Shearson suddenly released her, and raised his arms, like a boxer showing the referee that he’s broken completely free from a clinch. His eyes were giving nothing away at all. They were bland and bulbous and they didn’t even blink. He backed away, his thighs wobbling, his hands still raised.

‘Well, then, Della,’ he said, softly, ‘you can do whatever you choose. But if you decide you want to stay with that newspaper of yours, you’d better get yourself dressed and leave this house right now, and there’s something else you’d better consider, too. You’d better consider my friendly association with Mr Wendell Oliver, and how that might adversely affect your career. What’s more, you’d better think about all those confidences to which you’ve accidentally become a party, and how dangerous those kind of confidences can be. Why, I’ve known people with information like that get themselves into all kinds of trouble.’ In the dim Moroccan room there was no sound at all, save for Shearson’s laboured breathing. Then, the senator reached out behind him for the ottoman, and sat down on it, still breathing heavily, and still watching Della with those intense, vacant eyes of his.

‘If you decide you want to take up a new career in my employment, of course, your whole life’s going to be different,’ he said. There was no expression on his face at all. ‘You’re going to discover a whole new world of diamonds, and mink, and Cadillacs. That part of life which my good friend Alan Hedges calls “The Gravy”.’

He lay back, his belly spreading wide, his thighs crowding underneath its fleshy overlap like the carcasses of two white whales being towed along by a factory ship. But between them, his erection rose as strong as ever, and his balls were as tight as a fist.

‘Are you coming?’ he asked her.

She stayed where she was while an unseen clock ticked away another minute in her life. A brass-and-ebony clock which had ticked away the lives of unknown Moroccans in Tangier, and which Shearson had brought back with him from North Africa on one of his regular antique-plundering trips.

During this minute, she didn’t look pretty, even though her hair was shining bright red, and the shadows which fell across her nearly-naked body were soft and flattering. But then she approached the ottoman, and looked down at Shearson’s massive body, and smiled. The smile of a sensual woman, possibly – even the smile of a hooker. But she knew what she had to do and the smile went with it.