By half past five when they adjourned to the dining room and joined Harry with his ledgers, Patrick had collected twenty-three definite anomalies and a half dozen he wasn’t certain of.

‘Telephone numbers with initials?’ Naomi suggested.

‘Bank details, maybe,’ Harry speculated.

‘Have to be more than one then. And what about the letters?’

‘Offshore accounts often have much longer codes,’ Harry said thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes they are alphanumeric, too.’

‘Oh, and how would you know that?’ Patrick teased.

‘Because, my dear boy, I am an accountant. And though that may be a boring job, it’s one I’m very good at.’

‘Which means,’ Naomi guessed, ‘that you’ve made some headway with the ledger?’

‘Well, yes and no. The no part is that I don’t have all the pieces. There are elements missing which I’d hoped would be in the laptop, and indeed there are a few spreadsheets. What I’ve not managed to do as yet is tie everything together. Not everything.’

‘So, what do you have?’

Harry pulled the ledger towards him and shuffled through the bank statements they had found in Rupert’s office. ‘Look, these are Rupert’s normal statements. He was very organized, did everything he could by direct debit, so every month there’d be utility bills, insurance, that sort of thing going out, plus a weekly amount I’m guessing was for household expenses that he drew in cash and which tallies up with the little account book I found in the kitchen drawer. So much spent in this shop or that supermarket, or whatever. Then there’s an amount I can’t find a correlation for in any of the normal accounts but which he drew on the fourth of every month and had done for the past six or seven years. Maybe longer but that’s as far back as I’ve been able to check.’

‘It’s not a big amount,’ Patrick commented. ‘Fifty-five pounds.’

‘No, it’s not and it’s very precise, which is interesting. It started, incidentally, as forty-five pounds, then increased to fifty and in the past year to fifty-five.’

‘That’s inflation for you,’ Naomi joked.

‘Well, quite. I thought at first he might be putting it into a savings account, something like that. He has one with another bank, but that’s dealt with by direct transfer every month and the account doesn’t show any separate cash payments. But, and this is where it gets interesting, it is entered into the ledger he buried.’

‘As what?’

‘Well, just let me explain a bit about the ledgers first. All right, you remember I was looking for a stock portfolio. I’ve searched his study and I’m pretty sure it isn’t there, but he’s been keeping account of the rise and fall of whatever stocks and shares he invested in in this ledger. Every now and again he records having moved money, sold shares, but I couldn’t tell you what because they are referred to only by initials. See, here: shares in F.D., shares in G. Rupert obviously knew what they were and so didn’t need to add the details. Neither, annoyingly, did he record who his broker was.’

‘Patrick, do any of those initials appear in the journal?’ Naomi asked.

Patrick checked. ‘Well, there might be an F. D.,’ he said. ‘But there are numbers in between. Anyway, we don’t know if this is the right journal. I’ve not had a chance to look at the others yet and the date on the ledger entry is for later than the journal. The journal is dated two years ago and the ledger entry is more recent.’

‘So we need to look at the rest,’ Harry said. ‘Naomi, you’re sure Alec didn’t mention any investments of this kind in the packet the solicitor gave him.’

‘No, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you taking a look when he gets back. He took it with him.’

‘Oh?’ Patrick was curious.

‘He said he was going to call on his parents on his way back. I think he wanted to talk all of this over with them.’

‘Well, it will have to wait, then.’ Harry tapped the ledger thoughtfully. ‘There are large amounts of money mentioned here,’ he added.

‘How large?’

‘Well, if I’m reading this right, upwards of a hundred thousand pounds.’

‘Wow,’ Patrick said. ‘But you said it was linked to the fifty-five he drew every month. How?’

‘Well, that’s the funny thing,’ Harry said. ‘It’s listed as a related expense and it’s broken down into a series of very similar amounts for each month. Twenty-three pounds and four eighty, for example and, well, look for yourself. Anything left from that amount is actually deposited back into his account. Really quite bizarre.’

Patrick was staring at the ledger trying to make some sense out of the rows of figures and initial letters. Maths was not his strong suit, despite his father’s skills. He noted the initial written beside the incidental amounts. ‘E.,’ he said. ‘It’s got E. written by the side of it.’

‘Yes?’ Harry questioned.

‘Well, I was just wondering if that could be the mysterious Elaine.’

Alec waited for Billy Pierce to elucidate. He seemed, Alec thought, to be almost relieved to have said it out loud, but now was something of a loss to explain.

‘What is your interest in Kinnear?’ Pierce asked him. ‘If something else has come to light I do feel that I’ve a right to know.’

‘It isn’t so much my interest in Kinnear,’ Alec explained, ‘as his interest in me. He seems to think I have something belonging to him. I have the bruises to prove how annoyed that makes him.’

Pierce’s look was sharp. ‘Be thankful it’s only bruises. So, what does he think you have?’

‘That’s my problem. I don’t know, but my uncle was Rupert Friedman.’

Billy Pierce nodded and turned his attention to the kettle. ‘It was the name that made me agree to see you,’ he said. ‘I figured there wouldn’t be too many Friedman’s about. Not interested in Sam Kinnear, anyway. So, what do you know?’

Swiftly, Alec brought him up to speed and by the time Pierce had joined him at the table with mugs of tea, he knew just about as much as Alec which, he now reflected, wasn’t a whole lot.

Pierce left him and rummaged in the kitchen drawer, pulling out a sheaf of takeaway menus. ‘Got a preference?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I recommend the Chinese. They’re about the quickest too. I don’t bother to cook for myself, I’m afraid. Lousy at it. Miriam used to leave stuff for me when she went away, but I used to put it in the oven and forget to take it out. Now she just leaves these.’ He grinned sheepishly. It transformed the rather dour face and lost him a good ten years in age.

‘Chinese, then,’ Alec said suddenly realizing how ravenous he was. ‘I don’t think I managed lunch and breakfast was caffeine based.’

Pierce smiled again. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea how I’ve missed the chance to talk shop. Retirement! Bloody overrated, that’s for sure.’

After the food arrived, they settled themselves once again around the table. ‘At first,’ Pierce told Alec, ‘your uncle seemed like a star witness. He was lucid and coherent, which is more than could be said for most of the poor buggers caught up in the shoot out. And that’s what it was, I don’t care what the official report says. Two men were killed and, frankly, it’s a miracle not more were injured. Kinnear was just firing off shots in all directions. Didn’t give a damn.’

‘What was he armed with? The newspaper reports are a bit vague on that score.’

‘Smith and Wesson revolver of all things. Turned out it belonged to his stepdad.’

‘Stepdad?’

‘His father went off when he was just a kid. She married this other fella when Sam was six or seven. He took his name. From all accounts he didn’t make a bad fist of raising the boy, but it was a rootless sort of childhood.’

‘I read he was an army kid.’

‘Well, so are a lot of kids but they don’t turn out like Kinnear. No, it wasn’t the moving around it was the fact Kinnear had such a short fuse no one could get close to him for long enough to build a relationship. Now, they’d no doubt have some fancy label for him. We just knew he was a little scrote. In trouble from the time he was old enough to spell the word.’