It was therefore a surprise at around ten past nine that evening, to hear a loud knocking on the front door when there’d been no call-through from the security booth to let Northwood know that another guest had arrived. In fact, Northwood only heard the knock because he happened to be coming downstairs, having just visited his gold and marble bathroom to relieve himself of some champagne. If he’d been inside his eighty-foot by thirty-foot lounge, where the Wednesday Night Specials took place, he wouldn’t have heard anything, because the raunchy music from the boom box in there and the wild, booze-soaked shouts of encouragement from the guests as the girls bumped and ground on the temporary stage in front of the screened front windows was loud enough to drown out anything.

Even so, Lori, one of two maids on duty that evening, got there before him. She was in the process of bringing a tray of empties from the Games Room on the other side of the hall.

Lori wasn’t a real maid. She and Kerry were two pretty barmaids of his acquaintance, who regularly worked this occasion for him specially attired in sexy French uniforms with stocking tops showing under indecently short, pleated skirts. His one full-time domestic servant, Ms Forthergill, the housekeeper, was always given Wednesday evening off, as she would doubtless disapprove of such shenanigans.

‘Lori, wait up!’ Northwood said, descending the last flight of stairs quickly.

He’d just checked his phone, and he was correct – there had been no alert from the security booth, and that bothered him. But Lori had already unlatched the huge front door and had opened it by a couple of inches. She heard her employer, but screamed before she could react as the beaten, bloody-faced form of Rob Hoon was pushed semi-unconscious on top of her. She collapsed beneath his weight, still screaming, but the two figures that piled in through the door behind him were even more terrifying.

Northwood went rigid at the sight of men in black leather jackets and gloves, dark jeans and full-head woollen ski masks, blood-red in colour.

Both wielded what looked like sub-machine guns with silencers fitted to the muzzles.

Northwood launched himself back up the stairs with great lanky strides, covering three treads at a time, only for a volley of suppressed gunfire to burst up the staircase in pursuit, blasting out every spindle in the bannister. Still only halfway up, Northwood hurled himself down into a ball, arms wrapped around his head. With thudding footfalls, one of the intruders, the slightly shorter of the two, hurried up after him, grabbed him by the collar, yanked him to his knees and pushed, sending him rolling back down the stairs.