"So how long did the little scheme of yours run? When did you stop paying the tax man?"
"Nearly four years ago," my mother said in a whimper.
"And when did you start paying again?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Are you paying the VAT to the tax man now?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"No, of course not," she said. "How could I start paying again without them asking questions?"
How, I wondered, had she stopped paying without them asking? Surely it could be only a matter of time before she was investigated. Four years of nonpayment of VAT must add up to nearly a million pounds in unpaid tax. She should indeed be worried about going to prison.
"Who is doing your accounts now?" I asked. "Since this Roderick Ward was killed."
"No one," she said. "I was frightened of getting anyone."
With good reason, I thought.
"Can't you pay the tax now?" I said. "If you pay everything you owe and explain that you were misled by your accountant, I'm sure that it would prevent you from being sent to prison."
My mother began to cry again.
"We haven't got the money to pay the tax man," Derek said gloomily.
"But what happened to all of the extra you collected?" I asked.
"It's all gone," he said.
"It can't have all gone," I said. "It must be close to a million pounds."
"More," he said.
"So where did it all go?"
"We spent a lot of it," he said. "In the beginning, mostly on holidays. And Roderick had some of it, of course."
Of course.
"And the rest?"
"Some has gone to the blackmailer." He sounded tired and resigned. "I don't honestly know where it went. We've only got about fifty thousand left in the bank."
That was a start.
"So how much are the house and stables worth?" I asked.
My mother looked horrified.
"Mother, dear," I said, trying to be kind but firm. "If I'm going to keep you out of prison, then we have to find a way to pay the tax."
"But you promised me you wouldn't tell the police," she whined.
"I won't," I replied. "But if you really think the tax man won't find out eventually, then you're wrong. The tax office is bound to do a check sometime. And it will be much better for you if we go and tell them before they uncover it for themselves."
"Oh God."
I said nothing, allowing the awful truth to sink in. She must have known, as I did, that the tax inspectors at Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs had little compassion for those they discovered were defrauding the system. The only way to win any friends amongst them was to make a clean breast of things and pay back the money, and before they demanded it.
"Not if I retire," she said suddenly. "The tax man won't ever know if I simply retire."
"But Josephine," my stepfather said, "we've already discussed that. How would we pay him if you retired?"
I, meanwhile, wasn't so sure that her retirement wouldn't in fact be the best course of action. At least then she wouldn't be perpetuating the fraud, as she was now, and selling the property might raise the necessary sum. But I certainly didn't share my mother's confidence that her retirement would guarantee that the tax man wouldn't find out. It might even attract the very attention she was trying to avoid.
Overall, it was quite a mess, and I couldn't readily see a way out of it.
My mother and stepfather went off to bed at nine o'clock, tired and emotional from too much brandy and with the awful realization that their secret was out, and their way of life was in for radical change-and probably for the worse.
I too went up to my bedroom, but I didn't go to sleep.
I carefully eased my stump out of the prosthetic leg. It was not a very easy task, as I had been overdoing the walking and my leg was sore, the flesh below my knee swollen by excess fluid. If I wasn't more careful I wouldn't be able to get the damn thing back on again in the morning.
I raised the stump by placing it on a pillow to allow gravity to assist in bringing down the fluid buildup, and then I lay back to think.
There was little doubt that my mother and stepfather were up to their necks in real trouble, and they were sinking deeper into the mire with every day that passed.
The solution for them was simple, at least in theory: raise the money, pay it to the tax man, submit a retrospective tax return, report the blackmail to the police, and then pray for forgiveness.
The blackmailer would no longer have a hold over them, and maybe the police might even find him and recover some of their money, but I wouldn't bet my shirt on it.
So the first thing to be done was to raise more than a million pounds to hand over to the Revenue.
It was easier said than done. Perhaps I could rob a bank.
Reluctantly, my mother and stepfather had agreed that the house and stables, even in the recent depressed property market, could fetch about two and a half million pounds, if they were lucky. But there was a catch. The house was heavily mortgaged, and the stables had been used as collateral for a bank loan to the training business.
I thought back to the brief conversation I'd had with my stepfather after my mother had gone upstairs.
"So how much free capital is there altogether?" I'd asked him.
"About five hundred thousand."
I was surprised that it was so little. "But surely the training business has been earning good money for years."
"It's not as lucrative as you might think, and your mother has always used any profits to build more stables."
"So why is there so little free capital value in the property?"
"Roderick advised us to increase our borrowing," he'd said. "He believed that capital tied up in property wasn't doing anything useful. He told us that as it was, our capital wasn't working properly for us."
"So what did Roderick want you to do with it instead?"
"Buy into an investment fund he was very keen on."
I again hadn't really wanted to believe my ears.
"And did you?" I'd asked him.
"Oh yes," he'd said. "We took out another mortgage and invested it in the fund."
"So that money is still safe?" I had asked with renewed hope.
"Unfortunately, that particular investment fund didn't do too well in the recession."
Why was I not surprised?
"How not too well?" I'd asked him.
"Not well at all, I'm afraid," he said. "In fact, the fund went into bankruptcy last year."
"But surely you were covered by some kind of government bailout protection insurance?"
"Sadly not," he'd said. "It was some sort of offshore fund."
"A hedge fund?"
"Yes, that's it. I knew it sounded like something to do with gardens."
I simply couldn't believe it. I'd been stunned by his naivete. And it was of no comfort to know that hedge funds had been so named because they had initially been designed to "hedge" against fluctuations in overall stock prices. The original intention of reducing risks had transformed, over time, into high-risk strategies, capable of returning huge profits when things went well but also huge losses if they didn't. Recent unexpected declines in the world's equity markets, coupled with banks suddenly calling in their loans, had left offshore tax shelters awash with hedge-fund managers in search of new jobs.
"But didn't you take any advice? From an independent financial adviser or something?"
"Roderick said it wasn't necessary."
Roderick would. Mr. Roderick Ward had obviously spotted my complacent mother and her careless husband coming from a long way off.
"But didn't you ever think that Roderick might have been wrong?"
"No," he'd said, almost surprised by the question. "Roderick showed us a brochure about how well the fund had done. It was all very exciting."
"And is there any money left?"
"I had a letter that said they were trying to recover some of the funds and they would let investors know if they succeeded."
I took that to mean no, there was nothing left.