Chapter Eight: The Debit Column
The First Class carriage was a sarcophagus of moneyed quiet. Ben sat in 4A, the Financial Times a geometric puzzle of folded broadsheet in his steady hands. His eyes tracked the rise and fall of numbers—copper, wheat, bonds—with a lulling rhythm. Numbers were clean. They did not bleed in the night, or ask for stories, or flinch at a raised hand.
Opposite, in 4B, Riley looked like he was dressed for a funeral that hadn’t happened yet. The cloth