He attempted speech again. ‘My shoulder … it’s … I think it’s dis … dis … I think it’s dislocated.’

Curiously, through the uncomprehending fog of his senses, Ned was still careful to be polite. He could have said that his shoulder had been dislocated, or even that Mr Gaine had dislocated it.

The men turned to each other.

‘You know how to put a shoulder back?’ one of them asked.

‘I’m not bleeding touching him,’ said the other. ‘The cunt’s cacked his fucking pants. Fucking stinks.’

Ned’s smashed nose, bubbling with blood, had not detected the stench that surrounded him, but he understood now why he felt a soft squash and slide between his buttocks.

‘I’m sorry …‘ he said, tears dropping down his face. ‘I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, only

‘Give it a fucking rest, can’t you?’

‘Mr Delft said … he said I was to go home. He’ll be angry…, and my father…, my father is an important man … please, please!’

To stop the unpleasant whimpering, they took it in turns to kick him into unconsciousness.

It is not often that I confess to being baffled, but for a short while today the disappearance of Ned Maddstone struck me as the most complete mystery imaginable. It was as if he had been simply scooped off the surface of the earth. I am pleased, however, that I was able to work out the truth for myself.

I spent a frustrating night, raging against the system that had covered up his arrest. How typical, I thought, as each succeeding bulletin on the television, and subsequently on the wireless through the early hours, failed to disgorge so much as a scrap of news, how supremely typical. The police had been got to, it was clear to me. Some squalid Central Office lackey had swung into action and initiated a cover-up. I was tempted to ask Tom, in whose house I have my basement flat, if he knew anything. Tom works at party headquarters in Smith Square and is privy to all the gossip. I should know, I regularly read his paperwork when he’s upstairs drunk in his bed. I tamped down the desire, preferring not to have to answer questions. But it was frustrating to me that nothing of Ned’s arrest had yet emerged.

Rufus and I should have tipped off the press as well as the police, I told myself furiously, it was naпve of me not to have thought of it. I made a mental note to myself. One day, I resolved, I will put a sign over my desk –

This is, after all, England – and I shall make no important decisions without referring to it. Although it seems now that I may have done the police and the establishment an injustice, the sign over the desk is still a good idea.

In the normal course of events, Sir Charles had been due to arrive at Catherine Street at mid-day for a diary meeting. It seemed obvious to me however, given the lack of any news, that he must have come down the previous night to bail out his son and establish some kind of media blackout. None the less, I was determined to ensure the full involvement of the press somehow, even if it meant another anonymous call from a phone-box. First, however, I would have to see precisely how events had unravelled at Catherine Street. The prospect of Ned’s embarrassed explanations and confused protestations of innocence to his father filled me with delicious anticipation. Would he have been sent up to bed without any supper? Would he have been believed? I had decided to offer him exactly the same spaniel-eyed tactlessness and clumsy sympathy that he so crassly meted out to me.

Despite a great eagerness to be there as soon as possible, I took the tube to Victoria at my usual time of half past nine. While I would have loved to be there earlier, it was important not to show that I expected today to be anything more than a perfectly normal Friday.

As I turned into Catherine Street I was delighted to see a police car parked outside the house. Things were looking up. Such a sight argued against any concerted or coherent cover-up: at the most it suggested a very incompetent one. If the police had been got at they would hardly be there now, with an unmarked car outside the front door. Perhaps the Drug Squad were searching the place from top to bottom, I thought, hoping to enter and see floorboards up and books scattered all over the Bokhara. What an agreeable prospect. I looked up at the faзade and fancied I saw a face pressed against the window of the first floor study.

I let myself into the house and mounted the stairs, preparing an expression in which I hoped that mild curiosity and impassive preparedness were nicely blended.

Sir Charles was at his desk in conversation with two policemen. I saw that Ned’s girlfriend, Portia, had been the face at the window. She stood at it now, restlessly turning her head one way and the other to look up and down the street, her breath misting the pane.

‘Ashley, thank heaven!’ cried Sir Charles, rising excitedly to his feet as I came in.

‘Sir Charles, what is it? Is there something wrong?’

‘Have you seen Ned?’

‘Ned? Not since yesterday, sir, no. Why? Has he gone missing?’

‘He hasn’t been seen since four o’clock yesterday afternoon!’

‘Good lord!’ I said. ‘But that’s bizarre …

The policemen were eyeing me with curiosity and I bowed my head respectfully in their direction.

‘Gentlemen, this is Mr Barson-Garland, my researcher,’ said Sir Charles with a wave of the hand in my direction.

The two policemen half rose from their seats and nodded grave good mornings to me.

‘These kind officers are being very helpful, Ashley. But so far the thing seems to be a complete mystery.’

Very helpful? The Metropolitan Police should look to its policies on interdepartmental co-operation. I thought. The buffoons of the drug squad haven’t yet bothered to tell these poor flatfoots that they were holding Ned.

I had to confess that I hadn’t imagined that a minor offence like the possession of cannabis could warrant an overnight stay in the cells. But it struck me that on arrest, to save his father embarrassment, Ned might have refused to give his name. Perhaps such a lack of cooperation, allied to the arrogant Maddstone manner, had so annoyed the arresting officers that they had thrown him in a cell simply in order to teach him a lesson.

‘Have you tried calling the hospitals?’ I suggested. ‘Or police stations, even. If he was mugged perhaps, or…

‘Yes, yes,’ said Sir Charles, sitting down again. He had taken up the natural position of authority at his desk, with the policemen sitting respectfully across from him, caps on lap and notebooks in hand, like secretaries about to take dictation. ‘We have tried everything. A missing persons alert has been put out, every police station and hospital in London has been contacted. Officers from Special Branch will be here soon. There is always the possibility you see, given my position,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘that the security angle may have to be considered.’

There was something in the way he said ‘given my position’ that reminded me forcibly of Ned. The same Maddstone-maddening apologetic ruefulness – as if status, authority and birth were embarrassing solecisms to be understood and pardoned.

One of the policemen turned to me. ‘When did you last see Mr Maddstone, sir?’

I considered the question. ‘Um, about mid-day, I should say. Let me see. I spent the morning working on correspondence…’ My eye travelled to Sir Charles’s desk, where the pile of post still lay, unsigned. ‘Those letters there, in fact. Then I left at … what time did we leave, Portia?’

Portia turned from the window with a blank stare. I could see that she hadn’t slept all night and that the question hadn’t penetrated, only my calling her name.

‘I went off with your cousin Gordon,’ I reminded her. ‘To show him round Parliament. Do you remember? When was that, would you say?’