“So in those terms, technically what you’ve been doing at Watergaw falls into a gray area. It’s not the kind of fraud that gets the taxman too excited. It’s not like some companies, where they set up a dummy outfit in a tax haven and pay the commissions through that,” Lindsay added.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“In itself, nothing. But in practice, what usually happens is that for every ten dollars that go out in bribes, a couple go into a separate numbered bank account for the company’s directors. So they can pay themselves a tasty tax-free bonus for being clever enough to bribe their clients.”

Helen shook her head. “You know, the sheer deviousness of financial crooks never ceases to amaze me. But this still doesn’t explain how you’re going to drop Guy and Stella in it.”

Lindsay sighed. It wasn’t as if she really understood all the ins and outs herself, only the bare bones on which Ellie had put sufficient flesh for her to understand what she had to do. Explaining it to Helen was turning out to be more difficult than she had anticipated. Still, it was good experience for getting it straight in her own mind before she tried to put the theory into practice. “Watergaw isn’t a manufacturer, in the sense of making something for export. It’s not a service company in the sense of earning money for Britain by selling insurance or financial services abroad. The bribes you’ve paid have been handed over to make your filming run smoothly, yeah?”

“Of course. You’d never believe some of the things you have to hand out the readies for. I’ve paid people to muzzle their goats so they wouldn’t bleat at a crucial moment, I’ve paid yobs to let actors walk down their street without them mooning in the background, I’ve paid traffic cops not to give parking tickets to film units. I once bought fried-chicken dinners for an entire African village and laid on the coaches to take them to and from the fast-food stall.” Helen leaned back in her chair with the air of a woman who has only just opened the doors on her stock of anecdotes.

“Exactly,” Lindsay said hastily. “And what would happen if you hadn’t paid those bribes?”

Helen frowned. “We wouldn’t have got the films made.”

“And would people have lost their jobs if you hadn’t been able to make those films?”

“Well, probably, if we’d gone out there and then not been in a position to film.”

“But if you’d known in advance that you’d be penalized for paying kickbacks, you’d have been crazy to contemplate making those films, right?”