She smiled at him, a long smile that was full of desire. He started to compose his letter to Myrtle. The letter told her he was sorry, but life was too short and he felt he had not seen enough of it. Maybe he’d come back some day, and maybe he wouldn’t; he hoped she’d understand. They’d had a lot of good times together, she wasn’t to take it personally. There wasn’t anyone else. It was just – well – he wanted to be alone for a while, have time to think things over, think what it was he really wanted to do with his life, or at least the rest of his life until Myrtle tracked him down.

‘I’m sorry, I already have a date.’ The smile, for a moment, went from her face. Slan’s stomach hit the floor, and stayed there for several long seconds.

All Gebruder Sleder’s receptionists, and several other members of his office staff, at offices all around the world, were paid salaries way above the going rate for the posts. The reason for this was that the girls’ duties included sleeping with whoever they were instructed to, and when they were instructed to. But no one had instructed Barbara Lindell to sleep with this fat, sweating, half-cut stump of a man who stood leering at her from the other side of her ITT switchboard, and she counted her blessings. She smiled sweetly at Slan, pressed the intercom button to Deke Sleder’s private secretary and spoke into the telephone receiver. ‘Mr Harry Slan is here.’ She listened for a moment, smiled, and replaced the receiver. ‘Go right up, Mr Slan, take the internal elevator over there to the seventy-third floor, and you’ll be met.’

‘Thank you.’ Slan paused, but he hadn’t ever been much good at chatting up women, and although his ego had been boosted by his four days with Eva, at the age of forty-five he was discovering that his patter was even slower in coming now than when he was twenty. He grinned a rather unsure grin, and fled for the elevator. As the doors shut, he kicked himself. He should have tried harder; then he thought about Myrtle, and decided it was best that she had said no.

The doors opened again, and he stepped out into a large anteroom. Two burly security guards stood up from their chairs. ‘Good morning, Mr Slan,’ they said courteously. ‘Routine security – I’m afraid we’ll have to do a quick body-search, if you don’t mind.’

Slan did mind, but his brain was weakened by the mixture of expensive alcohol and the girl nine floors below, and he put his hands in the air and grinned.