Risk

17

I sat in one of the clients’ chairs, with Trevor magisterially behind his desk. His manner was somewhere between unease and cajoling, as if he were not quite sure of his ground.

‘Denby said he’d be here by four.’

‘Good.’

‘But Ro... he’ll explain. He’ll satisfy you, I’m sure. I think I’ll leave it to him to explain, and then you’ll see... that there’s nothing for us to worry about.’

He raised an unconvincing smile and rippled his fingertips on his blotter. I looked at the familiar, friendly figure, and wished with all my heart that things were not as they were.

Denby came ten minutes early, which would have gratified the psychiatrists, and he was wound up like a tight spring, as well he might be. His backbone was ramrod stiff inside the short plump frame, the moustache bristling on the forward jutting mouth, the irritated air plainer than ever.

He didn’t shake hands with me: merely nodded. Trevor came round his desk to offer a chair, a politeness I thought excessive.

‘Well, Ro,’ Denby said crossly. ‘I hear you have reservations about my certificate.’

‘That’s so.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘To be exact... fifty thousand pounds missing from the clients’ deposit account.’

‘Rubbish.’

I sighed. ‘You transferred money belonging to three separate clients from the clients’ deposit to the clients’ current account,’ I said. ‘You then drew five cheques from the current account, made out to yourself, in varying sums, over a period of six weeks, three to four months ago. Those cheques add up to fifty thousand pounds exactly.’

‘But I’ve repaid the money. If you’d’ve looked more carefully you’d have seen the counter credits on the bank statement.’ He was irritated. Impatient.

‘I couldn’t make out where those credits had come from,’ I said, ‘so I asked the bank to send a duplicate statement. It came this morning.’

Denby sat as if turned to stone.

‘The duplicate statement,’ I said regretfully, ‘shows no record of the money having been repaid. The bank statement you gave us was... well... a forgery.’

Time ticked by.

Trevor looked unhappy. Denby revised his position.

‘I’ve only borrowed the money,’ he said. There was still no regret, and no real fear. ‘It’s perfectly safe. It will be repaid very shortly. You have my word for it.’

‘Um...’ I said. ‘Your word isn’t enough.’

‘Really, Ro, this is ridiculous. If I say it will be repaid, it will be repaid. Surely you know me well enough for that?’

‘If you mean,’ I said, ‘would I have thought you a thief, then no, I wouldn’t.’

‘I’m not a thief,’ he said angrily. ‘I told you, I borrowed the money. A temporary expediency. It’s unfortunate that... as things turned out... I was not able to repay it before the certificate became due. But as I explained to Trevor, it is only a matter of a few weeks, at the most.’

‘The clients’ money,’ I said reasonably, ‘is not entrusted to you so that you can use it for a private loan to yourself.’

‘We all know that,’ Denby said snappily, in a teaching-grandmother-to-suck-eggs manner. My grandmother, I reflected fleetingly, had never sucked an egg in her life.

‘You’re fifty thousand short,’ I said, ‘and Trevor’s condoned it, and neither of you seems to realise you’ll be out of business if it comes to light.’

They both looked at me as if I were a child.

‘But there’s no need for it to come to light, Ro,’ Trevor said. ‘Denby will repay the money soon, and all will be well. Like I told you.’

‘It isn’t ethical,’ I said.

‘Don’t be so pompous, Ro,’ Trevor said, at his most fatherly, shaking his head with sorrow.

‘Why did you take the money?’ I asked Denby. ‘What for?’

Denby looked across enquiringly at Trevor, who nodded.

‘You’ll have to tell him everything, Denby. He’s very persistent. Better tell him, then he’ll understand, and we can clear the whole thing up.’

Denby complied with bad grace. ‘I had a chance,’ he said, ‘of buying a small block of flats. Brand new. Not finished. Builder in difficulties, wanted a quick sale, that sort of thing. Flats were going cheap, of course. So I bought them. Too good to miss. Done that sort of deal before, of course. Not a fool, you know. Knew what I was doing, and all that.’

‘Your own conveyancer?’ I said.

