Paper Money by Ken Follett

safe, not hung on walls-had been bought because his art dealer said
    they would appreciate. To him, money was like the toy bank notes in
    Monopoly: he wanted it, not for what it could buy; but because it was
    needed to play the game.
     
    Still, his lifestyle was not uncomfortable. A primary-school teacher, or
    the wife of an agricultural laborer, would have thought he lived in
    unpardonable luxury.
     
    The room he used as his own office was small. There was a desk bearing
    three telephones, a swivel chair behind it, two more chairs for callers,
    and a long, upholstered couch against the wall. The bookshelf beside the
    wall safe held scores of weighty volumes on taxation and company law. It
    was a room without a personality: no photographs of loved ones on the
    desk, no pictures on the walls, no foolish plastic pen holder given by a
    well-meaning grandchild, no ashtray brought home from Clovelly or stolen
    from the Hilton.
     
    Laski's secretary was an efficient, overweight girl who wore her skirts
    too short. He often told people: "When they were giving out sex appeal,
    Carol was elsewhere getting extra rations brains."
     
    That was a good joke, an English joke, the kind directors told each
    other in the executive canteen.
     
    Carol had arrived at nine twenty-five to find her boss's "out" tray full
    of work which had not been there last night. Laski liked to do things
    like that: it impressed the staff and helped to counteract envy.
     
    Carol had not touched the papers until she had made him coffee. He liked
    that, too.
     
    He was sitting on the couch, hidden behind The Times, with the coffee
    near him on the arm of the chair, when Ellen Hamilton came in.
     
    She closed the door silently and tiptoed across the carpet, so that he
    did not see her until she pushed the newspaper down and looked at him
    over it. The sudden rustle made him jump with shock.
     
    She said: "Mr. Laski." He said: "Mrs. Hamilton!" She lifted her skirt to
    her waist and said: "Kiss me good morning."
     
    Under the skirt she wore old-fashioned stockings with no panties. Laski
    leaned forward and rubbed his face in the crisp, sweet-smelling pubic
    hair. His heart beat a little faster, and he felt delightfully wicked,
    the way he had the first time he kissed a woman's vulva.
     
    He sat back and looked up at her. "What I like about you is the way you
    manage to make sex seem dirty," he said. He folded the newspaper and
    dropped it to the floor.
     
    She lowered her skirt and said: "Sometimes I just get the hots." He
    smiled knowingly, and let his eyes roam her body. She was about fifty,
    and very slender, with small, pointed breasts. Her aging complexion was
    saved by a deep suntan which she nourished all winter under an
    ultraviolet lamp. Her hair was black, straight, and well cut; and the
    gray hairs which appeared from time to time were swiftly obliterated in
    an expensive Knightsbridge salon.
     
    She wore a cream-colored outfit: very elegant, very expensive, and very
    English. He ran his hand up the inside of her thigh, under the perfectly
    tailored skirt. With intimate insolence his fingers probed between her
    buttocks. He wondered whether any one would believe that the demure wife
    of the Hon. Derek Hamilton went around with no panties on just so that
    Felix Laski could feel her arse any time he wanted to.
     
    She wriggled pleasurably, then moved slightly away and sat down beside
    him on the couch where, during the last few months, she had fulfilled
    some of his weirdest sexual fantasies.
     
    He had intended Mrs. Hamilton to be a minor character in his grand
    scenario, but she had turned out to be a very enjoyable bonus.
     
    He had met her at a garden party. The hosts were friends of the
    Hamiltons', not of his; but he got an invitation by pretending a
    financial fancy for the host's company, a light-engineering group.
     
    It was a hot day in July. The women wore summer dresses and the men,
    linen jackets; Laski had a white suit. With his