The Colonel stalled outside the Vault at nine fifty-eight on Wednesday night, with a sound like a cow being introduced to a trombone.

"It's the clutch," said Imran, restarting.

"You said it was a nuisance."

"It's a nuisance that has now become a theme." The van juddered, caught, and crawled forward into Cooper's Passage with its hazards ticking, smelling of damp carpet and Wim's air freshener, which was shaped like a pine tree and smelled nothing like a pine tree. In the rear, wedged among the learners' cones, sat Wim, wearing a black beanie, black gloves and a black hooded top that said, in small white letters across the chest, WORLD'S OKAYEST UNCLE. He had a torch in each hand and a roll of tape on his wrist.

"What's the tape for?" said Odette, from the passenger seat.

"I don't know, sorry. It always comes out in the films."

"Please put it away."

"Roger." Wim peeled it off the wrist with a ripping sound that could have woken the dead, and Odette, whose jaw had been set since lunch, closed her eyes for a count of five. She had dressed in dark trousers and a navy jumper and had tied her hair back so hard that her eyebrows had risen a quarter of an inch. In her lap lay the leather folder, which contained, for reasons she declined to explain, a ruler.

At ten the staff door in the lane opened a hand's breadth and a golden headwrap leaned out, like a sunflower reconnoitring a drought.

"Darling," whispered Bernie. "Quick. Clement's got four minutes before the night guard does his round and Dennis does not like surprises."

They went in single file. Odette first, Bernie behind her, Imran third, Wim last with his hood up and his torches clutched to his chest like a pair of new-born ferrets. The back corridor smelled of floor wax and toner. Somewhere above them a clock ticked with the gravity of a judge. At the end, in a lodge no bigger than a wardrobe, an elderly man in a brass-buttoned waistcoat stood at attention beside a hook board, holding a key the length of a human forearm.

"Uncle," said Bernie. "This is Odette."

"I know who it is." Clement was seventy, thin as a stick of rock, with a white moustache and the formal sorrow of a bishop. He looked at Odette for a moment with deep and unembarrassed tenderness. "You were nineteen when you came in to open an account with your mother's insurance. You sat on that chair and cried onto a pamphlet about ISAs. I gave you a mint." He held out the key. "Nobody's asked me for this in eleven years. The last was Mr Walter, on a Sunday, and he said I wasn't to say. So I'm not saying. Be quick, my dear. The brass doesn't polish itself."

The Old Registry lay under the Vault like a thought beneath a skull. A spiral stair, a steel gate, and then a vaulted cellar the colour of old pennies, lined with iron shelves and cardboard boxes grey with dust. Their torches made small bright circles in the black. It was cold and still, and smelled of paper and mice. Imran had been in a hundred cellars. This one had the same silence as all of them: not empty, but listening.

"Keep your voices down," said Odette, unnecessarily, since no one had spoken. "The Gateway boxes will be filed by date, three years ago, March onward. Bernie, shelves one to ten. Wim, you take the door. Imran, you're with me."

"Roger."

"Don't say roger."

"What do I say?"

"Nothing," said Odette. "It's very calming."

They found it in fourteen minutes. It stood at the end of the third aisle, at the bottom of a shelf, with its lid taped: GATEWAY — TANNERY YARD — PRIVATE, in a hand she recognised as Margit's. Beneath the tape was a small brass padlock, which Wim, called forward, opened in nine seconds with a bent hairgrip and a look of enormous private pride.

"Don't," said Odette.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to say *I learned it from films.*"

"I learned it from my cousin," said Wim, hurt.

Inside lay six manila folders. Each was tabbed with the name of a business on the Yard: FINCH & SON, BAKERS. KOWALSKI TYRES. MADIGAN SIGNS. THE STEAM ROOM (LAUNDERETTE). HARTE ELECTRICAL. And, last, in the same typed font, as if it had always belonged: HADDAD ROAD READY.

Imran's hand stopped in mid-air.

"I wasn't a business three years ago," he said. "I was a sergeant with a bad knee."

