‘I don’t think anyone really knows,’ said Negrini. ‘But the lowest estimate I’ve heard is seven billion, and the highest was ten billion. You come to this island and all you see are tourists. There are a hell of a lot of them and that’s the way I make my money. But the tourists are just the froth on the top. Any government must raise taxes, so this government taxes imports and exports. Goods are taxed coming in and people are taxed going out. You can get on to this island free but you have to pay to leave. There’s a departure tax of two pounds a head for tourists and residents alike. If you buy a car here – say, an American car – you’ll pay a thirty per cent tax on top of the American price. They even tax the freight charges to bring the car from the States at thirty per cent.’

I shrugged. ‘So?’

‘So you have a high cost of living here and a low wage structure. Salton didn’t like that and wanted to change things around. He wanted to cut the import taxes on food altogether so that people could at least afford three square meals a day. To do that, he’d have to tax something else. There are billions of dollars going through here and they don’t leave a cent behind in taxation – and that’s why you find a couple of new banks opening up every week.’

I didn’t need a degree in economics to see that this would be an attractive prospect to a certain kind of investor.

Negrini chuckled. ‘You ought to hear the Cardew Street crowd talk about Salton. You’d think he was a million miles to the left of Chairman Mao. There’s no one so righteous as a corporation lawyer attacked in the bottom line. Salton was going to slap a tax on the corporations, the banks and the trust funds – not enough to make them pull out, but just enough to get the money he needed for his political programme. It would be a pin-prick compared with what they pay anywhere else, but Cardew Street regarded him as a banana republic dictator about to nationalise the lot of them.’

‘And you financed him.’

‘For my own good.’ He shrugged. ‘And because I like to hear the sweet sound of corporations squealing. But God knows what’s going to happen now Salton’s dead. There’s nobody else in the party good enough to step into his shoes.’

‘Sounds like he was something of a one-man band.’