52

Robert Zaid’s home was every bit as beautiful on the inside as it was out. Polished wooden floors led from a foyer into a sunken living room – modern and airy, the furniture a mix of homely and contemporary – that, in turn, swept through to a huge, all-glass garden room. Beyond that was a tiered lawn, dotted with lights, and an outbuilding with a slate roof that appeared to house a swimming pool. I could see the reflection of the water on the walls, shimmering softly.

Outside, I heard the crunch of gravel as Zaid’s security team headed away, the sound of their vehicles quickly swallowed by the night. Once they were gone, Zaid used a sensor to close the gates and pushed the front door shut, cranking one of its locks. The moment he did, I heard a long beep from somewhere deeper in the house, and realized every entrance, every lock and every latch, was wired into an alarm system. There were clearly significant advantages to being as wealthy as Zaid was – but having to live like a prisoner wasn’t one of them.

I followed him further in.

‘Can I get you something to drink?’ he asked, and stopped at the edge of the living room, where three steps descended towards a low coffee table surrounded by a white rug.

He was in his early fifties, olive-skinned and dark-haired, with a neat beard. I’d managed to find a limited collection of photographs of him online, taken over a decade before, but there were more recent ones on the wall to my left, shots of him that hadn’t ever been publicized, and the one pattern I’d noticed was how much Zaid’s weight had fluctuated over time. In some of them, he was well-built and lean, muscular, strong, and in others, he’d totally gone to seed, the heft gathering around his face and in a band along his midriff, his belly straining against his shirt or lifted away from his beltline entirely by the sphere of his stomach. Right now, though, he was strong and angular, dressed in a pair of tracksuit trousers and a training top, and, as I looked at him, I had the weirdest sensation that we’d met before.

‘I like to box,’ he said, and gestured to the wall. ‘It’s why my weight goes up and down. I could see you were wondering, but you’re too much of a gentleman to say. It looks like you’ve been in the ring yourself.’

He was talking about the bruise on my cheek. ‘Just a little accident,’ I said, returning the smile. ‘So are you prepping for a fight now?’