It is not a thriller.

Nobody in this story got rich.

A barred old man in a rented room made a middling living for two years by asking his granddaughter four questions a month, and it cost my firm eleven million dollars and it cost my daughter something I am still paying for.

The legal position, when Hollis Dunmore finally explained it to me in January, was more complicated than I wanted it to be.

He said: “I want to manage your expectations, because you are about to be told a number of times that this is not what you think it is.