"Look at the date." Odette's voice had gone dry and small. She opened the sixth folder. It held a single file card, typed, and clipped to it a photograph, a passport-style picture of a younger Imran in the dress uniform he had worn for his discharge parade, grinning, stiff as a plank, with his medals on. "March the nineteenth. Eleven days before the auction. Before you'd signed anything."

She read aloud, in a flat voice, the card.

*CANDIDATE H. Ex-forces. No local ties. Honourable discharge; sentimental; unlikely to sell cheaply and unlikely to ask for help. Capital: nil. Credit: untested. Suitable for Unit 4 as holder pending Gateway. Estimated time to default: 18-24 months. Recommend affordable lending, low supervision.*

Beneath it, in a looped, cheerful hand, in green felt-tip pen, someone had added: *Perfect. A good man will hold on to the end. — W.*

Nobody said anything. Wim's torch, behind them, dipped and wavered across the shelves. Somewhere in the ceiling pipes ticked a long, slow heartbeat.

"He picked me," said Imran.

"He chose a holder," said Odette. "A man who'd take the loan and run the unit and keep it warm until the Yard was bought, and who'd fail on schedule. The five other leases went the same way. They all failed and were absorbed, by Gateway Holdings, quietly, through the Society. You were the last piece." Her voice shook once and was steadied. "You were the *clean* one. Everyone else in the file was a bankrupt or a pensioner. You were the one with a pension of his own and a nice sentence on a form, the sort of man a town would take pity on."

"And not question."

"And not question." She was turning pages faster now, her finger running down columns of figures. "There's a plan. Phasing. The Yard in three tranches. The Society's name isn't on any of it. It's a company in a dull place with a post box. Unit four was to be the last, the *anchor.* He wanted it at the end because it would look like sentiment."

Imran took the card from her hand. The younger Imran grinned out at him, in his medals, a man with his chin up and his whole life in front of him, entirely unaware that a stranger had read him like a menu and written *perfect.* He looked at it for what seemed like a long time. Then he put it back in the folder with extraordinary gentleness.

"Eighteen to twenty-four months," he said. "I did twenty-three."

"I'm so sorry."

"Not your fault."

"It might be." Odette's face was bone white under the torch. She had pulled out one last sheet, which had slipped to the bottom of the folder and stuck to the cardboard with age. She held it a long moment without reading it. When she finally did, her lips moved, but no sound came out, and Imran, watching, felt a cold finger run down the length of his spine.

"What?"

"It's an instruction. To Collections." She turned it to the torch. It was a half-sheet on Society paper, typed and initialled. "'*On default, assign account to Ms O. Nakamura-Boyle. Her reputation for fairness will assist. She will not look beyond the file. — W.*'"

The cellar fell silent. Even the pipes were still.

"It's dated," said Odette, slowly, "two years ago. Before you'd missed a payment. Before I'd even *heard* your name." She laid the paper down on the lid of the box. Her fingers were shaking so badly that it slid, and Imran caught it. Their hands touched. "He knew I'd come. He knew exactly what I'd do. He made me his instrument and let me think it was my own conscience."

"Odette."

"I thought I was the one who found the Provision. I thought I was the clever one. Do you understand, Imran? I read the charter in my first week and I thought, what a quaint thing, and I put it in a drawer for fourteen years, and I took it out for you because of a *sentence*..." She stopped. Her face crumpled and was ruthlessly smoothed. "Did he plan that, too? Did he leave the charter where I'd find it?"

"I don't think so."

"How can you possibly know?"

"Because," said Imran, "nobody plans a woman eating cereal."

It was a ridiculous thing to say. It came out of him on instinct, in the dark, and it fell between them like a coin. Odette stared. Her mouth opened. Then, with a shuddering breath, she gave a laugh that was half a sob, and put the back of her hand to her lips, and he, because it was the one thing within reach, took the hand and held it in both of his, a warm, large, work-roughened pair, until the shuddering stopped.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," breathed Wim from the door, "but there's footsteps."

They all froze. It was unmistakable: the slow, deliberate click of leather soles on stone, coming down the spiral stair, one measured step at a time. A torch beam wavered along the wall of the gate. A familiar voice, rich as plum cake, drifted into the cellar, humming something from an old musical.

"It's the Chairman," whispered Bernie, and put her hand over her mouth.