But she still needed to speak to her father. To check on the money. Had he put it in the hotel safe? Surely he hadn’t carried it down to the West End with him? Was he there now? She could hardly believe it, not at almost midnight. His flight was due to leave before nine in the morning, which meant he’d have to leave for Heathrow at seven. He had always been an early riser and early to bed. What had come over him? What had London done to him?

Liv phoned for the last time at exactly midnight. The night receptionist at the hotel told her Mr. Almquist wasn’t in his room. The hotel bar was closed. When had he last been seen? The receptionist knew nothing about it. He’d only come on at eight. Liv asked if he had put anything into the hotel safe, for the place wasn’t of the standard to have private safes in rooms, but the receptionist said in a shocked tone that he was in no position to tell her things like that over the phone.

Liv came out of that room looking thoughtful, but when Wim beckoned to her she went to him as a needle goes to a magnet and I saw that her arms and hands were faintly trembling. He took her on his knee and held his wineglass to her lips.

Chapter 21

21

I’VE SPENT THE DAY at a dolls’ museum in Hampstead, rewiring one of its prize exhibits, a doll’s house valued at £12,000. It’s a perfect facsimile in miniature of a Victorian Gothic mansion, three stories high and with pitched roofs and castellated turrets. It was made in the twenties so had electric light installed, which the museum’s curator had decided needed renewing. Driving home up Downshire Hill from South End Green after completing this enjoyable and peaceful task, I saw Håkan Almquist and his wife. Truth to tell, I had purposely gone that way when South End Road and Fleet Road might have been the better option, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Liv or even of Angus Clarkson himself, it being seven by then. What Liv had become from what she had been exercised a kind of fascination over me. It seemed such an unlikely success story, if you measure success in those terms. But I didn’t see Liv or her husband. I saw her parents.