Page had his hands together, forefingers upstanding and the others knitted, like the shape of a gun. He went goggle-eyed and then blinked to clear his vision. ‘It was supposed to be a transport job. It was just … all I did was put everyone in touch.’ Earnest and strained. Like a prison phone call from someone wrongly convicted. ‘Lamar’s soups, right? They come from Mexico on a Lamar’s truck. And, you know, some of the cans … not all of the cans have soup in them.’

Natasha Page perched on the edge of the desk and put a hand on Page’s shoulder. It seemed to give him energy. Page said, ‘All I did, I put people together. I know the sellers down south, then, you know, when someone comes and says who do I talk to about imports …’ He shrugged. ‘What are you going to do?’

Vincent had the Evian nestled in his lap. He tightened the cap and loosened it and tightened it again. The quiet grind of the plastic was the only sound in the room.

Then Natasha Page said, ‘Terry, you need to just tell them.’

‘Sweetheart, I know …’ Shaking his head, eyes closed.

‘So just say it, then. Excuses aren’t going to help. You can’t carry this around. You’ve just got to say it.’

Page looked at the ceiling and sighed. He rose from his chair and went and stood at the window, hands on his hips, looking out at the view. He said, ‘We’ve had a truckload of soup go missing.’

Erin said, ‘Soup in inverted commas.’

Page braced his arms on the sill, let his head hang. His shoulder blades pressed against his shirt like stumps of amputated wing. ‘Look, when I say “we”, it’s not … it isn’t my truck. I didn’t set this thing up.’

Vincent said, ‘I think you mentioned that.’

‘But the thing is, there’s thirty million bucks of soup or whatever, and it’s gone. Thirty million bucks. So of course the buyer’s furious. They can’t pay the thirty mil if there’s nothing to sell. They have to on-sell to cover the purchase price.’

Vincent said, ‘Sounds like a nice arrangement. Walk off with thirty mil of product and skip the down-payment.’

Page said, ‘They had collat—I mean, look: I don’t know the ins and outs of it, all right? But as I understand it, they had collateral to cover the full amount. Eugene had this property investment thing in Santa Monica. He’d given—I think Freeman had authority on the accounts.’

Vincent said, ‘This is the Oasis building, or whatever it was called? There was a piece in the Times.’