seeking out every crystallised violets lover in Lisbon.

'Dr Carriscant, you really can't-'

'How many times have I told you, Kay? I wish you'd call me Father.'

'It's hard for me, you know that.'

'I don't see why. At least " Salvador ", then. We're friends, Kay, good chums, you and I. I don't want to feel that I'm here on sufferance. I'll have another brandy, I think. What about you?'

SATURDAY, 6 MAY

We found two more sweetshops which stocked crystallised violets, one a tobacconist on the Praca do Commercio, the other in Biarro Alto. Unable to make our complicated requests understood we resolved to return later with Joao.

I prevailed upon Carriscant to attempt another method of finding Delphine. I suggested we obtain an enlargement of the photograph and place an advertisement in a newspaper, asking anyone who recognised Delphine to contact us at the Commercio. We could even offer a reward, I suggested. He thought this was a fine idea, so we ended our day with a visit to the photographer's studio where we had had our photographs taken for our identity cards and where the enlargement was duly made.

When we returned to the hotel there was a note from the US legation, from Senhor Liceu, beautifully written in exquisite copperplate. A colleague in the office thought that the woman who had been with the guests of honour on the day of the inaugural Aishlie cup was not French but Portuguese. He had spoken to her and recalled her name as Senhora Lopes do Livio. 'A melodious appellation,' Liceu had added, 'which is why it stayed in his head.' This fact was confirmed when they found the official visitors' book for the day. But there was no address by the signature.

'Portuguese?' Carriscant said. 'There must be some mistake. '

According to Joao there were three Lopes do Livios in the Lisbon telephone directory. One was a beautician's, one was at an address in the Alfama – 'I don't think a lady of distinction would live there,' Joao averred – the third was in a respectable part of town near the jardim botanico. We decided to investigate in the morning.

We sauntered out arm in arm for a digestive after our meal that evening, heading for the Cafe Martinho, situated between the station and the National Theatre on the Rossio. We walked through the dimly lit streets into the enormous square, still loud with trams and taxis, the shouts of lottery-ticket vendors and the calls of shoeshine boys, with groups of people strolling about the fountains and the monument, the cafe windows under their faded awnings glowing orange, and, beyond the classic bulk of the theatre, rose the city on one of its higher hills, a loose heap of spangling lights in the luminous dark. For the first time I experienced the authentic thrill of travel, that strangeness of displacement, as we strolled, anonymous foreigners in this hospitable, scruffy city, amongst its idling denizens, their laughter and their chatter falling on our uncomprehending ears. I was in Europe, I remembered, albeit on its very western edge, and I should draw some sustenance from this trip I was paying for – and, my God, did I need it – and stop behaving like the tolerant chaperone of a testy and eccentric old man. But the testy and eccentric old man, I could see, was enjoying himself too as he strode briskly across the square, proud in his new suit, towards the blurry warmth of the Martinho, from whose open doors a smell of roasting coffee wafted.

The Martinho was a grandly capacious place. A large room with solid pillars, encrusted cornices and tall gilt mirrors. It was filled with neat ranks of simple wooden tables with marble tops, laid out with a schoolroom precision in immaculate rows. Drooping lights with frosted glass shades sprouted like wilting tulips from the central pillars sending out a diffuse yellow light. All the waiters were stout middle-aged men with long white aprons and generous moustaches. The place was crowded, full of men who did not remove their hats and who sat, most oddly I thought, with one hand resting on their walking sticks and canes as they drank and chatted, as if at any moment they were about to spring to their feet and stride off into the night.

We found a table for two at one side of the room, beneath a baroquely carved mirror whose sides were formed by two golden caryatids, bare breasted pubescent beauties emerging from a tangle of lianas and tropical fruits. We ordered coffee, with a brandy for Carriscant, and sat back to survey the scene.

'This is the life,' Carriscant said, upending his brandy into his coffee cup. He looked at me slyly: 'You won't find anything like this in Los Angeles.'

'Which is why one travels,' I said a little frostily, irritated by his patronising manner. 'How boring it would be if every new place merely reproduced your home town. Someone from Lisbon doesn't go to Los Angeles looking for a Cafe Martinho.'

'He'd be pleased to find one, however,' Carriscant said in a self-satisfied way.

A silence fell as I decided not to prolong this discussion.

'How did you know,' I said abruptly, irritated with him for souring the excitement and pleasure I had experienced crossing the Rossio, 'that I lived in Los Angeles? How did you know Mother had gone to live there?'

My tone took him aback and he looked startled. 'Udo told me,' he said. 'Annaliese used to write to him once a month until he died.' He paused, remembering. 'The bishop annulled our marriage very promptly. Then Udo told me she had married an American called Fischer, a coir importer, from Los Angeles. When I got there it wasn't hard to track him down. Or you.'

'What about Hugh Paget?'

'I know nothing about any Hugh Paget.'

I felt the weight of my dissatisfactions descend on me, a sensation of living a personal history concocted of half truths and opportune fictions. Now other uncertainties and key ambiguities of Carriscant's story rose up to nag at me, making me fretful and ill at ease. In many ways Carriscant had been as honest and as unsparing as anyone I could imagine. He seemed to have held nothing back, providing me with details and intimacies I would never have asked for myself. But in the end it was his story and he was free to emphasise and ignore what he wished, to select and choose, shape and redirect…

I sipped my coffee, looking at him over the rim of the cup as his quick eyes scanned the busy room. He turned to meet my gaze and smiled it me, raising his cup in salute. He was in a good mood.

'Thanks for everything, Kay, I think tomorrow we-'

'Who killed Ward and Braun?'

The question blurted from me, unplanned, spontaneous, as my mind sifted through the tale he'd told me. Carriscant didn't flinch: he thought about it, tugged at an earlobe, and set his cup down in its saucer without a rattle. He shrugged.

'Your guess is as good as mine… Who do you think? I told you everything I know.'

'So you say. But that can't be true. There must be things you forgot, or didn't think were relevant.'

'Of course.' To my vague surprise I seemed to sense a pleasure in him now, as he settled back in his chair, a kind of mischievous delight at the line my questioning was taking. 'Look, I told you the story you asked me to tell -about me and Delphine – why we were making this trip. But who knows?' He paused, a tolerant smile on his lips. 'You may find the answer to other questions. Everything's there if you know where to find it.'

This intrigued me. 'What? You mean like clues?'

'Yes and no. It applies to both of us. I'm sure that m telling you what happened there are connections I haven't spotted. Got to be. Maybe we can force them out. Two heads are better than one, and all that.'