‘Lunchtime,’ she said in a dull voice. ‘You went off at lunchtime. And then you came back.’

‘Came back?’ I said, raising an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think … oh yes, you’re quite right, though. I let myself in to pick up my briefcase at … I suppose it was around three o’clock, but I didn’t see Ned then. You were both up … you were both – otherwise engaged,’ I amended with care, winning the ghost of a smile from one of the policemen. ‘And then you were off to a job interview somewhere, weren’t you? What happened?’

The story tumbled from her. I could tell that she had told it many times, to others and over and over again to herself and that in the telling of it she hoped somehow for a meaning or clue to emerge. Ned had not been there when she emerged from her interview. She had waited around Catherine Street, gone home, phoned and phoned and then at seven in the morning she had finally managed to persuade a House of Commons official to telephone Sir Charles in the country. He had driven up and called the police, who had so far discovered nothing.

‘You’ll forgive me, miss,’ one of them said now. ‘But there were no bad words between you and Mr Maddstone, were there? No quarrel or anything of that nature?’

Portia stared at him. ‘Quarrel? Me and Ned? No, that was impossible. We have never … we could never… We were like…’

Sir Charles went over to her with a handkerchief and put an arm round her shoulder. The policemen exchanged glances, then saw me looking at them and transferred their gazes down to their notebooks. All deeply affecting.

‘Is there anything that you think I could be doing?’ I said. ‘Anyone I should call?’

‘That’s very kind, Ashley, but I don’t think…’ Sir Charles began.

‘There is the question of the media, sir,’ said one of the policemen. ‘They can be very useful. Maybe Mr Barson-Garland here could call someone you know in the newspaper world.’

Sir Charles stiffened. The press were not his favourite institution. They liked to mock him for being ‘out of touch’ and for possessing an accent that made the Duke of Edinburgh sound like a filing clerk. They habitually referred to him as Barkingstone, Loonystone and Sir Charles the Mad.

‘Do we really think that’s necessary?’ he said worriedly. ‘Surely they would only-’

Any further consideration of the role of the press was put aside by a loud pealing on the doorbell. Portia gasped and, wriggling from Sir Charles’s grip, went to the window and looked down.

‘Oh. It’s just three men,’ she said dully.

‘That’ll be Special Branch, sir.’

Sir Charles stood alone on the carpet, suddenly looking every month his age. It occurred to me that he had put his arm round Portia to support himself as much as her.

‘I’ll let them in,’ I said.

And so the morning wore on. One nugget of news finally came through just before lunchtime and it puzzled me greatly. I relayed it to Rufus and Gordon over another pub lunch in the shadow of Big Ben.

‘It seems that the police paid a visit to the Knightsbridge College,’ I told them. ‘Apparently four Spanish students saw a blond English youth being picked up and driven off in a car. They can’t agree on whether it was a Vauxhall or a Ford and have been taken off somewhere to look at pictures of Ned.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Rufus. ‘They’ll recognise him straight away.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Gordon. ‘The cops already know it’s him. They’re the ones who picked him up, for Christ’s sake.’

‘The more time that passes and the more policemen that get involved, the less likely it appears that they ever picked him up at all,’ I murmured, but Gordon was listening to Rufus.

‘That car was definitely a Vauxhall,’ he was saying with conviction. ‘No doubt about that. A T-reg Cavalier. And they looked like Drug Squad to me. Unshaven, leather-jackets, tattered 501s, Adidas trainers. Classic DS. It’s their idea of undercover. Pathetic, really.’

‘Christ, what a screw-up. You mean the Drug Squad are holding the guy and they don’t realise that he’s been reported missing? Maybe we should make another call.’

‘Gordon, that is a disastrous idea,’ I said. ‘Listen to me. You have to get it into your head that whatever kind of jeans and whatever kind of footwear favoured by those men we saw yesterday, they were in fact not the Drug Squad, nor any other kind of squad.’

I spent a very fervent quarter of an hour persuading the pair of them that for us to confess to any part in the business would only confuse matters.

‘It has to be a coincidence,’ I explained. ‘Ned has been kidnapped. That is the obvious and the only explanation. It just so happens that the kidnappers chose that particular time and place. If you think about it, it’s not as illogical as it seems. Yesterday would have been the first proper opportunity they’d’ve had for a long time. He’s been at school for months and then away sailing. But yesterday, yesterday they could have followed him and Portia from the house all the way to Knightsbridge, seen him left alone on the pavement and nabbed him. We saw the whole thing and of course assumed it was an arrest. In fact the police probably didn’t think our tip-off worth bothering with. Or,’ I added, ‘they heard Rufus giggling in the background and recognised it for what it was, a schoolboy hoax. In any case, it’s just a coincidence. Nothing more.’

It sounded pretty thin to me, but they bought it and chewed on it for a while. Gordon, as I thought he would be, was the first to see the flaw.

‘If he’s been kidnapped, why hasn’t there been some kind of ransom demand?’

I was ready for that. ‘There are kidnappers and kidnappers,’ I said darkly. ‘For two years Ned’s father was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.’

Their mouths dropped as they took in the significance of this.

‘So now you see,’ I continued, ‘why we must lie low and not say a word. None of it has anything to do with us.’

‘Except that we witnessed it,’ said Gordon. ‘We might be needed for evidence…

‘Those Spanish students were right there, they can give plenty of descriptions. We were the other side of a busy street. No, believe me, there’s nothing we can add but confusion.’

I left the pub confident that I could trust them not to do or say anything indiscreet. I arrived back at Catherine Street and found that to gain admittance I now had to show my House of Commons pass to a policeman posted by the front door.

There is a chaise-longue in Maddstone’s office, all plush and gilt, the kind on which exotic princesses used to pose with panthers. I went upstairs to find Sir Charles slumped on it, the colour drained from his face. Portia was leaning against him, or he against her, and the tears were pouring down her face. It was clear that news of great import had broken while I had been away.

A man in his middle to late twenties sat on the desk, talking into the telephone. His eyes had taken me in as I entered the room and I had the unpleasant feeling that, lazy and pleasant as his inspection seemed to be, he had seen right through to the back of my soul and been unimpressed with what he had found there. An intelligence operative of some kind, I told myself, trying to shake the feeling off. No doubt a course of training in the perfection of that kind of look goes along with instruction in the use of code books, microfilms and cyanide capsules.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

Sir Charles opened his eyes and tried to speak. The man was completely in pieces. If this is the quality of our political leaders, I thought, then no wonder the country has gone to the dogs. You won’t find me cracking like that when I’m in power.

When I’m in power…

How strange. That’s the first time I’ve ever articulated such a thought. I have always told myself that I was going to become a teacher. How very strange. Now that I’ve written it down I feel pleasantly relieved. Perhaps I knew it all along. Well, well.