He smiled. “You’ll be taken and you’ll be dropped back, Cliff. You don’t have to worry about a thing.’

He had a white stretch limmo with driver parked in St Peters Lane. The car just fitted in the space between the workshop that specialises in repairing European automatic transmissions and a big roller door that opens so seldom it’s impossible to say what goes on behind it. Cartwright introduced me to the driver, whose name was Graham, as ‘Mr Hardy’.

‘Cliff,’ I said, reaching through the window to shake hands. ‘I hope you don’t have to wash this thing.’

‘We have people for that,’ Cartwright said. ‘I believe in employing specialists. Graham’s never hit an unnecessary bump, have you, Graham?’

‘That’s right, O.C.’

I climbed in the back with Oscar and we could really have spread ourselves out if we’d wanted to. There was a mobile phone with fax attachment, a minibar and a TV with built-in VCR. The late February day was warm with high humidity and some dark clouds building in the south. That was outside; in the limmo the air-conditioning was set for perfect comfort.

‘Drink, Cliff?’

I shook my head and watched him prepare a Perrier as if it was Dom Perignon. The limmo purred away down the lane and I waited for the bump at Forbes Street. No bump. Either the suspension was superb or Graham was the artist Cartwright proclaimed him to be. My 1980s Falcon has a reassuring number of knocks and rattles. I’ve learned to diagnose its state of health by those sounds and to take appropriate action, often too late to save a vital organ. There were no such signals from the limmo. We whispered along William and Park Streets and swung right at Elizabeth.