I looked up at the name boards; Gebruder Sleder and AtomSled occupied the sixty-fourth floor to the seventy-fourth – the top floor. The rest was a mixture of law firms, United Nations offices, and a plethora of anonymous-sounding corporate names.

I stepped into an elevator and noticed it only went up as far as the sixty-fourth floor – no doubt a security precaution on the part of the Sleder organization. I pushed the top button, the doors shut with a swoosh of air, and my stomach dropped to the ground like a balloon filled with water, whilst invisible hands tried to lift my head and neck up off my shoulders. A digital display before my eyes reeled off floor numbers faster than a bookie writing odds, then the water-filled balloon flew up from the floor and into the base of my neck, and a hefty foot trod on my head, and pushed it down into my shoulders. The digital read-out stopped, and the doors opened, and I wanted her, wanted all of her, wanted right now to own her, take her away to a warm, dark nest, to climb into it and never emerge.

She drew me like a magnet, out of the elevator, across the floor and up to the reception desk. I wanted someone to give her to me for Christmas. I stared into her eyes, then down at her body, most of which I could see clearly through the dress she wore, which appeared to have been made from a trawling net, then back into her eyes again. I concentrated hard on remembering that I had come up here on a recce, to take a brief look, not to carry away prizes.

‘Is this Hazier, Cohen and Lipitman?’ I said.

Her dark eyes stared right into the centre of mine, and her mouth opened a fraction. Whatever she was going to be doing for Christmas, she knew, wouldn’t be half so much fun as spending it with me. ‘They’re the fifty-fourth floor – you’ve come to the sixty-fourth.’

‘Stay here tomorrow,’ I wanted to tell her, ‘stay here tomorrow, and wait for me, and we’ll spend Christmas here together on Deke.’ But I hadn’t come here to do that. ‘Oh I’m sorry – I didn’t read the sign right.’ She was still staring at me, staring and smiling. I half-turned to go, swivelled my foot, turned my head, and then stopped. ‘Are you doing anything tonight?’

‘Not a lot.’ She stared into my eyes and smiled a very evil smile.

‘Would you like to come out and have some dinner?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d just like to come back to your place and screw all night long.’

I gave her a grin that was as evil as hers. ‘I’m at the Warwick, room 2302.’

‘What time will you be there?’

‘Eight o’clock?’

‘I’ll try and wait that long, Max.’