He ran from the car and mounted the steps to the plain white door that was the entrance to Club Eleven, head down against the driving rain. He pressed the bell and looked along the wet pavement to the Flamingo, a bright splash of light in the darkness. That could come later. For the moment, there was nothing he wanted so much as a few quiet words with Sammy Rosco.

The door opened and he moved in past a uniformed commissionaire and found himself standing in a tiny, thickly carpeted foyer. A young girl in black stockings and not much else, took his coat and a white-haired military-looking type came forward and smiled charmingly.

‘Membership card, sir?’

‘I haven’t got one, but I’d like to see Miss Ryan. Tell her it’s Nick Miller.’

‘A personal friend, sir?’

‘I think you could say that. We’ve even pounded the same beat together.’ The man frowned and Nick produced his warrant card and dropped it on to the reception desk. ‘Give her this with my compliments.’

The man’s face fell, but he picked up the telephone and pressed a button. After a few moments’ muttered conversation he replaced the receiver. When he turned, the smile was back and pasted firmly into place.

‘Miss Ryan will be with you in just a moment, Mr Miller. Perhaps you would care to wait at the bar? The floor show is just beginning.’

‘I’ll find my own way,’ Nick said.

He went through a door at the end of the passage and found himself standing at the top of a short flight of steps which dropped into a crowded dining-room. Above the tables was a raised catwalk and scantily dressed show girls were engaged in a dance routine.

The tables were crowded and the customers were exclusively men, most of them being entertained by the hostesses Club Eleven supplied in such profusion.

Nick ordered a drink and stood at the end of the crowded bar. After a while, there was a drum roll and a fat and balding comedian came skipping along the catwalk, a mike in one hand.

His patter was the usual mixture of crude filth and innuendo, but mixed in with it was a genuine acid wit, mostly directed at the customers themselves, a fact none of them seemed to grasp.

Finally the comedian stood to one side and took up his ancillary role as compère of the big event of the evening and the one for which, to judge from the applause, most of the customers had been waiting.

It was the usual sort of thing. Famous beauties through the ages. Each time the comedian announced a name, a curtain rose at the back of the room disclosing a nude tableau and various fleshy young women depicting Helen of Troy, Eve in the Garden and so on.