Spicer, a typical brutish sort – four-square in shape, with a low brow under his bald head, a flat nose and heavy jaw – went back through the curtain into the pub kitchen. Pentecost sipped more wine, and brushed an imagined speck from his left cuff. When Spicer returned, he had his sidekick, Alfie Atkins, with him; Atkins was roughly the same shape and aspect, except that he was younger, with greasy mouse-brown hair hanging down past his shoulders. Despite their basic monstrous appearance, both henchmen had been kitted out in specially tailored three-piece suits, which managed to make them look vaguely like members of the human race, but neither were as swish as the chap they escorted between them.

He was somewhere in his sixties, and tall and thin, with two stiff mops of chalk-grey hair, one standing upright from his scalp, the other jutting down from his long, lean chin. But aside from that, he was well-dressed, if a trifle dandified: beneath a caped Victorian-style overcoat, he wore a matching bottle-green blazer and tie, plus pink carnation, over a frill-fronted white shirt. His black trousers were pressed so professionally that the crease down either leg could have sliced paper. His shoes were black slip-ons, and had been polished until they glittered.

For all that, there was something gaunt and tawdry about him. Pentecost ignored the nervous but ingratiating smile, detecting a sour tang of body odour, and then those odd-coloured eyes – which automatically marked this chap as shifty – plus some bruising to his face and a dirty bandage wrapping his left wrist. Whoever this fellow was, he might fancy himself a picture of sartorial elegance, but he was no stranger to the cheap seats.

‘I don’t know you,’ Pentecost said slowly. It wasn’t so much a statement as an accusation.

‘Erm, no sir,’ the dandy replied hastily. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself … Gerald McGlaglen’

‘McGlaglen.’ Pentecost steepled his fingers. ‘With a name like that, I’d expect some kind of hardcase. Remember that old-time movie star? East London boy, I believe. Looked like he could drop a carthorse with a single punch.’

‘I do indeed, sir.’ McGlaglen smiled again, another attempt to be ingratiating. ‘A slightly different name, as it transpires … but a fine exponent of the theatrical art.’

‘You look like you should be called Mr Flower,’ Atkins put in, sniggering. ‘Or Mr Petal.’

Pentecost appraised his guest curiously. ‘I know better than most, Mr McGlaglen, that names can be deceptive … so we’ll judge you not on what you’re called, but on what you can tell us. They say you have good information. I sincerely hope I haven’t interrupted my lunch for anything less.’

McGlaglen clasped his hands in a humble gesture. ‘I always aim to satisfy, sir.’

’You sound like a refined man, Mr McGlaglen. Where do you come from?’