by Francis - TO THE HILT

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.'