“Cubbish. Adrian Cubbish,” I told her. I grinned. “Call me AC.”

“Why, are you cool?”

I was impressed. Usually I have to make the AC/Air-Conditioning thing clear myself. This was a clever one. “Course I am, doll.”

“Course you are,” she agreed, looking like she wasn’t sure she agreed, but still smiling. She was tall and blonde, though her face had a hint of Asian about it that made the tall blonde part look odd and meant it was hard to be sure how old she was. I’d have said about my age, but wouldn’t have wanted to swear to it. She wore a black suit and a pink blouse and carried herself like somebody who was even more of a stunner than she actually was, know what I mean? Confidence. I’ve always liked that.

“So you’re Connie?”

“Sequorin. Connie Sequorin. Pleased to meet you.”

Sequorin sounded like Sequoia, which is those big trees in California, and she was tall. Or there was that CS gas they use in Northern Ireland. But I thought better of saying anything. Clever ones need careful handling and usually it’s better to say nothing and stay silent and mysterious than try to make jokes that probably won’t impress them. Probably heard it all before, anyway.

“Good to meet you, Connie. Ed – Mr Noyce – said you wanted a word.”

“Did he?” She looked a bit surprised. She glanced over to him. We were at the house-warming party for Ed’s new gaff, a loft conversion in Limehouse with views upriver. He’d sold the house on the coast in Lincolnshire after another bit of garden fell into the sea. Still got a tidy price from some Arab he vaguely knew who never even bothered to go and see it. Some sort of investment or tax dodge or whatever. The loft was tidy, all tall ceilings, white walls and black beams and timber walls on the outside like a yacht’s deck with stanchions and cables round the balconies. Small-fortune territory. The area was still getting gentrified, but you could smell the smart money moving in.

This would have been mid-Nineties now, I suppose. I was working in Ed’s brokerage firm, which was a private company these days rather than a partnership. This made sound business sense according to the lawyers. The boy Barney had been living on a farm in Wales for the last year with some hippies or something but had recently turned up in Goa and was running a bar that his dad had helped him buy. Bit of a disappointment, really, but at least he’d tamed the coke habit, seemingly. I was almost clean myself, just took the occasional toot on special occasions and had stopped dealing entirely. Healthier.

I’d clocked that the real currency involved in making money out of money is knowledge, info. The more people you knew involved in a business, and the more you knew of what they knew, the better informed you were and the better the judgements you could make about when to buy and when to sell. That was all there was to it, really, though that’s a bit like saying all there is to maths is numbers. Still enough complications involved to be going on with, thanks.

“Mr Noyce speaks very highly of you,” Connie told me. Something about the way she said this made me think she wasn’t my age at all, but a lot older. Confusing.

“Does he? That’s nice.” I moved round her a bit as though making room for somebody passing nearby, but really getting her to turn more fully into the light. No, she really did look quite young. “What do you do yourself, Connie?”

“I’m a recruitment consultant.”

I laughed. “You’re a headhunter?” I glanced over at Ed.

“If you like.” She looked over at Mr N too. “Oh, I’m not trying to entice you away from Mr Noyce’s firm.”

“You’re not?” I said. “That’s a pity, isn’t it?”

“It is?” she asked. “You’re not happy there?” She had an accent that was hard to pin down. Maybe Middle European, but spent some time in the States.

“Perfectly happy, Connie. Though Mr N and me think the same way.” I glanced over at him again. “He knows if I got a much better offer from somebody else I’d be a fool not to take it.” I looked back at her. I did that glance thing, where you sort of flick your gaze over a woman, certainly as far as their tits if not their waist. Too quick to really take in anything you haven’t already seen through peripheral vision, but enough to let them know you’re, what’s the best way of putting it, alive to their charms, shall we say, without actually ogling them like a classless wanker, know what I mean? “No, I just meant we could all do with a bit of enticement now and again, don’t you think, Connie?”

I should explain that Lysanne was history by now. The barmy Scouse bint had stormed out once too often and I’d changed the locks on her. She was back in Liverpool running a tanning salon. I was playing the field, as they say, which meant I was seeing a few girls at a time on my terms. Plenty of sex, no commitments. Fucking Holy Grail, isn’t it?

She smiled. “Well then, maybe I can entice you to meet a client of mine.” She handed me a card.

“What’s it in connection with?”

“They would have to explain that themselves.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to go.” She reached out and touched my arm. “It was good to meet you, Adrian. Call me.”

And off she fucked.

I asked Mr N.

“Some people that I know, Adrian,” he told me. He was standing under a really bright light, his white-sand hair shining like a halo. “They’ve been helpful to me in the past. I’m on a consultancy for them. I hold myself ready to help them if and when they need it. They rarely do, apart from some very trivial matters. Frankly, so far I’ve been able to hand everything over to my secretary to deal with.” He smiled.

I frowned. “What sort of people, Ed?”

“People it’s very useful and lucrative to know, Adrian,” he said patiently.

“They Italian?” I asked. “Or American? Or Italian-American?” I was already thinking Mafia or CIA or something.

He laughed lightly. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

“Do you know so?”

“I know they’ve been very helpful and generous and have asked for next to nothing in return. I’m quite certain they’re not criminals or a threat to the state or anything. Have they asked you to talk to them?”

“I’ve to call Connie.”

“Well, perhaps you should.” There was a minor fuss at the door. Ed glanced over. “Ah, the minister, fresh off Channel Four News. Excuse me, Adrian.” He went over to greet him.

I think I was supposed to think about it but I called her moby right then.

“Hello?”

“Connie, Adrian. We were just talking.”

“Of course.”

“All right, I’ll see your client. When’s good?”

“Well, possibly this Saturday, if that’s good for you.”

“Yeah, all right.”

There was a slight hesitation. “You have the whole day free?”

“Could do. Would I need it?”

“Pretty much, yes. And your passport.”

I thought about this. I had a date on Saturday night with a girl who owned a lingerie shop in deepest Chelsea. A proper Sloan. And a lingerie shop. I mean, fuck. I watched Mr N glad-handing the Minister for Transport. “Yeah, why not?” I said. “Okay.”

“Let me call you back.”

Which was how I found myself at a cold, rainy Retford airport in Essex two days later on the Saturday morning and then in a proper executive jet heading out across the Channel, pointing due east as far as I could tell. Connie had met me at the airport, dressed the same apart from a purple blouse, but she wasn’t saying where we were heading. She had a bundle of newspapers with her and seemed determined to read them all, even the foreign-language ones, and didn’t want to talk. After I stopped checking out the luxury fittings I started to get bored so I had to read too.

I’d dozed off. I only woke when we touched down, the plane slowing along a bumpy runway with a lot of weeds at the edges. Flat country with lots of bare trees which looked like they were ready for winter a bit early. I checked my watch. Four hours in the air. Where the fuck were we?