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old-fashioned way.’ She looked down at the invoice she had had faxed from the offices of First Jet Private, having spoken to the real Kayleigh Brook. It was genuine, with the correct sort code and bank address. Ferret’s voice was full of excitement. ‘ He’s getting out a pen and paper. He’s going to do it. ’
    ‘Go ahead, Kayleigh. Read me the account details. So I can pay for me own bloody birthday surprise, and keep a pretty girl like you out of trouble on a Friday night. Read it out to me. I’ll check with the bank. Squirt the money through.’
    ‘Aw. Thanks a bunch.’ And so Tristie did, reading out all the information Malham would need. She had rung up First Jet Private that morning saying she wanted to put down a deposit on a package they were offering to next year’s Monte Carlo Grand Prix. Asked that they fax through the invoice for payment. So it was the company’s genuine details that were being read down the phone. The details would match payments Malham had made to the same company for similar trips. First Jet Private’s own quarterly glossy circulars had boasted that Malham travelled with them to Moscow and Rome for the final of the Champions League, to Milan for some opera and a whole range of trips to Germany. To see happy pension fund managers.
    The First Law of the Great Con: if your mark can’t see your point of profit, all defences will be down and you can get him for anything . ‘ He’s writing it all down. ’ And he did, even reading it back to make sure.
    Tristie’s final words. ‘Please, pretty please, can you makesure they start the payment thing rolling tonight. Please.’ And that was the last time she heard Sir Dale Malham’s voice.
    Five minutes later Tristie was out of the hotel room and in her rental car when the email from Ferret arrived. It was a high-resolution video clip lasting just over three minutes, taken from the secure digital card recording off his camera lens. Malham calling his Jersey bank.
    One of the things Tristie had had to learn when she was in the various care homes of her childhood was lip-reading. It was a survival thing. The need to communicate about their ‘carers’, to mock or ridicule, or warn others, but always fearing their wrath if they were caught speaking. Silence indeed golden.
    Watching him on screen, it didn’t take Tristie long to read off Malham’s sort code and account number. He was making no effort to be discreet. He explained on his mobile that the account he wanted to tap was his call deposit account. Instant access. Funds in excess of £ 50,000 required. She scribbled all of this down, her heart beating a little too fast. They were still a long way from victory. Fewer than forty per cent of word sounds are distinguishable by sight alone.
    He spoke the amount he wished to transfer to First Jet Private, and confirmed it once again. The numbers were easy because the visemes, or visual units of speech, were simple to pick. Answered a random but fairly obvious-to-anticipate security question. Then Malham gave the first line of his address, and postcode. Next, his authorisation code, or password. That was when the fun started.
    It took Tristie a couple of minutes of playing it back and forth before she could even take a guess. No, she told herself. Can’t be . She went back over it again and again and again, and the pinprick of emotion that started as anxiety somewhere in her stomach had spread. Becoming anger. Then her whole body tightened with fury. Money For Old Rope. His password was Money For Old Rope . She could have been wrong, of course. Money and Many lip-read the same. It helped that so many of even the Jersey call centres were using East European staff, soMalham had had to enunciate it carefully. It kept coming back to the same thing. Money For Old Rope. Perhaps she was being unfair. Perhaps this was a book title or obscure Dire Straits album he could have been referring to? Or was this really what he thought of his armed