‘I don’t give two hoots about how happy he is. He will not relinquish his position. You may need to be seen to play second fiddle. Just for a while. Just watch him for me, Raymond. Christmas is already on us. The New Year’s ball is two weeks away. In less than a week our suites open to the great and the good. Without the King in attendance, we must still put on a show. And, of course, Lord Edgerton is gracing us with his presence for New Year. All of his compatriots will be here with him. Mr White, Senior. Mr Mosley.’

Raymond thought: yes, I can dance for them. I danced for those bastards before. I came here tonight to get one up on them, didn’t I? To balance the scales. But what’s a little stolen and redistributed treasure compared to this? They’ve riches enough they might hardly notice . . . But Cable Street was just the beginning, wasn’t it? Another step down that road, a couple further, and suddenly the world could change. What if I can help stop that? What if I can do what’s right for my country, for my people, for my family by staying right here in the Buckingham Hotel, by spying on them just like Maynard Charles wants? Gossip, he calls it. Intelligence. Information. Well, it’s all of those things, but it’s something else as well – it’s power. It’s the power to do what’s right. To protect people who need protecting – not up on the barricades like my brother, but in my own way. ‘It’s time to pick a side,’ Artie had said. Well, now, at least, Raymond was being given the chance to prove it.

‘I’ll do the work for you, Mr Charles,’ he said with a dark finality. ‘But there’s still the problem of Artie. My brother.’ And Nancy, he thought, then pushed the image of her to the back of his mind.

Maynard Charles darkened. ‘Yes. This, I haven’t forgotten. You brought your brother here so that you might steal from me. Am I simply to let it go unpunished?’ He seemed to muse on the idea. Then he crouched again and, opening a locked drawer in his desk, came back with a roll of banknotes in his hand. Delicately, he peeled off the top layers, slipped them inside an envelope, and sealed it. ‘Artie Cohen was never here. He won’t be seen here again because I’m giving the doormen explicit instructions that, if he is seen here, they are to deal with him in the way doormen all over the world deal with intruders. And, of course . . . Raymond de Guise doesn’t have a brother, does he?’

Raymond accepted the envelope, staring in disbelief at Maynard Charles. ‘You’d overlook it, just like that?’