‘Not much. But it seems rude not to eat.’

‘Anything special, or do you want me to order?’ he asked helpfully.

‘Oh, anything. I don’t really mind.’ She began to pull herself together. ‘I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to bring my private life to work.’

‘It’s not work exactly, is it?’ he asked with just a note of hope in his voice.

She gave him a look that put him in his place. Firm enough but, he hoped, with just a hint of kindness.

He beckoned the waitress to their table, gave the order and then leaned back and looked around. ‘They’ve not stinted themselves have they?’

‘No. Boat certainly pushed out. And they have twenty-odd like this?’

‘Apparently. Same sort of livery for each one. Not done on a shoestring.’

‘And there’s nobody here you recognize?’ Sarah asked.

‘Well, not apart from Tiger and Erica, no.’

‘Hardly surprising I suppose. I should think Mr Tan makes a point of not dining in the same place twice.’

‘Keep us guessing.’

‘But what about the others? The pictures we have of his associates.’ Sarah scanned the room as unobtrusively as possible.

‘Doesn’t look like it. Not yet anyway.’

‘No. Maybe it was too obvious a thing to do. Maybe we’re wasting our time.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Gary. ‘Time spent doing things like this is never wasted.’ He was pleased she didn’t see what he was getting at. He didn’t want to rush things after all.

For Tiger and Erica it was still a little strange to be out on their own together after twenty-odd years of being a foursome. Like most parents they did manage to see something of each other alone when the girls were younger, but that was invariably after bedtime. Most intimate conversations during the preceding couple of decades were carried out over the washing-up, or in the bathroom, when there was a chance of not being interrupted. Which was not very often. Erica had, it seemed, only to get into the bath for a steady stream of daughters (if two can be considered a steady stream) to keep coming in and out with this problem over homework, or that trouble with a boy. They had grown used to it, it had become a part of life. But it did mean that dining out as a twosome had a degree of novelty value. Even if the conversation did, inevitably, turn to Aisling and Kirsty.

The conversation about Aisling’s latest boyfriend was interrupted when Erica said, ‘Wow! It’s him!’

‘What?’ Tiger was dealing with a particularly crisp spring roll that required all his concentration, and so he did not look up at first.

‘That man over there. The one in the corner. He’s the one who came to the shop.’