Chapter 18: The Speech

Laurence's POV

The second page was a cash receipt.

It was the size of a playing card, stuck to the back of the last carbon by six years of damp.

Ben peeled it free in the hospital stairwell with a pair of tweezers while I held the light.

*Received from SG Treasury, petty cash. Twelve thousand dollars. For services rendered.*

Under it was a signature that was not a signature, only a scrawl, and beside it, in blue ink, two small neat letters.

*I.D.*

I looked at them for a long time.

"It's the same hand as the strap," Ben said. "I'd bet my pension."

"You don't have to bet anything yet."

"No, sir."

"Pull the treasury ledger for the whole month. The thirteenth first."

He had already done it.

He gave me the printout in the stairwell with the door propped open on its latch.

I read the line twice.

On the thirteenth, at 2:14 in the afternoon, four hundred thousand dollars had left the relocation fund and gone into an account in Ciara's name.

At 4:02 the same afternoon, the whole sum had left that account again.

It had gone to an account at the same bank, opened in March of the year before.

The holder was not Ciara Mahoney.

The holder was a company I had never heard of, with an agent in Delaware.

The signature on the account card was Imogen's own hand, and Ben had already matched it.

"She did not even change her handwriting," Ben said.

"She never thought I would look."

"No, sir. You never did."

It was a fair thing to say, and he said it without cruelty.

I folded the printout and put it in my pocket with the receipt.

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