“Why don’t we meet for lunch?” he said.

“We can’t…” she began and then stopped. “What time are you meeting this client?” she said instead.

“Eleven.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine that it’ll go on until lunchtime.” Nothing had lasted that long, from the time he had arrived in Switzerland.

“Why don’t I ring you around twelve thirty, just in case?”

“Fine,” agreed Deaken. They had returned to the elaborate politeness of an hour before.

Because he was meeting a new client, the first for a month, Deaken wore the better of his two suits, the one with least shine at the seat and elbows. He returned to the kitchen from the bedroom for a cloth to give his shoes a final buff. When he straightened, Karen came forward and adjusted the knot of his tie. He reached out for her, feeling the stir of excitement at the touch of her body beneath the thin housecoat.

“Maybe today will be the big one,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said.

“What for?”

“Being kind.”

She stretched up to kiss him. “Twelve thirty,” she said.

“I’ll be waiting.”

Outside the apartment Deaken hesitated, at once aware that it had grown hotter since he had been out for the breakfast bread. He set out towards the water, turning left almost immediately up the rue de Rhone and then right, along a cross-street to take him to the avenue Pictet de Rochemont. It was too expensive an office, even huddled as it was like some afterthought atop the grander suites of bankers and accountants, but Deaken had wanted an impressive address. A mistake, he thought-like so much else. He went in through the main entrance, with its smoked glass and potted plants and uniformed doormen, feeling like an interloper, and took the lift as far as it would go.