“OK. I’ll be there.”

“And, Robin-”

“Yes?”

“This had better be worth it.”

My absences from the office had become so conspicuous and commented on that I gave no warning of the next one. Monday elapsed with merciful swiftness, Adrian proving as reticent about his trip to Sydney as I was forced to be about my tour of East Anglian willow plantations. The board meeting was ten days away, its imminence spreading apprehensiveness and suspicion among the entire staff, let alone my siblings. Our futures are always in the balance, of course. But usually we manage to ignore the fact. At Timariot & Small, during the last week of October, that simply wasn’t possible. As for the consternation my phone call to Liz from Gatwick on Tuesday morning was likely to cause, I’d ceased by then to give a damn.

The Hotel Burdigala was a stylish grand luxe establishment close to the fashionable stores and restaurants in the centre of Bordeaux. Bella always insisted on the best, which the soulless low-rise joint I’d booked into out at the airport certainly wasn’t. But her standards had slipped in one respect at least. This time, she didn’t keep me waiting. Or guessing long about her response when I told her what I meant to do-and why.

“So, you’re giving up on me, Robin.”

“I don’t have any choice.”

“That’s ridiculous. I don’t accept we’ve exhausted all the possibilities yet.”

“I’ve exhausted them. And myself in the process. Naylor was set up. Deservedly so, you could say. But that’s supposed to be the acid test of justice, isn’t it? Doing right by the innocent, even when you can’t stand the sight of them.”

“And Paul?”

“Is facing up to what he did. I suggest you find the decency to do the same.”

She might have bristled at that. Instead, she treated me to a soulful stare. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Robin. This business is tearing Keith apart. And our marriage with it.”

“I’m sorry, Bella. That’s not my problem. You have my sympathy, but…”

“Not your help?”

“I’ve done all I can.”

“I don’t agree.”

“Meaning you’ll break your promise and vote with Adrian?”

“I didn’t say so.” She lit a cigarette, her hand shaking faintly as she did so. Was she really upset? I wondered. Or just seeking another route round my defences? “Won’t you reconsider? I genuinely believe Paul’s made all this up. There has to be some way of-”

“For God’s sake!” I’d spoken loudly enough to turn heads elsewhere in the bar. Now I leant forward across the table and softened my tone. “I’ve spoken to everyone who knew him three years ago. I’ve been everywhere he went. And some places he never went. I’ve tried everything. And ended up where I knew I would all along. I don’t want him to have done it. I wish he hadn’t done it. But he did. And you have to accept it.”

She raised her left hand to her face and covered her mouth, her thumb pressing against one cheekbone, her forefinger against the other. Her engagement ring glittered in the lamplight. Smoke climbed in a gentle plume from the cigarette in her right hand. And in her eyes there was such brilliantly simulated agony that I could almost have believed it was what she truly felt. But when she took her hand away, her mouth was set in a firm determined line. “I have to think of myself now, Robin. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“I’ve always understood that.”

“I have to prepare for an independent future.”

“You’ll ditch Keith, then?”

“It’s not a question of ditching. It’s a matter of necessity.” She saw me raise my eyebrows in doubt, but carried on unabashed. “And it’s not the only one. I shan’t vote with Adrian. I’ll vote with you. But we’ll lose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Adrian’s made me an offer, you see. One that’s too good to refuse. Especially now.”

“What offer?”

“He’s willing to buy five thousand of my shares. At a substantial premium over the Bushranger price.”

I almost smiled in spite of myself. And so, I think, did Bella. Five thousand shares would exactly invert the voting ratio, giving Adrian a 52 1/2 per cent majority in favour of acceptance. Bella would vote on the losing side, but end up even better off than if the offer had gone through unopposed. She’d make a fool of me and Adrian. And then she’d walk away with the money she needed to rid herself of a husband who was about to become an embarrassment to her. Farewell, Timariot & Small. Adieu L’Hivernance. They’d been pleasant enough while they lasted. But Bella had decided it was time to leave. And time for them to go.

We walked out into the mild Bordelaise dusk. Bella looked and sounded genuinely sorry for me as she stood beside me in front of the hotel. But her sorrow came cheaper than her vote. Much cheaper. “I booked a table for two at Le Chapon Fin,” she said. “It’s an excellent restaurant.”

“You’ll have to dine alone. I know I shall prefer to.” It wasn’t meant as bitterly as it may have been taken. But I hadn’t the energy to pull my punches, even the unintentional ones.

“As you please,” said Bella. “I suppose it’s an arrangement I may have to get used to.”

“Not for long, if I know anything about it.”

She frowned slightly, as if struggling to construct an explanation of her motives. I thought I understood them well enough already. And the task was an unfamiliar one for her. With a toss of the head, she abandoned it. “What will you do, Robin?” she asked with amiable curiosity. “Go back to Brussels?”

“Which you said I should never have left? I don’t think so. There’s such a thing as too much security.”

“What, then?”

“I’ll resign from the company, of course. Before Harvey McGraw gets a chance to fire me. Then, well, I don’t know. I’m a free agent. I’ll have three hundred thousand pounds burning a hole in my pocket thanks to you and Adrian. I think I may do some travelling. See the world. Get away from it all. Get a very long way away-before friend Naylor comes out of prison.”

“And Paul goes in?”

“That too, of course.” I raised a hand as a taxi pulled into the hotel lay-by. The driver nodded and drew up beside me. “That too.”

“Good luck,” said Bella.

“I’d wish you the same,” I responded, “but the words might stick in my throat. Besides, you’ve never needed luck to get what you want, have you? I don’t suppose that’s about to change.”

“But it is,” she said, so softly I only half-heard the words as I climbed into the taxi. “Believe me, it is.”

I flew home to England the following morning and was back in the office before the end of the day, dodging Simon’s ever more frantic questions and acting dumb for Adrian’s benefit. He’d made it known in my absence that McGraw had refused to budge on the offer price. This didn’t surprise me, but it worried Simon and Jennifer considerably, since Adrian had said nothing to them about his alternative method of winning the board over. Accordingly, I said nothing either, preferring to let matters take their course. A letter from Bella reached me before the end of the week, appointing me her proxy for the meeting. But it was the key to an empty cage, as Adrian’s smug cat-who’s-dined-on-a-canary expression confirmed. The game was up. But both of us meant to play it to the end.

I contacted Inspector Joyce around the same time and made an appointment to see him in Worcester the day before the board meeting for the purposes of making a new and revised statement about my encounter with Louise Paxton on 17 July 1990. Our telephone conversation, like my exchanges with Adrian, embraced a fair amount of shadow-boxing, since we were both aware how big a climb-down this represented. In an attempt to preserve some self-respect, I put it to him that Naylor’s wife might be the person who’d tipped off Vince Cassidy. And something in his tight-lipped demurral told me Naylor had guessed right. They’d known all along.