A single payment, one dollar, anything you could call rent?” “Not one dollar,” I said.

“Not ever.”

There was a pause on the line, and when Arthur spoke again, his voice had changed.

The friendly warmth was still there underneath, but over it had come something crisp and focused, the sound of a man who has just seen the whole board and every piece on it.

I have worked with a great many professionals over the years, in a great many countries, and I have learned to recognize the specific sound a truly competent person makes when a problem lands in front of them that they know exactly how to solve.

It is a kind of settling, a dropping of the voice into a lower and steadier register, the sound of someone who has stopped worrying about whether a thing can be done and started simply planning how to do it.