The following chapter, entitled "Zizou" and set in the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, was cut from the 1st draft of "The Spanish Game".

Julian sounds over-excited.

"I've got two tickets, sitting with the hardcore fans in the Fondo Norte, fifty euros apiece. Came through from a contact at Old Trafford who used to play bingo with Ferguson's secretary. Why don't you come along, Alec? It's time you got into football. Five years in Madrid and you've never been to the Bernabéu. It's a bloody disgrace."

The English are in town. On Tuesday night, Real Madrid meet Manchester United in the quarter-finals of the European Cup. Sunburned Mancunians have been roaming around the city centre since the weekend. Walking back through the Plaza Mayor on Sunday evening I saw six of them gathered around a table at the southern end of the square surrounded by empty jaras of lager, bowls of half-eaten crisps and crumpled copies of the News of the World. Three had passed out cold in their chairs while the rest were attacking a pan of dried-up tourist paella. It was seven o'clock. A few feet away, a shaven-headed Cockney wearing the United home strip was having his portrait sketched by a local caricaturist.

"'Ow's it lookin'?" he called out to the table.

"Fookin' magic, son," one of them replied. "He's makin' ye' look like a total coont."

I became intensely nostalgic for the British sense of humour; this was a way of communicating between men that I hadn't heard in years. A few minutes later a pair of fans, fat as gobstoppers with tattooed, strawberry-red forearms, were walking just a few feet away from me in the Plaza de Oriente. An astonishingly beautiful Spanish girl - five feet ten with a perfect figure hugged in T-shirt and tight blue jeans - emerged from the palace and passed in front of them.

"Look at tha', Del," the older of them said, collapsing into his mate as if exhausted by lust. "Yet anoother phabulous arse."

"Bring me' knife and fork," his friend replied. "I could eat me' tea off that."

"So do you want to come?" Julian asks, and I succumb to a strange combination of curiosity and patriotism. It would seem wrong to turn down an opportunity to see a British football club testing themselves against the best that Spain can offer. I also wouldn't mind just spending time amongst the fans, listening to the banter and rhythm of the English language. It's about as close to home as I'm likely to get these days.

"You said fifty euros a ticket?"

"Not a penny more." The mobile connection starts to fade and Julian has to shout. "Look, let's hook up at half-past seven for a pre-match pint, okay? Kick off's at 8.45, victory for the Reds some 90 magnificent minutes later."

We arrange to meet at a pub two blocks south of the stadium, just off Paseo de la Habana. This is no more than half-a-mile from Rosalía's apartment and I wonder if we might even bump into each other. The bar is already packed out with fans by 7.30, but Julian has arrived early and secured two stools by the window. He is wearing a red United shirt with "v. Nistelrooy" emblazoned across the back and has a scarf slung loosely around his neck. There are two cañas of lager on the counter in front of him and a plastic bag of bocadillos, wrapped up in silver foil, waiting to be eaten at half-time.

"Your wife make those for you?" I ask.

"Yes indeed. Dear old Sofía. Didn't want us to starve during the match."

Using a copy of Marca, the daily Spanish sports newspaper that outsells El País three to one, Julian spends about half-an-hour talking me through the teams and attempting to explain, in layman's terms, what to look out for on the pitch.

"Trouble is, Real are so bloody strong. Casillas is just out of nappies, but if there's a better goalkeeper in Europe I have yet to make his acquaintance. At right-back you've got Míchel Salgado, gets up and down the wing like a tank and links well with Figo. Tough little bastard, too, plays to the last drop of blood. Then there's the Brazilian, Roberto Carlos, out on the left, made a mockery of Becks at the World Cup and can run all night. David always seems to come off second-best against him, no idea why, and we need a great game from him tonight if we're to keep the match alive for Old Trafford. Up front they have probably the two best strikers on the planet - Ronaldo and Raul - and then Claude Makelele holding the whole thing together from midfield. Their only real weakness, as far as I'm concerned, is in defence. Hierro's past it, an old man playing on his reputation."

