Costello leaned back in his chair and adopted the cheerful air of a tolerant college tutor happily indoctrinating his students. ‘Campanilla is snowballing,’ he said. ‘More particularly, there’s a building boom. They’re putting up hotels so fast that if your bedroom isn’t built when you check in, you still sleep sound that night. Money is flowing like champagne and caviar has become a staple food. That’s what happens when the palsied hand of the British Raj is shrugged off.’

‘Never mind the economics lecture,’ I said acidly. ‘Where did Salton come in?’

‘He was a property man through and through – that’s how he made his fortune in America. He got himself some nice tracts of land and started to cover them with ticky-tacky. He needed development capital, which we supplied. End of story.’

‘It is for Salton. What about you – how safe is your money now?’

‘Reasonably safe. Salton wasn’t a fly-by-nighter, and he was building for the locals, not the speculative stuff for middling-rich, middle-class immigrants who want a place in the sun to retire to. Although it wouldn’t have been altogether a bad thing if he’d tried that. We wouldn’t have touched it, though.’

‘Who runs things now that Salton is dead?’

‘That is a bit worrying,’ admitted Costello. ‘He was always a loner – kept things very much in his own hands – although he had a good manager, a man called Idle.’

‘My God,’ I said. ‘That name doesn’t sound too promising.’

Costello chuckled. ‘It isn’t as bad as it sounds. I took the trouble to look it up. It’s from the Welsh, Ithel, meaning “Lord Bountiful”.’

‘Could be worse.’

He grinned. ‘Idle, Mrs Salton and a firm of lawyers are running the show now. They’re not doing too badly so far.’

‘How far? When did Salton die?’

‘The boat was discovered two weeks ago. You going out there?’

‘The chairman insists. What fuels this economic miracle on Campanilla?’

‘Much as I regret to say,’ said Costello, not looking regretful at all, ‘it’s gambling. Of course, there are a lot of other angles, too. Campanilla has turned itself into an off-shore financial paradise with a set of fiscal laws that make the Cayman Islands look positively restrictive. You’ve heard of Bay Street in Nassau?’

‘The mecca of the Bahamas.’

‘Capital is leaving there so fast that the bankers are catching pneumonia from the draught. Campanilla has its very own version: Cardew Street.’

‘And you put three million of the company’s money into Cardew Street?’ I said.

‘Safe as houses, dear boy,’ said Costello. ‘As long as they were Salton’s houses.’

II