Outside Fred’s gym, I shuddered in the cold night air, and hunched my shoulders inside my leather jacket. On the far side of Charterhouse Street the men of Smithfield had begun their night’s work, and as they laughed and shouted at each other, their breath came out as steam. Winter was no longer coming. Winter was here. The full yellow moon of October hung low over the dome of St Paul’s. You only see that moon once a year. A hunter’s moon, they call it.

I turned up my collar and hurried home to take over from Mrs Murphy.

The next day I left Savile Row in plenty of time to make my two p.m. appointment with the Right Honourable Ben King, MP.

The address I had was just the other side of Piccadilly on St James’s Street and it should not have taken me more than a few minutes to get there. But I walked up and down the street staring at windows and doors and the address in my hand, feeling like a fool.

Because Ben King’s club was behind one of the many unmarked doors on St James’s Street and if you did not know it was there then you were never meant to find it.

Through one window I glimpsed silver heads, all men, dipped behind newspapers. I took a chance, and this was the place. Inside there was a counter where a uniformed porter took my coat. He had hung it up on what looked like a row of old school pegs before he noticed I was still waiting.

‘Anything else, sir?’ he said.

‘Ticket?’ I said, already sensing that I had made some stupid mistake.

‘Sir?’

‘Don’t I need some sort of ticket for my coat?’

There was another porter behind the front desk and I saw him smiling to himself. The porter who had hung up my coat grinned with hideous good humour.

‘Oh, no tickets in here, sir,’ he said. ‘Your coat is quite safe with us.’

I was escorted into the dining area with my face burning. It was more like a room in a private house than a restaurant. Solitary diners muttered to themselves behind broadsheets. An elderly man in a three-piece pinstripe suit sipped a glass of red wine. Another dozed peacefully, a bowl of rhubarb and custard cooling before him.

And Ben King, the youngest man in the room, Member of Parliament for Hillingdon North, was rising with a smile to greet me.

He was alone at the table but the waiter was clearing away two places. Because of the timing, I had assumed I was going to be offered lunch. Apparently not. The clean-picked bones of a grilled fish were on one plate, a scrap of bloody steak on the other.

‘DC Wolfe,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry this was so difficult to schedule. My apologies. Please.’