Sidney Sheldon’s After the Darkness. Тилли Бэгшоу

f-family. You need a support network.’

      ‘But I can’t leave Lenny, John. It’s like I’m abandoning him.’

      ‘Darling Grace. I know it’s hard. T-t-terribly hard. But Lenny is gone. You have to accept that. No one could survive a day in those w-waters. It’s been two weeks.’

      With her rational mind, Grace knew John was right. It was her heart she had trouble convincing. Lenny wasn’t gone. He couldn’t be gone. Until she saw his dead body with her own two eyes, she could not give up hope.

      Miracles happen. They happen all the time. Perhaps he was rescued by another fishing boat? Maybe a foreign boat, simple people who don’t know who he is? Maybe he’s lost his memory? Or found his way to an island somewhere?

      It was all nonsense, of course. Voices in her head. But in those early days, Grace clung to the voices for dear life. They were all she had left of Lenny and she wasn’t prepared to give them up. Not yet.

      When she got back to their Park Avenue apartment, Grace found hundreds of bouquets of flowers waiting for her. She could have piled the condolence cards up to the ceiling.

      ‘See?’ said John. ‘Everybody l-loves you, Grace. Everybody wants to help.’

      But the cards and flowers didn’t help. They were unwanted, tangible reminders that as far as the world was concerned, Lenny was dead.

      Three miles away, in the FBI’s New York offices at 26 Federal Plaza, three men sat around a table:

      Peter Finch from the SEC was a short, amiable man, completely bald except for a thin tonsure of ginger hair that made him look like a monk. Normally, Finch was known for his good humor. Not today.

      ‘What we’re looking at here is the tip of the iceberg,’ he said grimly.

      ‘Pretty big fucking iceberg.’ Harry Bain, the FBI’s assistant director in New York, shook his head in disbelief. At forty-two, Bain was one of the Bureau’s highest fliers. Handsome, charming and Harvard educated, with jet-black hair and piercing green eyes, Harry Bain had foiled two of the most significant domestic terror plots ever attempted on U.S. soil. Those had both been pretty huge cases. But if what Peter Finch was saying was true, this one could be even bigger.

      ‘How much money are we talking about? Exactly?’ Gavin Williams, another FBI agent who reported to Bain, spoke without looking up. A former SEC man himself, Williams had left the agency in disgust after the Bernie Madoff fiasco. A brilliant mathematician with higher degrees in modeling, statistics, data programming and analysis, as a young man he had dreamed of becoming an investment banker himself, joining the J.P. Morgan training program straight out of Wharton. But Gavin Williams had never quite made it. He lacked the killer commercial instincts necessary to take him to the top, as well as the political, people skills that helped his far-less-intellectually-gifted classmates amass private fortunes in the tens of millions. Tall and wiry with close-cropped gray hair and a military bearing, Williams was a loner, as dour and emotionless as a statue. Brilliant, he might be. But in the clubby world of Wall Street, nobody wanted to do business with him.

      Deeply embittered by this rejection, Gavin Williams made the decision to devote the rest of his life to the pursuit of those who had made it to the top, cataloging their misdemeanors with crazed zeal. In the early days, working at the SEC had given him a tremendous sense of purpose. But all that changed after Madoff. The agency’s failings in that case were catastrophic. Gavin himself hadn’t worked on the case, but he felt tainted by collective embarrassment. Blinded by a simple Ponzi scheme! The thought of it still gave Gavin Williams sleepless nights, even now in his new dream job as the FBI’s top man on securities fraud.

      Peter Finch said, ‘It’s not yet clear. On the surface the accounts looked clean. But after Brookstein disappeared, all Quorum’s investors wanted their money back at once. It’s those redemptions that have revealed this black hole. And it’s growing by the day.’

      ‘But there are billions of dollars missing here.’ Harry Bain scratched his head. ‘How can that kind of money just evaporate?’

      ‘It can’t. Maybe it got spent. Or lost, siphoned off into speculative, unprofitable private businesses controlled by Leonard Brookstein and his cronies. More likely Brookstein stashed it away somewhere. That’s what we’ve got to find out.’

      ‘Okay.’ Harry Bain’s quick mind was working. ‘How long before this gets into the press?’

      Finch shrugged. ‘Not long. A few days, a week at most. Once investors start talking, it’ll be out there. I don’t need to tell you the implications this could have on the wider economy. Quorum was bigger than GM, almost as big as AIG. Every small business in New York had exposure. Pensioners, families.’

      Bain got the picture. ‘I’ll handpick a task force of our best men to work on this today. The instant new information comes in, you pass it to Gavin. Gavin, you report directly to me. None of the information discussed today is to leave this room. Understood? I want to keep the media out for as long as possible. The NYPD, too. The last thing we need is those idiots running around, sabotaging our case.’

      Peter Finch nodded. Gavin Williams sat frozen, his face impassive, inscrutable. Harry Bain thought, I feel like Jim Kirk, working with Spock. He felt the familiar rush of adrenaline at the prospect of spearheading such a vital operation. If I track down that money, I’ll be a hero. I might even get a shot at the directorship. Harry thought about his wife, Lisa, and how proud she’d be. Of course, if I fail…

      But Harry Bain wouldn’t fail.

      He had never failed in his life.

      ‘There’s a trustees meeting next month, Grace, on the twenty-sixth. I think it’s important that you be there. If you can b-b-bear it.’

      It had been two weeks since Grace’s return to Manhattan, and John and Caroline Merrivale had invited her over for supper. When she declined the invitation, Caroline drove over to her apartment and frog-marched her into a waiting cab.

      Grace looked pained. ‘Can’t you deal with it, John? I won’t understand a word they say anyway. Lenny always handled all the legal things.’

      ‘You must go, Grace,’ said Caroline. ‘John will be there with you. But you’re the sole beneficiary of Lenny’s estate. There’ll be things you need to approve.’

      ‘Am I? The sole beneficiary?’

      Caroline gave a short, derisory laugh. ‘Of course you are, dear. You were his wife.’

      Grace thought, I’m still his wife. We don’t know he’s dead yet. Not for sure. But she didn’t have the energy to fight about it. Grace couldn’t help but notice that Caroline had gotten rather bossy since Lenny…since the accident. Whenever John spoke to Grace, he was firm, but deferential. I really feel so and so. If you can, you should try to do such and such. Caroline was much more autocratic. Do this. Say that.

      Still, perhaps that’s what I need right now? God knows I don’t seem able to make any decisions for myself.

      Grace agreed to meet the trustees.

      It was hard to pinpoint exactly when the change started. Like all these things, it began almost imperceptibly. First the flowers stopped coming. Then the calls. Invitations to lunch or dinner began to dry up. On the one day that Grace tried to make an effort and drag herself out of the apartment – she went to the tennis club for coffee – she noticed many of her old girlfriends avoiding her. Tammy Rees practically broke into a run when she bumped into Grace in the powder room, mumbling the quickest of ‘How are yous’ before scuttling out the door.

      Grace tried to talk to her sisters about it, but both Honor and Connie were distracted, distant almost. Neither had time to chat. Grace even called her mother, Holly, a sign of desperation if ever there was one.

      It was a mistake.

      ‘You’re probably imagining it, darling. Why don’t