‘What? Oh yes.’ He nodded. ‘Well, then, I needed a bit more extra capital to finance the deal. Perfectly safe. Good flats. Nothing wrong with them.’

‘But they haven’t sold?’ I said.

‘Takes time. Market’s sluggish in the winter. But they’re all sold now, subject to contracts. Formalities, mortgages, all that. Takes time.’

‘Mm.’ I said. ‘How many flats in the block, and where is it?’

‘Eight flats, small, of course. At Newquay, Cornwall.’

‘Have you seen them?’ I said.

‘Of course.’

‘Do you mind if I do?’ I said. ‘And will you give me the addresses of all the people who are buying the flats, and tell me how much each is paying?’

Denby bristled. ‘Are you saying you don’t believe me?’

‘I’m an auditor,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe. I check.’

‘You can take my word for it.’

I shook my head. ‘You sent us a forged bank statement. I can’t take your word for anything.’

There was a silence.

‘If those flats exist, and if you repay that money this week, I’ll keep quiet,’ I said. ‘I’ll want confirmation by letter from the bank. The money must be there by Friday, and the letter here by Saturday. Otherwise, no deal.’

‘I can’t get the money this week,’ Denby said peevishly.

‘Borrow it from a loan shark.’

‘But that’s ridiculous. The interest I would have to pay would wipe out all my profit.’

Serve you right, I thought unfeelingly. I said, ‘Unless the clients’ money is back in the bank by Friday, the Law Society will have to be told.’

‘Ro!’ Trevor protested.

‘However much you try to wrap it up as “unfortunate” and “expedient”,’ I said, ‘the fact remains that all three of us know that what Denby has done is a criminal offence. I’m not putting my name to it as a partner of this firm. If the money is not repaid by Friday, I’ll write a letter explaining that in the light of fresh knowledge we wish to cancel the certificate just issued.’

‘But Denby would be struck off!’ Trevor said.

They both looked as if the stark realities of life were something that only happened to other people.

‘Unfriendly,’ Denby said angrily. ‘Unnecessarily aggressive, that’s what you are, Ro. Righteous. Unbending.’

‘All those, I dare say,’ I said.

‘It’s no good, I suppose, suggesting I... er... cut you in?’

Trevor made a quick horrified gesture, trying to stop him.

‘Denby, Denby,’ he said, distressed. ‘You’ll never bribe him. For God’s sake have some sense. If you really want to antagonise Ro, you offer him a bribe.’

Denby scowled at me and got explosively to his feet.

‘All right,’ he said bitterly. ‘I’ll get the money by Friday. And don’t ever expect any favours from me for the rest of your life.’

He strode furiously out of the office leaving eddies of disturbed air and longer trails of disturbed friendship. Turbulent wake, I thought. Churning and destructive, overturning everything it touched.

‘Are you satisfied, Ro?’ Trevor said gently, in sorrow.

I sat without answering.

I felt like a man on a high diving board, awaiting the moment of strength. Ahead, the plunge. Behind, the quiet way down. The choice, within me.

I could walk away, I thought. Pretend I didn’t know what I knew. Settle for silence, friendship and peace. Refrain from bringing distress and disgrace and dreary unhappiness.

My friend or the law. To which did I belong? To the law or my own pleasure...

Oh great God almighty.

I swallowed with a dry mouth.

‘Trevor,’ I said. ‘Do you know Arthur Robinson?’

There was no fun, no fun at all, in looking into the face of ultimate disaster.

The blood slowly drained from Trevor’s skin, leaving his eyes like great dark smudges.

‘I’ll get you some brandy,’ I said.

‘Ro...’

‘Wait.’

I fetched him a tumbler, from his entertaining cupboard, heavy with alcohol, light on soda.

‘Drink it,’ I said with compassion. ‘I’m afraid I’ve given you a shock.’

‘How...’ His mouth quivered suddenly, and he put the glass to his lips to hide it. He drank slowly, and took the glass a few inches away: a present help in trouble. ‘How much... do you know?’ he said.

