Free The Seville Communion by Arturo Pérez-Reverte Page B

his hands of the whole business, aren't you? You just take people to the praetorium and all that. It's up to others to say ibi ad crucem ."
    "I would never have imagined you so well versed in the Gospels."
    "I think there are rather too many things you can't imagine."
    Embarrassed, the priest shifted from one foot to another. Then he passed a hand over his grey hair. The builder next to the cement mixer had stopped and was leaning on his shovel, watching them. He was young and wore old army-surplus clothes covered with plaster.
    "All I'm trying to do," said Quart, "is make sure there's a thorough investigation."
    Still facing him, Gris Marsala shook her head. "No, you're not," she said, her blue eyes piercing into his. "Father Priamo was right: you've come to make sure there's a swift execution."
    "Is that what he said?"
    "Yes. When the archbishop announced you were coming."
    Quart looked away, over the woman's shoulder. He could see a window with a grille hung with pots of geraniums and a canary in a cage. "I just want to help," he said in a flat voice that suddenly sounded alien to him. At that moment the church bell began to ring and the canary sang, glad of the accompaniment.
    This was not going to be an easy mission.
    III
    Eleven Bars in Triana
    You have to cut and cut and cut again. You have to fell the trees without mercy, until their rows have been cleared and the forest can be considered healthy.
    Jean Anouilh, The Lark
    There are dogs that define their masters and cars that announce their owners. Pencho Gavira's Mercedes was enormous, dark and shiny, with its menacing three-pointed star on the front like the sight of a machine gun. Celestino Peregil jumped out before the car had quite come to a halt and held the door open for his boss. The traffic on La Campana was heavy and the henchman's salmon-pink shirt collar was grimy. His red, yellow and green flower-print tie blazed like some monstrous set of traffic lights. The exhaust fumes made his lank, thinning hair flutter, ruining the shape he carefully constructed each morning with much patience and hair gel to hide his bald patch.
    "You've lost more hair," said Gavira cruelly. He knew that nothing tormented his assistant more than mention of his baldness. But the financier believed that periodic use of the spur kept the animals in his stables alert. Besides, Gavira was a hard man and given to such exercises of Christian virtue.
    It looked as if it was going to be a beautiful day despite the pollution. Standing very straight on the kerb, Gavira adjusted his shirt-cuffs so that his twenty-four-carat gold cufflinks glinted in the May sunshine. He looked like a male model. He touched the knot of his tie and then ran his hand over his thick, black hair, slightly wavy behind the ears and slicked back. Pencho Gavira was dark, handsome, ambitious, elegant. He had money and was about to have a lot more. He was proud of the fact that most of his success was due entirely to his own efforts. Confident and pleased, he looked round before heading for the corner of the calle Sierpes with Peregil trailing behind him.
    In the La Campana Cafe, Don Octavio Machuca sat at his usual table, looking through the papers that his secretary, Canovas, passed to him. For several years now the chairman of the Cartujano Bank had spent his mornings at a table on this cafe terrace in the very heart of the city rather than in his office, full of paintings and fine furniture, on the Arenal. He spent the morning reading the ABC newspaper, watching the world go by and attending to business matters until it was time for lunch at his favourite restaurant, Casa Robles. Nowadays he almost never got to the bank before four o'clock, so if there were any urgent matters to be dealt with, his employees and clients had no choice but to go and see him at La Campana. This included Gavira; as vice-chairman and general manager, he had to make the rather inconvenient journey almost every day.
    No doubt this was why