‘Melissa, I’ve looked at the printouts. They are designed entirely to disguise the origin of the money, to make it look like genuine deposits. The family trust probably doesn’t even know that it has happened. It’s been funnelled through what could look like genuine accounts in tax-avoiding countries, back to the bank where it is shown as deposits. Your man has marked all the suspicious ones. If you look at the merry-go-round of money, you can see that nobody would pick it up just by looking at the balance sheets cold. Banks take tens of thousands of deposits every day. What we want now from your man is the paperwork that tells us where this money originated. He’s been very clever in taking the money back only so far, to the Turks and Caicos, the Isle of Man and so on, but there is still another trail which, I think, leads right back by a very winding path to the family trusts and to a client trust. But your source hasn’t said where. Are you with me?’

‘I think so.’

‘To me it looks as if the money has come from the Trevelyan-Tubal family trust as he said to you, probably illegally, but at this stage impossible to prove, and also he’s marked other entries that probably come from the charitable trusts, some of which have been with the Trevelyan-Tubals for fifty years and longer and they probably leave everything to the trustees, one of whom would have been the late Sir Harry Trevelyan-Tubal.’

‘What do we say to our source? And what am I supposed to write, based on this? I mean I am in no position to give the facts. I’m not even sure I understand all of this, Mr Tredizzick.’

‘No. Stick to cupcakes and macaroons and Dorothy Wordsworth for the moment. But we will now ask our source to send the second half of his printouts. You should contact him and tell him to speak to me. That’s the way he wants it. You must use another phone, a new one.’

‘Mr Tredizzick, I really don’t want to get too deeply involved. I’ve been thinking about it and it’s not me. It’s like I’m being asked to be a sort of, to be the . . .’

She can’t say the word.

‘Bait. Melissa, remember, you are not doing anything illegal or dishonest. We need to break this story in an innocent and transparent way – in your blog – and then when the excrement hits the air conditioning – when they take the bait – we can stand the whole story up with our documents.’

‘Yes, I know, but what if I am questioned?’