To the hilt

CHAPTER EIGHT

When Ivan spread out the creditors' agreements on his table and slowly took each of them onto his lap to read them carefully one by one, his overall reaction was one of relieved gloom.

When my mother came into his room, though, he lifted his head to her and smiled, and for the first time since his illness the worry dissolved from the lines on her forehead. She smiled back with the deep understanding friendship of a strong marriage, and I thought inconsequentially that if the area bank bighead had seen that exchange he would have counted it benefit enough for anything I had done.

'Our boy,' Ivan said (and I was usually 'your' boy), 'has signed the brewery into chains and penury.'

'But…' my mother asked, 'why are you pleased?'

He picked up a thick batch of paper in a blue cover and waved it at her.

'This,' he said, 'is our annual audit. Tobias Tollright has signed it. It is our passport to continue trading. The creditors' terms for payment are tough, very tough, but they've been fair. We ought to be able to win our way back. And they've factored in the Cheltenham race! I was sure we'd have to cancel it. But the chalice and Golden Malt are still at risk… I'll not give them up. We must meet the payments. Increase sales… I'll call a board meeting.'

One could actually see his resolution trickling back.

'Well done, Alexander,' he said.

I shook my head. 'Thank Mrs Morden. It was all her work.'

We spent an easy, companionable evening, the three of us, but by morning Ivan's euphoria had mostly vanished and he was complaining that the brewery's shareholders would be receiving only tiny token dividends for the next three years. To do him justice he wasn't thinking of himself, although he was by far the major shareholder, but of various widows and relations left behind by time and mergers from the days before he'd inherited. Several widows relied on their dividends for existence, he said.

'If you'd have gone bankrupt,' I pointed out, 'they'd be lucky to get anything at all. A tiny lump sum and no dividends for ever.'

'But still…'

I'd hoped he would have had energy enough to dress, but he fretted instead about the widows. 'Perhaps I can afford… out of my own funds… heating bills this winter…'

My mother stroked his hand fondly.

I had expected, since he had written his codicil the day before, that he would have told his lawyer not to bother to come, but it seemed he had forgotten to cancel the meeting, and Oliver Grantchester, with his loud voice, bulky frame and room-filling presence arrived punctually at ten o'clock, the meek Miranda in tow.

Ivan began stuttering an embarrassed apology, to which Grantchester didn't listen.

The lawyer looked me up and down without favour and told Ivan that they didn't need my presence. He pointed to me and then to the door, giving me an unmistakable order. I might in fact have gone, but at that moment Patsy arrived like a ship in full sail, Surtees floundering foolishly in her wake.

Surtees the spanker: weak, pathetic and vicious.

'You are not making any codicil, Father, unless I'm sure Alexander' - Patsy spat the word - 'doesn't in any way benefit.'

'My dear,' Ivan told her pleasantly, 'I'm not writing any codicil this morning. None at all.'

'But you said… You arranged for Oliver to come…'

'Yes, I know, I'm sorry I forgot to tell him, but I wrote my codicil yesterday. It's all done. We can just have some coffee now.'

Ivan was naive if he thought coffee would quell a tempest. Patsy and Oliver both berated him. My mother stood like a shield beside him. Surtees glared at me as if his brains had seized up.

'It's perfectly simple,' Grantchester boomed. 'You can tear up yesterday's codicil and write another one.'

Ivan looked at me as if for help. 'But I don't need to write another one,' he said, 'do I?'

I shook my head.

The bombardment of voices went on. Ivan, upset, nevertheless held to his position: he had written his codicil, it expressed what he wanted, and there was no need to write it again.

'At least let me check it from the legal point of view,' Grantchester said.

Ivan with a touch of starch told him that he, Ivan, knew when a document had been correctly executed, and his codicil had.

'But perhaps I can see it…?'

'No,' Ivan said, regretfully polite.

'I don't understand you.'

'I do,' Patsy said forcefully. 'It's quite clear that Alexander is manipulating you, Father, and you're so blind you can't see that everything he does is aimed at taking my place as your heir.'

Ivan looked at me with such troubled indecision that I quietly went out of his study and climbed the stairs to the room I'd slept in, to put together the few things I'd brought with me, ready for leaving. I'd done my best for the brewery - for Ivan, for my mother - but the biggest difference between my stepfather and me was the ease and extent of his mood swings and changes of opinions, and, good and honourable man though he might be, I never quite knew what he believed of me from one hour to the next.

