"I don't know why that should surprise you. This is my town, Pencho," said Machuca.

Gavira took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. The chairman didn't smoke, and Gavira was the only person allowed to do so in his presence. "Don't worry," Gavira said as he took his first puff. "Eveything's under control." He exhaled, calmer now. "No loose ends."

"I'm not worried." The banker shook his head, absently watching the passers-by. "As I said, it's your deal, Pencho. I'll be retiring in October. However this turns out, it won't make any difference to my life. But it might to yours."

With that the old man seemed to consider the matter closed. He drank the rest of his coffee, then turned back towards Gavira.

"By the way, have you heard from Macarena?" he asked.

It was a low blow. He'd obviously been saving it till the end. Gavira glanced at the newspaper kiosk and anger again knotted his stomach. It was also a rather unfortunate coincidence: just when he'd ordered Peregil to keep a discreet eye on his wife's adventures, the journalists from Q amp;S had caught her gallivanting with a bullfighter and got it all on film. Damn his luck and damn Seville.

In the three hundred metres from Casa Cuesta to the Triana Bridge there were exactly eleven bars. That meant an average of one bar every twenty-seven metres and twenty-seven centimetres, Don Ibrahim worked out in his head. He was more used to books and numbers than the other two, but any one of them could recite the entire list of bars forwards, backwards or in alphabetical order: La Trianera, Casa Manolo, La Marinera, Dulcinea, La Taberna del Altozano, Las Dos Hermanas, La Cinta, La Ibense, Los Parientes, El Bar Angeles, and the stand of Las Flores at the end, almost on the bank, by the tile showing the Virgen de la Esperanza and the bronze statue of the bullfighter Juan Belmonte. They had stopped at each and every one of the bars to discuss their strategy, and now crossed the bridge in a state of grace, not looking to their left, at the hideous modern buildings on the island of La Cartuja, and enjoying the view to their right, Seville as she had always been, beautiful Moorish queen, with her palm trees all along the other bank, the Torre del Oro, the Arenal and La Giralda.