When she emerged from an hour with John, discussing other cases, nothing whatsoever to do with Rivelli, he was still sitting in the outer office, making calls, scribbling notes, sending emails. He sprang to his feet the moment she appeared, gabbled ‘okay, okay, ciao’ into his phone, blocked her exit.

‘Hello again,’ said Christine, wondering what he wanted.

‘Miss Fairbrother.’ He put the stress on the second syllable. ‘I want to thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For saving me a lot of trouble.’

‘Ah.’ That full disclosure business. So, he had taken his medicine like a man, then. ‘My pleasure. All part of the service.’

‘And I would like to show my gratitude by taking you to lunch.’

Christine was about to trot out the usual excuses, but then Rivelli touched her on the arm, just above the elbow. Even through the black wool of her jacket, she felt a tingle, and found her mouth saying the word ‘yes’.

Well, after all, she thought, as Rivelli steered her out of the office and into a cab that seemed to materialise out of thin air, he was not a client yet, nor, if John Ferguson was doing his job right, would he ever be. If Rivelli had taken her advice, and given a full disclosure of assets, then there was a good chance that a settlement could be negotiated without the courts being involved at all. And so – what was he to her? A chance acquaintance, really, little more. Someone to whom she had done a good turn. She would be paid for her opinion, of course, by Ferguson McCreath, and thus, indirectly, by Rivelli himself, but there the matter ended. Didn’t it? Yes, she told herself, it did, as Rivelli held the cab door open for her and handed her in.

He took her to L’Escargot.

Sitting across the table from him, it was hard not to make an inventory of his charms. The well-cut, greying hair. The immaculate clothes, the blue checked shirt with the charcoal suit, the open collar revealing a few tufts curling up on to the thick, tanned throat. The hands, neatly manicured but large, masculine, the hands of a working man, not some effete academic or lawyer . . .

‘It is very charming to kidnap you in this way, Miss Fairbrother.’

‘Am I being kidnapped?’ She looked around the light, airy opulence of the L’Escargot dining room. ‘I had no idea it could be so agreeable.’