It had seemed, since his illness, that he had relied on and believed in and made use of my good faith, but it had been a frail belief after all.

I could hear shouting going on downstairs, though I'd thought my departure would at least have stopped Patsy haranguing her father.

I stood at the window looking out towards Regent's Park and didn't hear my mother come upstairs until she spoke behind me.

'Alexander, Ivan needs you.' I turned. 'I can't. I'm not fighting Patsy.' 'It's not just Patsy. That man who runs the brewery is here now too. Desmond Finch. Ivan thinks the world of him but he's a terrific fusspot, and he trots to Patsy with every complaint. They're all telling Ivan… yelling at him… that the terms you signed with the creditors are disgraceful and they could all have done better, and they want him to cancel your power of attorney retrospectively so that your signature on everything is void.'

I asked, 'Did Ivan send you to fetch me?'

'Well, no. But last night he was so pleased…'

I sighed and put my arm round her slender waist. 'And,' I said, 'he can't legally make my signature void.'

We went down. Ivan looked hunted, harried by the pack. They all resented my reappearance, and I looked at them one by one, trying to put reasons to their antagonism.

Patsy, tall, good-looking, fierce and obsessed, had been an unappeasable foe since the day her father had fallen in love with my mother. Young women who felt possessive of their widowed fathers usually hated the usurper who displaced them, but Patsy's rage had skipped over her sweet-natured unthreatening stepmother and fastened inexorably on me. If she had ever stopped to make a sensible reckoning she would know that she had never lost anything at all because of me, let alone her father's love, but emotion ruled her entirely, and, after twelve years of her steadfast detestation, I didn't expect her to change.

She'd married Surtees two years after her father had married my mother, and in the weak, good-looking Hooray-Henry had chosen a mate she could indoctrinate.

I looked at Surtees as he stood behind Ivan's chair; he was a person, I thought, who would always seek such a shield, who would never have the steel to stand out in the open and say; 'Here I am. Judge me as I am.' Patsy had married a man she could bully and it had been very bad for both of them.

I found it less easy to understand Desmond Finch. He stood there glaring at me, thin, aggressive, flashing his large silver-rimmed glasses in sharp little head movements, his Adam's apple actively jumping in his neck. I had no reason to doubt the general assessment I'd been given that he was efficient and energetic in his job, but I believed also in the evaluation that he would act only if given directions. It seemed plain that he danced to Patsy's instructions: plain also that he'd made no objective overview on the brewery's troubles, in spite of his own whole career being bound up in its financial health.

A limited man, I thought. Short-sighted mentally as well as optically. A voice baying in the pack. Not one to sink the teeth in first.

And Oliver Grantchester? He'd never liked me; I'd never liked him.

There he balefully stood, bulky, going bald, Ivan's legal adviser from way-back, consulted, wise - and enchanted by Patsy to the extent that his manner to me was always of suspicion, distrust and obstruction.

Ivan said weakly, 'Couldn't you have got a better deal for the brewery, Alexander?'

I smiled grimly. 'I'm sick of the brewery,' I said. 'Ivan, let Patsy loose on the creditors. I don't give a damn about the fact that she'll ruin her inheritance. Why should I care? The brewery is yours. It's rescued; it has problems that are basically solved, but which you can muck up in a moment. I'm a painter and I'm going back to my own work, and goodbye… a heartfelt goodbye to you all.'

Ivan said miserably, 'Alexander…'

'For you,' I said to him plainly, 'I've taken risks that I'll take again, and I've begged and persuaded and bargained to save your good name. Because you sent me the chalice' - and I glanced at Patsy and Surtees, who stared as if transfixed - 'I got beaten beyond a joke. And I've had enough. I'll do anything on earth for my mother, but that's where it now ends. Do what you like, Ivan. Just count me out.'

My mother said, barely audibly, 'Oh no… please, Alexander,' and Ivan looked exhaustedly strained.

Grantchester said heavily, 'Ivan tells us he gave you his codicil for safe-keeping. He now sees that this was a mistake. So hand it over.'

Into the silence that followed I said, 'Ivan?'

