Georgio ran his fingers through his thick black hair then, taking a deep breath, he said: ‘I’m sorry, Donna.’ He paused for a few seconds. ‘What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? Well, I am, believe me, I’m heart sorry. All my life I spent building up those businesses, and I made them work, you know that yourself. But, Donna, I made a few mistakes.’

She ran her tongue over her lips to moisten them. ‘What kind of mistakes, Georgio? I know you stripped the businesses of money, I guessed that much. What I want to know is where it went.’

Georgio had the grace to look ashamed and Donna felt the pull of him as his dark eyes searched hers for a glimmer of understanding.

‘I suppose I had better start at the beginning. Remember a few years ago when I was seeing a lot of Joseph Bronski?’

Donna shook her head. ‘I can’t say I do.’

Georgio was impatient. ‘Remember when I went to Thailand? I was over there on and off for a year, you must remember that!’

Donna smiled faintly. ‘I remember that all right.’

‘Well, while I was out there, I did a few deals. I effectively bought a half share in two hotels. One in Bangkok, one in Sri Lanka. The hotels were built, I saw to that myself, albeit from a distance. It was a good move at the time. Thailand was ripe for me, it was full of tourists, people were killing themselves to get out there. The same with Sri Lanka, though that was more for the German and American market. Still, the point is I stripped everything here, took from everywhere I could, to finance this operation.’

Donna was puzzled. ‘So what went wrong?’

Georgio smiled sadly. ‘What went wrong? I’ll tell you what went wrong. Bronski tucked me up. Not just me either but a few others. The hotels were built all right, I can’t deny that, but they were worthless. The Thai government wouldn’t give us house room. The hotels are sitting out there derelict, we can’t even sell them.’

Donna shook her head in consternation. ‘I don’t understand. ’

Georgio smiled once more. ‘Bronski bought the land off an agent, or so he told us anyway. We had to believe him; he had always come up trumps before so we had no reason to doubt him. We were furnished with copies of the plans, I even went out there as you know to look at the progress on the building. Everything was going fine. Except the guy Bronski bought the land from was arrested for a large-scale land fraud. The government took back everything he owned, and it turned out he still owned fifty percent of the hotels. The one in Sri Lanka was only at the foundation stage. All our money was still in Bangkok. We were wiped out, Donna. Every one of us.’