‘Why I was abducted. Who did it. Who owns the boat. Who sailed her. Where she is now. How much she cost. And where the money comes from.’

‘My God... My God...’ His hands shook.

‘I want to talk to him,’ I said. ‘To Arthur Robinson.’

A faint flash of something like hope shone in his eyes.

‘Do you know... his other name?’

I told him what it was. The spark of light died to a pebblelike dullness. He clattered the glass against his teeth.

‘I want you to telephone,’ I said. ‘Tell him I know. Tell him I want to talk. Tell him, if he has any ideas of doing anything but what I ask, I’ll go straight from this office to the police. I want to talk to him tonight.’

‘But Ro, knowing you...’ He sounded despairing. ‘You’ll go to the police anyway.’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ I said.

He stared at me for a long, long time. Then with a heavy half-groaning sigh, he stretched out his hand to the telephone.

We went to Trevor’s house. Better for talking, he suggested, than the office.

‘Your wife?’ I said.

‘She’s staying with her sister, tonight. She often does.’

We drove in two cars, and judging by the daze of his expression Trevor saw nothing consciously of the road for the whole four miles.

His big house sat opulently in the late afternoon sunshine, nineteen-twenties respectability in every brick. Acres of diamond-shaped leaded window panes, black paint, a wide portico with corkscrew pillars, wisteria creeping here and there, lots of gables with beams stuck on for effect.

Trevor unlocked the front door and led the way into dead inside air which smelled of old coffee and furniture polish. Parquet flooring in the roomy hall, and rugs.

‘Come into the snug,’ he said, walking ahead.

The snug was a longish room which lay between the more formal sitting and dining rooms, looking outwards to the pillared loggia, with the lawn beyond. To Trevor the snug was psychologically as well as geographically the heart of the house, the place where he most felt a host to his businessmen friends.

There was the bar, built in, where he liked to stand, genially pouring drinks. Several dark red leather armchairs. A small sturdy dining table, with four leather-seated dining chairs. A large television. Bookshelves. An open brick fireplace, with a leather screen. A palm in a brass pot. More Stubbs prints. Several small chair-side tables. A leaf-patterned carpet. Heavy red velvet curtains. Red lampshades. On winter evenings, with the fire lit, curtains drawn, and lights glowing warmly, snug, in spite of its size, described it.

Trevor switched on the lights, and although it was full daylight, drew the curtains. Then he made straight for the bar.

‘Do you want a drink?’ he said.

I shook my head. He fixed himself a brandy of twice the size I’d given him in the office.

‘I can’t believe any of this is happening,’ he said.

He took his filled glass and slumped down in one of the red leather armchairs, staring into space. I hitched a hip on to the table, which like so much in that house was protected by a sheet of plate glass. We both waited, neither of us enjoying our thoughts. We waited nearly an hour.

Nothing violent, I told myself numbly, would happen in that genteel house. Violence occurred in back alleys and dark corners. Not in a well-to-do sitting-room on a Monday evening. I felt the flutter of apprehension in every nerve and thought about eyes black with the lust for revenge.

A car drew up outside. A door slammed. There were footsteps outside on the gravel. Footsteps crossing the threshold, coming through the open front door, treading across the parquet, coming to the door of the snug. Stopping there.

‘Trevor?’ he said.

Trevor looked up dully. He waved a hand towards me, where I sat to one side, masked by the open door.

He pushed the door wider. Stepped into the room.

He held a shotgun; balanced over his forearm, butt under the armpit, twin barrels pointing to the floor.

I took a deep steadying breath, and looked into his firm familiar face.

Jossie’s father. William Finch.

‘Shooting me,’ I said, ‘won’t solve anything. I’ve left photostats and all facts with a friend.’

‘If I shoot your foot off, you’ll ride no more races.’

His voice already vibrated with the smashing hate: and this time I saw it not from across a courtroom thick with policemen, but from ten feet at the wrong end of a gun.

Trevor made jerky calming gestures with his hands.

‘William... surely you see. Shooting Ro would be disastrous. Irretrievably disastrous.’