His eyes looked deep in their sockets. I understood the impossibility he faced. His faith in me was a disloyalty to his daughter; a disloyalty I had no right to coerce, even if I could.

'I'll get it,' I said, letting him off. 'It's upstairs.'

I went up and fetched the sealed envelope, and returning, put it into his hands.

'I'll take it,' Grantchester said authoritatively, but Ivan put the envelope on his knees and folded his hands on it, and shook his head.

'I'll keep it here, Oliver,' he said.

'But-'

'Then I can tear it up if I change my mind.'

I smiled into Ivan's troubled eyes and without weight said I would be upstairs for an hour or two more if he wanted me.

'He doesn't want you,' Surtees said spitefully. 'None of us do.'

I shrugged and left them and, shaking my head to my mother's pleading eyes, went back upstairs, looking out of the window and waiting.

They went on shouting, downstairs, but finally the angry voices came out of Ivan's study and descended to street level and left by the front door. When all was quiet I went out of my room and onto the stairs, and found Ivan on the landing below me, looking up. He made a gesture towards his study, a flip of the hand that was unmistakably an invitation, so I went down and followed him into his room, and sat opposite him in my usual chair.

My mother, looking as frail as her husband, stood beside Ivan, touching him as if to give him strength.

He said to me, 'Did you mean it, that you've had enough?'

For answer I asked, 'Did you cancel the power of attorney?'

'I… I don't know what to do.'

'No, he didn't,' my mother said. 'Ivan, tell Alexander… Beg Alexander to go on acting for you.' To me she said, 'Don't leave us.'

I had so recently vowed I would do anything on earth for my mother. So small a thing, to stay and field a few insults. I wilted inside from disinclination.

'What did you mean about being beaten?' Ivan said.

'That black eye I had last week…'

He frowned. 'Keith Robbiston said you were hurt.'

I told them about the robbers. 'I didn't want to worry you when you were so ill… so I didn't tell you.'

'Oh my God,' he said, 'I've done so much harm.'

'Nothing that isn't being put right.'

I poured brandy into two glasses standing ready on a nearby silver tray and handed one to Ivan, one to my mother. They both drank without protest, as if I'd given them medicine.

I said to Ivan, 'If you just leave things as they are, the brewery should be out of debt in three years. I know some of the terms are hard. They have to be. The debts are truly enormous. Mrs Morden has done a marvellous job, but she says the future depends greatly on keeping the services of your present brewmaster and on the managing energies of Desmond Finch. Desmond Finch wouldn't take a diamond-studded suggestion from me, but he's used to following your instructions, so that's what you have to do, Ivan. Go back to the brewery and instruct him.'

My stepfather nodded with resolution. And how long, I morosely considered, would that resolution last?

The telephone rang. Ivan's hand asked me to answer it, so I did.

A confident voice said, 'This is Detective Constable Thompson of the Leicestershire police. I want to speak to Sir Ivan Westering.'

Ivan, of course, wanted me to deal with whatever it was. I explained that Sir Ivan was recovering from a heart attack, and offered my services.

'And you are, sir?'

'His son.' Well, near enough.

After a pause a different voice, just as confident, identified himself as Detective Chief Inspector Reynolds.

'What is this about?' I asked.

The voice enquired whether Sir Ivan knew anyone named Norman Quorn.

'Yes, he does.'

The voice impersonally explained. I listened blankly. The Leicestershire police had for two weeks been trying to identify a body that they now had reason to believe was that of a Mr Norman Quorn. The Chief Inspector wanted Sir Ivan Westering, as Mr Quorn's long-term employer, to assist in making a positive identification, yes or no.

With shortened breath, I said, 'Doesn't he have any relations?'

'Only his sister, sir, and she is… distressed. The body is partly decomposed. The sister gave us Sir Ivan's name. So we would be grateful, sir…'

'He isn't well,' I said.

'Perhaps you, then?'

'I didn't know him.' I thought briefly. 'I'll tell my father. Give me a number to phone you back.' He told me a number, which I wrote out of habit on the bottom of the box of tissues. 'Right,' I said, 'five minutes.'

As emotionlessly as possible I gave Ivan the news.

'Norman!' he said disbelievingly. 'Dead?'

'They want to know for sure. They ask you to go.'

'I'll go with you,' my mother said.

