The beer and the gin were sloshing about inside him. He felt like a car wash.

He wasn’t even sure he was still taking part in this conversation. Benny was doing all the talking.

“And of course, you know who else used to attend those parties.”

John didn’t.

Then he did.

Benny tapped the side of his nose with his finger. He seemed to have adopted most of his gestures from cheesy soap operas.

“H.R.H.,” he said. “If you’ll pardon the abbreviation.”

The car wash was going into its lathering cycle. Cigarette smoke was drifting past John’s face, crawling up his nose, into his mouth.

“And my man—Mr. Four-Storey—well, he had a few crafty souvenirs, didn’t he?”

Audio and visual, John remembered.

“All on his laptop, handy as you like. Course, I fed that into a crusher first thing. Soon as I knew what I’d got hold of, I mean.”

He put a hand in his pocket, and when he withdrew it was clutching a USB stick.

“Always with me,” he said. “One and only copy.”

John Bachelor turned and threw up into the gutter.

Benny stood next to him, a hand on his shoulder while he heaved.

“You’re my milkman, John,” he said. “Don’t forget. You’re here to make sure I’m all right.”

“Oh God. What now?”

And here was Daisy back.

“John’s been taken poorly,” Benny said. “Must have been something he didn’t bother to eat.”

He felt better after being sick. Not brilliant, but better. And was capable of ambulatory motion—capable of constructing the phrase “ambulatory motion,” even—because here he was, cutting through Holborn, the three of them like friends, Daisy one side, Benny Manors the other. Yes, friends. He hadn’t had a day like this in as long as he could remember. Spending the sunshine getting wasted with his best mate, and staggering home shot to pieces. Jesus, he’d had a skinful. How much money had he got through? Best not think about that.

Daisy pulled on his arm as they reached a road. “Oi! Let’s not walk under a bus, all right?”

Let’s not.

He’d cleaned himself up in the loo before leaving the pub, and had managed a quick call to Di Taverner. Voicemail. So he’d left a message—nothing too revealing, but enough to let her know he’d completed his mission. And that Benny Manors carried his evidence, the one and only copy, on his person at all times. It was possible he’d mentioned Solly’s flat, and their arrangement that he get to stay there. Anyway, that done, he’d returned to the bar to find Benny had bought another round, and it would have been rude not to drink it. Settled his stomach. That or the one after.