She had to give it to Dave. Not by a flicker did he show anything but pleasure as he smiled and said, ‘Gwyn, great to see you. Must have missed you at St Osith’s.’

‘Didn’t make the service, Dave, sorry. Good to see you’re taking your leader’s strictures to heart. What was it he said? Religion should have no politics. We will all stand naked before God. When doubtless we will find if size really does matter.’

Gidman’s heart lurched. Could the bastard be on to Sophie?

But his smile remained warm and his voice was light and even as he replied, ‘You’re talking about majorities, of course. So what do you think of the Centre?’

‘Looks great. No expense spared, eh? Folk round here must be very grateful.’

‘Gratitude isn’t the issue. We just want to put something back into the area.’

‘Yeah, I can see why you’d feel like that. Though it does raise the question, would it ever really be possible for your family to fully put back in everything you’ve taken out? You’d have to build something like Buck House, wouldn’t you?’

Maggie was taken aback. The Messenger was never going to be Gidman’s friend, and Jones hated his guts, but even so his approach here was unusually frontal.

Her employer’s initial reaction was relief. Sexual innuendo would have bothered him. Anti-Goldie slurs were old hat and easily dealt with.

‘Do what you can then do a little more, isn’t that what they say?’ he declared.

‘Is it? Who was that? Alex Ferguson?’

‘Someone even older, I think. Confucius, perhaps.’

‘That’s really old. But we should always pay attention to the past, right, Dave? You never know when something’s going to come up behind you and bite your bum. Man with a bitten bum finds out who his real friends are. Of course, it depends what’s doing the biting. A flea would just be irritating, but something a bit bigger, like a wolf, say, that could be serious. You wouldn’t have a wolf trying to take a bite somewhere behind you, Dave?’

Why the hell was he stressing wolf?

‘Not even a flea to the best of my knowledge, Gwyn.’

‘Lucky you. Talking of the past, I heard a rumour your dad was thinking of writing his autobiography.’

‘Another rumour! Definitely nothing in that one, Gwyn. I once suggested it to him and he said, who’d want to read about a dull old devil like me?’

‘Oh, I think there’s quite a lot of people who’d like to hear the whole moving story, Dave, wolves and all. If he ever does go down that road, I’d be more than happy to help him out with the research. It’s never easy digging up the past. People move on, disappear. That’s where a journalist could come in really useful. We’ve got the skills. Finding disappeared people’s a bit of a specialty of mine.’

‘That’s a kind offer. I’ll be sure to mention it to him, Gwyn.’

His gaze flickered to Maggie, who took the hint and brought the interview to a close by advancing the friendly face of the Daily Telegraph. For which relief much thanks, thought Gidman. The Telegraph loved him. But as he answered the bromidic questions, the voice he was hearing in his mind was still Gwyn Jones’s.

Goldie Gidman watched his guest’s reaction to the food that Flo had set before him with an amusement he took care to hide.

The man had been an hour late for his eleven o’clock appointment at Windrush House. As his purpose was basically to beg for money, it might have been expected that he would be punctual. On the other hand, as a peer of the realm condescending to visit the tasteless mansion of a self-made black man, he perhaps did not feel that the courtesy of kings need apply. Certainly his explanation for his lateness with its casual reference to the number of roadworks between Sandringham and Waltham Abbey had more of condescension than apology in it.

Goldie Gidman was not offended. When asked as he frequently was by journalists why a man with his background should be such a staunch supporter of the Conservative Party, he had a stock reply that included references to traditional values, British justice, fair play, equal opportunity, enlightened individualism, and cricket.

Privately, and not for publication, he had been known to say that he’d looked closely at British politics and seen that the Tories were his kind of people. Folk he could deal with, motives he understood.

Internally, in that core of being where all men hide their truths and which will only be laid completely open at the great Last Judgment, if such an event ever takes place, Gidman believed that all politicians were little better than reservoir dogs, so you might as well run with the pack that fed off your kind of meat.

The peer was what is known as a fund raiser. His purpose in visiting Goldie was to discover why in recent months his hitherto generous donations to the Party had diminished from a glistening flood to a muddy trickle. It should not be thought that the Party’s ringmaster was so naïve as to think that Gidman was likely to be impressed by an ancient title. Rather his thinking was that, by hesitating his payments, Gidman was taking up a bargaining position. In consequence of recent scandals, such negotiations tended to be delicate and oblique, with the attendant danger of misunderstanding. When a man who thinks he has bought a villa in Antibes finds himself fobbed off with a timeshare in Torremolinos, dissatisfaction at best, and at worst defection, will follow. So this particular peer had been chosen because he gave out such an impression of intellectual vacuity that Goldie might feel constrained to explain in words of at most two syllables what precisely it was he wanted in return for his largesse.

But an hour had passed and the peer was no further forward.

So when Goldie looked at his watch and said, ‘Any second now my wife’s going to call me in to lunch. Thinks if I don’t eat regular I’m going to get an ulcer. You’re very welcome to take pot luck with us if’n you ain’t got somewhere better to be.’

‘How kind,’ said the peer. ‘I should be delighted.’

He meant it. Though this was his first visit to Windrush House he had heard that his host kept a fine cellar and that his wife, who apparently had a professional connection with the catering trade, could dish up some of the tastiest traditional fare a true blue Englishman could desire. This he imagined would be an old-fashioned Sunday lunch to remember.

He was right in one respect.

The pot from which he had agreed to take his luck held nothing more than a thin beef consommé. This was backed up by some hunks of wheaten bread and a wedge of hard cheese, all to be washed down by a small bottle of stout-a special treat, Goldie assured him, as on normal days Flo permitted him nothing but still water.

After a cup of lukewarm decaffeinated coffee, the peer was eager to be on his way even though, with regard to his mission, he felt he now knew less than he thought he did when he arrived.

As he rose to take his leave, Gidman said, ‘Almost forgot. Must be getting old.’ And he produced a long white envelope.

It was unsealed and, after an enquiring glance from the peer had been met by an encouraging nod, he opened it and examined the contents.

‘Good lord,’ he said. ‘My dear fellow, this is extraordinarily generous.’

‘I like to help,’ said Gidman.

‘And you do, you do. Don’t think we’re not appreciative.’

Here he paused, expecting to receive at the very least a strong hint as to how this appreciation might best be shown.

But as he was later to explain to the ringmaster, ‘He just smiled and said goodbye, didn’t hint at a gong, never even mentioned young Dave the Turd. I mean, can it really be he’s not looking for anything in return?’

And the ringmaster said with that insight which had put him at the centre of the circus, ‘Don’t be silly. Of course he wants something, and I don’t doubt we’ll find out what it is sooner or later.’