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dared to tackle.
    The fact that he had managed a revealing glimpse of a bank statement on the desk of the empty office was merely icing on the cake.
    Late in the afternoon, he called to see his friend George Lewis, the porter at Old Mead Park. There was work for him in three of the flats, it seemed. Small jobs, more bother than they were worth in themselves, but sprats which in due course could net him mackerels. That was a pattern which had become familiar: customers who tested his work and found it satisfactory usually came back in due course with more challenging assignments. And Charlie noted with some satisfaction, as George Lewis showed him what was required, that he had not been in two of the flats before.
    The third one was the luxurious penthouse of James and Gabrielle Berridge, where Mrs Berridge apparently wanted new locks on the drawers of her bureau. Charlie thought he could guess at the reason for that, but he asked Lewis to let him in for a moment to reconnoitre the work. The suggestion that they might enjoy a cup of tea and chinwag over old times in George’s cosy little office near the entrance to the building sent the porter swiftly down in the lift; portering could be lonely work. Charlie Pegg found there were three messages on the Berridges’ answerphone tape. Then he spent an interesting three minutes in James Berridge’s study.
    ***
    Amy asked him about his day as she always did, and he told her everything he thought she should know. He knew his eyes were prejudiced, but he thought her as buxom and pretty as she had ever been. It seemed to him that Amy was one of the few women who improved with age, as her angularities disappeared beneath a pleasant plumpness. Perhaps it was contentment rather than all these mudpacks and facelifts the Americans went in for that was the secret of retaining a woman’s looks, he thought.
    He went into the kitchen and put his arms round his wife’s waist, leaning his chest lightly on her well-covered shoulders. ‘Get on with you, Charlie!’ she said automatically. Her low giggle became almost a purr of pleasure in the repetition of a ritual they both knew in its every detail.
    The institution of marriage carries a multitude of ironies. It was at that very moment that Gabrielle Berridge was sitting combing her hair before the hotel mirror. She studied her abnormally bright eyes, her face still flushed with the warmth of her departed lover, and wondered whether there might be safe ways of disposing of her husband. And in her normally lucid mind, the distinction between a pleasant fantasy and a serious proposition became a little more blurred.
    Charlie Pegg enjoyed his meal, as throughout the day he had known he would. Steak and kidney pie, fashioned with care and skill by his wife’s experienced hands. Since his days in stir, Charlie could eat anything, but on his rare visits to restaurants he had never eaten anything as tasty as the meals served to him each day by the buxom Amy. There was fresh fruit salad to follow. Amy had been reading about diet in the glossy women’s magazines she collected from the lady who employed her to clean twice a week; she did not have cream on her fruit, but she watched her husband pour a copious amount over his heaped dish with the indulgence of a mother.
    She had lit a fire: it was still cold at nights, and they liked to sit by a real fire to watch the telly in the evenings, even though they could have relied on the central heating. They took their tea there now. Charlie said before they could settle too comfortably for the evening, ‘I’ll need to go out for a while later. See a man about a dog.’ He was not sure what he meant by the old cliché, but it had become part of the ritual, an assurance that nothing abnormal or dangerous was involved.
    ‘Do you have to, Charlie? You look tired. I bet you were humping heavy pipes about all morning.’ This too was part of their conventions. She would never prevent him from going wherever