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me,’ Paul said. ‘Sauce all over everything.’
    Shepherd pointed at him, delighted. ‘Spot on. And white spuds. Really white, you know? Sitting there on your plate like an albino bulldog’s bollocks, with all the taste boiled out of them.’
    Shepherd had collar-length, blond hair; looked a bit like that actor in the Starsky and Hutch movie, Paul reckoned. The smile wasn’t quite so charming, though. He wore a light pink shirt with one of those oversized, trendy collars and a mauve tie. The suit had to be four figures’ worth and the shoes cost more than everything Paul was wearing.
    The taxi drove west, heading along Oxford Street. Shepherd hadn’t said anything, but the driver seemed to know where he was going. It was one of the newer cabs, with a fancy speaker system in the back and a screen showing trailers for forthcoming movies, adverts for perfume and mobile phones.
    â€˜Can I see your warrant card?’ Shepherd asked. He watched as Paul dug into his pocket. ‘Make absolutely sure who’s getting the free ride.’ He reached across and took the small leather wallet in which Paul also kept his Oyster card and stamps; examined the ID. ‘Intelligence, you said on the phone.’ Paul nodded. ‘Heard all the jokes, I suppose?’
    â€˜All of them.’
    The cabbie leaned on his horn, swore at a bus driver who’d swerved away from a stop as he was about to overtake.
    â€˜So, tell me just how intelligent you are,’ Shepherd said.
    Paul sat back, left it a few seconds. ‘I know that in the middle of February this year, you were approached by a Romanian businessman named Radu Eliade.’ He watched Shepherd blink, adjust his tie. ‘He came to you with three hundred thousand pounds, which he’d acquired through a series of credit- and debit-card scams, and which needed a little “cleaning up”. “Placed”, “layered” and “integrated” into the system. I think those are the technical terms.’ A smile from Shepherd. Definitely not as charming as his film star lookalike. ‘I know that you and several associates rented a yard and a warehouse in North Wales and spent the next few weeks at auctions buying industrial plant equipment for cash, which you sold on a week or so later. I know that Mr Eliade got his money back, nice and squeaky clean, and that you didn’t even have to charge him commission, because you made a tidy profit selling your diggers and JCBs on to small businesses in Nigeria and Chad.’ He paused again. ‘How am I doing?’
    Paul had watched Shepherd’s expression change as he was talking. It had hardened immediately, as the man sat trying to decide if Eliade had been nicked and done the dirty on him, or if one of the associates Paul had mentioned had been the one to roll over. Then the change: the sweet wash of curiosity as Shepherd asked himself why, if one of the Met’s intelligence officers really knew all these things, he was still walking around.
    Why he hadn’t yet had his oversized, trendy collar felt.
    They drove on in silence for a while, the cab rumbling north along the Edgware Road towards Kilburn. The shop-fronts getting that bit scruffier, the Mercedes count dwindling.
    â€˜Looks like it’s brightening up,’ Shepherd said.
    â€˜That’s good.’
    â€˜What about the long-term forecast, though?’ Shepherd was trying to find Paul’s eyes, to make sure he understood the implication. ‘Maybe I should be thinking about spending a bit more time in Languedoc. What d’you reckon, Paul? You’re the one in the know.’
    â€˜Depends,’ Paul said.
    The cab pulled over suddenly, stopping outside a parade of shops on Willesden Lane to let two men in.
    â€˜That’s Nigel,’ Shepherd said, nodding towards the man who was taking the fold-down seat next to Paul. He was a big man; fifty or so, with greased-back