Fatal Legacy by Elizabeth Corley Page B

half-hour until the night nurse arrived and he could escape to hours of mindless television before bed and the guilty pretence of sleep. As he picked up the fork, his mind switched to the memory of his meeting with Sally Wainwright-Smith, and he set about mashing the food with a passion that smashed the innocent potato into fragments that shot across the edge of the plate and on to the floor.
    He was surprised at the violence of his feelings towards Sally. Look at her now, so smart and smug, probing into the company accounts and consequently into his past as if she owned both. Her butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-the-mouth looks filled him with contempt. Who did she think she was, parading around like the lady of the manor? He knew better, oh yes. Arthur had recognised her at once; there was no forgetting that face, particularly those eyes. He had seen them gleam in malicious delight, narrow in anger and close in ecstasy, but she had no idea what he knew.
    The sense of power this knowledge brought him was disorientating , and he had to rest his hand for a moment on the worktop to steady himself before lifting the pie from the oven. He had rarely felt this strongly, and adrenaline pumped into his systemas he realised that he might be able to reclaim some control of his life. Let her probe and bully all she liked; there was a point beyond which she would not be able to push him, and when the time came he would tell her so. The thought made him lick his lips with pleasure, and he actually smiled as he placed his wife’s small bowl of food on the tray next to his own plate.
    ‘Supper’s up, love!’ he called as he walked down the short passage whistling the familiar theme tune.

CHAPTER TEN
    Throughout the following Friday night and the whole of the weekend Alexander and Sally worked their way diligently through boxfuls of Wainwright accounts. Sally was baffled within the first hour; Alexander admitted his confusion not much later, but between them they gradually worked out a solution. They would concentrate on just one year and on one part of the business in order to try and understand it completely. At first they would work independently and then compare notes.
    By eleven o’clock on the Saturday morning they were ready to discuss their conclusions for the first time. Sally started.
    ‘This part of the business received forty-five million pounds in income, had costs of only eleven million and transferred twenty to another subsidiary company.’
    ‘I agree. Let’s look at the subsidiary that received the twenty million next.’
    They worked on until one, when they ate a hurried salad, and completed their analysis by three in the afternoon. This time Alex spoke first.
    ‘Total income for this subsidiary of the company was eighty-three million, including nineteen and a half million it received as an intercompany transfer. In other words, half a million pounds went missing in the year. It also transferred forty million to two other parts of the business.’
    ‘That’s what I have too. Now you look at one of the divisions that received some of the forty million and I’ll look at the other.’
    Throughout the rest of the afternoon and into the night they followed a daisy chain of transfers among Wainwright Enterprises subsidiaries. They stopped for a few hours’ sleep andresumed again before dawn. By the end of Sunday afternoon they had trawled through just three-quarters of one year’s detailed accounts and had calculated that five and a half million pounds had so far ‘disappeared’ in the web of intercompany transactions.
    Sally defrosted some leftover goulash for supper and laid places for them at the kitchen table. She poured two glasses of a supermarket wine and served large bowlfuls of the stew with potatoes and chunks of Saturday’s bread refreshed in the oven.
    ‘Five and a half million! Where’s it gone, Alex?’
    ‘No idea. We need to finish going through the papers for the rest of the year, and if we don’t