‘The situation is already irretrievable.’ His voice was thick, roughened and deepened by the tension in throat and neck. ‘This little creep has seen to that.’

‘Well,’ I said, and heard the tension in my own voice, ‘I didn’t make you steal.’

It wasn’t the best of remarks. Did nothing to reduce the critical mass: and William Finch was like a nuclear reactor with the rods too far out already. The barrels of the gun swung up into his hands and pointed at my loins.

‘William, for God’s sake,’ Trevor said urgently, climbing ponderously out of his armchair. ‘Use your reason. If he says killing him would do no good, you must believe him. He’d never have risked coming here if it wasn’t true.’

Finch vibrated with fury through all his elegant height. The conflict between hatred and commonsense was plain in the bunching muscles along his jaw and the claw-like curve of his fingers. There was a fearful moment when I was certain that the blood-lust urge to avenge himself would blot out all fear of consequences, and I thought disconnectedly that I wouldn’t feel it. . you never felt the worst of wounds in the first few seconds. It was only after, if you lived, that the tide came in. I wouldn’t know... I wouldn’t feel it, and I might not even know...

He swung violently away from me and thrust the shotgun into Trevor’s arms.

‘Take it. Take it,’ he said through his teeth. ‘I don’t trust myself.’

I could feel the tremors down my legs, and the prickling of sweat over half my body. He hadn’t killed me at the very start, when it would have been effective, and it was all very well risking he wouldn’t do it now when he’d nothing to gain. It had come a good deal too close.

I leaned my behind weakly against the table, and worked some saliva into my mouth. Tried to set things out in a dry-as-dust manner, as if we were discussing a small point of policy.

‘Look...’ It came out half-strangled. I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘Tomorrow I will have to telephone to New York, to talk to the Nantucket family. Specifically, to talk to one of the directors on the board of their family empire; the director to whom Trevor sends the annual Axwood audited accounts.’

Trevor took the shotgun and stowed it away out of sight behind the ornate bar. William Finch stood in the centre of the room with unreleased energy quivering through all his frame. I watched his hands clench and unclench, and his legs move inside his trousers, as if wanting to stride about.

‘What will you tell them, then?’ he said fiercely. ‘What?’

‘That you’ve been... er... defrauding the Nantucket family business during the past financial year.’

For the first time some of the heat went out of him.

‘During the past...’ He stopped.

‘I can’t tell,’ I said, ‘about earlier years. I didn’t do the audits. I’ve never seen the books, and they are not in our office. They have to be kept for three years, of course, so I expect you have them.’

There was a lengthy silence.

‘I’m afraid,’ I said, ‘that the Nantucket director will tell me to go at once to the police. If it was old Naylor Nantucket who was involved, it might be different. He might just have hushed everything up, for your sake. But this new generation, they don’t know you. They’re hard-nosed businessmen who disapprove of the stable anyway. They never come near the place. They do look upon it as a business proposition, though, and they pay you a good salary to manage it, and they undoubtedly regard any profits as being theirs. However mildly I put it, and I’m not looking forward to it at all, they are going to have to know that for this financial year their profits have gone to you.’

My deadpan approach began to have its results. Trevor poured two drinks and thrust one into William Finch’s hand. He looked at it unseeingly and after a few moments put it down on the bar.

‘And Trevor?’ he said.

‘I’ll have to tell the Nantucket director,’ I said regretfully, ‘that the auditor they appointed has helped to rip them off.’

‘Ro,’ Trevor said, protesting, I gathered, at the slang expression more than the truth of it.

‘Those Axwood books are a work of fiction,’ I said to him. ‘Cash books, ledgers, invoices... all ingenious lies. William would never have got away with such a wholesale fraud without your help. Without, anyway...’ I said, modifying it slightly, ‘without you knowing, and turning a blind eye.’

‘And raking off a bloody big cut,’ Finch said violently, making sure he took his friend down with him.

Trevor made a gesture of distaste, but it had to be right. Trevor had a hearty appetite for money, and would never have taken such a risk without the gain.