"What about Zidane?" I ask. He is one of the few players I have actually heard of.

"Ah, the great Zizou." Julian leans back in his seat as if to savour the name. He swallows a final mouthful of lager and goes a bit glassy-eyed. "Wonderful, wonderful talent, let's face it, even for a heathen such as yourself. A great treat to see a player like Zidane in the flesh, different class to all the others. If he starts dictating terms, I'm afraid it's au revoir, merci, and thank you very much. But as long as Keano and Nicky can snuff him out, we shouldn't have a problem."

I've forgotten most of these names by the time we leave the pub and join the throng of spectators moving steadily north towards the stadium. It's a good feeling to be out of the house and lost in something as mundane as a game of football. Every element of the search for Mikel - Zulaika's interest in the SIM-card, Kitson's hunt for the weapons, the relationship between Buscon and Dieste - feels out of my hands. I can't control things from a position of such comparative weakness, and there is no point in my even trying to do so. Right now my only concern is that Julian should not use our proximity tonight as a means of broaching my affair with Sofía. That would be catastrophic. It would necessitate resigning from Endiom and, most probably, spell the end of my time in Madrid.

There are crowds of fans packing the street immediately east of the Bernabeu and it takes almost fifteen minutes to reach the base of Torre D at the near side of the Fondo Norte. A bottleneck of as many as two thousand United fans has formed near the small entry point at the bottom of the tower and we are obliged to join them, suddenly with the threat of violence hanging in the air. Spanish riot police on horseback, predisposed to treat every British spectator as a potential hooligan, are busy driving them with batons closer and closer to the stadium wall. Many of the English fans look as though they have been sitting out in the sun for three days drinking nothing but Mahou and Sangría, and there's a rapidly deteriorating atmosphere of resentment and panic as 8.45 draws near.

"Let us into the fookin' stadium," one of them shouts out and then a scream of fright goes up as the crowd surges forward. At one point my feet are lifted clear off the ground and I overhear somebody close to me saying "Hillsborough".

"What's the problem?" Julian is up ahead. Bodies are closing in on us from all sides, the massed sweat heat of men merging their rage to the will of the crowd. For the first time in years I feel like a stranger in my own city and it strikes me as absurd that my first contact with a massed group of British football fans should end in conflict.

"Some of the supporters up ahead must be trying to get in without a ticket," he replies. I can feel my chest being squeezed up and have to catch a silver-haired woman by the arm as she loses her balance and almost topples over beside me.

"Thanks, pet," she smiles, now safely back on her feet. It occurs to me that if the police start making arrests, I might even be deported back to Manchester. What would Kitson think about that?

"We'll never get into the game," Julian says, shaking his head and indicating that he has had enough. We have come to a complete halt in the crowd and I see from my watch that it is already 8.30. "There must be another way in," he says and, slow as molasses, we decide to walk out against the flow until we are free and standing about fifty metres back from the stadium. Both of us are a little shaken up, as if some of the joy of the occasion has already been rubbed out, but Julian looks determined to carry on.

"The home fans aren't having any trouble," I suggest, looking over at the lines of Real supporters steadily making their way into the eastern side of the Bernabeu. Julian is clutching his entrada like a winning lottery ticket. "Why don't you take off your shirt and your scarf, pretend to be one of them, and once we're inside we can find our seats?"

He thinks this is a good idea and, in full view of a helmeted riot cop, removes his shirt and scarf, stuffs them into the plastic bag containing the bocadillos, and walks with me towards the nearest entrance wearing just an old white vest. His arms are pale and unexercised and I think of Sofía lying beside him in bed. Both of us, with the language, can easily pass for Spaniards and although there's a brief discrepancy over the location of our seats, the last-minute rush into the stadium convinces the gap-toothed attendant to allow us through. Had we been identifiably British, he would have certainly sent us on our way. Ahead, there's a switchback flight of concrete stairs and we're halfway up them when a deafening screech tears around the stadium. Julian looks at his watch and says: "Fuck, they've kicked off," and I take this as my cue to hurry. We jog the last few hundred metres, exhausted by the time we have reached the third tier, and make it to our seats by about five-to-nine.

