An appropriate metaphor for a dealer in performance cars that his bank manager had used, ‘Lanky’ Larry Olson rued.

‘But sometimes,’ his bank manager told him, turning him down for a further business loan, ‘you can be too far ahead of the curve. Ever heard the saying, “It’s the second mouse that gets the cheese?”’

Larry had come in early this morning to open up his small showroom with its big name, Sussex Sporting E-Cars. The location, in a mews off Church Road, wasn’t helping, because there was hardly any through traffic. He should have been bolder and gone for a prime site when he’d opened, but he had worried that the rent would have stretched him too much.

The gangly fifty-five-year-old was dressed as he was every day of his working life, in a sharp suit, shirt and sober tie. He had a mop of thinning fair hair turning to grey, big blue eyes, a winning smile, and was charm personified. His first wife had told him he could sell fridges to Eskimos. His second that he could sell guano to bats. His future third wife had told him, three years ago, that he was nuts to give up his lucrative job as the top salesman for Jim Spatchcock Honda.

But hey, when he’d hit fifty he’d seen Jim Spatchcock in the Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune of over £200 million from his chain of car dealerships around the UK. Sure, Larry knew he earned good money himself, but it was peanuts compared to that. With retirement looming too close for comfort, it was now or never if he was going to strike out and make his fortune.

The way forward, for sure, was in electric cars. He used his savings, remortgage money from his house and a decent bank loan to start this specialist business, trading in second-hand electric performance cars.

Except the business, which had started two years ago, wasn’t as of yet booming the way he had anticipated, and he was fast running out of cash – and credit.

As he stared around the shiny, brand-new-looking stock of cars in his showroom, he was reflecting on just how poor business had been during these past months. The words from a record made by his favourite-ever comedians, the late Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, came to mind.

Moore was interviewing Cook in his persona of the world’s most unsuccessful entrepreneur, Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, about his latest catastrophic venture, a restaurant serving only frogs and peaches, situated in a bog in the middle of the Yorkshire Moors. In response to the question about how business had been, Cook replied, ‘Business hasn’t been and there hasn’t been any business.’

Which was pretty much how he felt, Larry reflected.

So far he was surviving, just. But with the further loan he’d been hoping for now turned down, he needed to make some good sales – and quickly. And he had one very big prospect coming in this morning to test drive the most expensive car in the showroom. A top spec, two-year-old BMW i8 hybrid. New, it had cost close to £130,000. He’d managed to buy it at an auction of cars seized back by finance companies for a knock-down £37,000 and had it advertised at £89,500. If he got that price it would hand him a profit of more than £50,000, which would see him through for a good few months.