‘I say again,’ I said. ‘Is this strictly necessary?’

We were on the Tullamarine tollway, now at its early-evening worst, a howling blur of taxis, trucks, cars, trade vehicles, drivers all tired and vicious.

‘I don’t want to die not knowing,’ said Linda Hillier. She was looking exceptionally attractive, as people leaving often do.

‘I don’t understand that,’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t you die not knowing? Why is that worse than dying knowing? Let’s say you’re a mountain climber, you get a chance to climb Everest or K-47, AK-47, Special K, an unusually large piece of vertical landscape. You fall off it or into a glacier, you’re going to be snap-frozen, like a baby pea. In that instant, you know. Now, why is that better than…’

I felt her eyes on me. I didn’t want to risk a glance. I was driving her car, a new Alfa, much too refined a creature for someone only at home with V-8 American brutes, crude things, power without responsibility.

‘Jack,’ she said. ‘They’ll probably terminate me in two months, pay out the contract. I’ll send for you. We’ll take an apartment in Paris, wake late, coffee and croissants, walk around, eat expensive lunches, hit the pleasure mat in the afternoon…’

I closed on a plumber called John Vanderbyl, a blocked-drain specialist towing a trailer holding his video-equipped probing instruments. He was a laggard and himself guilty of clogging so I moved out and left him behind. Then I had to curb the Alfa’s instinct to stay in the right lane, overtake everything. Like me, it was a natural front-runner. Unlike me, it could sustain it.

‘That’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘You have to lose for me to win. You’ll be heartbroken, I’ll be impotent. On the other hand, if you win, I stay in Carrigan’s Lane wearing a dust mask while you’re bouncing on George V’s famous mattresses with Nigel, your priapic young Eton-educated production assistant.’