Winter in Madrid by C. J. Sansom

about decaying buildings; the Victorians had loved them, of course. But it was different if you had to live in them.
    Tolhurst pointed to a narrow street leading north, where the buildings looked even more down at heel.
    ‘Wouldn’t go down there if I were you. That’s La Latina. Bad area, leads across the river to Carabanchel.’
    ‘I know,’ Harry replied. ‘There was a family we used to visit in Carabanchel when I came in 1931.’
    Tolhurst looked at him curiously.
    ‘The Nationalists shelled it badly during the Siege, didn’t they?’ Harry asked.
    ‘Yes, and they’ve left it to rot since the Civil War. See the place as full of their enemies. There are people starving down there, I’m told, and packs of wild dogs living in the ruined buildings. People have been bitten and got rabies.’
    Harry looked down the long empty street.
    ‘What else is there you should know?’ Tolhurst asked. ‘English people aren’t very popular generally. It’s the propaganda. It’s never more than dirty looks, though.’
    ‘How do we deal with Germans if we meet them?’
    ‘Oh, just cut the bastards dead. Be careful about greeting peoplewho look English on the streets,’ he added as he opened the car door. ‘They’re just as likely to be Gestapo.’
    Outside the air was full of dust, a breeze lifting little whorls of it from the street. They took Harry’s case from the car. A thin old woman in black crossed the square, a huge bag of clothes on her head supported by one hand. Harry wondered which side she had supported during the Civil War, or whether she had been one of the thousands without politics, caught in the middle. Her face was deeply lined, her expression tired but stoical; one of those who endured – somehow, only just.
    Tolhurst handed Harry a brown card. ‘Your rations. The embassy gets diplomatic rations and we distribute them. Better than we get at home. A lot better than the rations they get here.’ His eyes followed the old woman. ‘They say people are digging up vegetable roots for food. You can buy stuff on the black market, of course, but it’s expensive.’
    ‘Thanks.’ Harry pocketed the card. Tolhurst went over to one of the tenements, producing a key, and they entered a dark vestibule with cracked flaking paint. Water dripped somewhere and there was a smell of stale urine. They climbed stone steps to the second floor, where the doors of three flats faced them. Two little girls were playing with battered dolls in the hallway.
‘Buenas tardes,’
Harry said, but they looked away. Tolhurst unlocked one of the doors.
    It was a three-bedroomed flat, such as Harry remembered would often house a family of ten in crowded squalor. It had been cleaned and there was a smell of polish. It was furnished like a middle-class home, full of heavy old sofas and cabinets. There were no pictures on the mustard-yellow walls, only blank squares where they had hung. Dust motes danced in a beam of sunlight.
    ‘It’s big,’ said Harry.
    ‘Yes, better than the shoebox where I live. Just the one Communist Party official used to live here. Disgrace when you see how most people are crowded together. Left empty for a year after he was taken away. Then the authorities remembered they had it and put it up for rent.’
    Harry ran a finger along the film of dust on the table. ‘By the way, what’s this about Himmler coming here?’
    Tolhurst looked serious. ‘It’s all over the Fascist press. State visit next week.’ He shook his head. ‘You never get used to the idea that we might have to run. There have been so many false alarms.’
    Harry nodded. He’s not really brave, he thought, no more than I am. ‘So you report directly to Hillgarth?’ he asked.
    ‘That’s right.’ Tolhurst tapped the leg of an ornate bureau with his foot. ‘I don’t get to do any actual secret work, though. I’m the admin man.’ He gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Simon Tolhurst, general dogsbody. Flats found, reports typed,