He stood for a moment and took in the suite. No, he thought, all the brandy in the world couldn’t have the same effect as simply standing here, breathing it all in. Just stepping through the doors made him feel lighter, freer, as if Mr Moorcock and all of his MI5 acolytes didn’t exist at all. If only he could stay here . . . and not have to march out each morning to battle with the Buckingham, nor retire each night to his own quarters, just in case he was seen creeping around and questions started to be asked. There were already enough rumours about the permanently locked abandoned suite on the sixth floor. One day soon he would have to perform an elaborate act of misdirection and silence them all again.

The suite’s lounge room was small but cosy, with an ornamental fireplace around which three armchairs were arranged, and a wireless which ordinarily buzzed with news from the BBC. Radio was a godsend; it opened one up to so much of the world. These newfangled television sets might be a novelty, but they would never replace radio in Maynard Charles’s view. Who would want a pair of eyes staring back at you from a little box in the corner, as they read out the news? But the radio – the radio could be a comfort, through the long, lonely days.

The trolley was still waiting, where Mrs Moffatt had left it, ready to be picked up in the morning. The grouse they had eaten for dinner had been superb, and the spiced plums for pudding had made Maynard think of Christmases in long gone, happier times. He fancied he could taste them even now, as he crossed the little lounge and went through the archway into the bedroom.

The wheelchair was up against the wall, where he had left it. Two single beds dominated most of the room; by the side of the bed closest to him was the medicine cabinet and, by that, an oxygen tank, now spent, that Doctor Evelyn Moore routinely delivered. The sounds coming from the first bed were only gentle snores, and this made Maynard’s heart soar – because it meant that everything was all right.

Quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeper, Maynard Charles took off his dressing gown, crossed the room, and climbed under the covers of his own bed. Moments later, the figure in the bed alongside him startled. Inwardly, Maynard cursed. He himself had long been a light sleeper, after the years he had spent sleeping in foxholes in the earth. He hadn’t slept a night uninterrupted since the Somme in 1916.

The figure picked himself up, as if expecting attack.

‘Shhhh,’ Maynard began. ‘It’s only me.’

‘What happened?’ said a voice.

‘Oh, Buckingham business. Another fire that needed extinguishing. It’s—’

‘Not Moorcock again?’