Suddenly Standish looked closer to forty than thirty. His face seemed to clench and lines radiated out from his eyes.

'Did you ever meet Malouf?' he said.

'Two or three times.'

'What did you think of him?'

I didn't want to talk about Malouf. I'd tried to forget him. 'As I said, I found all that money management stuff boring and I tended not to take much notice of the people who spouted it.'

He persisted. 'Good-looking?'

'Certainly not ugly, anyway.'

'He had… has a fatal attraction for women, including my wife.'

You want to say 'Ah' at times like that but you don't.

'I discovered that they'd been having a long-running affair.'

'How did you discover that?'

'She told me.'

It hurt him to say it; Standish was the sort of man who liked to put a personal-positive spin on anything. 'Why?'

'It was after he disappeared with your money and other people's as well, as I suppose you know. She seemed upset at the news about Malouf but not distraught. But it was a sort of catalyst. We hadn't been getting along for some time, the usual things… and she told me, shouted it to me. She said she loved him.'

Saying this had taken a lot out of him. He got up and the athletic bounce had left him as he crossed to where his bar fridge and a cupboard were tucked away. 'I'm going to have a drink. You?'

It was about three hours before my usual drinking time, but I didn't want him to feel any worse than he already did. 'Sure, what've you got?'