She had seen me arrive at the party, and had decided, for whatever mysterious reason that sometimes triggers the jackpot switch in a woman’s brain, that I was to be the lucky man. She had gone to my coat, taken my keys, made a wax impression of them, then put them back. Noticing that the car keys had a Jaguar tag, she had gone outside, walked up the street to the first Jaguar she had come to. It was an old one, a 1953 XK120 convertible, and as far as she was concerned it fitted me. To be sure, she had felt the radiator. It was hot, so she knew it had recently been driven, and figured it was definitely mine.

She had then telephoned what she described as ‘a chum’ at Scotland Yard, given him the Jaguar licence number, and asked for the name and address of the owner. Then she went to a late-opening locksmith in the Earls Court Road and had a duplicate of my keys made, then went straight to my Holland Park mews house. Somehow, the talent scouts for British Intelligence had missed her. She wasn’t a spy. She had a trendy up-market gym-cum-solarium for trimming the fat and tanning the face of anyone willing to stump up eighteen pounds an hour to lie in a make-believe tropical island, listening to taped sounds of Pacific breakers, and tropical monkeys fucking.

‘How did you know I was coming back alone?’ I asked.

‘There were only two spare girls at the party, and neither of them was your type. I decided that if you hadn’t come with a girl, then you wouldn’t be going home with one.’

‘I didn’t see you at the party.’

‘I was there – all six foot three of me.’

‘I can’t have been looking high enough.’

I felt something cool and firm grip an important part of my reproductive apparatus. ‘Careful what you say, Max Flynn. I don’t want any gags about the mountain going to Muhammad because Muhammad wouldn’t go to the mountain.’

‘You’re one hell of a gorgeous mountain,’ I said.

She released her grip, and set to work on my body again, and we didn’t talk for another hour. When we did, it was she who opened the dialogue; she did it by prodding me very hard in the stomach and bringing me out of my not entirely unpleasant coma.

‘Max Flynn,’ she said, ‘what do you do?’

‘What? You don’t already know?’

‘No. I can tell you’re not an interior decorator.’

‘Is that a compliment or an insult?’

She stuck a Rothmans in my mouth, then held the flame of a platinum-cased Zippo to the end of it. Then she took the cigarette, lit her own with it, and put it back. ‘It’s an insult!’ she said.