by Francis - TO THE HILT

I nodded. 'Sir Ivan had a daughter, Patsy, with his first wife, who died. He then married my widowed mother when I was eighteen, so I am his stepson.'

Finch, loudly and waspishly, added, 'And he is trying to worm his way into Sir Ivan's fortune and cut out Mrs Benchmark.'

'No,' I said.

I couldn't blame Margaret Morden for looking doubtful. Patsy's fear was obsessive but real.

'Please try to save the brewery,' I said to Mrs Morden. 'Sir Ivan's health may depend on it. Also, the brewery will be Patsy's one day. Save it for her, not for me. And she won't thank you , Mr Finch, if it goes down the tubes.'

It silenced them both.

Finch gaped and made for the door, and then stopped dead and came back to accuse with venom: 'Mrs Benchmark says you have stolen the King Alfred Gold Cup. You've stolen the golden chalice and you're hiding it, and if necessary she will take it back by force.'

Hell's teeth. 'Where is it?'

My ribs ached.

The King Alfred Gold Cup. It . The it that the demons had been looking for. The it that I didn't have, not the it that I did have.

'You look tired, Mr Kinloch,' Mrs Morden said.

'Tired!' Finch was deeply sarcastic. 'If he's tired he can go back to Scotland and sleep for a week. Better, a month.'

Good suggestion, I thought. I said, 'Was the Cup kept at the brewery?'

Desmond Finch opened and closed his mouth without answering.

'Don't you know?' I asked with interest. 'Has there been a rumpus, with policemen flourishing handcuffs? Or did Patsy just tell you I'd taken it? She does have a galvanic way of neutralising people's common sense.'

The second-in-command of the brewery made an exit as unheralded as his entry. When the air had settled after his departure, Mrs Morden asked if by any chance I had a replacement certified copy of the power of attorney which, owing to Ivan's foresight in giving me ten, I had. I gave her one: five left.

'I need further instructions,' she said.

'Such as, carry on?'

'I am willing to, if you will give me a handwritten assurance releasing me from any proceedings arising from work done on your say-so. This is by no means a normal request, but little about this particular insolvency now seems normal.'

I wrote the release to her dictation, and signed it, and she had it witnessed by her secretary as being supplemental to the authorities to act that I'd already given her.

'I hope to bring together the brewery's main creditors on Monday,' she said. 'Telephone me tomorrow for a progress report.'

"Thank you, Mrs Morden.'

'Margaret,' she said. 'Now, these depressing numbers…'

I walked back to Pierce, Tollright and Simmonds, where the auditor and I became Tobe and Al and went out for an early beer.

I told Tobias of Desmond Finch's visit to Margaret Morden, a tale that resulted in much vicious chewing of an innocent toothpick but an otherwise diplomatic silence.

'Have you met him?' I asked, prompting.

'Oh yes. Quite often.'

'What do you think of him?'

'Off the record?'

'This whole pub,' I said, 'is off the record.'

Even so, his caution took its time. Then he said, 'Desmond Finch gets things done. He's a very effective lieutenant. Give him a programme he understands, and he will unswervingly carry it out. His energy pumps the blood round the brewery, and it is his persistence that makes sure that everything that ought to be done, is done.'

'You approve of him, then?'

He grinned. 'I applaud his work. I can't stand the man.'

I laughed. 'Thank God for that.'

We drank in harmony. I said, 'What was Norman Quorn like?' Norman Quorn was the Finance Director that had vanished with the cash. 'You must have known him well.'

'I thought I did. I'd worked with him for years.' Tobias took out a toothpick and swallowed beer. 'The last person, I would have thought, to do what he did. But then, that's what they always say.'

'Why was he the last person?'

'Oh. He was coming up to retirement. Sixty-five. A grey, meticulous accountant. No fun in him. Dry. We went through the firm's books together every year. Never a decimal out of place. It's my job of course to pull out invoices at random and make sure that the transactions referred to did in fact take place, and in Quorn's work there was never the slightest discrepancy. I'd have bet my reputation on his honesty.'

'He was saving everything up for the big one.'

Tobias sighed. Another toothpick took a mauling. 'He was clever, I'll give him that.'

'How did he actually steal so much? I've been reeling at the figures with Margaret Morden.'

'He didn't go round to the bank with a sack, if that's what you mean. He didn't shovel the readies into a suitcase and disappear through the Channel Tunnel. He did it the new-fashioned way, by wire.' He sucked noisily. 'He did it by electronic transfer, by routing money all over the place via ABA numbers - those are international bank identification numbers - and by backing up the transactions with faxed authorisations, all bearing the right identifying codes. He was too damned clever. I may have believed I could follow any tracks, but I've lost him somewhere in Panama. It's a job for the serious fraud people, though Sir Ivan wants to hush up the whole thing and won't call them in, and of course it wouldn't save the brewery if he did. Margaret Morden is the best hope for that. The only hope, I'd say.'

We refilled the half-pints in suitable gloom.

I said tentatively, 'Do you think Quorn could have stolen the King Alfred Cup? The actual gold chalice?'

'What?' He was astonished. 'No. Not his style.'

'But electronic transfers were his style?'

'I see what you mean.' He sighed deeply. 'All the same…'

'Desmond Finch says that Patsy Benchmark - have you met Ivan's daughter? - is accusing me of having stolen the Cup. She's persuasive. I may yet find myself in Reading Gaol.'

'Writing ballads a la Oscar Wilde?'

'You may jest.'

'I've met her,' Tobias said. He thought through another toothpick. 'The fact that no one seems to know where this priceless gold medieval goblet actually is, does not mean that it's been stolen.'

'I drink to clarity of mind.'

He laughed. 'You'd make a good auditor.'

'A better slosher-on of paint.'

I considered his friendly harmless-looking face and imagined the analytical wheels whirring round as fast in him as they were in me. Benevolent versions of Uncle Joe Stalin's vulpine smirk hid unsmiling intents from presidents to peasants and all points in between. Yet trust had to begin somewhere, or at least a belief in it.

I asked, 'What happened first? The disappearance of Norman Quorn, or your realisation that the books were cooked, or my stepfather's heart attack? And when was the Cup first said to be missing?'

He frowned, trying to remember. 'They were all more or less at the same time.'

'They can't have been simultaneous.'

'Well, no.' He paused. 'No one seems to have seen the Cup for ages. Of the other three… I told Sir Ivan one morning about two weeks ago… he was in his London house… that the brewery was insolvent, and why. He told me to cover it up and keep quiet. Quorn had already gone away for a few days' leave, or so the brewery secretaries said. Sir Ivan collapsed in the afternoon. I could get no instructions after that from anyone until you came along. The whole financial mess simply got worse while Sir Ivan was in hospital because no one except him could make decisions and he wouldn't talk to me. But the bank wouldn't wait any longer.'

'What about Desmond Finch?'

'What about him?' Tobias asked. 'Like I told you, he's a great lieutenant but he needs a general to tell him what to do. He may say now he's in charge, but without Mrs Benchmark prodding him from behind he'd be doing the same as he's been doing for the past two weeks, which is telling me he can't act without Sir Ivan's orders.'