"Calm down, Martin," I said. "Let's just hope that the real Alex Reece isn't sending his own transfer e-mail to SB today."
"Oh my God," said Martin. "That would really confuse things."
"The shortest time that money has spent in the account before being moved on is six days. It is now five days since the first one arrived and four since the second. So I don't expect a real transfer request from Alex today."
"How about if SB knows that it has to be a minimum of six days or it's a fake request?"
"We'll know that soon enough," I said. "It's two minutes to twelve."
I pushed the send button, and the message disappeared from the screen. It was on its way, and we were left holding our breaths.
We both waited in silence as I continually refreshed the webmail page. The clock on the computer moved past twelve o'clock to twelve oh-one. I refreshed the page once more. Nothing. I forced myself to be calm and wait for a count of ten before I clicked on the refresh button again. Still nothing. I counted again, slowly, this time to fifteen, but still nothing came.
The reply arrived at nine minutes past twelve, by which time I had all but given up hope. Alex. I acknowledge receipt of your instructions. To which party do I charge the transfer costs? SB.
I had the reply ready to send, but I quickly pulled it up to make the changes. I typed in the new information. Sigurd, I confirm receipt of your acknowledgment and I endorse the instructions. Please charge the transfer costs to the recipients.Thank goodness spring is nearly here in the UK and the temperature has begun to rise. AR.
I pushed the send button, and again the message disappeared from the screen. Next, I used the mail2web tools to delete SB's reply from the server so that it would not appear on Alex's computer when he downloaded his mail.
"Now we wait and see," I said. But I went on monitoring the webmail page for another forty minutes before I was happy that SB wasn't going to ask another question.
"Do you think it will work?" he said.
"Do you?" I asked in reply.
"Not really," he said. "It was much too easy."
"Yes," I said. "Almost as easy as getting you to part with the two million dollars in the first place!"
Martin called his bank and asked them to inform him by telephone immediately if a large deposit arrived. My mother, meanwhile, might simply have to wait to see if it appeared on her bank statement.
"Call me if you hear anything," I said, shaking his hand in the driveway.
"Don't worry, I will," he said with a smile. "Quite an entertaining morning, I'd say. Much more exciting than the boring existence I have now found for myself."
"You miss running your company, then?" I asked.
"Miss it!" he said. "I grieve for my loss."
"But you have all that money."
"Yes," he said rather forlornly. "But what can I do every day? Count it? I started in business when I was straight out of school, aged sixteen. It wasn't plastics in those days, it was cardboard. Cardboard boxes for home-moving companies. They were all still using old tea chests then, and I reckoned that cardboard would be better. I started by collecting old cardboard boxes from shops and passing them on to the moving men. Then I started importing boxes, both cardboard and plastic."
He sighed.
"Where did the drainpipes come from?" I asked.
"The man who made the plastic boxes in Germany also made drainpipe, and I bought the UK rights from him. And it just took off. That was years ago."
"Why did you sell?"
"I'm sixty-eight, and neither of my children are interested in running any business, let alone a drainpipe business. Far too boring for them. But I loved it. I used to get to the factory in Swindon at seven in the morning, and often I'd not leave before ten at night. It was such fun."
"Didn't your wife object?" I asked.
"Oh, I expect so," he said, laughing. "But she does so enjoy shopping in Harrods."
"So what will you do in the future? Will you start something else?"
"No," he said, with another sigh. "I don't think so. I suppose I'll have to go to Harrods more often with my wife. We need to do something with all that money."
The prospect of more shopping with his wife clearly didn't make him happy. I obviously wasn't the only person viewing his future life with anxiety and trepidation.
"Shop for some racehorses," I said. "I hear that's a great way to spend loads of money, and it can be lots of fun too."
"What a great idea," he said. "I'll do just that."
"And," I said, "I know a way to save you all the VAT."
We both laughed out loud.
As I had hoped, Martin Toleron and I parted as friends, not foes.
Martin called my cell phone at a quarter past three as I was dozing on Ian's sofa, half watching the racing from Huntingdon on the television.
"Have you heard from the bank?" I asked, instantly wide awake.
"No, nothing from them," he said. "But I've just had a call from Jackson Warren."
"Wow," I said, clapping my hands together. "And what did he say?"
"He tried to tell me that the bank in Gibraltar had made an error and had inexplicably returned my two million dollars to my account. He asked if I would mind instructing my bank to send it again."
"And what did you say?" I asked.
"I expressed surprise that Jackson was calling me, as I had no idea that he was involved with the organization of the fund. I told him that I thought he was just another satisfied investor."
"And what did he say then?"
"He tried to tell me that he had only been called by the fund manager because he, the manager, knew that Jackson was a friend of mine."
He paused. "Yes?" I said. "Go on."
"I lost my rag a bit. I told him to get stuffed. I said that I would not be investing in anything to do with him, as he had purposely misled me. I also told him I'd be reporting the incident to the Financial Services Authority."
"I bet he didn't take kindly to that."
"No, he didn't," Martin said. "In fact, he threatened me."
"He what?"
"He told me straight-out that if I went to the FSA I'd regret it. I asked him what exactly he meant by that, but all he said was 'Work it out.' "
That was the same phrase that Alex had said to me.
"And," Martin went on, "he doesn't seem to be too pleased with you either."
"How so?" I asked.
"He point-blank accused me of conspiring with you to defraud him. I told him that was rich coming from him, and he could go and boil his brains, or words to that effect."
I wasn't altogether sure that insulting Jackson Warren was a sensible policy. Insults sometimes provoked extreme reactions, and some historians now believed that Saddam Hussein's cruel invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was the direct result of a personal insult to the Iraqi people from the Emir.
"Did he ask if you knew where I was?" I asked.
"Ask me?" He laughed. "He demanded that I tell him. I simply said that I had no idea where you were, and also that I wouldn't have told him if I did."
"How secure are your gates?" I asked.
"Why?" He sounded slightly worried for the first time.
"I think that Jackson Warren is a very dangerous man," I said seriously. "Martin, this is not a game. He has already tried to kill me once, and I am sure he would do it again without hesitation. So keep your gates locked and watch your back."
"I will," he said, and hung up, no doubt, to go outside rapidly and make sure his gates were closed and bolted.
Was it now time, I wondered, to involve the police and be damned about the tax consequences? But what could I say to them? "Well, officer, Mr. Jackson Warren tried to kill me by hanging me up to starve to death in a disused stable when I had to stand on only one leg for days, but I escaped by unscrewing the hay-net ring, climbing over the stable walls and breaking a window in the tack room, but I've only now decided to tell you about it, a week later, after I've been sneaking around Berkshire in camouflage cream, attacking and torturing one of Mr. Warren's associates using fake insulin and a hypodermic needle, and using the information I illegally obtained from him to transfer one million American dollars from Mr. Warren's company in Gibraltar into my mother's personal bank account in Hungerford."