‘This is your chance to do it. Doyle thinks you’re on board. I’ll be reporting back to him, pouring all kinds of honey in his ear. He already thinks that he’s indispensable to Lady Norton. He won’t suspect a thing.’

Indispensable? thought Abbott. But it wasn’t that, was it? It was something else. Thinking once again of the safe.

‘You’re going to make sure of it.’

‘Aye, I am.’

‘She must be paying you a lot.’

‘Aye, she does. But it’s worth it to her to have someone looking out for her interests, keeping an eye on things, you know what I mean? To her, Doyle’s like a dog that needs constant supervision.’

‘And now she wants to put him down.’

‘You gonna lose sleep over that, are you?’

‘Just her, is it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What about the rest of the family she’s talking about? Who are they anyway?’

‘Try Google. There aren’t that many of them but for a small bunch they’re hardly what you’d call close-knit. There are no alliances there, I can tell you. Well, none that I know about anyway. Naw, I work for Lady Norton and that’s it.’

‘That really is it? You’re up for hire to the highest bidder?’

‘That go against your principles, does it?’

‘I can’t say that it does,’ lied Abbott. He felt dirty. As though he wanted to wash. Worse than any shame-filled hangover. He found himself yearning for the pragmatic voice of Cuckoo, the caring concern of Tess.

But then, no.

Pull yourself together.

He had a job to do.

‘Look, pal,’ sighed McGregor. ‘I’ve got no loyalty to Doyle. The man’s a scumbag. Yes, it could be that I’m a scumbag, too, but on a scumbag scale of one to ten, you’ve got Doyle at ten and then, much lower down, you got me. I know I’m not exactly contributing to the overall sum of human happiness, but I do what I have to do. I don’t want you to hate me, Abbott.’

Too late, thought Abbott, but said, ‘Why do you suppose she’s so keen that Doyle dies?’

‘I suppose because she wants to make sure that he can’t come back after her. There’s no love lost between those two, I can tell you. As far as I can tell, they used to tolerate each other because of Sir Charles, but now he’s no longer in the picture . . .’

‘That right, is it?’ said Abbott thoughtfully. And it could be right, he mused, staring out of the window. But then there were all sorts of reasons that you might want somebody out of the picture permanently. Maybe because you want to shut them up.

‘After all,’ continued McGregor, ‘we’re about to smash them, aren’t we? Doyle?’

‘I am. You’re going to stay well out of the way.’