The American thought for several moments.

‘It’s a trick,’ he pronounced finally. ‘You must’ve known about my phone. Somehow, don’t ask me how, you got access to it earlier.’

‘That is logical,’ admitted Artemis. ‘It’s what I would suspect. Name your test.’

Spiro cast his eyes around the restaurant, fingers drumming the tabletop.

‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to a video shelf above the bar. ‘Play one of those tapes.’

‘That’s it?’

‘It’ll do, for a start.’

Arno Blunt made a huge show of flicking through the tapes, eventually selecting one without a label. He slapped it down on the table, bouncing the engraved silver cutlery into the air.

Artemis resisted the urge to roll his eyes and placed the red box directly on to the tape’s surface.

An image of the cassette’s innards appeared on the tiny plasma screen.

‘Download?’ asked the box.

Artemis nodded. ‘Download, compensate and play.’

Again, the operation was completed in under a second. An old episode of an English soap crackled into life.

‘DVD quality,’ commented Artemis. ‘Regardless of the input, the C Cube will compensate.’

‘The what?’

‘C Cube,’ repeated Artemis. ‘The name I have given my little box. A tad obvious, I admit. But appropriate. The cube that sees everything.’

Spiro snatched the video cassette. ‘Check it,’ he ordered, tossing the tape to Arno Blunt.

The bleached-blond bodyguard activated the bar’s TV, sliding the video into its slot. Coronation Street flickered across the screen. The same show. Nowhere near the same quality.

‘Convinced?’ asked Artemis.

The American tinkered with one of his many bracelets.