“Come in, come in,” she insisted, but her voice retained something of the hesitancy of the character in the soap: she refused to believe, and perhaps that was why she shouted into the room, and kept her eyes trained on the newcomers: “Candito, you’ve got visitors.”

Like in a puppet theatre, Red Candito’s saffroncoloured head peered out from behind the curtains hiding the kitchen and the Count got the code: having visitors was different to having customers, and Candito should show himself cautiously. But as soon as he saw them, the mulatto broke into a smile and walked over.

“Fucking hell, Carlos, you persuaded him,” he said, as he shook hands with his two old school friends.

“I told you I’d come and here I am, right?”

“You bet, come inside. I’ve still got some stuff left. Hey, Cuqui, get a nice snack for these mates of mine and forget the soap, go on. Whenever I look at it, they’re spewing out the same bullshit…”

Candito sorted the furniture so Skinny’s chair could cross the room, raised the curtain which hid the kitchen and opened the patio door: some six tables, all full, halted the Count in his tracks. Candito looked him in the eye and nodded: yes, he could go in. But for a moment from the kitchen the Count scrutinized the customers: they were almost all men, only three women, and he tried to identify the odd face. He instinctively touched his belt to check his pistol wasn’t there, but calmed down when he didn’t recognize anyone. Any of those characters could have had run-ins with him at Headquarters and the Count didn’t like the idea of bumping into them in a place like this.

The cheap marble tables were round, iron legged and piled high with bottles.