Millar’s face was suddenly suffused with rage. The hand which was not holding his glass beat furiously on the arm of his chair. ‘I told you! Do not interrupt me. If you can’t hold your bloody nigger tongue, get out! Get the hell out! Get out!’

Jojo rose majestically from his zebra skin, his hands splayed along his thighs.

‘An’ if I do? What then? Who will fix the pills? Who wipes whose backside? Who does a million and one loving little things? Who needs this caressing nigger mouth? You tell me that.’

I got up. My mouth was drier than sawdust, more bitter than wormwood. I ignored the ugliness of the conversation around me, just blundered in.

‘This “everything” which you have belonging to my brother...’

‘It belongs to me now. Remember?’

‘Can I see it? As you will realize, I am a little battered at this moment. Not at all what I expected to hear, any of it, but if you could see your way to just letting me have a look at the stuff, just so that I can form my own opinion, so that I will at least be armed, for his wife … or perhaps discover some clue that might lead me … to know why and where he has gone.’

‘He left in January. In a light snowfall. He came to say farewell. I can assure you that he left of his own volition, against all persuasion to remain. He went, and he never intended to return, or that anyone should try to find him. He was determined to go and no one, no one, I assure you, could have stopped him. It was no sudden caprice. He had reached a conclusion over time. He wanted out.’ Millar threw his empty glass into one of the zebra chairs and began to manoeuvre himself out of the room.

Jojo watched cautiously.

‘Mr Millar?’ I said. ‘May I see the stuff? Can I come back? I am pleading. For my family …’

He stopped in the doorway, his broad back towards me. ‘Oh dear God! The utter tedium of it all! Ten thousand dollars and now this.’ He half turned the chair with angry twists of his hands. ‘Tomorrow. Come to lunch. You can have the afternoon with the stuff. After that no more. No more. Right?’

‘Thank you. No more.’

He turned again and wheeled off into the other room shouting over his shoulder, ‘Jojo, buzz Millie. Our guest is leaving.’ He went noiselessly away.

Down in the hall, Millie Millar had just arrived, a little breathless, fixing her Alice band, eyes anxious behind the thick glasses. She stood at the lift; beyond her, at the front doors, a youngish man in a blue striped apron like a butcher stood with hands by his sides. The early-evening light was fading, spilling from the terrace through the doors, across the polished parquet floor.