PART 12

The formal update about Gerald’s financial case arrived almost a year after the supermarket incident.

Joan asked me to come in because she did not want to compress several careful pages into a telephone conversation.

I brought Owen, now sturdy on his feet, and watched him attempt to rearrange the law books in her reception area before a patient assistant handed him a basket of wooden animals.

The investigation had produced findings on certain questionable invoices and transfers.