Mr. Sarotzini seemed a different man altogether from the person John had sat with at dinner. He had the same distinguished appearance and natural air of superiority, and he was again immaculately dressed - today in a finely tailored grey worsted suit, yellow Hermits tie, and a complementing yellow handkerchief protruding with flourish from his breast pocket. It was his expression that had changed.

  At dinner he had exuded all the charm of a bon viveur, a relaxed man with barely a care in the world. Today he was hard, remote, chillingly serious. The warmth that John recalled, and the sparkling humour, was gone, and John's attempts to break the ice had so far failed. He tried again now.

  "Those two tips you gave me," he said. "I really am impressed."

  Mr. Sarotzini stared out of his side window, as he had for most of the journey, his long, elegant fingers calmly entwined in his lap. Even his voice seemed different today. At dinner his accent had carried a charismatic trace of Italian but that had been replaced with an equally cultured but harsher, guttural Germanic undertow. "Horse racing is the sport of kings and fools, Mr. Carter. If someone gives you a tip and it wins, you should put it down to coincidence or corruption, no more or less."

  John looked at him, unsure from his tone which of the two applied in this case. Both of Mr. Sarotzini's tips at Ascot yesterday had won, the first at 20 to 1, the second at 15 to 1. John had bet two hundred pounds on each, plus a further fifty pounds on a forecast, and had come away with a twelve-thousand-pound profit.

  Yet instead of being thrilled, as Susan had been - she was treating it as a great omen - he was kicking himself for not having backed the horses harder. If he had been bolder (and if he'd had the money available, which he didn't), he could have solved all his financial problems on just those two tips. Except, of course, he couldn't have taken a risk big enough for that.

  "On your balance sheet, you show a capital loss of $48,751 carried forward two years. Can you explain this to me?" Mr. Sarotzini asked.

  "Yes, of course, it's..." John had to rack his brains. "It's the way we treated the depreciation on some computer graphic equipment we bought from a bankrupt firm. We acquired shares in the company at the same time to give us a loss we could carry forward."

  "And in last year's accounts there was a note from the auditor about a payment of 35,687 pounds into an account at the Credit Suisse bank in Ziirich. I did not understand what that was in respect of."

  This was a little embarrassing for John, although he felt that, as a Swiss banker himself, Mr. Sarotzini would understand. "That was part of our arrangement with the gynecologist Harvey Addison. He's very important to us - he hosts our most successful online show. But the deal is that we have to lose - hide - part of his salary overseas."

  John was increasingly surprised at the extent of the detail Mr. Sarotzini had remembered. The banker had no notes and he had spent less than half an hour in John's office, scanning the figures that had been prepared for him, yet everything now seemed to be stored in his head.

  "This composer," Mr. Sarotzini said. "Zak Danziger. Do you think a quick settlement is possible?"

  John considered his reply carefully, and decided it was wisest to be truthful. "No, I don't think so. At least, he might settle but not cheaply."

  He had been concentrating so hard on the questions that he had not noticed the car pull up. They got out and entered a club in Mayfair that had about it an air of discretion. The Georgian building, off Curzon Street, had a certain grandeur, but the exterior was in need of a fresh coat of paint. There was no doorman, and no name, simply an entry bell and the number 3 on the door.

  Inside, it became evident, from the reverential manner in which he was treated, that Mr. Sarotzini was well known here, and he warmly greeted each member of staff by name. They passed a porter's desk and entered a large, panelled hall hung with portraits and a row of green baize notice boards.

  The staff were elderly, but all were unctuously polite to John, treating him, as he imagined they treated all visitors, as if he were the most important guest ever to have entered these portals. Yet from the silence that fell as he followed Mr. Sarotzini through a doorway and across another hall, he had the impression that he was being studied and assessed by them all.

  The dining room was decorated in Baroque grandeur, with gilded columns and crystal chandeliers, yet it was not so large that it lacked intimacy. Like everything else about this club, the room seemed a little tired. The stuccoed ceiling was stained an uneven ochre from years of rising nicotine, the green velvet curtains had faded badly, and the nap had worn thin on the carpet. Even the handful of other diners, all elderly men dressed in dark suits, looked a little faded.

