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“It doesn’t feel like one,” she snapped, and turned plaintive. “He mutilated the copy I gave him and made it useless. It may still look like my book, but now all it’s good for is—”
Now all it was good for was hiding William’s secrets.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Safe Passage
It’s in the quietest moments that our lives are most profoundly altered. Not in the firing of a weapon, but the decision to acquire it. Not the dropping of bombs, but the stroke of the pen that orders them. A Scottish scientist returns from holiday and notices a Penicillium mold has killed the bacteria in a Petri dish. A young nurse has a vision of a contraceptive pill after her mother dies from the cumulative effects of eighteen pregnancies.
Discoveries, decisions, and ideas all happen in the human mind before history knows it’s been changed.
In the stillness of William Farlow’s office, Reina paged through an unmarked private ledger and found a number on a half inch of space that would destroy thousands of lives and send a tremor through Lombard Street.
She stared at it, feeling blessedly numb. Her brain worked even faster than usual, following multiple strategies and outcomes almost simultaneously. She needed to devise an internal rescue plan for depositors, to preserve what few resources they might have left. The accounting issues were so complex, a court and magistrate could easily be misled by lawyers. A neutral third party would have to be appointed to manage the situation. She would suggest trustworthy candidates to the authorities. Since Farlow’s was a private credit bank, the proceedings would have to go through the Chancery Division. Maybe she could help initiate a civil suit—
John was saying something. “. . . only need to take enough evidence to obtain a warrant from a magistrate.”
Reina registered the words with irritation, already thinking beyond that. She was several steps ahead of him.
Then she realized John was focused on the practical matter of not being caught. He was absolutely right.
“We’re going to take this ledger,” she said. “It would be proof enough on its own, but I’ll find corroborating information, just to make sure.”
Bracing his palms on the desk, John leaned toward her, his intent dark gaze holding hers. “Reina. What does the ledger say?”
She rotated the open book on the desk to face him and rested a fingertip near one line.
Deficiency against deposits: £2,017,645 13s 8d
John read it silently. She couldn’t see his face. With his head lowered, he asked gruffly, “Over two million pounds?”
“Yes.”
“Completely gone?”
“Yes.”
John pushed back from the desk and paced a tight, agitated circle.
Reina opened the cash book, which showed receipts and disbursements, and paged through it rapidly. It was full of unpaid debts, interest in arrears, and a telling overuse of the word “pending.”
“Would you hand me the suspense ledger?” she asked.
John came back to the desk and went through the pile of volumes. “Which one?”
“There’s more than one?”
“There are four—no, five.”
“Five?” Reina looked down at the cash book again. “I need the most recent one.”
John set the book in front of her, opened it, and pressed it flat.
She checked a few entries against each other. After a few minutes, she said, “He’s created many unnecessary layers of bookkeeping.” She paused to massage her temples with her fingertips. “A suspense ledger is where money is temporarily held until it’s put into the proper account. But this one is full of entries with no corresponding debit or credit in the originating ledger.” She glanced up to make sure he understood the significance.
“Simple terms,” he prompted.
“William is moving money from one book to another, so if anyone tries to find out where it’s gone, they’ll only be led to another book.”
