Crunch! With no little sense of disquiet, Yancie saw she had lost the tenuous hold she had on her job, as it suddenly went shooting from her grasp. And, because of it, her brain, usually lively and active, seemed to seize up. She should have been ready for this; but wasn't.

'I-er-I-er-paid for the petrol I used myself,' she heard herself say idiotically. `I have authority to book petrol and oil to the company, but wh-when I stopped at that service station I paid…' Her voice trailed off at the realisation that-oh, you fool-she had just, by her statement, confirmed that she hadn't been on that stretch of the road on the firm's business.

Thomson Wakefield looked over to her, but if he was waiting to hear more he wasn't getting it. Her tongue, like her brain, had gone into reverse.

'That was very fair of you, Miss Dawkins to pay for the petrol,' he commented silkily but she suspected that sort of tone. And a second later knew she was right to suspect it when he continued, `And the milometer? How did you square that?'

Like she was going to tell him! Like she was going to tell him any of the `wrinkles' that went on down in the transport section! How, when Wilf Fisher had asked her to make that fifty-mile round trip on unofficial business, he'd said to give the correct mileage but, if asked why the extra mileage covered, to state that her passenger had asked her to do an errand. Either that, or the said passenger had asked her to take him to see a friend or family member. Since their passengers were almost exclusively board members or someone very high up in the executive tree, nobody, according to Wilf, would dream of questioning why the top brass had needed to do the extra mileage. Certainly, no one in the transport section.