I phoned the Chief Inspector, told him I would be driving, and wrote his directions on the bottom of the tissue-box.

In the end four of us went to Leicestershire in Ivan's Rover (retrieved from an underground garage), Ivan and my mother in the back with Wilfred sitting in the front beside me, a box of heart-attack remedies on his lap. Wilfred read out the directions on the tissue-box so that fairly early in the afternoon we arrived at a featureless building in Leicester that housed a mortuary and investigating laboratories.

The Detective Chief Inspector met us, shook hands with Ivan and my mother and me and was impressed into solicitude by Wilfred's presence and medical precautions. Ivan, though in suit and tie, looked almost greyer than in his dressing-gown.

Inside the building, in a small reception area that doubled as waiting-room, a large weeping woman was being comforted in the arms of an equally large uniformed policewoman. The Chief Inspector indicated that we should wait there while he took Ivan to see the body, but Ivan clutched my arm and wouldn't go without me, so, shrugging, the senior policeman settled for taking me too.

We were all then issued with disposable gowns, with gloves, overshoes and masks for our noses and mouths. Dead bodies, it seemed, could infect the living.

I hadn't been in such a place before, but it was curiously familiar from pictures. We went down a passage into a white painted room that was clean, brightly lit, not very large and smelled not unpleasantly of disinfectant. On a high centre table, under a white cover, lay a long quiet shape.

Ivan's hand shook on my arm but civic duty won the day. He looked steadily at the white face revealed when a gowned and masked mortuary attendant pulled back one end of the covering sheet, and he said without wavering, 'Yes, that's Norman.'

'Norman Quorn?'

'Yes, Chief Inspector. Norman Quorn.'

'Thank you, sir.'

I said, 'What did he die of?'

There was a pause. The policeman and the mortuary attendant exchanged eyebrow signals that I hadn't the code to read, and the policeman also looked assessingly at Ivan's physical state, and at mine, and came to a decision.

'I'll take you back to your wife, sir,' he said to Ivan, and offered his arm instead of mine, neatly leaving me behind alone to hear the answer to my question.

The mortuary attendant first of all identified himself as the pathologist who had carried out the original post mortem.

'Sorry,' I said.

'Don't be.' He casually pulled down his mask, revealing a young face, competent.

'So… what did he die of?' I asked.

'We're not sure.' He shrugged. 'There are no obvious causes of death. No gunshots, no stab wounds, no fractures of the skull, no signs of strangulation, no household poisons. No evidence of murder. He had been dead about two weeks when he was discovered. He didn't die where he was found, which was in a rubbish dump. I saw him in situ. He had been placed there after death.'

'Well…' I frowned, 'was he simply ill? Heart attack? Stroke? Pneumonia?'

'More likely one of the first two, though we can't know for sure. But there is an abnormality…' He hesitated. 'We showed it to his sister, and she fainted.'

'I'm not his sister.'

'No.'

He stripped back the sheet as far as the body's waist, showing the dark discolorations of decomposition and the efforts made to tidy up the radical post mortem incisions. I thought it no wonder the sister had fainted and hoped I wouldn't copy her.

'Look at his back,' the pathologist instructed, and with his gloved hands gripped the shoulders and half rolled the body towards him.

There were about a dozen or more rows of darker marks in the darkened flesh, and flecks of white.

The pathologist eased the body flat again.

"Those white bits - did you see them? - are his ribs.'

I felt nauseous, and swallowed.

The pathologist said, 'Those darker marks are burns.'

'Burns?'

'Yes. The skin and flesh have been burned away in a few places down to the ribs. He must have fallen into something very hot when he died. Something like a grating. People fall on electric fires in that way. Terrible burns, sometimes. This is like that. Any thoughts?'

My chief thought was how soon I could leave the mortuary.

'He was wearing a nylon shut,' the pathologist said chattily, 'and there were man-made fibres in the lining and cloth of his suit jacket. They melted to some extent into his skin.'

In another minute, I thought, I would vomit.

I said, 'Could he have died from the burns?'

'I don't think so. As you saw, the burns extended only from below his shoulder blades to his waist. Several local burns, but not lethal, I don't think. It's most likely they occurred just after death, or anyway at about the same time. I would guess he had a stroke, fell unconscious on the fire, and died.'

