He still wore the unnecessary raincoat and looked like a bundle that someone had been embarrassed about and tied in polythene before leaving on a rubbish dump. About right, he thought. He undressed, letting the clothes puddle about him on the floor, but ignored the bed. Charlie knew it would rise and fall on the sea of booze if he lay down, until he had to dash for the bathroom anyway. He filled the basin with water and sank his face deeply into it. He kept coming up for breath, then down again, finally panting to a halt and gazing at his dripping, pouch-eyed image. Broken veins showed bright in his nose and cheeks.

‘Bloody fool,’ he said. The whisky-buoyed bravado was ebbing away. They wouldn’t have forgotten. Just one mistake and the hunt would start all over again. And he didn’t want to get caught. Any life, even one as empty as that he now lived, was better than what would happen if they ever found him.

Charlie dried his face and was reentering the bedroom when the telephone which never rang jarred through the tiny apartment. His immediate reaction was one of fear. He watched it for several moments and then reached out hesitantly.

‘Hello?’ There was still a vague fog of alcohol in his voice.

‘Charlie,’ said the voice. ‘I’ve been calling you for hours. It’s Rupert Willoughby.’

Charlie had rehearsed the approach but when the time came he couldn’t think of the prepared words. Instead, he said, ‘I’d like to see you.’

‘Good idea,’ said the underwriter. ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem.’

It was a measure of how careless Charlie had become that he talked unaware of the listening device that had been implanted in his receiver. In the early days he had dismantled it regularly, but, as with everything else, he hadn’t bothered for months.

Sure of the man and his movements, they recrossed the river after the surveillance ended, because the pubs were better in Chelsea and Pimlico.