‘I should be getting off soon,’ said Nelson, checking his watch.

‘You have some more time yet, surely,’ said Shane.

‘Well, maybe a few more minutes,’ he said reluctantly, not wanting to let his boyfriend down.

‘Yes, do stay,’ said Susan coldly. ‘You’re such fun. I can see why my brother likes you. You’re the absolute life of the party.’

‘Thank you,’ muttered Nelson.

‘You must have some wonderful stories. About police life, I mean? I’d love to hear them.’

‘Oh, not really. Most of it is surprisingly mundane. Drug kingpins, terrorists, flashers, that sort of thing. The really good stuff is top secret, you know. For your eyes only.’

‘For my eyes?’

‘No, for the eyes of, you know, my superiors.’

‘He’s being modest, he has lots of good stories,’ said Shane. ‘Tell her about the time you captured a cat burglar.’

‘Oh no,’ said Nelson, feeling himself begin to blush again. ‘No, she wouldn’t want to hear about that.’

‘A cat burglar?’ said Susan, perking up. ‘That sounds fascinating. Oh, go on, tell me!’

‘I don’t know if I—’

‘Tell me!’ she insisted. ‘Then you can go. Just tell it quickly, the main points.’

‘All right, then,’ said Nelson, taking a last bite from his sandwich, wiping his lips with a napkin and pushing the plate away. ‘Well, it didn’t start in London, I should point out. It started in France. On the French Riviera, in fact. It seems that there was a cat burglar working the area, breaking into rich people’s houses and the bedrooms of luxury hotels and so on, stealing all the women’s jewellery. Really high-priced stuff.’

‘Goodness!’ said Susan. ‘How exciting!’

‘The French police had a suspicion about who it was, but they hadn’t been able to capture him.’

‘And who was he?’

‘A fellow named John Robie. They called him Le Chat. Which is French for The Cat.’

‘It’s not, is it?’

‘It is, yes.’

‘And John Robie, you say?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Actually, I think I’ve heard of him,’ said Susan, frowning. ‘Perhaps I read about him in the newspapers.’

Nelson looked a little discomfited but carried on.

‘Anyway, the gendarmes caught up with him at his hilltop villa but he climbed out on the roof and gave them the slip. Then he made his way to Calais and across the Channel on a boat to England and settled in London, where he took up his old game, breaking into the Mandarin Oriental and the Ritz and the Savoy and all the rest of them. He caused quite a stir.’

Susan’s eyes narrowed while Shane’s face grew in excitement.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell her what happened next!’

‘Well, this John Robie fellow got caught up with an American heiress and her mother and he fell in love with the younger woman, and she fell in love with him too, and he insisted that he wasn’t the one responsible for any of the robberies and he’d only come to London to try to clear his name by catching the real villain in the act.’