“For the last time, we don’t know what’s happening,” one said sharply to a bunch of determined journalists who had abandoned their role of delegates for the far more exciting one of on-the-spot news reporters. As their baying rose to a crescendo, she shouted, “I don’t give a damn what your news-desks want to hear, we haven’t got anything to tell you. All we know is what you know. If you want to hassle someone who might have some answers, why don’t you go and find the Standing Orders Sub-Committee? They’re meeting right now to decide what’s going to happen to conference.”

The pack were gone faster than Jennifer would have believed possible.

“Excuse me,” she said in a low voice to the harassed woman. “I’m Lindsay Gordon’s solicitor. I rather think I need to speak to your Standing Orders Sub-Committee. They may be able to help me. Can you give me directions?”

The woman gave a wicked grin. “Well, you won’t find them in their committee room. All you’ll find there is a shower of frustrated journos. They needed to meet in peace, so they went off somewhere else. But I don’t think they’ll object if I tell you.”

Ten minutes later, Jennifer stood in the doorway of Burger King. A quick glance was all she needed to spot the seven members of the committee that was responsible for the smooth running of the first annual conference of the AMWU. The four women and three men had taken over two tables and each had a bundle of papers in front of them. Although, like all Standing Orders committees, they were generally credited with possessing the sharpest brains in their union, right then they all looked like bankers with indigestion.

Jennifer walked confidently up to the table and gave them her best professional smile. “I’m sorry to intrude,” she said, “but I think I need your help.”

They gazed at her with expressions that ranged from bewilderment to relief. Jennifer sat down on the vacant chair and introduced herself. “What I need desperately is to find the Irishman that Lindsay was talking to between leaving the ceilidh and entering her room. I know it’s rather like asking you to produce a needle from a haystack, but I hoped you’d be able to indicate the best way of achieving this.”

A middle-aged man with a crew-cut and a flamboyant silk waistcoat snorted. “Dear lady,” he drawled in the cultivated tones of a Radio Three announcer, “we find ourselves desperately searching the rule book for something that might conceivably cover the eventuality of the suspicious death of a general secretary in the midst of conference. We’d got as far as a two-minute silence. You have no idea how welcome it is to be asked to do something so simple and straightforward as to find one Irish drunk among so many!”