‘These books look all right at first sight,’ I said. ‘They would have satisfied an outside auditor, if the Nantuckets had wanted a check from a London firm, or one in New York. But as for Trevor, and as for me, living here...’ I shook my head. ‘Axwood Stables have paid thousands to forage merchants who didn’t receive the money, to saddlers who don’t exist, to maintenance men, electricians and plumbers who did no work. The invoices are there, all nicely printed, but the transactions they refer to are thin air. The cash went straight to William Finch.’

Some of the slowly evaporating heat returned fast to Finch’s manner, and I thought it wiser not to catalogue aloud all the rest of the list of frauds.

He’d charged the Nantuckets wages for several more lads than he’d employed: a dodge hard to pin down, as the stable-lad population floated from yard to yard.

He’d charged the Nantucket company more than nine thousand pounds for the rent of extra loose boxes and keep for horses by a local farmer, when I knew he had paid only a fraction of that, as the farmer was one of my clients.

He’d charged much more for shares in jockeys’ retainers than the jockeys had received; and had invented travelling expenses to the races for horses which according to the form books had never left the yard.

He had pocketed staggering sums from a bloodstock agent in the form of commission on the sales of Nantucket horses to outside owners: fifty thousand or so in the past year, the agent had confirmed casually on the telephone, not knowing that Finch had no right to it.

I imagined Finch had also been sending enlarged bills to all the non-Nantucket owners, getting them to make out their cheques to him personally rather than to the company, and then diverting a slice to himself before paying a reasonable sum into the business.

The Nantuckets were far away, and uninterested. All I guessed they’d wanted had been a profit on the bottom line, and he’d given them just enough to keep them quiet.

As a final irony, he’d charged the Nantuckets six thousand pounds for auditors’ fees, and nowhere in our books was there a trace of six thousand pounds from Axwood Stables. Trevor might have had his half, though, on the quiet: it was enough to make you laugh.

A long list of varied frauds. Much harder to detect than one large one. Adding up, though, to an average rake-off for Finch of over two thousand pounds a week. Untaxed.

Year in, year out.

Assisted by his auditor.

Assisted also, it was certain, by the ever-sick secretary, Sandy, though with or without her knowledge I didn’t know. If she was ill as often as all that, and away from her post, maybe she didn’t know. Or maybe the knowledge made her ill. But as in most big frauds, the paperwork had to be done well, and in the Axwood Stables’ case, there had been a great deal of it done well.

Ninety to a hundred horses. Well trained, well raced. A big stable with a huge weekly turnover. A top trainer. A trainer, I thought, who didn’t own his own stable, who was paid only a salary, and a highly taxed one at that, and who faced having no capital to live on in old age, in a time of inflation. A man in his fifties, an employee, seeing into a future without enough money. An enforced retirement. No house of his own. No power. A man with money at present passing daily through his hands like a river in flood.

All racehorse trainers were entrepreneurs, with organising minds. Most were in business on their own account, and had no absentee company to defraud. If William Finch had been his own master, I doubted that he would ever have thought of embezzlement. With his abilities, in the normal course of things, he would have had no need.

Need. Ability. Opportunity. I wondered how big a step it had been to dishonesty. To crime.

Probably not very big. A pay-packet for a non-existent stable lad, for a little extra regular cash. The cost of an unordered ton of hay.

Small steps, ingenious swindles, multiplying and swelling, leading to a huge swathing highway.

‘Trevor,’ I said mildly, ‘how long ago did you spot William’s... irregularities?’

Trevor looked at me sorrowfully, and I half-smiled.

‘You saw them... some of the first ones... in the books,’ I said, ‘and you told him it wouldn’t do.’

‘Of course.’

‘You suggested,’ I said, ‘that if he really put his mind to it you would both be a great deal better off.’

Finch reacted strongly with a violent gesture of his whole arm, but Trevor’s air of sorrow merely intensified.

‘Just like Connaught Powys,’ I said. ‘I tried hard to believe that you genuinely hadn’t seen how he was rigging that computer, but I reckon... I have to face it that you were doing it together.’

‘Ro...’ he said sadly.

