Barnes stiffened very slightly at this, so I thought I’d try stiffening him some more.

‘Graduate Studies. On the cover. I thought to begin with it was History of Art stuff, but it wasn’t. I didn’t really understand it, to be honest. Business. Manufacturing or whatever. She’d made some notes. Man called Solomon. And your name. American Embassy. I… Can I be honest with you?’

Barnes looked back at me. There was nothing on his face but scars and wrinkles.

‘Don’t tell her this,’ I said. ‘I mean, she doesn’t know it, but… I’m in love with her. Have been for months. That’s why I gave her the job, really. Didn’t need anyone else working at the gallery, but I wanted to be close to her. It’s all I could think of. I know it sounds feeble, but… do you know her? I mean have you seen her?’

Barnes didn’t answer. He just fingered the card I’d given him, and looked up at Mike with a raised eyebrow. I didn’t turn round, but Mike must have been busy.

‘Glass,’ said a voice. ‘It checks.’

Barnes sucked his teeth for a moment and then looked out of the window. Apart from the clock, the room was astonishingly quiet. No phones, no typewriters, no traffic noise. The windows must have been quadruple-glazed. ‘O’Neal?’

I looked as defeated as I could. ‘What about him?’

‘Where’d you get the stuff about O’Neal?’

‘The file,’ I shrugged. ‘I told you, I read her file. I wanted to know what had happened to her.’

‘Any reason why you didn’t tell me this from the beginning? Why all this bullshit?’

I laughed and glanced up at the Carts.

‘You’re not an easy man to see, Mr Barnes. I’ve been trying to get you on the phone for days. They kept putting me through to the Visa Section. I think they thought I was trying to wangle a Green Card. Marrying an American.’

There was a long pause.

It really was one of the silliest stories I’ve ever told; but I was gambling - heavily, I have to admit - on Barnes’ machismo. I read him as an arrogant man, trapped in a foreign country, and I hoped that most of him would want to believe that everyone he dealt with was as silly as my story. Ifnotsillier.

‘You try all this with O’Neal?’

‘According to the Ministry of Defence, there is no one of that name working there, and I’d be better off making a missing persons report at my local police station.’

‘Which you did?’

‘Which I tried to do.’

‘Which station?’

‘Bayswater.’ I knew they wouldn’t check that. He just wanted to see how quickly I could answer. ‘The police told me to wait a few weeks. They seemed to think she might have found another lover.’

I was pleased with that. I knew he’d go for it. "‘Another" lover?’

‘Well…’ I tried to blush. ‘All right. A lover.’

Barnes chewed his lip. I was looking so pathetic he didn’t have much choice but to believe me. I would have believed me, and I’m very hard to please.

He came to a decision. ‘Where’s the file now?’

I looked up, surprised that the file was of any interest to anybody.

‘Still at the gallery. Why?’

‘Description?’

‘Well, it’s just a sort of… gallery, really. Fine art.’

Barnes took a deep breath. He was really hating having to deal with me.

‘What does the file look like?’

‘Like a file. Cardboard…’

‘Jesus and Mary,’ said Barnes. ‘What colour?’

I thought for a moment.

‘Yellow, I think. Yes. Yellow.’

‘Mike. Saddle up.’

‘Wait a minute…’ I started to get up but one of the Carls leaned on my shoulder and I decided to sit down again. ‘What are you doing?’

Barnes was already heading back to his paperwork. He didn’t look at me.

‘You will accompany Mr Lucas to your place of business, and you will hand the file over to him. Is that understood?’

‘And why the hell should I do that?’ I don’t know how art gallery owners ought to sound, but I plumped for petulant. ‘I came here to find out what’s happened to one of my employees, not to have you meddling around with her private property.’

It was as if he’d suddenly glanced down and seen that the last item on the agenda was ‘showing everybody what a tough piece of work I am’ - even though Mike was out of the door and the Carls were already starting to back away.

‘Listen to me, you fucking fairy,’ he said. Which I thought was overdoing it, frankly. The Carls dutifully stopped to admire the testosterone. ‘Two points. One. We don’t know until we see it whether it’s her private property or ours. Two. The more you do what the fuck I tell you to do, the better the chance you’ll have of seeing this freak bitch again. Do I make myself understood?’

Mike was a nice enough lad. Late twenties, Ivy League, and smart as a whip. I could see that he wasn’t comfortable with this heavy stuff, and I liked him all the more for that.

We were heading south downPark Lane in a light-blue Lincoln Diplomat, chosen from thirty identical ones in the embassy car park. It seemed to me a trifle obvious for diplomats to use a car called a Diplomat, but maybe Americans like those sort of signposts. For all I know, the average American insurance salesman drives around in something called a Chevrolet Insurance Salesman. I suppose it’s one less decision in a man’s life.

I sat in the back, playing with the ashtrays, while a plainclothes Carl sat beside Mike in the front. The Carl had an earpiece with a wire disappearing inside his shirt. God knows where it went.

‘Nice man, Mr Barnes,’ I said eventually.

Mike looked at me in the rear-view mirror. The Carl turned his head an inch, and judging by the size of his neck, that was about all he could manage. I wanted to apologise for having cut into his weight-training time. ‘Good at his job too, I would think. Mr Barnes. Efficient.’

Mike shot a glance across at the Carl, wondering whether to answer me.

‘Mr Barnes is indeed a remarkable man,’ he said.

I think that Mike probably hated Barnes. I’m pretty sure I would have done, if I’d worked for him. But Mike was a nice, honourable, professional man who was trying hard to be loyal, and I didn’t think it fair to try and get any more out of him in front of the Carl. So I went back to fiddling with the electric windows.