Things began to break. People came to me instead of me having to go to them, which is always a good sign. In the next two hours I had two telephone calls, both anonymous, and two callers.

I left the Blue Water Casino and went back to the hotel, where I put in a call to London and broke the news to Jolly. He even sounded dyspeptic on the phone but absorbed what had happened to Ogilvie without apparently incurring much pain, the cold-hearted bastard. He dismissed the occurrence with a few curt words and said, ‘What are your findings on Salton?’

‘I’m recommending immediate payment. If he committed suicide you’ll never be able to prove it now and, anyway, the verdict of the inquest was death by natural causes.’

‘All right,’ he said because he couldn’t say anything else. ‘I’ll have the cheque drawn. When are you coming back? We need you here.’

‘When the police will let me,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, when I feel like it.’

‘I said we need you in London.’

‘And Ogilvie needs me here. What am I supposed to do? Leave him here unconscious in hospital and forget him? Besides, I haven’t finished the investigation.’

His voice was acid. ‘You have as far as I’m concerned. And I don’t like the tone of your voice.’

‘So have me fired – if you can.’ He couldn’t and he knew it. ‘You can tell Costello that I’m looking into Salton Estates Ltd.’

I put down the telephone before he could say anything else, and fumed for a while. Then the phone rang and caused me to simmer in quite a different way.

A man said, ‘Keep your nose out of what doesn’t concern you or you’ll get what your friend Ogilvie got.’ There was a click and then silence on the line and I listened to it for a long time, hearing only the surge of blood in my inner ear.

Gently I laid the telephone on to its cradle. The chips were down and the game had started. Up to then, everything had been misty and conjectural. Hypothetically, Ogilvie could have been hammered in a street brawl that had nothing to do with the Salton case. But now I knew that someone had something to hide, someone with flesh which would bruise as readily as Ogilvie’s had. I was ready and prepared to do the bruising.

The phone rang again and I picked it up. The receptionist said, ‘There’s a gentleman here to see you, Mr Kemp. A Mr Roker.’

‘Put him on the line.’

The earpiece clicked and buzzed, and then a man said, ‘You don’t know me, Mr Kemp. My name is Roker. I’m with the Caribbean Banking Corporation here in San Martin. I’d like to have a few words with you in private.’

‘What about?’

‘About the … er … investigation you are apparently making here,’ he said delicately.