‘You don’t need to know that.’

‘I do, if I am going to protect this firm: keep it safe.’

‘I’m protecting the firm.’

‘Who are they?’

‘You don’t need to know that, either.’

‘They know what you’re going to do?’

‘That’s why I stayed on, for the extra year. To tidy things up and to bring it all to an end. You think I…’ There was another familiar hesitation. ‘It’s all going to be resolved.’

‘Going to be,’ seized Carver, at once. ‘Hasn’t it been, yet?’

‘It’s my problem. I’m sorting it out.’

Carver gazed around Northcote’s mahogany-panelled, leather-Chesterfielded office with its corner-window glimpse of Battery Park City and the intervening pillared monuments to wealth and power and corporate cunning, for once – for the first time – not feeling the comfort, and the pride, of being part of it. He said: ‘I’m aware of a possible criminal activity. There are regulations governing that. Quite a lot, in fact.’

Northcote looked blankly at him. Then indignantly – close to being big-voiced again – he said: ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘I’m being professional. In everything you’ve said – every inference you’ve made – you’ve assumed I’ll go along with what you’ve got in mind: everything you’ve got in mind but won’t tell me.’

Northcote held up a hand. ‘A long time ago, when I was first starting out and needed every break I could get…’ The block came but he made jerky gestures with the still raised hand against Carver intruding. ‘I got caught up in a situation which developed as it did… innocently caught up, with no idea what was happening until I was involved. Couldn’t get out. I’ve lived with it, all these years. Now it’s over: I’m promising you that it’s over. I’m leaving you with one of the foremost accountancy firms in the financial world. You’re already a rich man and you’re going to become richer. You’ve got it all and not just because I’m handing it over to you: because you’re good – the successor I hoped you would be – and because you deserve it