  John was glad that he had dressed conservatively, in a navy suit, white shirt and a striped golf-club tie that might have passed for an old-school tie.

  He was given a menu, but Mr. Sarotzini was not. "I always have the same," the banker said, sitting with a ramrod straight back. "But please help yourself, enjoy. The food here is really quite pleasant."

  John ordered smoked salmon and Dover sole. The salmon arrived almost immediately, along with a plate of quails" eggs for Mr. Sarotzini.

  Mineral water and white Graves were poured. John raised his wine glass. "Cheers, your health."

  Mr. Sarotzini smiled politely but did not respond, and John put down his glass. He said, awkwardly, "This is very nice, this club. Beautiful building." Mr. Sarotzini opened his hands expansively. "I find it convenient."

  "What's it called?"

  "The name is private, known only to members. This is one of the rules." Mr. Sarotzini smiled again, but his expression seemed to John to have turned a little frosty.

  "How does one become a member?"

  Mr. Sarotzini carefully poured a small mound of salt at the edge of his plate. "You have an enquiring mind, Mr. Carter. Please, time is short today, permit me to ask the questions. I must make a report about your business this afternoon if we are to have a chance of helping you by your deadline." Of course."

  John squeezed lemon onto his salmon, and his eye caught an oil painting on the wall depicting a group of cherubs picnicking beneath a viaduct. There was something carefree about it, in contrast to the atmosphere in this room, and John fleetingly found himself envying those anonymous characters their simple pleasure.

  Mr. Sarotzini cracked a quail's egg on his plate, shelled it, then dipped it into the salt. "Tell me, what are your religious convictions, Mr. Carter?"

  John, an atheist, took a moment to think before answering, wondering if he was stepping into a minefield. Was this another Clarke? Was Mr. Sarotzini a deeply religious man? "I - I have an open mind," he said finally. "How open?"

  Mr. Sarotzini's eyes were fixed on his now: it was as if the banker could see into his mind, and that the truth was the only option.

  "I suppose I tend to look towards science for explanations, rather than religion, mysticism or the Paranormal."

  "And your wife?"

  "She's a believer - a committed Christian."

  "How committed?"

  "She goes to church. She used to go every week, but now only occasionally."

  "And does this difference in your beliefs affect your marriage, Mr. Carter?"

  "No, it's not an issue. I guess we agreed to differ a long time back, and we hardly ever talk about it."

  "Of course. Forgive me for being so personal."

  They ate in silence. John waited for Mr. Sarotzini to continue, but with deep concentration the banker began to shell another egg. John wondered if he had disappointed him, and whether he should say something to retrieve the situation. But then Mr. Sarotzini said, "Forgive me again for being so personal, but has religion ever entered your reasoning for not having children?"

  John sensed that Mr. Sarotzini was deliberately trying to avoid the subject of business, but he was anxious to get back to it. There were some big deals in the pipeline that he wanted the banker to know about, and he needed time to explain these in detail as they would significantly affect DigiTrak's profits over the next couple of years and make the figures look much better.

  "No, that's not an issue. Susan's pretty relaxed about religion. We're godparents to a small boy, and I'm happy about that. It's no big thing in our lives."

  "But your decision not to have children, Mr. Carter, that is a big thing?" John tried to side-step the question, but Mr. Sarotzini would not let him, and John found himself getting into the full story of why he and Susan had decided not to have children. He was nearing the end of his Dover sole before he had finished.

  Mr. Sarotzini, eating his boiled fish with slow deliberation, commented, "So it is your family upbringing that is responsible?"

  "Yes."

  "You had no stability. Your father drank, he drove a taxicab, he cut hair, he bought a corner store and lost his savings. He became a salesman, then he dropped out and became a shepherd on a remote Scottish island. Finally he returned home, bitter and angry, and blamed your birth for destroying his freedom and his marriage."

