Chapter 11: The Key

We went to the office on the night of the twenty-third, when the building was empty for Christmas.

Margaret had chosen the day on purpose.

"He'll be at his carol dinner until ten," she said in the taxi. "Bryony runs it. Every light in the place will be off by seven."

"And if they aren't?"

"Then I'm an old woman who wants her husband's reading glasses."

She looked straight ahead with her handbag on her knee, and I understood where her son had got his chin.

Wrenfield Capital took up the top three floors of a glass building off Berkeley Square.

The night guard at the desk was a heavy man with a flask on the counter.

He stood up when he saw her.

"Mrs Wrenfield! It's been two years."

"It has, and I'm sorry for it. How's your knee?"

"Mending, ma'am."

"I've only come to collect something of my late husband's. This is my daughter-in-law."

He glanced at me, and at her old brass-edged pass, which still worked.

"You know where it is," he said, and let us through.

He didn't ask us to sign the book.

I noticed that, and I noticed Margaret noticing it too.

The lift opened onto carpet and silence.

The lights had gone down to a dim blue glow, and the glass walls showed the snow melting on the roofs of Mayfair.

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