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rewards of capitalist enterprise.
    It also had a brooding aura hovering over it like a dense cloud, as if the owner’s sudden change of status had infected the area, draining whatever light there may have been out of the atmosphere.
    ‘Nice gaff,’ said Rik Ferris, studying the facade. He scrubbed at his head of spiky hair which refused to be tamed. A bit, Harry decided, like his unusual taste in T-shirts, although he’d toned them down a bit lately. The current one was dark blue with a vivid splash of orange across the chest. The blue matched the Audi TT they were sitting in. Rik had agreed to meet him outside the house for a briefing on Param’s background. ‘I thought you said Jennings wanted him left alone.’
    ‘So he did. But I haven’t yet sorted out how to start on the latest job he gave me. A runner named Silverman – I’ll tell you about it later. In the meantime, we might as well do something positive.’ Harry took out the briefing paper on Param and scanned the main points. Raymond Param, investment manager for Boulding Bartram, an investment partnership in London. Aged forty-three, Anglo-Indian, his mother British, he went to the London School of Economics, did some time in the States, then joined Bouldings. Married, no children. Solid performer, reliable, steady, then one day, gone. No notes, no goodbyes, no shoes on the beach. He checked a six-by-four photo which accompanied the briefing notes. It showed a sleek individual in a conservative pinstripe, with receding black hair and an easy smile.
    ‘Why are they hot to find him?’
    ‘His employers found a bunch of dummy offshore accounts after he’d skipped. All empty. They think he set them up so he could dump small amounts of money over several months, then cleared them out once he was ready to go.’
    ‘Small? Is it worth all the trouble, trying to get him back?’
    ‘The small amounts added up to about three million.’
    ‘Ouch. Painful. Sounds like their systems slipped up.’
    ‘Just a bit. No warning, out of character, never done this before, highest integrity, honest as the day is long, blah-di-blah. Now rich and on the lam.’ He passed Rik copies of the briefing documents. ‘We need to check out anything you can find on him; clubs, friends, recent trips, financials – the usual.’
    ‘No problem.’ Rik folded the sheets and put them in the glove box. Like Harry, he was a former employee of MI5. He had an extensive knowledge of government systems and a widespread hacking community he could use to blur the lines of any illicit searches he needed to conduct. It had been his misuse of IT resources that had led to his own downfall, and his posting to the same remote station where he and Harry had first met.
    ‘Where do we start the physical stuff?’
    ‘Right here. The wife’s staying with her sister, so we’ve got full run of the house to do the audit, including, with luck, his computer and financial records.’ The audit was the term Harry used for trawling through a runner’s background, checking every file, document, scrap of paper, phone and email records, financial detail, and even searching their clothing and cars, all in the hope of finding a clue to the runner’s whereabouts. Mostly, it worked. Like it had with Matuq, turning up a colour postcard of a cottage in Blakeney, Norfolk. It hadn’t been the one he’d been staying in, but enough to point Harry in the right direction. The rest had been down to Rik checking phone calls and emails made by the Libyan from his office and home. Harry looked at him. ‘First, though, I’d like to check the wife actually is with the sister and hasn’t snuck off to Las Vegas to join hubby Raymond on the blackjack tables.’
    ‘Cynic,’ Rik murmured drily. But he knew Harry was right; Param wouldn’t be the first partner or husband to skip with some ill-gotten gains with the connivance of his better half. He yawned. ‘Tomorrow first thing?’
    ‘Why – you got a hot date?’ Rik