“Maybe it would be a good idea to ring them,” I suggested. “See if they can help.”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing that can be done. Everything’s frozen. It’s been frozen for a while. I just thought that girl in the bank … in a small country bank.” She shrugged and looked away.

“You mean, you knew everything was frozen?”

She nodded.

“Before Bob even died?”

“Yes.” She looked down at her hands: the nails, though painted, were bitten to the quick. “We have nothing. Or at least nothing we can get our hands on. There’s a court order freezing all the accounts. The only thing we have is the house and that’s mortgaged to the hilt.” She played with her wedding ring, twisting it around her finger. “I thought that young one in the bank might have heard of Bob’s death and might …”

“Be inexperienced enough to let you have some money?”

No matter how stuck Amanda was, trying to get a bank clerk to make a mistake so she could access money to which she wasn’t entitled said something about her that I didn’t like. But it did seem odd to me that their personal accounts had been frozen, no matter what was happening with the charity.

“Bank workers don’t have that kind of power any more, you know. Everything’s centralized.”

She nodded. “I know. I just thought …” She shook her head. “The boys have been ringing looking for money, bottomless pits the pair of them. Bob used to give them cash, he always had a stash of cash.” Her eyes welled with a kind of desperation. “I can’t access a cent. Can’t even pay that woman for our accommodation.”

“What about Derek?” I suggested.

She shook her head and looked away.

“They were brothers,” I prompted gently. “Surely, he would help if you asked him.”

If I’d thought the scene at the bank was as fiery as Amanda Jameson could get, I was wrong. Her face flooded with anger. “We wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for Derek. Derek was the one who reported the charity to the Regulator. He’s the reason the accounts are frozen. He’s the reason that I can’t feed my kids.”

This seemed a bit of an exaggeration considering the ages of the “kids”, but I was still surprised. “Really? Derek?”

“Oh, it was anonymous, but we knew it was him.” She looked at the ceiling as if trying to keep the tears from overflowing from her eyes and tumbling down her cheeks. This was the first true grief I’d seen from her and it was about money.

“Did Bob know?”

“Of course, he did,” she snapped. “And after everything Bob did for him. Derek wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for Bob.”

I remembered the feature in the paper. “Are you talking about Derek’s accident?”