That and everything else, thought Raymond. You’ve gone soft, Ray. You’re living in a false world and it’s turned you soft. The real world is brittle and nasty and full of inhumane sorts. You might have escaped from it yourself, but not everyone can run. He thought back to the stories he’d seen coming out of Germany. Hadn’t Artie himself said that Jewish runaways were already turning up in the East End, on the run from the National Socialists in Germany? Well, if Cable Street was any indication – if the fracas in the Midnight Rooms was any sign – they were running from one fire straight into the next. A few short years ago there had been singing and dancing and prosperity, of a sort, in Germany too. Now look at them. How long until it happens here as well?

Stop kidding yourself, Ray. It’s already happening.

Perhaps it was suspicion that was putting down roots in his head, growing stronger and sturdier with every day that passed. Suspicion that his father, who would have been so proud of how elegantly Ray Cohen could dance, would never have counten-anced him dancing here, in the Buckingham Hotel. A place whose lord was a close compatriot of the type of men who marched through their home streets, meaning to drive them out – and all because of who their fathers were, and their fathers’ fathers before them. A place where the Londonderrys came to dine, and spoke so eloquently about their noble German friends. A place where he, Ray Cohen, had danced with Unity Mitford from the richest family in the land, kissed her once on each cheek and watched as she was chauffeured off to meet her plane and – at the other end – the hateful Führer Hitler to whom she was so devoted.

Maybe it was the realisation that, bitter and angry and playing him for money as they were, his family might just have been right.

He came out of his agony and fixed Billy with a glare. ‘You’d do me a favour, wouldn’t you, Billy?’

‘That’s what I’m here for, Mr de Guise.’

‘There’s a girl here. She works under Mrs Moffatt, in housekeeping. Her name’s Nettleton. Nancy Nettleton. Find her and bring her to me, would you, Billy? I have some . . . explaining to do.’

*

Nancy Nettleton was in the housekeeping kitchenette when Billy Brogan appeared at the doors. In the week since Mr Simenon had delivered her so joyously into Mrs Moffatt’s hands, she had tried her best to remain invisible.