“I know. But I shall be working from home today. I need some time to think. Is there anything urgent, meetings that ought not to be rescheduled?”

She quickly checked the screen. “Just internal ones.”

“Then cancel them.”

“Very good, sir.”

“You do have something to do today?”

Elizabeth Percy smiled. How like Hugh Montfort to imagine that if somebody wasn’t working they were at a loose end. Of course she had something to do. She would go home, shower, call Jack at the bank, and they’d go at it like rabbits. Jack could get away for half an hour. And then afterwards maybe she’d go shopping. . . .

A day off. Montfort never gave her even five minutes off. This was like Christmas.

“Oh, yes, thank you, Mr. Montfort.”

He appeared in the outer office with his briefcase. “Well—have fun, then, I suppose.”

“Goodbye, sir,” said his astonished assistant.

What on earth could Louis Maitre have had to say to Mr. Montfort? It was as though he’d won the lottery, she thought, as her boss strode out with the same purposeful gait he’d walked in with. She admired the rear view. No, must have been better than the lottery; that was just money, and money would never keep him out of the office.

Oh well. Mustn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and all that. She dialled Barclays in High Street Ken. Maybe she could catch Jack between meetings.

Hugh ignored the taxis. It was a fine day, and he preferred to walk. London, for all the choking exhaust fumes and crowds of badly dressed shoppers, was still a marvellous place in late spring. The sky was clear blue, with just a few white clouds scudding briskly across it. He felt a surge of something very rare, not quite happiness, as such, but more like satisfaction. Yes, it was finally coming together, and he felt satisfied with himself. It was the same feeling he got when playing chess at the club and he could look across the board and quite clearly see his checkmate, a mere five or six moves away.

The exercise would help calm him. Whenever he felt excesses of emotion, good or bad, he liked to go for a walk. When he was retired, in what, fifteen years or so, he would get a couple of dogs. He wasn’t in Ireland long enough to own dogs there, and you couldn’t keep dogs in London, it was too cruel.

No, at present he was unable to own a dog. Or form any other kind of attachment. Even if he had wished to, he travelled too much.