On Father’s Day my millionaire son walked into my freezing apartment, saw the tinned soup on the table, and asked how I was managing on the eight thousand a month his wife sends me. I told him nobody sends me anything.

PART 1

My name is Dunstan Vale. I am seventy-two years old.

Before I retired I spent forty years as a corporate auditor.

Four decades of tracing money that had gone somewhere it was not supposed to go. Of sitting in a room with a box of statements and finding the one line that does not sit right.

I was good at it. I was known for it in a small way, within about four firms, which at the time felt like a great deal more than it was. I have stood in front of eleven people in a boardroom and told them, with a page in my hand, exactly which account they had stopped looking at.

I used to say it as a sort of joke about myself, at dinners, about four times a year.