Over their muesli and kale shakes, Bram informed her that Jared, his accountant, had been arrested. He reminded her that Jared had once drawn his attention to an exciting opportunity: the chance to invest in a funeral home. A client of Jared’s intended to take over the business and was putting together a consortium. Jared told Bram that the funeral industry was booming, on top of which his client had a foolproof growth strategy for the new venture. He intended to take it downmarket, offering the bereaved cut-throat rates and amazing special offers for cash. ‘The projected return was twenty per cent,’ Bram said.

‘I remember,’ said Chanel. ‘And I asked you, “How come twenty when four to five is the norm?”’

‘That was great – it really pulled me up.’

(I bet Bram ran his hand through his hair at that point. But Chanel is immune to his curls. She’d have raised one of her unfashionable brows and waited for him to go on.)

Bram repeated that he hadn’t invested in the funeral home. ‘Not because I advised against it,’ said Chanel to me. ‘But it came up just after that luxury eco-retreat Bram had shares in burned out. Remember that? I’d warned him against buying into that as well, but he said the retreat was sited in old-growth rainforest that had never known fire. One of Jared’s twenty-four-carat investment strategies. Anyway, that disaster kept Bram out of the funeral home thing.’

Now the police were alleging that the real purpose of the funeral home was to launder money. The entrepreneur behind it was an underworld figure suspected of trafficking ice. There was a warrant out in his name, but he’d disappeared. Jared was in custody, along with all the shareholders in the home. Bram learned everything from Jared’s sister, who was one of his patients.

The problem was that in the glory days when the ecoretreat was raking it in, Jared had underreported Bram’s income. Bram swore that he hadn’t asked Jared to do anything of the kind. ‘You know how it goes,’ he told Chanel. ‘You sign the form that says everything in your tax return is true and that you’ve checked it all yourself – but who does? That’s what we pay accountants for. And let me tell you, Jared didn’t come cheap.’

‘Bram knew perfectly well what Jared was doing,’ Chanel said to me. ‘But you know – it’s tax. Who doesn’t love sticking it to the man? Bram asked me, “How many billions of tax dollars did you help the Corporation not pay this year?” There wasn’t anything I could say to that.’

At the mention of tax evasion I was out of bed, dread sloshing about my stomach like thin, cold soup. The cops would go through the names on Jared’s client list, looking for further evidence of criminal activity. They’d track every digital footprint and scrutinise every official document. ‘They have special programs,’ I told Chanel. ‘Run a tax return through one of them and anomalies light up.’