‘But people are going to die.’ There were tears in her eyes, and if the wine waiter hadn’t come and tried to flog us another bottle of the Pouilly at that moment, I probably would have hugged her. Instead I took her hand across the table.

‘People are going to die anyway,’ I said, and hated myself for sounding like Barnes’s nasty little speech. ‘If I don’t do it, they’ll find someone else, or some other way. The result will be the same, but Sarah will be dead. That’s what they’re like.’

She looked down at the table again, and I could see that she knew I was right. But she was checking everything all the same, like someone about to leave home for a long time. Gas off, TV disconnected, fridge defrosted.

‘And what about you?’ she said, after a while. ‘If that’s what they’re like, what’s going to happen to you? They’re going to kill you, aren’t they? Whether you help them or not, they’re going to end up killing you.’

‘They’re probably going to have a go, Ronnie. I can’t lie about that.’

‘What can you lie about?’ she said quickly, but I don’t think she meant it the way it sounded.

‘People have tried to kill me before, Ronnie,’ I said, ‘and they haven’t managed it. I know you think I’m a slob who can’t even do his own shopping, but I can look after myself in other ways.’ I paused to see if she’d smile. ‘If nothing else, I’ll find some posh bint with a sports car to take care of me.’

She looked up, and nearly smiled.

‘You’ve got one of those already,’ she said, and took out her purse.

It had started raining while we’d been inside, and Ronnie had left the roof down on the TVR, so we had to pelt throughMayfair as fast as we could for the sake of her Connolly-hide seats.

I was scrabbling with the catches on the car’s hood, trying to work out how I was going to fill the six-inch gap between the frame and the windscreen, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I kept myself as loose as possible.

‘And who the fuck might you be?’ said a voice.

I straightened up slowly and looked round. He was about my height, and not far off my age, but he was considerably richer. His shirt was fromJermyn Street, his suit was from Savile Row, and his voice was from one of our more expensive public schools. Ronnie popped her head up from the boot where she’d been folding away the tonneau cover.

‘Philip,’ she said, which was pretty much what I’d expected her to say.

‘Who the fuck is this?’ said Philip, still looking at me. ‘How do you do, Philip?’

I tried to be nice. Really I did.

‘Fuck off,’ said Philip. He turned to Ronnie. ‘Is this the shit who’s been drinking my vodka?’

A knot of tourists in bright anoraks stopped and smiled at the three of us, hoping that we were all good friends really. I hoped we were too, but sometimes hope isn’t enough.

‘Philip, please don’t be boring.’ Ronnie slammed the boot and came round to the side of the car. The dynamics shifted a little, and I tried to squirt myself out of the group and away. The last thing I felt like was getting involved in someone else’s pre-marital row, but Philip wouldn’t have it.

‘The fuck do you think you’re going?’ he said, raising his chin a little higher.

‘Away,’ I said. ‘Philip, come on.’

‘You little shit. Who the hell do you think you are?’ He put his right hand out and took hold of my lapel. He held it tight, but not so tight that he was committed to fighting me. Which was a relief. I looked down at his hand and then at Ronnie. I wanted to give her the chance to call this off.

‘Philip, please, don’t be stupid,’ she said.

Which, obviously, was about as wrong a thing as she could have chosen to say. When a man’s reversing himself flat out into a corner, the very last thing to make him slow down is a woman telling him he’s being stupid. If it had been me, I’d have said I was sorry, or stroked his brow, or smiled, or done anything I could think of to dissipate the flow of hormones.

‘I asked you a question,’ said Philip. ‘Who do you think you are? Drinking at my bar, cocking your leg in my house?’

‘Please let go of me,’ I said. ‘You’re creasing my jacket.’ Reasonable, you see. Not facing him down, calling him out, squaring him up, or anything else involving odd prepositions. Just straightforward concern about my jacket. Man to man. ‘I couldn’t give a fuck about your jacket, you little tosser.’ Well, there you are. Every possible diplomatic channel having been tried and found wanting, I opted for violence.

I pushed towards him first, and he resisted, which is what people always do. Then I dropped back with his push, straightening his arm, and turned away so that he had to flip his wrist over to keep hold of the lapel. I put one hand on top of his, to make him keep the grip, and with my other forearm I leaned gently downwards on his elbow. If you’re interested, this happens to be an Aikido technique called Nikkyo, and it causes a quite stupendous amount of pain with almost no effort.

His knees buckled and his face went white as he dropped down to the pavement, trying desperately to take the pressure off the wrist joint. I let him go before his knees touched the ground, because I reckoned that the more face I left him with, the less reason he’d have to try anything else. I also didn’t want to have Ronnie kneeling over him saying there, there, who’s a brave soldier? for the rest of the afternoon.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and smiled uncertainly, as if I didn’t quite know what had happened either. ‘Are you all right?’

Philip wrung his hand and shot me a pretty hateful look, but we both knew he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Even though he couldn’t be certain that I’d hurt him deliberately.

Ronnie moved in between us and gently put her hand on Philip’s chest.

‘Philip, you’ve got this very badly wrong.’

‘Have I really?’

‘Yes, you have really. This is business.’

‘Fuck it is. You’re sleeping with him. I’m not an idiot.’ That last remark ought to have had any decent prosecution counsel leaping to their feet, but Ronnie just turned to me and half-closed an eye.

‘This is Arthur Collins,’ she said, and waited for Philip to frown. Which he eventually did. ‘He painted that triptych we saw inBath, do you remember? You said you liked it.’

Philip looked at Ronnie, then at me, then back to Ronnie again. The world turned a little more while we waited for him to chew it over. Part of him was embarrassed at the possibility that he’d made a mistake, but a much bigger part was relieved that he now had the chance to seize on a respectable reason for not trying to hit me - there I was, don’cha know, ready tolay the blighter out, had him begging for mercy, and he turned out to be a wrong number. Different party altogether. Laughs all round. Philip, you’re a scream.