Someone out there must have seen the chink of light at the upper-storey window. I caught a brief glimpse of something thrown and there was a smash of glass just to my left. I dropped the curtain quickly and stepped back. The drapery had prevented shattered glass from spraying into the room, but the missile lay on the carpet: a jagged half-brick.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hanna and Barstow making a quick exit and then Conyers was coming towards the window. ‘What’s going on out there?’

‘It’s the voice of a dead man,’ I said. ‘You can’t fight that, Mr Prime Minister.’

EIGHT

I

Although Joe Hawke had not been invited to the Prime Minister’s cocktail party, he was undoubtedly present, in spirit if not in body. The crowd out in the square might have been yelling the name of Salton, but they were puppets manipulated by Hawke. He was milking the situation for all it was worth.

The reaction in the ballroom could best be described as modified panic. As another window smashed, the noisy conversation gave way to the roar of the crowd outside and, for a tantalising moment, everyone stood still. The mob, a manifold wild beast, sounded like something out of a zoo baying with a rage that held everyone in a strange paralysis.

Then a woman screamed and the spell was broken. Conyers swung on his heel and elbowed his way through the crowd, which had begun to scurry about in a chaotic manner. Women were gathering up their handbags and already the quicker-witted were slipping away. I saw Conyers approach a red-tabbed army officer and speak to him urgently. The officer nodded, picked up his braided cap and a swagger stick, and shouldered his way to the door.

I didn’t like the look of that. If sending in the army was Conyers’s instinctive response to a civil disturbance, it suggested he was losing his grip. The use of armed force against civilians is not a good indication of a clear-headed statesman.

A third window smashed and I decided it was time to make a move. The crowd had thinned appreciably – there would be no last-minute drunks at this party – and I made my way across the room. Negrini grabbed my arm. ‘Seen Jill Salton?’

‘The last time I saw her she was out there.’ I nodded towards the door.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘She’ll have got a head start.’ He grimaced. ‘What do you think’s blown the lid off?’

‘Someone told me it was me,’ I said, and ignored his look of surprise. ‘What’s the best way out of here?’

‘You saw out front: how does it look?’

‘The square’s jammed with people.’

‘Damn,’ he said. ‘My car’s out there. Maybe the back door’s our best bet.’