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And
it stopped him eating calorific food. Once, when he was cooking
as he intended to cook this evening, he would have picked at and
tasted the ingredients. Tasted again during the process and before
he served the food. Now two Chocoranges would see him through.
    At home he unpacked the groceries first. The Chocorange were
in his shoulder bag and there also was the envelope containing the
ten- and twenty-pound notes and the five-pound note he had found
on the corner of the street. Sucking his third Chocorange of the
day, he counted the notes. Some drug dealer's haul, he thought
vaguely, but perhaps not. Eugene wasn't indifferent to other people's
feelings, especially in the matter of money, and it might be, though
he couldn't as yet see how, that these were someone's legitimate
earnings that he had dropped – while being attacked? Such things
happened and more often than ever these days. The obvious thing
was to take the money to the police station in Ladbroke Grove.
But he had another idea.
    He sat down at his desk and wrote, 'Found in Chepstow Villas
a sum of money between eighty and a hundred and sixty pounds.
Anyone who has lost such a sum should apply to the phone number
below.' He transferred this to his computer in various sizes and
styles of type and printed it out. He would attach it to one of the
lamp posts as his neighbours attached appeals for lost cats. Armed
with Sellotape and blu-tak, he went outside into the street with
his sheet of paper and looked for a suitable lamp post. For the
past week such an appeal had been fastened to the post outside
number 62 and it was still there, though the missing animal, a
spiteful Persian kitten called Bathsheba, had returned home two
days before. Eugene peeled off the notice and put up his own in
its stead.
    He thought about it while he was cooking Ella's dinner. The
applicant had only a telephone number. But he had no intention
of handing over the money on a phone call alone. Whoever applied
must be invited here and then asked to name the sum he had lost
precisely. Not eighty pounds or a hundred and sixty pounds but
somewhere in between. There was no way anyone could get it right
except by the most enormous coincidence or by being the true
loser of the money.
    The phone call was really something to look forward to. He
would tell Ella all about it later. Absently, he helped himself to
another Chocorange.

CHAPTER FOUR
    You couldn't walk down any of these posh streets without
coming on a notice appealing for a lost cat. Always on the
lookout for money-making scams, Lance thought it might
be a good idea to find one of them and take it as a what-you-callit,
a hostage. You could ask a big ransom. Those crazy cat owners
would pay anything you cared to name. The difficulty, of course,
was to catch a cat. One of them, a stripy chestnut and dark-brown
job, had just come out from a bank of greenery and flowers and
sat down on the wall opposite the lamp standard on which a member
of its tribe was posted as missing. It began to wash its face.
    Grab it, thought Lance. No, maybe go and get a sack or bag
from somewhere first. He put up one hand, then the other, to see
how easy grabbing it might be. The cat was a lot faster than he.
Quick as a flash, its paw shot out and scratched him right across
his four fingers and the back of his wrist. With a curse, Lance put
his bleeding hand up to his mouth and stepped back. The cat had
gone.
    Kidnapping a cat was obviously a tougher task than he had
supposed. He turned to read the notice on the lamp standard. It
would be just his luck if the missing animal turned out to be that
stripy thing, which looked valuable but had now disappeared. But
the print on the sheet of paper wasn't about a cat at all. Found ,
Lance read, found in Pembridge Crescent, a sum of money between eighty and a hundred and sixty pounds. Anyone who has lost such a sum should apply to the phone number below . That was a funny
way of putting it. Was it eighty or a hundred and