'Any the wiser?' he asked.

'No. But you haven't answered my question. Who killed Ward and Braun?'

'I thought it was obvious. It must have been Cruz.'

'Cruz? Are you serious?'

'The man was mad. He hated Americans. He was obsessed with his heart operation. Remember he had deliberately made an incision in that man's heart in order to make some cardiac sutures. I think Cruz was going slowly mad, anyway. The war, the loss of the colony. Even my presence at the hospital meant his reputation was in decline also. So he became obsessed with making his name in some way. And in those days the heart was the organ that most frustrated us. That's the only explanation for the mutilations. I remember once he told me he needed European hearts, I don't know why, some mad prejudice, I suppose. I don't think he killed the woman though. That was random. A Tondo stabbing that confused the picture.'

I sighed, uncertain, troubled by this shocking story. One sunny morning in San Teodoro…

Carriscant leaned forward, his chin on the knuckles of his clasped hands, staring at me.

'I hope you don't mind me saying this, Kay. You're an attractive woman, but you don't want to get any stouter. Shall we go?'

I sit in my room bathed, ready for bed, and write the names of the dead down. Ward, Braun, the unnamed woman, Sieverance. Then I make another list.

PANTALEON QUIROGA DR ISIDRO CRUZ JEPSON SIEVERANCE I am not sure why I am doing this, or what I hope it will achieve, my brain is fugged and sluggish after all this new information, but I need to write things down as they occur to me, almost as an exercise, simply to set some process of deduction rolling, to see if the name on the page, in stark black and white, will tell me something. I consider the options.

Pantaleon – Paton Bobby's suspect. He knew about the massacre, he knew about Carriscant's suspicion about Sieverance. Were Ward and Braun the other two soldiers on the bridge? Perhaps Pantaleon's connection with General Elpidio provided him with that sort of information. But I found it hard to figure Pantaleon as an insurrecto fifth columnist.

Carriscant's suspect was Cruz. Seeking strong American hearts for his experiments. But why dump the bodies at key sites of the first day of the war? Or was that just coincidence? Almost everywhere around Manila had some significance considered in the light of February 1899. Cruz did seem somewhat deranged, but I found it hard to believe that he would go so far in his need to make a name for himself.

But Bobby clearly suspected him as well, why else raid his laboratory?…

Jepson Sieverance was my idea. A notion I had. Carriscant told me that an official commission-the Lodge Commission – investigating the post-Balangiga atrocities was sitting throughout 1902. Sieverance, an ambitious young officer, might just have thought it worth removing his two accomplices. Or perhaps Braun and Ward were blackmailing him in some way? Assuming of course that the man Carriscant saw had been Sieverance in the first place, and Carriscant had never been fully convinced of this… On the other hand, Sieverance certainly didn't commit suicide. But then we knew who killed him. Or did we?

I seem to be achieving nothing. I write down one more name: SALVADOR CARRISCANT Tomorrow we go to pay a visit to Senhora Lopes do Livio. Let us see what revelations the new day brings.

SUNDAY, 7 MAY

We breakfasted in the dining room on small hard rolls and honey, washed down with a reasonable pot of coffee. Carriscant didn't seem at all nervous and ate three of the rolls with a gourmandising enthusiasm, asking the waiter to confirm if the honey were clover, or from bees feeding on some other species of flower.

'I can taste it, can't you? The clover,' he said to me.

'A fragrance, a stratum below the surface. But if not clover then lavender, or broom perhaps.'

The waiter was unable to help him and to me the honey tasted of honey. Besides I was not hungry: I left half my roll, drank a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette rather earlier in the day than normal. I asked Carriscant if we should telephone ahead or send a note to explain who we were but he preferred to go unannounced.

'Suppose it's not her,' he explained. 'We don't want to waste their time. We'll just turn up, much the best way. Bound to be in on a Sunday.' I let him do as he wished. His mood was calm, almost buoyant, whereas I felt a curious sense of foreboding, as if I were about to visit a doctor or specialist, on the point of learning facts about which I would rather remain ignorant.

At about midday we rendezvoused at the hotel entrance and hailed a taxi. The day was fresh and sunny, and above our heads the strip of sky between the buildings was a perfect washed-out blue. Joao hurried out from reception with an umbrella which he insisted on our taking. 'There will be rain in the afternoon,' he said with adamantine certainty. 'Better to be prepared.'

We asked the taxi to drop us outside the gates to the botanical gardens and we walked the short distance to Senhora Lopes do Livio's address. She lived on the second floor of a large apartment block with ornately wrought balconies. A high arched doorway led through to a narrow cobbled courtyard; to the left was the entrance foyer where a stooped old porter stood on a strip of red carpet leading to the elevator. The walls were lined with a small collection of pots containing dusty undernourished ferns struggling to grow in the perpetual gloom. We decided to walk up the stairs to the second floor – Carriscant's suggestion. I think he was beginning to feel the enormous pressures of this encounter for the first time and the chance of delaying matters even for a few seconds was suddenly very desirable.

I reached to press the bell – set beneath a worn and polished brass plate reading 'Lopes do Livio' – but Carriscant's touch on my elbow made me hesitate.

'How do I look?' he said.

'Very good,' I said. 'Very handsome and distinguished.' He smiled broadly at me, his pleasure manifest, and my heart went out to him. I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. He was most surprised and his hand went instantly to the spot where my lips had touched him, as if I'd daubed him with paint or pricked him with a pin.

'Bless you, Kay,' he said, moved. 'I don't know what I'd have done without you.'

'Don't give it a thought,' I said. 'Look it may not even be her. We may be tramping around the sweetshops of Europe for a while yet.'

I rang the bell and after some moments we heard footsteps and the door was opened by a young man, about my age. He was tall with unruly curly hair forced severely into an immaculate middle parting, and full rather pouting lips. There was a guarded, suspicious quality about him; he seemed to hold his body angled back slightly, as if pre-emptively fearful of some act of aggression.

He said a few words to us in Portuguese.

'Do you speak English?' I asked.

'Yes I do,' he said, with a slight accent. 'Are you English?'

'We're American. We would like to see Senhora Lopes do Livio, if that were possible.'

'I regret. My mother is not well. She does not receive visitors.'

I could sense Carriscant stiffen beside me.

'I'm a very old friend,' Carriscant said. 'I've come all the way from the United States to meet her again.'

The man frowned. 'She said nothing of this to me.'

'She didn't know I was coming. It took me some time to find her.'

'I am not knowing if my mother had some friends in America…'" His suspicion was acute, suddenly we were importunate salesmen, hawkers who had not used the tradesmen's entrance.

'If you tell her that Dr Salvador Carriscant has come to see her I'm sure she'll grant me a moment of her time.'

The tone of confidence and marginal hostility in Carris-cant's voice was sufficient to have us admitted even though the young man's reluctance was palpable. He showed us into a large pale green sitting room, dimly lit, the shutters drawn half to. The style of the furnishings was old and the swagged green velvet drapes at the three long windows were threadbare. But the proportions of the room were elegant and the furniture of good quality, well chosen. Dark over-varnished portraits of whiskered and waxed military types hung on the walls. I wondered if these were the Lopes do Livio forebears. We took our seat on a gilded bergere, sitting primly, our hands on our knees like candidates waiting for an interview.