Perhaps the Revenue might not be knocking at her door in the morning after all, even if they could find it.
Possibly designed to confuse them, the return was not in the name of Mrs. Josephine Kauri, and her address was not recorded as Kauri House Stables. It wasn't even in Lambourn but at 26 Banbury Drive, Oxford. However, I did recognize the signature as being that of my mother, in her familiar curly handwriting.
Only the name was unfamiliar. She had signed the form Jane Philips, her real, legal, married name.
In the same filing cabinet, I also found a Kauri House Stables Ltd corporate tax return for the previous year. It was dated May and they were annual so at least we had some breathing space before the next one was due.
I looked through it. Roderick had worked his magic here as well.
How, I wondered, did my mother afford to pay two thousand pounds a week in blackmail demands if, as according to the tax returns, her personal income was less than two and a half thousand a year, and her business made such a small profit that it paid tax only in three figures, in spite of all the extras paid by the horse owners in nonexistent VAT.
But, of course, I could find no records of the profits made by the company called Kauri House Stables (Gibraltar) Ltd. In fact, there was no reference to any such entity anywhere in the R for Roderick drawer of the filing cabinet, or anywhere else, for that matter. However, I did find one interesting sheet of paper nestling amongst the tax returns. It was a letter from an investment fund manager welcoming my mother and stepfather into the select group of individuals invited to invest in his fund. The letter was dated three years previously and had been signed by a Mr. Anthony Cigar of Rock Bank (Gibraltar) Ltd.
Mr. Cigar hadn't actually used the term "hedge fund," but it was quite clear from his letter, and from the attached fee schedule, that a hedge fund was what he'd managed.
I sat at my mother's desk and looked up Rock Bank (Gibraltar) Ltd on the Internet. I typed the name into Google and then clicked on the bank's own Web address. The computer came back with the answer that the website was under construction and was unavailable to be displayed.
I went back to the Google page and clicked on the site for the Gibraltar Chronicle, one of the references that had mentioned the Rock Bank. It reported that back in September, Parkin amp; Cleeve Ltd, a UK-based firm of liquidators, had unsuccessfully filed a suit in the High Court in London against the individual directors of Rock Bank (Gibraltar) Ltd in an attempt to recover money on behalf of several of their clients. The directors were not named by the report, and the Chronicle had been unable to obtain a response from any representative of the bank.
It didn't bode well for the recovery of my mother's million dollars.
I yawned and looked at my watch. It was ten to midnight, and my mother and Derek had long before gone up to bed, and it was also well past my bedtime.
I flicked off the light in the office and went up the stairs.
My first day as sleuth-in-residence at Kauri House Stables hadn't gone all my own way. I hoped for better news in the morning.
When I came down to breakfast at eight o'clock I found my stepfather sitting silently, staring at a single brown envelope lying on the bleached-pine kitchen table, with "On Her Majesty's Service" printed in bold type along the top.
"Have you opened it?" I asked him.
"Of course not," he said. "It's addressed to your mother."
"Where is she?" I asked.
"Still out with the first lot," he said.
I picked up the envelope and looked at the back. "In case of non-delivery, please return to HMRC" was printed across the flap, so there was no mistake-it was definitely from the tax man.
I slid my finger under the flap and ripped open the envelope.
"You can't do that," my stepfather said indignantly.
"I just did," I said, taking out the contents. I unfolded the letter. It was simply a reminder for her Pay-As-You-Earn payments for the stable staff.
"It's OK," I said. "This is just a routine monthly reminder notice. It was generated by a computer. No one is going to come here. Not yet anyway."
"Are you sure?" he asked, still looking worried.
"Yes," I said."But they will come in the end if we don't do something about this mess."
"But what can we do?" he said.
It was a good question.
"I don't know yet," I said, "but I do know that we will be in even more trouble if we do nothing and then the tax man comes calling. We simply have to go to them with answers before they come to us with questions."
My mother swept into the kitchen and placed her hands on the Aga.
"God, it's cold out there," she said. Neither my stepfather nor I said anything. She turned around. "What's wrong with you two? Quiet all of a sudden?"
"A letter has arrived from the tax office," my stepfather said.
In spite of her cold-induced rosy cheeks, my mother went a shade paler.
"It's all right," I said in a more reassuring tone than her husband's had been. "It's just an automatic PAYE reminder. Nothing to worry about." I tossed the letter onto the kitchen table.
"Are you certain?" she asked, moving forwards and picking it up.
"Yes," I said. "But I was saying to Derek here, we will have to tell the tax man soon about what's happened, and before he starts asking us difficult questions we can't answer."
"Why would he?"
"Because you should have sent them a tax return by January thirty-first."
"Oh," she said. "But why does that mean we have to tell them everything? Why can't I just send them a tax return now?"
Why not indeed? I thought. As things stood, I could just about argue that I was not an accessory to tax evasion, but I certainly wouldn't be able to if I helped her send in a fraudulent tax return.
Junior officers have to learn, from cover to cover, the contents of a booklet titled Values and Standards of the British Army. Paragraph twenty-seven states: Those entrusted with public and nonpublic funds must adhere unswervingly to the appropriate financial regulations. Dishonesty and deception in the control and management of these funds is not a "victimless crime" but shows a lack of integrity and moral courage, which has a corrosive effect on operational effectiveness through the breakdown in trust.
"Let's leave it for a few days," I said. "The tax website says you won't get any more penalties until the end of the month." Other than the interest, of course.
I left my mother and Derek to reflect on things in the kitchen while I went out to the stable yard in search of Ian Norland.
"You're still here, then?" he said as I found him in the feed store.
"Seems so," I said.
I stood in silence and watched him measure out some oats from a hopper into some metal bowls.
"I'm not going to talk to you," he said. "It nearly cost me my job last time."
"We've moved on since then."
"Who has?"
"My mother and me," I said. "We're now on the same side."
"I'll wait for her to tell me that, if you don't mind."
"She's in the kitchen right now," I said. "Go and ask her."
"I think I'll wait for her to come out."
"No," I insisted. "Please go and ask her now. I need to talk to you."
He went off reluctantly in the direction of the house, looking back once or twice as if I might call him back and say it was all a joke. I hoped my mother wouldn't actually bite his head off.
In his absence I went from the feed store into the tack room next door. It was all very neat and smelled strongly of leather, like those handbag counters in Oxford Street department stores. On the left-hand wall there were about twenty metal saddle racks, about half of which were occupied by saddles with their girths wrapped around them. On the opposite wall there were rows of coat hooks holdings bridles, and at the end between the saddles and bridles, there were shelves of folded horse rugs and other paraphernalia, including a box of assorted bits and a couple of riding helmets.