by Francis - TO THE HILT

'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.'

I walked to the office of Young and Uttley, half expecting to find it locked, but when I knocked and turned the handle, the door opened.

I walked in. The occupant that day wasn't a skinhead or a secretary or Mr Young with moustache or even the football coach Uttley, but a straightforward-looking man of about my own age dressed much as I was myself in jeans, shirt and sweater: no tie, unaggressive trainers and clean hands. The chief difference between us was that he had very short light brown hair, while mine still curled on my shoulders.

I smiled at him slowly, and I said, 'Hello.'

'Hello.'

'What's your name?' I asked.

'Chris.'

'Chris Young?'

He nodded. 'I've done a bit of let-your-fingers-do-the-walking for you,' he said.

His accent was unchanged. The skinhead, the secretary and Chris Young all spoke with the same voice.

'And?' I asked.

"There was a goldsmith name of Maxim working in London in the eighteen hundreds. Like Garrard's or Asprey's today. Good name. Ritzy. Made fancy things like peacocks for table ornaments, gold filigree feathers with real jewels in.'

'Tobe promised me you were good,' I said.

'Just good?'

'Brilliant. A genius, actually.'

He grinned immodestly. 'Tobe told me you were a walking brain and not to be put off by your good manners.'

'I'll kill him.'

'Tobe told me you were raised in a castle.'

'It was cold.'

'Yeah. I drew an orphanage. Warm.'

We got on fine. I made a drawing of King Alfred's golden chalice, and he phoned back to his goldsmith informant with a detailed description. 'And it has engraved lines round it that look just like random patterns but are some sort of verse in Anglo-Saxon. Yeah, yeah, that's what I said, Anglo-bloody-Saxon. See what you can do.'

He put down the receiver. 'Those specs you gave me,' he said, 'you can buy them anywhere.'

I nodded.

'I'd use them myself for disguises, if I could see through them.'

'I reckon that's why the robber took them off.'

'That's another thing,' Chris Young said. 'Boxing gyms. Your spanking pal Surtees never goes near a gym. He's as unfit as a leaking balloon. I've tailed him until I've had it up to here with him, and besides, none of the gyms in his area have ever heard of him.'

'Fingers doing the walking?'

'Sure.'

'Suppose he uses a different name?'

Chris Young sighed. 'He's not the gym type, I'm telling you. Which leaves me - and don't point it out -with no option but to flash your drawings of your robbers all over the place hoping for a fist in the guts.'

I stared.

'An adverse reaction,' he said carefully, in his incongruous voice, 'is a positive indication of a nerve touched.'

'You've been reading books!'

'I've been bashed a few times. It always tells me something. Like being bashed told you quite a lot, didn't it?'

'I suppose it did.'

'See? If anyone bashes you again, learn from it.'

'I don't intend to be bashed again.'

'No? That's why you asked about bodyguards?'

'Exactly why.'

He grinned. 'I've a friend who's a jockey over the jumps. He's broken his bones about twenty times. It'll never happen again, he says. He says it every time.'

'Mad,' I agreed.

'Have you ever met a jump jockey?'

'I was married once to a trainer in Lambourn.'

'Emily Cox,' he said.

I was still.

'I like to know who I'm working for,' he said.

'And to check up on whether I would lie to you?'

'Most of my clients do.'

I would, I acknowledged to myself, have lied to him if I'd wanted to.

His telephone rang and he answered it formally, 'Young and Uttley, can I help you?'

He listened and said, 'Thank you' half a dozen times, and wrote a few words onto a notepad, and disconnected.

'Your chalice,' he said, 'was inscribed with something called Bede's Death Song. It sounds a right laugh. It was made in 1867 to the order of a Mr Hanworth Hill of Wantage, Berkshire, probably to impress the neighbours. It cost an arm and a leg because it was solid gold inlaid with emeralds, sapphires and rubies.'

'Real ones?' I exclaimed, surprised.

Chris consulted his notes. 'Cabochon gems, imperfect.' He looked up. 'What does cabochon mean?'