Innuendo, then. Luca eyed her warily. Hair tousled and lips glossed, she was propping one arm up on the wall and striking a Playboy pose. She had a chandelier tattoo beneath her breasts. With a flash of clarity, he remembered burying his forehead drunkenly into it, calling her by somebody else’s name.

His groin – no great judge of one-liners, but a rapid response unit to full frontal – was stirring obligingly, and he forced himself to think about the boy spitting out sand, the undiluted fury in his face. Mishaal would never bear the shame of such dishonour if his father was there to witness it with eighty close friends and business allies. Luca had to ensure it didn’t happen by getting up at dawn tomorrow to work the horse in. ‘Signe, I really can’t stay.’

‘Of course you can.’ She weaved towards him, chandelier swinging as her hips swayed exaggeratedly, holding his keys and phone behind her back now.

‘Put some clothes on, please.’ He reached round her to take them, finding himself trapped in an octopus tangle of naked Signe clinch. ‘Seriously, I’m away to my bed.’

‘Away to mine instead,’ she said, mocking his accent breathily, arms curling around him.

If it was difficult to take one’s leave with a small, naked and remarkably strong Swedish woman grappling to undo one’s fly buttons, it was harder still with door double-locked.

‘How do I undo this fucking thing?’

Signe was on his belt buckle now, kissing his chest where his shirt was still open from all her unbuttoning earlier.

‘For the love of God, Signe, will you get off me! What’s got into you?’

She backed off reluctantly, holding her hands up. ‘Okay! So you don’t want sex?’

‘You’re beautiful and you’re fun, but no. Not right now.’

She looked suddenly vulnerable, crossing her arms over her breasts. ‘Just stay and sleep here tonight, will you? No sex, I promise.’

Again, Luca sought to shrug off the yoke of obligation from his shoulders. ‘Sure, you’ll be fine. Nobody’s going to get in past this thing, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ He spun the lock again. ‘Will you let me out? I have to check on Bechstein.’

‘Why?’ she demanded, anxious white rims round the blue eyes. ‘The nightman’s there.’

‘I don’t trust him.’

‘The dogs will be loose.’

‘Sure, they don’t bother me. C’mon, Signe, stop mucking about.’

Looking even more agitated, she reversed to the sofa to wrap herself in the Swedish flag. ‘I think it’s best you stay here, Luca, for your own sake.’

This was starting to get seriously weird. Guessing that she’d double-locked the door, Luca started searching for her keys. In a large glass bowl beside him, amongst loose change, hairclips and lanyarded competition passes, was a man’s watch, a chunky Patek Phillipe, its three-dial face familiar. He’d stared it in its face at wither height more than once, the crocodile strap wrapped around the sinewy wrist of a petulant young horseman born to the sort of outrageous privilege that meant his timepieces were worth more than Irish country houses set amid rolling acres, and yet could be casually left forgotten on a washbasin rim or in a member of staff’s flat.