  John felt a lump in his throat. It still hurt. Over the years he had tried to forget it, to confront it, and once he had even tried therapy, but nothing had worked.

  "And then he threw himself beneath an underground railway train?" John had been at school then in North London, fourteen years old; it had made the local newspaper. Kids whispered and pointed; groups fell silent as he passed them in the playground. If your father threw himself under a train, you were tainted with it. Whatever sickness in the head your father carried, you carried too.

  Stay away from John Carter he might take you under a train with him. The banker disinterred a bone from his fish. "And your mother?" he said. John did not want to tell Mr. Sartozini about his mother. He thought about the presents she used to buy him, and the terrible rows she always had with his father over how much they cost. He remembered the model of Apollo 11, when he'd been hooked on the moon landing. The Action Man. The model aeroplanes, the encyclopedias, the Lego sets.

  It was around her gifts that his childhood had revolved. They became his brother and sister, his best friend, his window on the world. He huddled in his room, reading, learning, making models, living his life vicariously through Action Man's hair-raising adventures, and closed his ears to the moans of his mother with the men who visited her when his father was out or away, and to her screams when she opened his bedroom door some days and blamed him for ruining her life. If he had never been born their marriage would have been wonderful.

  And always he escaped into his fantasy world. Into board games, Dungeons and Dragons and, finally, into computers.

  He told Mr. Sarotzini a modified, more palatable version of this. Coffee arrived. They had discussed no business over lunch and Mr. Sarotzini was now looking at his slender, old-fashioned Cartier watch. John reached beneath the table for his briefcase. "I have copies of the accounts and projections for you," he said.

  The banker pulled a tiny gold dispenser from his pocket and tapped two sweeteners into his demi-tasse. "How thoughtful of you, but that will not be necessary."

  John looked at the man, alarmed by his tone. The hope that had buoyed him earlier had been dashed on rocks. Was it something he had said during lunch? This sudden change in Mr. Sarotzini was not making any sense. He could not understand why the man should have gone to the trouble he had and then ask him, only about. his private life and his background.

  As the banker dabbed his mouth carefully with his napkin, then rose from the table, John wondered whether the man had all his lights on. Yet he had remembered incredible details about the accounts and he had not in any way seemed a fool.

  As the Mercedes headed back towards John's office, Mr. Sarotzini sat in distant silence. When John tried to steer the conversation back towards the chances of the V6rn Bank coming on board, Mr. Sarotzini replied, finally, that the more he had thought about it, the more Zak Danziger presented a deeper problem than he had at first realised.

  By the time they parted company, John was deeply despondent. Mr. Sarotzini hadn't taken any paperwork, he couldn't be interested.

  The calendar on the computer in John's office told him that he had eleven days left. It was Saturday tomorrow, golf with the lads if he felt up to it. On Monday morning he would have eight days left. Gloomily he picked up the receiver and phoned Archie Warren.

  Archie had run out of suggestions.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The cellar was the only part of the house Susan didn't care for.

  The heavy, door had sagged on its hinges and she had to give a backbreaking heave to move it As it scraped open, she was greeted by dank-smelling darkness. She switched on the light and went down the steps, ducking her head. She particularly didn't like the claustrophobically low ceiling, or the little spiders that hung around everywhere in their webs.

  She walked past a cluster of old Chianti bottles, lengths of drainpipe, empty packing cases and a stack of rusty strips of metal, reached the chest freezer and opened the lid. It came free with a loud cracking of ice from the frozen rubber seal and a blast of cold air. As she peered at the contents, she cursed her stupidity in not having labelled anything when she had stocked up. She lifted out something that might have been a leg of lamb, searching beneath it for the frozen tiger prawns she was sure were in here. She pulled out more packets. Even this simple task was an effort today: she was too distracted by her worries to concentrate on anything normal. They had guests coming tonight, and she usually loved entertaining, but today it was an ordeal.