'Oh.'

'Anyway,' the pathologist said with satisfaction, 'now that we have a positive identification we can have an inquest. The coroner's verdict will be "cause of death unknown" and the poor man can have a decent burial. I'll be glad to get him out of here, to be honest.'

I left him with relief and, stripping off the protective clothing, rejoined the group in the entrance area.

'Please tell us,' I said to the Chief Inspector, 'where exactly you found Mr Quorn.'

Instead of directly answering he explained that the still quietly weeping woman was Norman Quorn's sister. My mother had taken over from the policewoman the role of comforter although, true to form, she looked as if she would prefer saying 'Pull yourself together' to "There, there.'

'Mr Quorn,' the Chief Inspector told us conversationally, 'was found by council workers who went to clear away a decaying rubbish dump left behind on a farmer's land when a band of travellers moved on. We made lengthy enquiries among the travellers at their next place, but drew a total blank. We spent a great deal of time on it. The travellers pointed out that they were all much younger - we had told them the unknown body was elderly-'

'Sixty-five,' the sister sobbed.

'On the other hand, these travellers were accustomed to cook on home-made barbecues of brick supports with metal rods across, and there were signs that perhaps Mr Quorn had overbalanced backwards onto something like that. None of their current barbecues matched Mr Quorn's burns, but it was all inconclusive. There are absolutely no indications at all of foul play. So now we have your identifications, we can close the case. I'm sorry, but it isn't always possible to determine how things happened, and unless any other facts turn up…'

He left the sentence unfinished. Neither Ivan nor my mother told him that the brewery's funds had vanished with the Finance Director, and nor did I. Ivan would have to think it through, and decide.

Because of Wilfred's presence we were silent on the way back to London but spent the evening discussing nothing else.

Ivan was inclined to be glad that Norman Quorn hadn't after all run off with the money.

'We misjudged him,' he said sorrowfully. 'My dear old friend…'

'Your dear old friend,' I corrected regretfully, 'certainly did transfer the money out of the brewery. I've seen copies of about six huge withdrawals that he made just before he left. He did indeed, I'm afraid, send all the funds on their way to destinations still unknown.'

'But he didn't go!'

'No. He died. He didn't die on the rubbish tip. Someone put him there. Wherever he died, someone didn't report it to anyone, but just dumped him.'

Ivan's beliefs and intentions swung widely to and fro, but his chief instinct, as before, was not to make public the brewery's loss. Norman Quorn dead, Norman Quorn living under palm trees… it made no difference. The theft existed and either way would be covered up.

I said, 'But don't you care who dumped him? Don't you want to know where he died?'

'What does it really matter? And as Norman was homosexual-' Ivan saw my surprise. 'Didn't you know? No, I suppose you didn't, he was always discreet… but, you see, suppose he died where it was awkward for someone… do you see what I mean?'

I saw.

'And it wouldn't do Norman or the brewery any good to disclose his sexual preference or, oh dear, his theft.'

It was astounding, I thought, to find my starchy stepfather so tolerant of homosexuality, but my mother, who after all knew him better, took it for granted. 'Quite a lot of Ivan's friends,' she told me later, 'were "that way". Delightful friends,' she added. 'Good company always.'

Ivan asked me, 'If we tell the police that Norman stole the funds and was homosexual, would it affect the creditors' arrangements?'

'Well, I don't know. The creditors do know he stole the funds. They signed the agreements knowing that.'

'Well, then?'

'But they believe he skipped the country. They believe he's alive. They believe the money is with him… and it isn't.'

'So?'

'So where is it?'

A long silence.

By ten in the evening Ivan was saying we needed someone else's advice.

'OK,' I agreed, 'whose?'

'Perhaps… Oliver's?'

I said mildly, 'Oliver would ask you what I, Alexander, suggested, and then give you an opposite opinion.'

'But he knows the law!'

I had been careful always not to belittle Patsy to her father. Oliver was Patsy's man. So was Desmond Finch.

I asked, 'What did Patsy think of Norman Quorn?'

'She didn't like him. Always a sadness. Why do you want to know?'

'What would she expect you to do?'

Ivan dithered.

