He wasn’t thinking rationally about this, he realised. The problem was that they were his own accounts, and he was used to reading other people’s. Since they were his own, it was in fact possible for him just to phone up the bank and ask. Except that, of course, they’d be closed now. And he had a horrible feeling that if he phoned them up, the response would be “Whoops, sorry, wrong account. Thank you for bringing this error to our attention. How stupid of us to imagine that this money could possibly belong to you.” Obviously he had to try to work out where it was from before he asked the bank. In fact he had to get the money out of the bank before he asked them. He probably had to get to Fiji or somewhere before he asked them. Except—suppose the money continued to come in?

On reapplying his attention to the papers, he realised something else that would have occurred to him straightaway if he hadn’t been so flustered. There was, of course, a code next to each entry. The purpose of the code was to tell him what kind of entry it was. He looked the code up. Easy. Each payment had reached his account by international transfer.

Hmmm.

That would also account for the fluctuations. International exchange rates. If the same amount of a foreign currency was being transferred each week, then the variations in the rate would ensure that a slightly differing amount actually arrived on each occasion. It would also explain why it didn’t arrive on exactly the same day each week. Although it only took less than a second to make a computerised international transfer of money, the banks liked to make as much fuss as they possibly could about it so that the funds would swill around profitably in their system for a while.

But which country were the payments coming from? And why?

“Kevin,” said the Irish-Swedish voice. “Kieran.”

“Oh, shut up!” shouted Dirk suddenly.

That provoked a response. The small border terrier lying, perplexed, in a basket in the corner of the room looked up excitedly and yipped with pleasure. It had not reacted at all to any of the names that the elderly computer on the table next to it had been reciting from a text file of babies’ names, but the creature obviously just enjoyed being told to shut up and was keen for more.

“Kimberly,” said the computer. Nothing. The dog with no name looked disappointed.

“Kirby.”

“Kirk.” The dog slowly settled back down into its basket of old newspapers and resumed its previous posture of baffled distress.

Old newspapers. That was what Dirk needed.