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Winter’s second knock. In the surveillance photos Richardson had been huddled in a full-length cashmere coat. Now he was wearing designer jeans, a collarless white shirt, and sported a tiny pony tail secured with a twist of blue and red beads. For a puffy-faced overweight gay in his early fifties, this outfit suggested a wistful yearning to turn back the clock.
    ‘Gentlemen?’ The eyes were glassy behind the wire-rimmed specs.
    ‘DC Winter. Portsmouth Crime Squad. This is DC Suttle. We’d like a word if we may.’
    ‘Now?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘My goodness. Well …’ Winter realised the man was pissed ‘… why not?’
    He held the door open as Winter stepped past. Safely inside the apartment, he confirmed the owner’s ID. Stephen Wallace Richardson.
    ‘But I’m not the owner,’ Richardson added. ‘Would that I was. You need to talk to Mr Hakim.’
    ‘And where would we find him?’
    ‘This week? Maybe Beirut. Maybe Dubai. Maybe Monte Carlo. I can give you a mobile number if it makes things easier.’
    ‘So what do you do … Mr Richardson?’
    ‘I’m a guest, really. No, more a lodger. It’s a grace and favour thing. Mr Hakim and I go back a long way. You might say I keep an eye on the place.’ He did his best to look helpful. ‘Is there a problem?’
    The question brought a grin to Suttle’s face. The entrance hall was big, almost a room in itself. A fluted vase on an antique occasional table held what looked like a hand-painted dildo – a whorl of yellows ribbed with scarlet – and a collection of photos on the wall, beautifully lit, artfully composed, offered an arresting level of anatomical detail. On closer inspection, the photos were all of the same woman and Suttle couldn’t remember seeing a body so exposed since a stag-night weekend in the fleshpots of Antwerp.
    ‘That music …?’ Winter had cocked an ear. It sounded classical, maybe opera, and it was coming from a room at the end.
    ‘Friend of mine,’ Richardson mumbled. ‘Adores Verdi.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    Winter was already trying another of the five doors. Richardson watched him, seemingly helpless.
    ‘Our salon.’ He answered Winter’s enquiring look. ‘Please. Be my guest.’
    Suttle followed Winter through the door. The room was huge, extending the full width of the apartment. Three of the four picture windows were masked with venetian blinds but through the tall window at the kitchen end of the room Suttle could see the black gleam of water in the Camber Dock and the lights of the houses and apartments beyond.
    Winter was standing beside a dining table in the central part of the room. The table was set for four places. Plates and cutlery for the early courses had been cleared away but the remains of a rack of lamblay in the centre of the tablecloth, flanked by a gravy boat and a little hillock of mint sauce in a Chinese bowl. A trail of gravy drops led to one of the place mats and spoons and forks still awaited the dessert course. Two of the wine bottles on a trolley beside the table were upended in coolers.
    Winter turned in time to see Richardson stepping back into the hall.
    ‘If you don’t mind, sir.’ He motioned him into the sitting room again. ‘So who does the cooking?’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘All part of the service, is it? Bed and board?’
    Without waiting for an answer, Winter shepherded Richardson towards the vast crescent of leather sofa that dominated the left-hand end of the room. The corners of the sofa were padded with heavy tapestry pillows, and a newly opened box of Montecristo cigars had been abandoned beside a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
. There was a bottle of Krug and more glasses on the low occasional table, plus a selection of magazines. Winter gazed down at them. Nesting amongst the copies of
Tatler, Country Living
and
Yachts and Yachting
were a number of porn magazines, mainly Italian and Spanish. He reached for the nearest and began to flick through it. With a waiting room like this, Winter thought,