‘Next week. When I work with my trainer, I always scrub up pretty well, but my body – if I don’t work hard in the gym and don’t eat properly all the time – packs it on quickly. Sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation to live the perfect lifestyle twenty-four seven.’

I nodded. ‘I can imagine.’

‘Now, that drink?’

‘Just water would be great,’ I said.

I followed him through to the kitchen and stole a look to my right, along one of the two corridors that led from the living room: in this one were more glass walls, segregating the hallway from a gym – a running machine visible – and what looked like a shower and sauna. There was steam on the glass next to the shower, and I could see a pair of dumbbells on a mat in the gym. He’d obviously just finished exercising.

He handed me a glass of water.

‘I appreciate you seeing me so quickly, Mr Zaid.’

He waved me away, as if it had been no trouble at all. ‘Robert’s perfectly fine.’ His accent was elegant, his words refined. ‘Today is one of the rare days when I’ve been relatively unencumbered by meetings, so when Jackie told me yesterday that you’d called and asked to see me, I confess I did spend a moment Google-stalking your name to see if it was a meeting I should take. But as soon as I saw what you did for a living, I was intrigued as to how I might be able to help. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a missing persons investigator before.’

‘Well, this is what we look like.’

He smiled again. ‘So I see.’

He directed me to the sofas in the living room and, as I sunk into one of them, I could see along the opposite hallway. There was a bedroom at the far end.

‘You’ve got a beautiful place here,’ I said.

‘Thank you.’ He looked around the room, out to the garden and the swimming pool. ‘I’ve been very lucky, I know that. My father was wealthy, I was fortunate to get an extremely good education, I’ve had a very interesting and varied career at the Foreign Office – those things shouldn’t be underestimated. But I like to think I’ve not relied on the fact that I was given certain assistances. I hope that what I’ve done with my advantage is to help people from less auspicious backgrounds than myself.’