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imagination which can instantly convert good guys into sleazeballs without any evidence. Knock it off!”
    “Okay, I accept he’s not into incest, but something’s got to be going on, Carta. He’s a workaholic. He smokes like an industrial furnace. And he drinks too damn fast and too damn much.”
    “You mean he’s a typical City high flyer.”
    “I mean he could be right out there on the edge and teetering on the brink of a crack-up.”
    I shook my head. “No way,” I said firmly. “Richard’s just not the type to have a spectacular nervous breakdown.”
    But I felt more worried about him than ever.
    X
    The news reached me the next morning at the Appeal office. Here I was assisted by a volunteer, a youthful pensioner called Caroline, who held the fort in my absence, typed letters on a vintage electronic typewriter and kept me fuelled with strong coffee. I was just shoring up some details of the reception we were planning to hold at the hall of Richard’s City livery company, when Caroline took a call on the other line.
    I saw her expression change. “Carta, it’s Jacqui from Curtis, Towers with some bad news about Richard Slaney.”
    Guillotining the conversation I was having with the livery company’s clerk, I punched my way onto the other line. Jacqui, now Richard’s PA, had once worked for me, so I knew her well. “What’s happened?” I demanded, wasting no time on preliminaries, and heard her say unsteadily: “He had a coronary. It was just after he arrived at the office this morning, and—”
    “Hang on.” I took a deep breath and listened to my heart banging. Then I demanded: “Is he dead?”
    “No. He’s in intensive care at Barts. Carta—”
    I started to feel numb as the shock hit me. I had to make a big effort to concentrate on what she was saying.
    “—I would have called you with the news anyway, but I do also have an urgent question to ask. I’m trying to cancel his appointments, and I find he’s slipped a lunch-date into his desk diary without telling me— there are no details on the computer. Do you by any chance know who ‘G’ is? Could it be someone from the St. Benet’s Healing Centre?”
    I was transfixed. “When are they supposed to meet?”
    “Twelve-forty-five, but there’s no restaurant named and no contact number.”
    “Leave it with me.” I knew there would be no rendezvous at a restaurant. Richard had said he always met G at an office suite in Austin Friars, and the number of the building was . . . I remembered him mentioning his age, remembered how I had noted he was the same age as Nicholas. Forty-nine was the magic number. Forty-nine, Austin Friars. To Jacqui I added: “I do know who this person is. I’ll make sure the date’s cancelled.”
    Two hours later I was walking into Austin Friars.
    XI
    The street was a cul-de-sac in the shape of the letter T, with the crossbar of the T blocked to traffic at both ends; cars could only enter at the bottom of the T by driving under the arch from Old Broad Street, but as a pedestrian I was able to slip into one end of the crossbar. Number forty-nine, I found, was one of the tall, slim Edwardian houses which had somehow survived the Blitz.
    In the porch I examined the list of names by the buzzers. The basement, ground floor and first floor formed the offices of a company called Austin Trading International, but although I expected to find other firms occupying the rest of the building, it seemed that the remaining floors were in residential use and I wondered why Richard had talked of an office suite. Obviously he had wanted to mislead me, but what had made him so reluctant to admit that G worked from home? I took a closer look at the names. The fourth-floor slot, the top slot, was marked G. BLAKE.
    There was no video-entryphone, and although I expected G to use the intercom to check who I was, the front door clicked open as soon as I rang the buzzer. I mentally awarded G bad marks for security. Violent crime is low