By four in the morning, the plan was agreed: J.D. would leak, casually, to a colleague at the FT, a rumour that Tubal’s was in serious trouble: there are unconfirmed reports that the balance sheet has been padded. J.D. will follow this up on Monday in an occasional column he writes for the Evening Standard, saying that rumours were flying around the City that Tubal’s is virtually bankrupt, like Northern Rock, and for much the same reasons. There are even unconfirmed reports of inflation of the balance sheet. By Tuesday a tip-off will lead to the editor of the Cornish Globe and Mail, who is the recipient of some anonymous documents. The editor will adopt a high-minded attitude, saying that an innocent blog by a very junior reporter has led to an anonymous tip-off, followed by the documents, which appeared to him – he was once on the financial pages of a national newspaper – to be genuine. Other experts agree with his judgement. The papers suggest a major misuse of trust funds in order to bolster the asset ratio. He, the editor, will be sending copies to the FSA or the Charity Commission as soon as he has heard from them. It is his duty, he believes, to hand over these documents if the authorities wish to see them. The newspaper will anyway publish extracts shortly.

By the time the plan was agreed, they were exhausted. The editor wondered for a moment if they weren’t too old for this sort of thing, which was once the whole purpose of their careers – the exposing of crooks. They are both left over from an era of smoke-filled rooms and powerful trade-union bosses, bowler hats in the City, comfortless childhoods, the promise of socialism to come: jam tomorrow. It was the creed – the religion – people professed, but in reality didn’t really believe. But both J.D. and the editor knew that the four sheets from Tubal’s computers revealed something very important in their close script and that was the traditional arrogance and contempt of the high-altitude financial classes for ordinary people. What they were forgetting, perhaps, is that the people as a coherent and decent group with shared values has never been anything more than a convenient myth, and now it has, anyway, gone for ever, lost in a world of compulsive gratification and trivialisation, where culture and art and learning are no longer the goals of this once decent class – if it ever existed. Now the whole country longs for celebrity and easy money and exemption from all forms of restraint. Money dominates every life.

All this the editor knows. The truth is, he has known it for more than two decades but his bitterness obliges him to ignore the facts as they present themselves to him daily.