Mahmood Shabro always invited Charlie Eshraq when he threw a thrash in his office. Shabro had known his father, and his sister and his uncle. The wide windows looked out onto the busy east end of Kensington High Street. There was a teak veneer desk and shelves and cabinets. There was a computer console in the corner, a pile carpet on the floor with a centre-piece of a good rug brought many years before from home. The easy chairs were pushed against the walls that were covered with photographs of a far away country – mosques, landscapes, a bazaar scene, a portrait of an officer in full dress uniform and two rows of medals. Mahmood Shabro was somewhat rare among the London exile community, he had done well. And when he did better, when he had clinched a deal, he celebrated, and he asked the less fortunate of his community to push out the boat with him.

Mahmood Shabro was a conduit for electrical goods going down to the Gulf. Not your low life stuff from Taiwan and Korea, but high quality from Finland and West Germany and Italy. He didn't do badly. He liked to say that the oil rich buggers down in the Emirates were putty to him.

Charlie could put up with the cant and boasting of the Shabro husband and wife, and he could put up with the caviare and the canapes, and the champagne. A thousand top of the range Zanussi washing machines were going down to Dubai, and some cretin who was happier on a camel was paying the earth for the privilege of doing business with Mahmood Shabro.