I switched the light on and immediately saw that things were different. Things were not as I had left them when I was last in there two days before. The tea trolley had been moved a few feet away from the wall, a dark green tray patterned with various species of tropical birds lay on the table. Most troubling of all, most sinister, was the flashlight that stood on the sideboard, lamp-end downward.

Quickly I opened the table napkin drawer. Liv’s money was gone.

Chapter 17

17

IT’S A STRANGE FEELING you have when you discover you’ve lost a sum of money, a sudden hollowness inside, as if something has fallen out of your body. Not just money, though. I expect you feel it when you have lost any valuable item, jewelry, something expensive that you’ve just bought. Last evening, leaving the former Gilmore Hotel in Sussex Gardens, I went to find my car, which was parked quite a long way away, on a meter in Praed Street. Several times that day I had been back to the car to feed the meter (when no traffic warden was looking) and moving the car and putting cash into the new meter (when one was). Someone must have watched me and seen me feel for change in my jacket pocket, for, when I got to the car at just before six, not only the remaining change but my wallet, which was also in the pocket, were gone. Mugging has never happened to me before and I didn’t like it, though the sum involved was only £30, and credit cards are quickly replaceable. I suppose that what I hate is being made a mug of, not being streetwise enough, not being sufficiently on my guard.

I had no such feelings when I understood that Liv’s £2,000 was gone, no hollowness as of having expelled well-being and contentment, but pure panic. I searched every drawer in that room, though I knew perfectly well where I had left those wads of notes. But that is always done in these circumstances, it comes of not trusting oneself, doubting one’s own memory. I desperately wished I had asked Silver to stay with me that night, just to have him there, his comforting presence. I thought of going back to him. If I did that, I might find Liv still up, still in that room with her head against Wim’s knees. Sooner or later I should have to face her but not then, not now. In the end I just went back to bed. I even managed to sleep, waking early to a pounding on the door at the foot of the interior staircase.