I wanted to take the Underground to St James’s Park as I had already spent fifteen pounds on my train ticket, but the others insisted we were millionaires now and made me hop in the back of a cab. The hotel was new and compulsively trendy, and we were given a frightening bouquet of orchids at reception to take up to our suite. The suite itself was divided into three rooms: two bedrooms and a drawing room overlooking the street and beyond it the green reach of Hyde Park. Each of the bedrooms contained a king-sized bed, and had an en-suite bathroom. Scented candles burned on the dressing tables. Summer twilight came in discreetly like room service from the park. The expensive hotel confirmed us in our roles as secret agents, master criminals, forgers extraordinaires. ‘You take one bedroom,’ Francis said to Jessica, ‘James and I will share the other bed.’

Francis produced a plain white T-shirt that hugged his torso and a heavy damask coat embroidered with a rich tapestry of black roses.

‘I got it at auction last week,’ he said, displaying the back to us, ‘I was bidding against the V and A. It’s eighteenth century. Can you believe they wanted to put it into a glass cabinet? I told the director they could have it when I die.’

‘How did you pay for it?’ Jessica asked, a little warily.

‘I got credit,’ Francis said, and disappeared into the bathroom.

We changed, and before we left at ten-thirty we each did a line of coke and downed vodka from the mini-bar. Jessica was wearing black leather trousers and an elegant pink corset. Her hair was up, and she had black smudges on the lids of her sockets that made her blue eyes gleam. After a brief debate we left the coke in the hotel. I walked out of the lobby into the waiting taxi feeling like a god.

It was in the gilt belly of Vagabond that we were to meet our business partner for the first time. Lisa met us at the door and ushered us past the courteous bouncer and the laminated women running the cloakroom. The actual exchange of the picture and subsequent money transfer had gone off without a hitch, and she had presented the meeting to us as a mere formality, a courtesy requested by our buyer to mark the completion of the deal. It should perhaps have occurred to me that it was odd for him to waive his anonymity in this way, but I was too excited to be suspicious. We came down the stairs and waited for guidance in the crowded foyer. The main dance floor looked to me like the drawing room of a country house, with extensive carving in the oaken panelling on the walls, which were hung with oils depicting drab hunting scenes. In the most impressive painting a group of hounds brought down a stag before a wooded hillside. A splash of scarlet on the stag’s flank was the only discordant point of colour in a tawny landscape, and it produced a sense of shocking violence. A great fireplace flanked by sturdy fluted columns and a tumbling brigade of pudgy putti dominated the wall opposite the doorway, and vied for attention with the DJ booth, which jutted out into the dance floor like a rich mahogany pulpit. The sober elegance of the decor contrasted strongly with the clientele, who appeared to be neither sober nor elegant, but aggressively high and attractive.