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  ‘You can go too far, you know,’ said Alexander.

  ‘Not while you have ambitions to go even further,’ said Julian, with a laugh.

  ‘I’ll need a few days.’

  ‘I can’t wait that long - I want to catch the early flight to Nice tomorrow. Be sure that the money has been transferred to my account before you go into the board meeting at eleven, there’s a good chap. Don’t forget it was you who taught me about electronic transfers.’

  The phone went dead, then rang again immediately.

  ‘Who is it this time?’ snapped Alexander.

  ‘The Chairman’s on line two.’

  ‘Put him through.’

  ‘Phillip, I need the latest figures on the Russian loans, along with your assessment of the McKinsey report.’

  ‘I’ll have an update on the Russian position on your desk within the hour. As for the McKinsey report, I’m broadly in agreement with its recommendations, but I’ve asked Godfrey Tudor-Jones to let me have a written opinion on how we should go about implementing it. I intend to present his report at tomorrow’s board meeting. I hope that’s satisfactory, Chairman?’

  ‘I doubt it. I have a feeling that by tomorrow it will be too late,’ the Chairman said without explanation, before replacing the phone.

  Sir William knew it didn’t help that the latest Russian losses had exceeded PS500 million. And now the McKinsey report had arrived on every director’s desk, recommending that seventy jobs, perhaps even more, should be shed in order to make a saving of around PS3 million a year. When would management consultants begin to understand that human beings were involved, not just numbers on a balance sheet - among them seventy loyal members of staff, some of whom had served the bank for more than twenty years?

  There wasn’t a mention of the Russian loan in the McKinsey report, because it wasn’t part of their brief; but the timing couldn’t have been worse. And in banking, timing is everything.

  Phillip Alexander’s words to the board were indelibly fixed in Sir William’s memory: ‘We mustn’t allow our rivals to take advantage of such a one-off windfall. If Critchley’s is to remain a player on the international stage, we have to move quickly while there’s still a profit to be made.’ The short-term gains could be enormous, Alexander had assured the board - whereas in truth the opposite had turned out to be the case. And within moments of things falling apart, the little shit had begun digging himself out of the Russian hole, while dropping his Chairman right into it. He’d been on holiday at the time, and Alexander had phoned him at his hotel in Marrakech to tell him that he had everything under control, and there was no need for him to rush home. When he did eventually return, he found that Alexander had already filled in the hole, leaving him at the bottom of it.

  After reading the article in the Financial Times, Sir William knew his days as Chairman were numbered. The resignation of Maurice Kington had been the final blow, from which he knew he couldn’t hope to recover. He had tried to talk him out of it, but there was only one person’s future Kington was ever interested in.

  The Chairman stared down at his handwritten letter of resignation, a copy of which would be sent to every member of the board that evening.

  His loyal secretary Claire had reminded him that he was fifty-seven, and had often talked of retiring at sixty to make way for a younger man. It was ironic when he considered who that younger man might be.

  True, he was fifty-seven. But the last Chairman hadn’t retired until he was seventy, and that was what the board and the shareholders would remember. It would be forgotten that he had taken over an ailing bank from an ailing Chairman, and increased its profits year on year for the past decade. Even if you included the Russian disaster, they were still well ahead of the game.

  Those hints from the Prime Minister that he was being considered for a peerage would quickly be forgotten. The dozen or so directorships that are nothing more than routine for the retiring Chairman of a major bank would suddenly evaporate, along with the invitations to Buck House, the Guildhall and the centre court at Wimbledon - the one official outing his wife always enjoyed.

  He had told Katherine over dinner the night before that he was going to resign. She had put down her knife and fork, folded her napkin and said, ‘Thank God for that. Now it won’t be necessary to go on with this sham of a marriage any longer. I shall wait for a decent interval, of course, before I file for divorce.’ She had risen from her place and left the room without uttering another word.

  Until then, he’d had no idea that Katherine felt so strongly. He’d assumed she was aware that there had been other women, although none of his affairs had been all that serious. He thought they had reached an understanding, an accommodation. After all, so many married couples of their age did. After dinner he had travelled up to London and spent the night at his club.

  He unscrewed the top of his fountain pen and signed the twelve letters. He had left them on his desk all day, in the hope that before the close of business some miracle would occur which would make it possible for him to shred them. But in truth he knew that was never likely.

  When he finally took the letters through to his secretary, she had already typed the recipients’ names on the twelve envelopes. He smiled at Claire, the best secretary he’d ever had.

  ‘Goodbye, Claire,’ he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Goodbye, Sir William,’ she replied, biting her lip.

  He returned to his office, picked up his empty briefcase and a copy of The Times. Tomorrow he would be the lead story in the Business Section - he wasn’t quite well enough known to make the front page. He looked around the Chairman’s office once again before leaving it for the last time. He closed the door quietly behind him and walked slowly down the corridor to the lift. He pressed the button and waited. The doors opened and he stepped inside, grateful that the lift was empty, and that it didn’t stop on its journey to the ground floor.

  He walked out into the foyer and glanced towards the reception desk. Haskins would have gone home long ago. As the plate-glass door slid open he thought about Kevin sitting at home in Peckham with his pregnant wife. He would have liked to have wished him luck for the job on the reception desk. At least that wouldn’t be affected by the McKinsey report.

  As he stepped out onto the pavement, something caught his eye. He turned to see an old tramp settling down for the night in the far corner underneath the arch.

  Bill touched his forehead in a mock salute. ‘Good evening, Chairman,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Good evening, Bill,’ Sir William replied, smiling back at him.

  If only they could change places, Sir William thought, as he turned and walked towards his waiting car.

  JEFFREY ARCHER, whose novels and short stories include Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, Kane and Abel and A Twist in the Tale, has topped the bestseller lists around the world, with sales of over 250 million copies.

  He is the only author ever to have been a number one bestseller in fiction (fourteen times), short stories (four times) and non-fiction (The Prison Diaries).

  The author is married with two sons and lives in London and Cambridge.

  www.jeffreyarcher.com

  ALSO BY JEFFREY ARCHER

  NOVELS

  Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

  Shall We Tell the President?

  Kane and Abel

  The Prodigal Daughter

  First Among Equals

  A Matter of Honour

  As the Crow Flies

  Honour Among Thieves

  The Fourth Estate

  The Eleventh Commandment

  Sons of Fortune

  False Impression

  The Gospel According to Judas

  (with the assistance of Professor Francis J. Moloney)

  A Prisoner of Birth

  Paths of Glory

  SHORT STORIES

  A Quiver Full of Arrows

  A Twist in the Tale

  Twelve Red Herrings