He went through the closed window with an eruption of glass and fell into thin air. I heard his sister scream and I heard Wren cry out and just a second later we heard a hideous thump as he landed one floor below.

I was already running for the stairs.

The wrought-iron railings had broken his fall, impaling his great bulk, one spike speared into his groin and another through his cheek. A couple more had torn open his guts and buried themselves deep inside.

I heard Wren calling it in at the same awful moment I recoiled backwards as if struck in the face, choking on the sewer stink of a man’s spilt intestines.

Chapter 23

23

I SAT IN my car on Prince Albert Road, the lights of the mansion blocks rising up on one side of me and the black vastness of Regent’s Park on the other, and I felt the sickness rise in me as Ben King came out of Natasha Buck’s block. I grimaced at the smooth Westminster smile as the fawning porter let him out, actually touching his head in salute, as if seeking a forelock to tug.

Even when he was sneaking around his friend’s widow after dark, King looked every inch the visiting dignitary.

She must have thought there was time enough to get him off the premises before I arrived. But for some reason there is never much traffic around the park, and I was early.

Natasha was dressed for a date. Candles on the table. Al Green singing about staying together. The smell of roasting red meat. And the perfumed smell of her as she kissed me on one cheek and then the other and then, finally, on the mouth. A smell to make a man want to start inhaling and never stop.

I was carrying a bottle of wine and she took it with elaborate grace as I thought how wrong, how grotesque, how inappropriate.

A date, I thought. We’re on a date.

The rage inside me was directed at myself as well as her.

On the sofa the dog opened its bleary eyes, clocked me and then closed them again, deeply unimpressed, as Natasha brought me a bottle of Asahi Super Dry and a frosted glass that had been sitting in the freezer, waiting for me.

‘Scout,’ she said. ‘She went with her friend? To her playover?’

‘Sleepover,’ I said. ‘Yes, her friend’s mother picked them up after school.’

Natasha bit her bottom lip. Laughed. Shook her head.

‘Then we can have a sleepover too,’ she said, coming in close, holding my arm, looking up at me. ‘You must think I’m bad.’

I laughed. Then she wasn’t smiling.

‘What’s wrong?’

I walked towards the sofa but I didn’t sit down. I wasn’t staying long.