‘Go screaming off to the Social Services.’
‘For a gardener?’
‘You know darned well what I mean.’
‘Endurance is like tax,’ I said. ‘You’re silly to pay more than you have to, but you can’t always escape it.’
‘And you can whine,’ she said, nodding, ‘or suffer with good grace.’
She drank her sherry collectedly and invited me to say why I’d come.
‘To ask you to keep a parcel safe for me,’ I said.
‘But of course.’
‘And to listen to a fairly long tale, so that...’ I paused. ‘I mean, I want someone to know...’ I stopped once more.
‘In case you disappear again?’ she said matter-of-factly.
I was grateful for her calmness.
‘Yes,’ I said. I told her about meeting Vivian Iverson at the races, and our thoughts on insurance, springboards, and rocks. ‘So you see,’ I ended, ‘you’ll be the rock, if you will.’
‘You can expect,’ she said, ‘rocklike behaviour.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve brought a sealed package of photocopied documents. It’s in the car.’
‘Fetch it,’ she said.
I went out to the street and collected the thick envelope from the boot. Habit induced me to look into the back seat floor space, and to scan the harmless street. No one hiding, no one watching, that I could see. No one had followed me from the racecourse, I was sure.
Looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.
I took the parcel indoors and gave it to Hilary, and also the negatives of her photographs, explaining that I already had the extra prints. She put everything on the table beside her and told me to sit down and get on with the tale.
‘I’ll tell you a bit about my job,’ I said. ‘And then you’ll understand better.’ I stretched out with luxurious weariness in the cane chair and looked at the intent interest on her strong plain face. A pity, I thought, about the glasses.
‘An accountant working for a long time in one area, particularly in an area like a country town, tends to get an overall picture of the local life.’
‘I follow you,’ she said. ‘Go on.’
‘The transactions of one client tend to turn up in the accounts of others. For instance, a racehorse trainer buys horse food from the forage merchants. I check the invoice through the trainer’s accounts, and then, because the forage merchant is also my client, I later check it again through his. I see that the forage merchant has paid a builder for an extension to his house, and later, in the builder’s accounts, I see what he paid for the bricks and cement. I see that a jockey has paid x pounds on an air-taxi, and later, because the air-taxi firm is also my client, I see the receipt of x pounds from the jockey. I see the movement of money around the neighbourhood... the interlocking of interests... the pattern of commerce. I learn the names of suppliers, the size of businesses, and the kinds of services people use. My knowledge increases until I have a sort of mental map like a wide landscape, in which all the names are familiar and occur in the proper places.’
‘Fascinating,’ Hilary said.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if a totally strange name crops up, and you can’t cross-reference it with anything else, you begin to ask questions. At first of yourself, and then of others. Discreetly. And that was how I ran into trouble in the shape of two master criminals called Glitberg and Ownslow.’
‘They sound like a music-hall turn.’
‘They’re as funny as the Black Death.’ I drank some sherry ruefully. ‘They worked for the council, and the council’s accounts and audits were done by a large firm in London, who naturally didn’t have any intimate local knowledge. Ownslow and Glitberg had invented a construction firm called National Construction (Wessex) Limited, through which they had syphoned off more than a million pounds each of taxpayers’ money. And I had a client, a builders’ merchant, who had received several cheques from National Construction (Wessex). I’d never heard of National Construction (Wessex) in any other context, and I asked my client some searching questions, to which his reply was unmistakable panic. Glitberg and Ownslow were prosecuted and went to jail swearing to be revenged.’
‘On you?’
‘On me.’
‘Nasty.’
‘A few weeks later,’ I said, ‘much the same thing happened. I turned up some odd payments made by a director of an electronics firm through the company’s computer. His name was Connaught Powys. He’d taken his firm for over a quarter of a million, and he too went to jail swearing to get even. He’s out again now, and so are Glitberg and Ownslow. Since then I’ve been the basic cause of the downfall of two more big-time embezzlers, both of whom descended to the cells swearing severally to tear my guts out and cut my throat.’ I sighed. ‘Luckily, they’re both still inside.’
‘And I thought accountants led dull lives!’
‘Maybe some do.’ I drained my sherry. ‘There’s another thing that those five embezzlers have in common besides me, and that is that not a penny of what they stole has been recovered.’
‘Really?’ She seemed not to find it greatly significant. ‘I expect it’s all sitting around in bank deposits, under different names.’
I shook my head. ‘Not unless it is in literally thousands of tiny weeny deposits, which doesn’t seem likely.’
‘Why thousands?’
‘Banks nowadays have to inform the Tax Inspectors of the existence of any deposit account for which the annual interest is £15 or more. That means the Inspectors know of all deposits of over three or four hundred quid.’
‘I had no idea,’ she said blankly.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I wanted to know if it could be Powys or Glitberg or Ownslow who had kidnapped me for revenge, so I asked them.’
‘Good heavens.’
‘Yeah. It wasn’t a good idea. They wouldn’t say yes or no.’ I looked back to the night at the Vivat Club. ‘They did tell me something else, though...’ I said, and told Hilary what it was. Her eyes widened behind the glasses and she nodded once or twice.
‘I see. Yes,’ she said.
‘So now,’ I said. ‘Here we are a few years later, and now I have not only my local area mental map but a broad view of most of the racing world, with uncountable interconnections. I do the accounts for so many racing people, their lives spread out like a carpet, touching, overlapping, each small transaction adding to my understanding of the whole. I’m part of it myself, as a jockey. I feel the fabric around me. I know how much saddles cost, and which saddler does most business, and which owners don’t pay their bills, and who bets and who drinks, who saves, who gives to charity, who keeps a mistress. I know how much the woman whose horse I rode today paid to have him photographed for the Christmas cards she sent last year, and how much a bookmaker gave for his Rolls, and thousands and thousands of similar facts. All fitting, all harmless. It’s when they don’t fit... like a jockey suddenly spending more than he’s earned, and I find he’s running a whole new business and not declaring a penny of it... it’s when the bits don’t fit that I see the monster in the waves. Glimpsed, hidden... But definitely there.’
‘Like now?’ she said, frowning. ‘Your iceberg?’
‘Mm.’ I hesitated. ‘Another embezzler.’
‘And this one — will he too go to jail swearing to cut your throat?’
I didn’t answer at once, and she added dryly, ‘Or is he likely to cut your throat before you get him there?’
I gave her half a grin. ‘Not with a rock like you, he won’t.’
‘You be careful, Roland,’ she said seriously. ‘This doesn’t feel to me like a joke.’
She stood up restlessly, towering among the palm fronds, as thin in her way as their stems.
‘Come into the kitchen. What do you want to eat? I can do a Spanish omelette, if you like.’