Charlie peered closer at the picture. This was how he would remember Sir Archibald. Cherub-faced and bright-eyed, like a garden gnome by a goldfish pond. Not like the last time, at Rye, after he’d been dumped: a food-stained, shaky old man, his memory so whisky-blurred that sentences never had a coherent ending. Next to Sir Archibald lounged Clarissa in a veil and engulfed in cascades of fashionable satin. Narrow-featured even then, high cheek-boned, her face chiselled by the permanent diet. Calorie-free tonic water for social appearances and hand-rolled cigarettes for highs, remembered Charlie. Did she still smoke or had that been a passing hobby, like stray animals?

‘I’ve got the file here,’ interrupted Willoughby.

Charlie turned back into the room, seeing for the first time the small chair that had been set for him alongside the desk. In front of the underwriter was a spread of documents and diagrams. Charlie took the side chair and twisted the lamp, needing the illumination in the shaded room. It was an extensive dossier, with illustrations of the protection system and lists of the jewellery indexed against individual pictures of each piece, taken from several different angles. The correspondence between the ambassador and Willoughby was included, together with biographies of Sir Hector and Lady Billington. It was thirty minutes before Charlie looked up.

‘Wealth I ask not, hope nor love…’ quoted Charlie. In the early days in the department he’d habitually made remarks like that, in a futile attempt to convey the impression of an education he didn’t have.

‘They’re important people, Charlie.’

‘I’ll tug my forelock and keep my place,’ promised Charlie. Sir Archibald wouldn’t have made a point like that, even with cause.

‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ said Willoughby hurriedly.

‘You haven’t,’ said Charlie. Why did people always suspect he’d break wind in a quiet moment?