‘So, Thomas,’ he said, ‘I guess there are one or two things you’d like to ask me?’

‘Well, yes.’ I dabbed my mouth in return. ‘I hate to be predictable, but what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ There was an intake of breath from a nearby table, but Woolf didn’t flinch and neither did Sarah.

‘Right,’ he said, nodding. ‘Fair question. First of all, in spite of whatever you may have been told by your Defence people, I have nothing whatsoever to do with drugs. Nothing. I’ve taken some penicillin in my time, but that’s it. Period.’

Well, that obviously wasn’t good enough. Not by a long shot. Saying period at the end of something doesn’t make it incontrovertible.

‘Yes, well,’ I said, ‘forgive my tired old English cynicism, but isn’t this a case of "you would say that wouldn’t you"?’ Sarah looked at me crossly, and I suddenly thought I might have overdone it. But then I thought heck, beautiful tendons or not, there were some things that needed to be straightened out here.

‘Sorry to bring it up before you’ve even got started,’ I said, ‘but I assume we’re here for plain talking, so I’m talking plainly.’

Woolf had another bite at his food and kept his eyes on his plate, and it took me a moment to realise that he was leaving it to Sarah to answer.

‘Thomas,’ she said, and I turned to look at her. Her eyes were big and round, and went from one side of the universe to the other. ‘I had a brother. Michael. Four years older than me.’

Oh cripes. Had.

‘Michael died half-way through his first year atBatesUniversity. Amphetamines, qualudes, heroin. He was twenty years old.’

She paused, and I had to speak. Something. Anything. ‘I’m sorry.’

Well, what else do you say? Tough? Pass the salt? I realised I was hunching down towards the table, trying to blend with their grief, but it was no good. On a subject like this, you’re an outsider.

‘I tell you that,’ she said eventually, ‘for one reason only. To show you that my father,’ and she turned to look at him while he kept his head bowed, ‘could no more get involved in the traffick of drugs than he could fly to the moon. It’s that simple. I’d bet my life on that.’

Period.

For a while, neither of them would look at each other, or at me.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I’m very, very sorry.’

We sat like that for a moment, a little kiosk of silence in the middle of the restaurant din, and then suddenly Woolf switched on a smile, and seemed to get all brisk.

‘Thanks, Thomas,’ he said. ‘But what’s done is done. For Sarah and me, this is old stuff, and we dealt with it a long time ago. Right now, you want to know why I asked you to kill me?’

A woman at the next table turned and looked at Woolf, frowning. He can’t have said that. Can he? She shook her head and went back to her lobster.

‘In a nutshell,’ I said.

‘Well it’s very simple,’ he said. ‘I wanted to know what kind of person you were.’

He looked at me, his mouth closed in a nice, straight line. ‘I see,’ I said, not seeing anything at all. This is what happens, I suppose, when you ask for things in a nutshell. I blinked a few times, then sat back in my chair and tried to look cross.

‘Anything wrong with ringing my headmaster?’ I said. ‘Or an ex-girlfriend? I mean, that all seemed too dull, I suppose?’ Woolf shook his head.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I did all of that.’

That was a shock. A real shock. I still get hot flushes about having cheated in Chemistry O-Level and scoring an A when experienced teachers had anticipated an F. I know one day it’s going to come out. I just know it.

‘Really,’ I said. ‘How did I do?’ Woolf smiled.

‘You did okay,’ he said. ‘A couple of your girlfriends reckon you’re a pain in the ass, but otherwise you did okay.’

‘Nice to know,’ I said.

Woolf continued, as though reading from a list. ‘You’re smart. You’re tough. You’re honest. Good career in the Scotch Guards.’

‘Scots,’ I said, but he ignored me, and went on.

‘And best of all, from my point of view, you’re broke.’ He smiled again, which irritated me.

‘You missed out my watercolour work,’ I said.

‘That too? Hell of a guy. The one thing I needed to know was whether you could be bought.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Hence the fifty thousand.’ Woolf nodded.

This was starting to get out of hand. I knew that at some point I ought to have been making some kind of hard man speech about who I was, and who the hell did they think they were, prodding around in who I was, and just as soon as I’d had the pudding I was going right back to who I was - but somehow the right moment never seemed to come along. In spite of the way he’d treated me, and for all his nosing around in my school reports, I still couldn’t bring myself to dislike Woolf. He just had something I liked. And as for Sarah, well, yes. Nice tendons.

Even so, a glint of the old steel wouldn’t do any harm. ‘Let me guess,’ I said, giving Woolf a hard look. ‘Once you’ve found out that I can’t be bought, you’re going to try and buy me.’

He didn’t even falter. ‘Exactly,’ he said.

There. That was it, and this was the right moment. A gentleman has his limits, and so doI. 1 tossed my napkin on to the table.

‘Well this is fascinating,’ I said, ‘and I suppose if I was a different sort of person I might even think it was flattering. But right now I really have to know what this is all about. Because if you don’t tell me, now, I’m leaving the table, your lives, and possibly even this country.’

I could see that Sarah was watching me, but I kept my eyes fixed on Woolf. He chased the last potato round his plate and ran it down in a pool of gravy. But then he put down his fork and started to speak very quickly.

‘You know about the Gulf War, Mr Lang?’ he said. I don’t know what happened to Thomas, but the mood certainly seemed to have changed somewhat.

‘Yes, Mr Woolf,’ I said, ‘I know about the Gulf War.’

‘No, you don’t. I’ll bet everything I have that you don’t know the first damn thing about the Gulf War. Familiar with the term military-industrial complex?’

He was talking like a salesman, trying to bulldoze me somehow, and I wanted to slow things down. I took a long sip of wine.

‘Dwight Eisenhower,’ I said eventually. ‘Yes, I’m familiar. I was part of it, if you remember.’