‘Anyway,’ I said to Finch, ‘you sent the books in for the annual audit, and after all this time neither you nor Trevor are particularly nervous. Trevor and I have been chronically behind with our work for ages, so I guess he just locked them in his cupboard, to see to as soon as he could. He would know I wouldn’t look at your books. I never had, in six years; and I had too many clients of my own. And then, when Trevor was away on his holidays, the unforeseen happened. On Gold Cup day, through your letterbox, and mine, came the summons for you to appear before the Tax Commissioners a fortnight later.’

He stared at me with furious dark eyes, his strong elegant figure tall and straight like a great stag at bay against an impudent hound. Round the edges of the curtains the daylight was fading to dark. Inside, electric lights shone smoothly on civilised man.

I smiled twistedly. ‘I sent you a message. Don’t worry, I said, Trevor’s on holiday, but I’ll apply for a postponement, and make a start on the books myself. I went straight off to ride in the Gold Cup and never gave it another thought. But you, to you, that message meant ruin. Degradation, prosecution, probably prison.’

A quiver ran through him. Muscles moved along his jaw.

‘I imagine,’ I said, ‘that you thought the simplest thing would be to get the books back; but they were locked in Trevor’s cupboard, and only he and I have keys. And in any case I would have thought it very suspicious, if, with the Commissioners breathing down our necks, you refused to let me see the books. Especially suspicious if the office had been broken into and those papers stolen. Anything along those lines would have led to investigation, and disaster. So as you couldn’t keep the books from me, you decided to keep me from the books. You had the means to hand. A new boat, nearly ready to sail. You simply arranged for it to go early, and take me with it. If you could keep me away from the office until Trevor returned, all would be well.’

‘This is all nonsense,’ he said stiffly.

‘Don’t be silly. It’s past denying. Trevor was due back in the office on Monday, April 4th, which would give him three days to apply for a postponement to the Commissioners. A perfectly safe margin. Trevor would then do the Axwood books as usual, and I would be set free, never knowing why I’d been abducted.’

Trevor buried his face in his brandy, which made me thirsty.

‘If you’ve any mineral water, or tonic, Trevor, I’d like some,’ I said.

‘Give him nothing,’ Finch said, the pent-up violence still thick in his voice.

Trevor made fluttery motions with his hands, but after a moment, with apologetic glances at Finch’s tightened mouth, he fetched a tumbler and poured into it a bottle of tonic water.

‘Ro...’ he said, giving me the glass. ‘My dear chap...’

‘My dear shit,’ Finch said.

I drank the fizzy quinine water gratefully.

‘I bust things up by getting home a few days early,’ I said. ‘I suppose you were frantic. Enough, anyway, to send the kidnapping squads to my cottage to pick me up again. And when they didn’t manage it, you sent someone else.’ I drank bubbles and tasted gall. ‘Next day, you sent your daughter Jossie.’

‘She knows nothing, Ro,’ Trevor said.

‘Shut up,’ Finch said. ‘She strung him along by the nose.’

‘Maybe she did,’ I said. ‘It was supposed to be only for a day or two. Trevor was due back that Sunday. But I told you, while you were busy filling my time by showing me round your yard, that Trevor’s car had broken down in France, and he wouldn’t be back until Wednesday or Thursday. And I assured you again that you didn’t have to worry, I had already applied for the postponement, and I would start the audit myself. The whole situation was back to square one, and the outlook was as deadly as ever.’

Finch glared, denying nothing.

‘You offered me a day at the races with Jossie,’ I said. ‘And a ride in the novice hurdle. I’m a fool about accepting rides. Never know when to say no. You must have known that Notebook was unable to jump properly. You must have hoped when you flew off to the Grand National, that I’d fall with him and break a leg.’

‘Your neck,’ he said vindictively, with no vestige of a joke.

Trevor glanced at his face and away again, as if embarrassed by so much raw emotion.

