‘Let’s go through the files.’

We take one each. By the orange-sulphur glow, with a low hum of the party as the soundtrack, we read.

*

For fifteen minutes, there’s silence: just the sound of rustling paper, and the scratch of Jess’s biro as she makes the occasional note. Then, like divers surfacing for air, we both look up at the same time and gaze at each other.

‘Got him.’ I murmur.

‘Looks like it.’

‘What have you found?’

‘You go first.’

I hold up a sheet of paper. It’s a memo to Breitner and the Media Corp board, headed Albion Super Highway. It describes the financial impact of the particularly disastrous acquisition of a British internet start-up that Breitner made two years previously. The company had talked up its share price with ambitious plans to lay fibre-optic cables all over the country: Breitner bought into the hype and paid a huge premium. But Albion couldn’t get regulatory permission and so the only hole that got dug was the one the company collapsed into. The business went bust, wiping out the two billion pounds that Breitner had invested.

‘Listen to this. We bought Albion Super Highway through Mastiff Inc., a Cayman Islands associate of Media Corp, the Breitner family trust and Media Corp Pension Scheme 1. On 26 February, all shares in Albion were transferred to Scheme 1. There is therefore no need to take the loss of £2.12 billion through the company’s profit and loss account or its balance sheet. Our auditors have confirmed the transaction, and that there has been no breach of our banking covenants or any credit event. On a non-actuarial valuation, Scheme 1 has moved from a surplus of £210 million to a deficit of circa £1.9 billion.’

An accompanying flow chart shows the movement of the liability from a secret corporate vehicle in the Caymans to Media Corp’s main pension fund. At the bottom of the chart, preceded by a tiny asterisk, is this statement: Our lawyers confirm there is no legal obligation on Media Corp to make good the deficit in the fund. The board may wish to consider whether there is a moral obligation.

No legal obligation. Only a possible moral obligation not to deprive printers and secretaries and subeditors and writers, many of whom had worked for Media Corp and its predecessor companies all their lives, of the pensions for which they had been saving, and which they had been counting on for when they retire. I wonder quite how long the board spent evaluating whether to allow Breitner to dump the loss from his failed investment, his reckless gamble, on thousands of his present and past employees. Maybe a couple of minutes?

Jess looks stunned. ‘Bloody hell. Any director worth his salt would have blown the whistle rather than go along with this cover-up.’

‘I think Clare was their conscience,’ I say. ‘Which is why she had to be silenced. What did you find?’