She got up from the ottoman, walked over, and kissed him on his bald forehead. There were pinpricks of sweat on his brow, and he still smelled of garlic from lunchtime. He glanced up at her and gave an appreciative ‘hmmph,’ but then he was used to the attentions of pretty young women. He was very rich, and very powerful, and apart from that the sheer bodily size of him exerted some sort of grotesque attraction over the unlikeliest girls. One of his mistresses had ecstatically described his love-making as ‘something between riding on Moby Dick in a rough sea, and bouncing on a huge feather bed.’

He had known Della McIntosh for just four days. He had seen her before, of course, because she was the Washington bureau chief for the Kansas City Herald-Examiner, and whenever he held a press conference or handed out prizes or opened his mouth in the Senate, Della McIntosh would have to be there. She had even interviewed his wife Margaret once, for a piece that had run under the headline ‘Living With The Stomach Of The Senate.’

But four days ago, Margaret had been fortuitously out of town, visiting her diabetic sister in San Diego. And when Shearson and Della had found themselves together on the balcony of Senator Karl Leiderman’s elegant Georgetown house, both taking an oxygen break during a seven o’clock cocktail crush, it had been animal attraction at first sight, with nothing to hold it back.

Della was petite – snub-nosed, green-eyed, with vivid red hair in a shaggy Farrah bob. Although she was small, her breasts were enormous – Playboy playmate size – and Shearson had taken one look at her and felt an almost irresistible urge to dig his podgy fingers into them. Della had been wearing a low-cut cocktail dress in electric blue, with a small sapphire cross dangling in her cleavage, and Shearson had walked across the balcony in his huge black tuxedo and loomed over her like Mount Baldy on a dark night.

‘That cross,’ he had rumbled, ‘is resting in the most desirable spot in the whole of the District of Columbia.’

They had left the cocktail party separately. There was no way in which Shearson could ever slip out from anywhere unnoticed. They had met up an hour later at Le Faisan Restaurant, where he had treated her to dinner, and to the unparalleled spectacle of an average Shearson Jones repast. He had steadily eaten his way through turtle soup, fresh trout, roasted quails, rack of lamb, boeuf en croûte, salad, cheese, and a heaped plateful of profiteroles, smothered with hot chocolate and cream.

They had toasted each other wordlessly in Hospices de Beaune.

Now, over by the African-style cocktail cabinet – stained oak topped by minarets and pierced with mirrors – Della mixed them two vodka tonics. Shearson opened a brass-inlaid box and took out a telephone.

‘Are you sure you can trust me?’ asked Della, squeezing the limes.