  Last night John had arrived home more miserable than ever. He'd had high hopes of the Swiss banker he'd met at the dinner at the Guildhall, and so had she after the success of the man's racing tips. But now it seemed that, like everything else, it had come to nothing.

  She jumped as the boiler, at the far end of the cellar, rattled and thumped into life. Then she continued to dig, her hands numbingly cold. Alex and Liz Harrison were coming tonight. Alex, who had been John's best man, was marketing director of a large software company and John was going to pick his brains to see if he could think of any company that might buy DigiTrak. Liz was Susan's closest friend in England, next to Kate Fox, her colleague in the office.

  Harvey Addison and his wife, Caroline, were coming too. Susan didn't much care for the gynecologist, whom she thought rather precious and arrogant, but John wanted to keep him sweet. If DigiTrak went to the wall, he planned to offer him a partnership in a new venture.

  Susan found Caroline pleasant but dull and self-obsessed. Attractive, in a Barbie-doll way, her conversation was limited to the walk-in wardrobes she was having built, the diet she was on, and updates on her children, on whom she lavished the same Stepford admiration she held for her husband. In the five years that Susan had known her, she could not remember Caroline Addison ever having asked her a question about herself.

  It was Saturday morning and John was on the golf course. He needed to relax, and she was glad that at least he was out in the fresh air for a few hours. Then he was going on to the office, to meet a liquidator, someone Archie Warren had suggested, a bit of a rough diamond, according to Archie. The liquidator was going to advise him on how to salvage what he could between now and when the bank pulled the plug. Nothing illegal, John told her last night, but his tone had told her something different.

  His desperation was scaring her. Until this crisis she had always been able to trust his judgement, but now she was worried that he might do something that could land him in trouble. Or worse. She was beginning to fear that he might try to kill himself.

  Until now John and she had always discussed everything openly, but now they could hardly communicate with each other. He had drunk heavily again last night and had snapped at her when she had tried to talk about other avenues they could try. Then he had fallen asleep in front of the television.

  A bad childhood either destroyed you, warped you, or made you strong. John's had made him strong; his father's failure had made him determined to succeed, to prove that failure was not in his genes. He had never been a quitter, but now he seemed close to becoming one. From what he had said last night, she thought he was beginning, alarmingly, to see the end as a release.

  And she could see that, in some ways, it would be a release. He could start again, although it would take time for him to get back to where he was now, or anything close to it, and yes, it would be a wrench, but if they had to leave this house, she could accept it. The serious problem was Casey.

  If only her own job were secure.

  When.John had asked her to marry him and move to London, only Casey had made her hesitant about leaving LA.

  Tinseltown held mostly images of tragedy for her. Her father, a bit-part actor who hadn't had a role in thirty years, earned a living gassing up the yachts and powerboats of the rich, the famous and the just plain successful at Marina del Rey. At the age of fifty, he had taken up painting, and still dreamed of being discovered, if not as an actor, maybe now as a water-colourist. But Susan knew, sadly, that he wouldn't be. He had talent but he didn't have drive.

  Her mother, whose biggest movie break had been a part riding an elevator with Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, which had been cut in the televised version, now worked in a ticket booth at Universal Studios and had stopped dreaming a long while back.

  Casey, who was fun, wacky and stunningly beautiful, had dropped a contaminated Ecstasy tab at a party when she'd just turned fifteen. She had lain ever since in a persistent vegetative state in a clinic. Susan's mother would not allow life support to be switched off, and Susan and her father, although with some misgivings, had always supported her decision.

  Susan blamed herself for Casey's condition. In spite of her parents and friends telling her repeatedly that it hadn't been her fault, she couldn't help the guilt she carried. Her parents had gone away for the weekend and Casey had been invited to a party. Susan had been reluctant to let her go but Casey had begged, promising to be home early, and Susan had relented.

  If only... Susan had thought a thousand times.

  For the first five years, Susan had visited Casey for an hour every day. She had sat by her bed, talking and playing her favourite rock music. Slowly it had drifted to an hour "every few days, then once a week.