‘Your men must have been standing by in case I survived undamaged, which of course I did,’ I said. ‘They followed us to the pub where I had dinner with Jossie, and then to the motel where I planned to stay. Your second attempt at abduction was more successful, in that I couldn’t get out. And when Trevor was safely back, you rang Scotland Yard, and the police set me free. From one point of view all your efforts had produced precisely the desired result, because I had not in fact by then seen one page or one entry of the Axwood books.’

I thought back, and amended that statement. ‘I hadn’t seen any except the petty cash book, which you gave me yourself. And that, I imagine, was your own private accurate record, and not the one re-written and padded for the sake of the audit. It was left in my car with all my other belongings, and I took it to the office when I went back last Friday. It was still there on Saturday. It was Saturday morning that I got out the Axwood books and studied them, and made the photocopies.’

‘But why, Ro?’ Trevor asked frustratedly. ‘What made you think... Why did you think of William?’

‘The urgency,’ I said. ‘The ruthless haste, and the time factors. I believed, you see, when I was on the boat, that I’d been kidnapped for revenge. Any auditor who’d been the downfall of embezzlers would think that, if he’d found himself in such a position. Especially if he’s been directly threatened, face to face, as I had, by Connaught Powys, and earlier by Ownslow and Glitberg, and later also by others. But when I escaped and came home, there was hardly any interval before I was in danger again. Hunted, really. And caught. So the second time, last week, in the van, I began to think... that perhaps it wasn’t revenge, but prevention, and after that, it was a matter of deduction, elimination, boring things, on the whole. But I had hours...’ I swallowed involuntarily, remembering. ‘I had hours in which to think of all the possible people, and work it out. So then, on Saturday morning, I went to the office, when I had the place to myself, and checked.’

Finch turned on Trevor, looking for a whipping boy. ‘Why the hell did you keep those books where he could see them? Why didn’t you lock them in the bloody safe?’

‘I’ve a key to the safe,’ I said dryly.

‘Christ!’ He raised his hands in a violent, exploding, useless gesture. ‘Why didn’t you take them home?’

‘I never take books home,’ Trevor said. ‘And you told me that Ro was going to the races Saturday, and out with Jossie Sunday, so we’d nothing to worry about. And anyway, neither of us dreamt that he knew... or guessed.’

Finch swung his desperate face in my direction.

‘What’s your price?’ he said. ‘How much?’

I didn’t answer. Trevor said protestingly, ‘William...’

‘He must want something,’ Finch said. ‘Why is he telling us all this instead of going straight to the police? Because he wants a deal, that’s why.’

‘Not money,’ I said.

Finch continued to look like a bolt of lightning trapped in bones and flesh, but he didn’t pursue the subject. He knew, as he’d always known, that it wasn’t a question of money.

‘Where did you get the men who abducted me?’ I said.

‘You know so much. You can bloody well find out.’

Rent-a-thug, I thought cynically. Someone, somewhere, knew how to hire some bully boys. The police could find out, I thought, if they wanted to. I wouldn’t bother.

‘The second time,’ I said. ‘Did you tell them not to leave a mark on me?’

‘So what?’

‘Did you?’ I said.

‘I didn’t want the police taking any serious interest,’ he said. ‘No marks. No stealing. Made you a minor case.’

So the fists and boots, I thought, had been a spot of private enterprise. Payment for the general run-around I’d given the troops. Not orders from above. I supposed I was glad, in a sour sort of way.

He’d chosen the warehouse, I guessed, because it couldn’t have been easy to find a safer place in a hurry: and because he thought it would divert my attention even more strongly towards Ownslow and Glitberg, and away from any thought of himself.

Trevor said, ‘Well... What... what are we going to do now?’ but no one answered, because there were wheels outside on the gravel. Car doors slammed.

‘Did you leave the front door open?’ Trevor said.

Finch didn’t need to answer. He had. Several feet tramped straight in, crossed the hall, and made unerringly for the snug.

‘Here we are then,’ said a powerful voice. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

The light of triumph shone in Finch’s face, and he smiled with grateful welcome at the newcomers crowding into the room.

Glitberg. Ownslow. Connaught Powys.

‘Got the rat cornered, then?’ Powys said.