By midnight he had decided, in his law-abiding Jockey Club persona, that I should ask Margaret Morden whether Norman Quorn's death made any difference to the creditors, and that I, not Ivan, should tell Detective Chief Inspector Reynolds that the now-identified corpse had been probably an embezzler about to leave the country.

'Probably?' I echoed with scepticism.

'We don't know for sure.'

I thought he would have changed his mind again by morning, but it seemed my sensible mother had fortified his decision, as she agreed with it; so at nine o'clock Ivan, again in dressing-gown and slippers, instructed me to phone Leicestershire.

Slight snag. The policeman's phone number was written on the tissue-box. The tissue-box was still in the car. I trailed off to retrieve it and finally reached the necessary ear.

'Tell me on the phone,' he commanded when I suggested meeting.

'Better face to face.'

'I'm off duty at noon.'

'I'll get there. Where?'

'Do you remember the way to the mortuary? There then. It's on my way home.'

I refrained - just - from observing that the mortuary was on everyone's way home, and managed to trace Margaret Morden to hers.

'It's Saturday,' she said tartly.

'I do know.'

'Then it had better be important.'

'The King Alfred Brewery's Finance Director has turned up, still in England - but dead.'

'I agree,' she said slowly, 'that that is Saturday news. How did he die?'

'Stroke or heart attack, the pathologist thinks.'

'When?'

'About the time he disappeared.'

She thought briefly and said, 'Phone me in the office on Monday. And tell Tobias. But if what's bothering you most is the status of the creditors' agreements, my first impression is that they will stand.'

'You're a doll.'

'No, I'm definitely not.'

I put down the receiver with a smile and drove to Leicester.

The chief inspector's reaction was as expected. 'Why didn't you tell me this yesterday?'

'The brewery has hushed up the theft.'

'The body,' he said reflectively, 'was dressed in suit, shirt, tie, underpants, socks and shoes, all unremarkable. There was nothing in his pockets.'

'How did you identify him in the end?'

'One of our clever young constables took another look at the clothes. The shoes were new - on the sole of one was the name of a shop and the price. The shop was in Wantage, and they remembered the sale… Mr Quorn was a regular customer. He was away from home, but a neighbour had the sister's address.'

'Neat.'

'But what he was doing in Leicestershire…?' He shrugged. 'It's possible he died out of doors, in a garden. There were a few blades of mown grass in his clothes. That would gel with him falling back onto a barbecue of some sort.'

'Hardly the right clothes for a barbecue.'

He looked me up and down in amusement. 'While you, sir, if I may say so, look more like a traveller.'

I acknowledged it in good humour.

'I'll complete my case notes with what you've told me,' the policeman said. 'It isn't by any means unknown for people to get rid of bodies when they've died inconveniently. I appreciate your help. Give my regards to Sir Ivan. He looks so ill himself.'

It was by then three and a half weeks since Ivan's heart attack (and four weeks and a day since Quorn had skipped with the cash) and what Ivan badly still needed and wasn't getting was complete untroubled rest. I drove back to London and for the remainder of that day and all of the next kept the house tranquil with the telephone switched into an answering machine and with simple meals, cooked by me, that needed no decisions. I gave Wilfred the rest of the weekend off and did his jobs: it was all peaceful and curative and its own reward.

On Monday I went by train again to Reading and did the rounds of the offices.

Life had moved on for Tobias and Margaret, who were already dealing with the next unfortunates down the line, but they each gave me half an hour and information.

'Old Quorn's dead!' Tobias exclaimed. 'Then where's the money?'

I said, 'I thought you might be able to work it out.'

He gave me his best blank outer stare concealing furious activity within.

'I followed him to Panama…' he said thoughtfully.

'How many stops to Panama?' I asked.

'Wait.' He turned to one of his three computer monitors, sorted out a disc from an indexed box, and fed it into a slot, pressing keys. 'Here we are. Wire transfer from the brewery to a bank in Guernsey… six transfers in one day, each from a different brewery account - it was as if he'd collected everything available into those six accounts, then he sent all six separately into the same account in Guernsey, and the bank there already had instructions to transfer the whole amount - multiple millions - to a bank in New York, which already held instructions to wire the money onward to a bank in Panama, and that bank cannot say where the money went from there.'

'Can't or won't?' I asked.

'Quite likely both. All these banks have unbreakable privacy laws. We only know the path to Panama because Norman Quorn had scribbled the ABA numbers on some rough paper and neglected to shred it.'

