East Hampton, New York: 5 June 2007

Malachi Zorn walked out of his house on Lily Pond Road and strolled across the grass to the path that led down to the beach. He was a man of medium height and slim build with tousled, dirty-blond hair, the year-round tan of a lifelong sportsman and a three-day growth of stubble that glowed golden in the bright early-summer sunshine. He wore an old Brooks Brothers button-down shirt whose pale-blue fabric had faded almost to white in places, and was frayed around the top of the collar. It hung loosely over a pair of khaki cargo shorts. His feet were bare.

He stopped for a moment and looked with disgust at the edifice rising on the plot next to his own. A hedge-fund manager had torn down the elegant, eighty-year-old house that had once stood there, and was now building a vast, white temple to tastelessness and excess. The new building dwarfed Zorn’s own traditional beach cottage, built in 1896 by a pupil of Stanford White, with its gabled roof, shingled walls and cosy veranda looking out towards the sea. His neighbour’s monstrosity summed up everything Zorn most despised about the amoral, self-enriching vulgarians who had turned Wall Street into a gigantic machine for extracting money from everyday Americans and pocketing the profit for themselves.

Fighting hard to contain the simmering rage that now threatened to ruin his day and, more importantly, distort his thinking, Zorn got moving again, relishing the warmth of the sand beneath his feet as he strolled to the water’s edge and let the incoming waves ripple and eddy around his ankles. He stood for a while, looking out to sea, hardly taking in the view but using it as a backdrop to the inner workings of his mind. Finally, he gave a single decisive nod of his head, turned on his heels and walked back up to his property.