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English and a D in History) he very soon had a job.
    Still had a job.
    In the early 1990s, Oxfordshire's potential facilities for business and industry had attracted many leading national and international companies. During those years, for example, the county could boast the largest concentration of printing and publishing companies outside the metropolis; and it was to one of these, the Daedalus Press in North Oxford, that on leaving school Simon had applied for the post of apprentice proofreader. And had been successful, principally (let it be admitted) because of the employers’ legal obligation to appoint a small percentage of semidisabled applicants. Yet the “apprentice” appellation was very soon to be deleted from Simon's job description, for he was provingto be surprisingly and encouragingly competent: accurate, careful, neat—a fair combination of qualities required in a proofreader. And with any luck (so it was thought) experience would gradually bring with it that needful extra dimension of tedious pedanticism.
    On the morning of Friday, July 17, he found on his desk a photocopied extract from some unspecified tabloid which some unspecified colleague had left, and which he read through with keen attention; then read through a second time, with less interest in its content, it appeared, than in its form, since his proofreading pen applied itself at five points in the article.

    Chief Inspector Morse had not as yet encountered Simon Harrison, but he would have been reasonably impressed by the proofreader's competence. Only reasonably, of course, since he himself was a man who somewhere, somehow, had acquired the aforementioneddimension of “tedious pedanticism,” and would have made three further amendments.
And
, of course, would have corrected that gross anachronism, since historical accuracy had engaged him from the age of ten, when he had taken it upon himself to memorize the sequence of the American presidents, and the dates of the kings and queens of England.

Chapter Eight
    Bankers are just like anybody else,
Except richer.
    (Ogden Nash,
I'm a Stranger Here Myself
)
    The London offices of the Swiss Helvetia Bank are tucked away discreetly just behind Sloane Square. The brass plaque pinpointing visitors to these premises, albeit highly polished, is perhaps disproportionately small. Yet in truth the Bank has little need to impress its potential clients. On the contrary. Such clients have every need to impress the Bank.
    Just after 4 P.M. on Friday, July 17, a smartly suited man in his late forties waved farewell to the uniformed guard at the security desk and walked out into the sunshine of a glorious summer's day. Traffic was already heavy; but that was of no concern to Frank Harrison, one of six portfolio and investment managers of SHB (London). His company flat was only a few minutes' walk away in Pavilion Road.
    Earlier in the day he'd been very much what they paid him so handsomely for being—shrewd, superior, trustworthy—when his secretary had poured coffee for a small, grey-haired man and for his larger, much younger, cosmetically exquisite wife.
    “You realize that SHB deals principally with portfolioinvestments of, well, let's say, over a million dollars? Is that, er… ?”
    The self-made citizen from South Carolina nodded. “I think you can feel assured, sir, that we shall be able to meet that figure—ah!—
fairly
easily, shan't we, honey?”
    He'd taken his wife's heavily diamonded left hand in his own and smiled, smiled rather sweetly, as Harrison thought.
    And he himself had smiled, too—rather sweetly, as he hoped—as mentally he calculated the likely commission from his latest client.
    Almost managed a smile again now, as he stopped outside Sloane Square Underground Station and bought a copy of the
Evening Standard
, flicking through the sheets, almost immediately finding the only item that appeared to interest him, then swiftly scanning the brief article before depositing the