One look encompassed the room and Deaken knew the shading from the Venetian blinds hadn’t worked. Shit, he thought.

The man offered his hand. “Rupert Underberg,” he said.

The contact was dry, businesslike; for the first time Deaken put the name in possible context. The accent was bland but there could have been the slightest trace of South Africa.

When Underberg sat in the chair indicated, Deaken realized his face was almost completely shadowed in the effort to put the office in better light. Deaken glanced at his wristwatch. Underberg was ten minutes early. The man looked again around the office, more critically this time. Deaken had no doubt he could manage lunch with Karen. He would probably have time to plait several yards of paperclips. Except that he didn’t have sufficient for several yards. He normally collected these from incoming mail. It was thoughtless not to have accepted the brochures from the answering service and American Express this morning.

“You didn’t make it clear in your telephone call what exactly it was that I could do for you, Mr Underberg,” said Deaken.

“I didn’t know then,” said the man. “Now I do.”

“What is it?”

“Negotiate for me,” said Underberg. “Negotiate something very difficult. And special.”

Deaken felt a spurt of interest. He took one of the painstakingly sharpened pencils from the coffee cup, wrote “Underberg” on the pad, underlined it twice and then looked up.

“Why don’t we talk about it and I’ll see if 1 can help?” he said.

“Oh, I think you’ll be able to help.”

Deaken inscribed a third line beneath the man’s name. “How?” he said, mildly irritated by the man’s attitude.