"Real are in white, United are in red," Julian kindly explains, yet things seem to go wrong almost immediately. Out on the right, way below us in a deep green corner of the pitch, a Madrid player curls a cross into the box which somehow loops over the bald goalkeeper's head and lands in the net. It is almost the first piece of action we have witnessed.

"Oh mother of God," Julian screams, and the ginger-haired Manc standing immediately beside him casts us a suspicious look. Prawn sandwich on the premises. There's an appalled hush among the mass of United fans, silent as drowning, but 70,000 Madrid supporters in the rest of the stadium let out a roar like a sonic boom with lifts up gloriously into the night air. Instinctively, I want to celebrate with them, but decide against it when I see Julian's face.

"What happened?" I ask.

"Luis fucking Figo is what happened," he says. He looks as unhappy and depressed as I can ever remember seeing him. "That wasn't a fucking shot. Was that a shot, mate? Figo was bloody crossing the ball."

Ginger Manc, to whom Julian has directed his question, again looks suspicious before saying: "Yeah mate, total flook." We are at the very top of the stadium, crowded into a tight corner awash in red flags and banners. Julian puts the bocadillos on the seat, removes his United shirt from the plastic bag, tugs it over his head and sniffs violently.

"Worst possible start," he mutters, "worst possible start" and I feel like putting my arm around his shoulder.

"It can't be that bad," I tell him, regretting the sentiment immediately. I am, after all, lamentably ill-qualified to be prognosticating on the outcome of a European Cup tie. "Haven't they got time to hit back? Doesn't the game last ninety minutes?"

"That's the right fookin' attitude, mate," Ginger Manc announces, and two of his mates lean over and nod at me with warm enthusiasm. One of them has a burn scar torched across his forehead, like a skinhead Harry Potter, and I feel as if I have been initiated into a secret cult. Julian thumps me on the back with the force of a Heimlich manoeuvre and says, "Absolutely bloody right, Alec, absolutely bloody right," almost knocking me forward into the next row. "We've still got bags of time to equalise. Away goals worth their weight in gold in this competition."

But things go from bad to worse. About ten minutes later, one of the Manchester United defenders hauls down Ronaldo in the box and the entire stadium roars its disgust. Around me, the massed ranks of United fans suck on their teeth and Julian murmurs "Fuck it, fuck it" under his breath. By some miracle, however, the referee fails to blow his whistle for a penalty and the game carries on, catcalls and jeers screeching into every corner of the ground.

"Clear pen, didn't you think?" Julian asks the Mancs. "What was Wes thinking?"

"Unbelievable," the furthest of them replies, looking directly at me, and we all stand there shaking our heads. I have a feeling that it might mark a turning point in the match, a little shift in English luck, but I'm proved wrong just moments later when Raúl, right under our noses, receives an exquisite pass from Zidane, turns sharply, and then slides the ball home, with incredible speed and accuracy, tight into the bottom corner of the net.

"Oh holy living fuck!" Julian screams and again there's that awful Manchester hush as the Madridistas roar, Raul wheeling away from the goal and kissing the ring on his left hand. I have never heard such a noise. For the next twenty minutes Madrid seem to have all of the play and I begin to fear that United will lose heavily, perhaps six or seven-nil, and the hordes of dejected fans still undoubtedly queuing outside will express their disgust in a night of neanderthal Saxon violence. Julian's prediction about Zidane proves eerily correct. His touch and balance are so faultlessly aligned that the ball might as well be an extension of his personality. He seems, unlike any other player on the pitch, to have time to do whatever he wants, floating while others run, and I say all this to Julian as the whistle blows for half-time.

"We're being totally outplayed by the lot of them," he replies, sitting down with a look of utter dejection on his face. "Keane's a busted flush, Beckham's more worried about his fucking Alice band, the whole thing's a bloody farce." The Mancs beside us have embarked on a quest to buy diluted lager at the Pepsi stand and we are now sitting more or less alone in our row of seats. "You enjoying it?" he asks and I take my first bite of the bocadillo. Sofía makes terrible sandwiches.