'Remind me about ABA numbers.'

Tobias chewed a toothpick. 'They identify all banks in the United States and roundabout areas like the Caribbean. They're part of the Fedwire system.'

Tobe - what's Fedwire?'

'There are three huge worldwide organisations dealing with the international transfer of funds and information,' he said. 'Fedwire - ABA included - is the Federal Reserve Bank's institution. They have nine-digit routing numbers, so any transfer with a nine-digit code is likely to have been seen to by Fedwire.'

I sighed.

'Then,' Tobe said, 'there's SWIF'I - the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. And third, there's CHIPS, Clearing House Interbank Payments System, which is operated also through New York and has special identifier codes unique to their customers, ultra secret.'

'God.'

'Take your pick,' Tobias said. 'All the systems have identifying codes. The codes will tell you the bank, but not the account number. We know the brewery money went to a branch of Global Credit in Panama, but not into which account there.'

'But they must know,' I said. 'I mean, they can't have millions sent to them every day from New York. The amount, the dispatcher, the date… they could surely work it out.'

'Perhaps, but it's against their law to pass the information on.'

'Not to the police? Or the tax people?'

'Especially not to the police or the tax people. A lot of banks would be out of business at once if they did that.' Tobe smiled. 'You're an infant, Al.'

I acknowledged it. 'But,' I said, 'what if the money just sits in Panama for ever, now Norman Quorn is dead?'

'It may do,' Tobias nodded. 'There are billions and trillions of loot in unclaimed accounts sitting in banks all over the world, and you can bet your soul the banks profit from them and are in no hurry to look for heirs.'

'Henry VIII syndrome,' I said.

'What?'

I explained about gold church treasures hidden in fields.

'Just like that,' he said.

I left him pulverising a toothpick over someone else's problems and presented myself on Margaret Morden's doorstep.

I told her what few details I knew of Norman Quorn's exit. 'Poor man,' she said.

'So you don't think,' I asked, 'that the wages of sin is death?'

'Are death, surely? And where have you been for the last fifty years? The wages of sin nowadays are a few years of full board and lodging at the country's expense with a chance to study for a degree, followed by tender loving care from ex-prisoners' aid societies.'

'Cynical.'

'Realistic.'

'What about the victims?'

'The wages of a victim is to be blamed if at all possible for a crime committed against her - I regret it's often a her - and seldom to be offered compensation, let alone free board and lodging and a university education. The wages of a victim are poverty, oblivion and a lonely grave. It's the sinners the tabloids pursue with their cheque-books.'

'Margaret!'

'So now you know me better,' she said. 'Norman Quorn robbed little old widows of their pathetic dividends and I don't give a shit if he died of a guilty conscience.'

'Little old widows are a bit mawkish…'

'Not if you happen to be one.'

'Well… if the little old widows' dividends are languishing in a foreign bank somewhere, how do we find them?'

She said, 'What's in it for you?'

I looked at my hands. What could I say? She would consider it mawkish in the extreme whatever I said.

'I don't mean that, Al. I'm in a bad mood today. I'm dealing with yet another deliberate bankruptcy whose sole aim is to dodge paying small-scale creditors, who may themselves go out of business through the loss. The people I'm dealing with will dump the suppliers in the shit, declare the business bankrupt and closed, and go off and start all over again under another name.'

'But,' I said, 'is that legal?'

'Legal, yes. Moral, you must be kidding. I'm not used to people like you. Go away and leave me to my disillusions.'

'I wanted to ask you,' I said, 'about that possible trial run. Do you remember any of the trial's destinations?'

She frowned, then, as Tobias had done, consulted one of her row of computer faces and tapped instructions into the keys.

'It's possible,' she said finally, but with doubts, 'that Quorn sent a fairly small sum to a bank on an island in the Bahamas, who forwarded it to a bank in Bermuda, who sent it back to Wantage. The transactions weren't backed up by signed documentation, and half the information - like the actual account numbers - is missing. If the brewery's money is in either of those banks, which is doubtful, you're not going to find it.'

'Thanks a bunch.'

'Cheer up. First thing this morning I consulted your committee of creditors. The agreements they signed with you will remain unaltered by Norman Quorn's death.'