‘I’m a businessman and I can smell potential failure a mile off. I could smell it on your father. I’ve done you a lot of favours—’

‘You can stuff your favours.’

Angus’s benign expression hardens. ‘Keep your voice down. Listen to me, Nick. You’ve worked hard and you’re a real asset to this firm, but that doesn’t give you leave to throw your weight around. Don’t make it personal.’

‘It is personal. Dad made a hash of it, but to go behind his back, to go behind my back … But I might have known.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I covered for you. I shredded papers and deleted files. I thought you had put things right, but now I can see I was mistaken. You’re ruthless.’

‘Let’s not get into that,’ Angus says.

‘No, let’s get into it. You acted illegally. You put this entire company and its employees’ jobs in jeopardy. I got my hands dirty for you, and you did that to my father. Well, I’m not going to put up with it any more.’

‘For God’s sake, shut up. Phillipa will hear you.’ Angus picks up a pen, twiddles it, then puts it down and moves it so that it lies parallel to his keyboard. Nick recognizes the signs of anxiety. Angus tries to hide it, but his eyes give him away; they looked startled.

‘I didn’t delete everything,’ Nick says.

Angus goes preternaturally still, and Nick asks himself if he’s gone too far.

‘Now why would that be?’

‘To be honest,’ Nick responds, ‘I have no idea. A sense of self-preservation, I suppose. At any rate, since you’re not the man I thought you were, since you’ve turned out to be a devious bastard, I see no reason why I should be mixed up in this any more.’

Angus shoves his chair back, stands up and walks right up to him. He prods him in the chest. ‘You’d better be extremely careful. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.’

Nick moves Angus’s hand away. ‘I think I do.’

‘What I did, didn’t hurt anyone.’

‘When you facilitate a crime, someone always suffers.’

‘What are we talking about here, Nick? Are you asking for a pay-off?’

Nick grimaces. ‘I’ve only just found out what you did to my father, I haven’t had time to process it. But I think I need to do the right thing. You do too.’

There’s a flash of genuine fear in Angus’s eyes, but it’s gone so quickly that Nick wonders if he imagined it.