"Sure, it's exciting," I reply, but for the next few minutes there's little I can do except listen to Julian moaning on about Barthez and Giggs, Butt and Brown, to the point where he can detect my boredom.

"Sorry, Alec, let's talk about something else. How are things with you? We haven't had a chance to discuss. Who's this guy Patxo Zulaika who keeps calling me up? Has he been bothering you, too?"

"Rang me yesterday, matter of fact." I suppose it's perfectly normal that Julian should bring this up, but it's unnerving nonetheless. "He wanted to know if I'd heard of a company of industrial engineers in Madrid. Apparently your friend kept calling them up."

"My friend?"

"Arenaza."

"Oh, Mikel." Julian moves his head very quickly back and forth, as if shaking out cobwebs caused by the game. How could he forget something like that? "Yes. Zulaika said the police had found a SIM-card or something in his wardrobe. I wasn't able to help."

"Me neither."

"Terrible thing."

"What, finding the SIM-card?"

"No, Mikel going missing."

"Of course." Another bite of the sandwich. "The journalist said he was most probably dead."

Julian meets my eye. "He did?"

"Afraid so."

He shrugs his shoulders. "Yes. Hard to believe." It is no exaggeration to say that he was more upset by Raul's goal. Were they really that close? In the weeks since I met Arenaza, Julian has discussed his disappearance with me on only one occasion.

"You mind me saying something, Julian?"

"What's that?"

The Mancunians have reappeared and want to make their way back to their seats armed with the plastic glasses of lager and a box of mustard-oozing hotdogs. There's a lot of "Cheers, mate, ta" as they edge past and I wonder if this is the time to be having this conversation.

"It's just that we've never really talked about what happened to Mikel. You don't seem all that bothered by it. You don't seem all that concerned."

Julian looks aghast, a mortal blow to his dignity.

"What? Not bothered?"

"It's just…"

"No. No… you couldn't be more wrong. Sofía and I have been worried sick, ringing the police, trying everything we can." The measured, polite Englishman in him tries to make me feel better by saying: "Perhaps I should have involved you more, perhaps I should have sought out your help," but it's clear that I have offended him.

"I had no idea, Julian. Sorry. I just thought that, given the fact that I'd met Mikel that time in San Sebastián, we might have talked about it a bit more."

There is a long, uneasy silence. The Mancunians seem to pick up on the tension and one of them makes a joke about Ronaldo eating the guy who ate the guy who ate all the pies. This has the effect of breaking the ice and Julian laughs, turning to them to talk animatedly about "the threat from Arsenal in the league". I am more or less excluded from this conversation. Down on the pitch, a small circle of substitutes wearing tracksuits and yellow vests are knocking a ball back and forth. I recognise one of them as Steve McManaman and a smell of cigar smoke lifts up through the tiers.

"Here they come," someone calls out behind me and the United players emerge from the tunnel to a drenching of boos and whistles. Julian tries to drown them out with applause and cries of: "Come on United!" but it's a hopeless task. Moments later, Real Madrid themselves are greeted to ecstatic cheers and the second half gets underway.

"It's funny," Julian says, suddenly returning to the conversation about Arenaza. "Did you see in The Guardian yesterday that they've sentenced two former heads of the Spanish intelligence service to three years in prison for spying on Batasuna?"

"No. No I didn't."

Why is he bringing this up?

"Mikel would have been delighted. They set up an illegal eavesdropping operation above party headquarters without getting permission from a judge. Now he's sent them down. Huge embarrassment for Aznar, of course, last thing he bloody needs."

Before I can respond, he has switched his attention back to the match, where United quickly go 3-0 down. About five minutes later, Van Nistelrooy scores a consolation goal, but the mood in the seats around us is decidedly downbeat as the whistle blows for full-time. Sofía rings to comfort Julian in his hour of need but he is characteristically magnanimous in defeat.

"No, they were bloody good," he tells her, speaking in Spanish. I feel sorry enough for him that I am not even jealous of their call. "Look, I might grab a drink with Alec, maybe a bit to eat. All right if I'm home by twelve o'clock?"

The police, however, have other ideas. Every United supporter in the Fondo Norte is held back for more than half-an-hour while the home fans leave the stadium unmolested by the foreign hordes. It's well past eleven o'clock by the time we make it out onto the Castellana and by then Julian has had enough. We bid one another farewell at the entrance to the metro with a promise to have lunch later in the week. There's a chance, he says, that Endiom may need me to drive down to Marbella for a few days, but he'll have a clearer idea by the weekend.

"Just hope you enjoyed the game," he says. "Just hope it was all worth the effort."

I descend into the station more convinced than ever that my worries about him were ill-founded. So what if his first wife worked for the State Department? So what if he disguised the truth about his past? We are all entitled to our privacy. Julian Church is just a lantern-jawed Sloane of a sort that's rapidly dying out. I quite enjoyed his company tonight; for the first time I actually felt bad about fucking his wife. Maybe it's time I had a chat with Sofía and brought our affair to an end. What good can come of it? A guy like that doesn't deserve to be treated so shabbily. A guy like that deserves a second chance.

This short section, concerning Saul's first appearance in Madrid, was also cut from the finished manuscript.

At five to seven Saul telephones from the street and tells me that the cab driver is asking 49 euros for the trip from the airport. I go downstairs, spot the taxi on the opposite side of Calle Princesa and cross the road at the lights. Saul is gesticulating at a bespectacled man wearing an old white shirt and merely glances up to greet me. I am astonished by the weight he has put on, great rings of puffy fat slung around his neck and stomach.

"Hi man," he says, and there's no big reunion speech, no hug or even handshake. Just a lot of bad feeling between him and the driver which he needs me to sort out. "He doesn't speak any English," Saul explains, light rain beginning to fall and obscuring the driver's glasses.

"Qué pasa aquí?" I ask, trying to size him up. The cabbie is mid-to-late fifties, about six inches shorter than both of us and inexpressive to the point of apathy. He knows he's been caught out, but will stand his ground.

"Tu amigo me debe cuarenta y nueve euros," he says firmly.

"No me lo creo. Nunca he pagado más de 25 euros desde el aeropuerto."

Saul asks what I'm saying.

"I just told him that I've never paid more than 25 euros to come here from the airport. Now he's going to tell me there's a surcharge for your suitcase. It's what they always do."

Sure enough, the driver indicates Saul's bag and says: "Tienes que pagar más por la maleta."

But there's no conviction in his voice, just the stubbornness of a guilty man with his pride at stake. The rain is falling more heavily now and it is cold outside.

"But that's only one bag," I tell him. "So the surcharge is three euros."

"Qué?"

"You trying to tell me it cost 46 euros to get here from the airport in under half-an-hour?"

"Tráfico," the driver spits.

"Y una mierda," I reply, and this is when the swearing starts, the squaring up and the rage. Saul says: "Alec, let's just leave it, pay him what he wants," but the vodka is working in me, the audacity of booze, and I need to win Saul's favour.

"Listen to me." I am standing directly in front of the driver, using a rare advantage of height. "This conversation is going to end now. This is a great city, but every tourist that comes here gets a bad first impression because people like you rip them off. Now I'm going to give you 25 euros and we're going to walk away. And if you don't like it I'm going to call the police and see what they have to say about it."

And that is enough for him; you can always defeat a Spaniard with rain and the threat of bureaucracy. He backs away and takes the money and Saul picks up his bag. Slamming the boot shut, the driver has one last go at me, muttering "Qué cabrón eres," under his breath, but it's a nothing insult and he ducks into the cab. Several people at the bus stop are staring at us in disbelief.

"Very nice, man, very nice," Saul says, putting his hand on my back. "But I thought you said you were keeping a low profile."