What I Tell You In the Dark by John Samuel Page A

story for me,’ she chimes in.
    That’s good, her engaged voice is back. She’s finishing my sentences again, like the other day down by the canal.
    â€˜Exactly,’ I tell her. ‘So they have to use some offshore location – in this case Jersey,’ I draw a big fat pound sign midway down the line, ‘where they set up a little cluster of trusts,’ I stab at the pound sign with the pen point, making the cluster, ‘administered by faceless trustees, for the benefit of undeclared owners.’
    â€˜And you think you can get the details of these trusts?’
    â€˜I know I can.’ My pen hovers over the dot cluster, I know no such thing. I believe it, though, to the point of knowing. Quite the model man I’m becoming. ‘All they are is conduits, these places. No money is kept there, it just flows through, but what they do hold is records. Details of where that money is headed and what other money it will send back.’
    â€˜What do you mean send back ?’
    â€˜Well …’ my pen quickly sketches another line, shooting off at a tangent ‘… the money doesn’t just go straight from the Jersey trust to InviraCorp, it goes via another one of these offshore places – let’s say Cayman for argument’s sake.’
    I intend to draw a palm tree but it comes out looking like an anchor – that’ll do just as well.
    â€˜From there, it goes to InviraCorp. But, and this is the important part, the profits also come back. That’s what the trustees are there for, to ensure that the right people are benefiting from the different income streams. So when the money they ushered out of the holy coffers has doubled, tripled, septupled itself, they then divert it right back in.’
    I delve a little more into the granular detail, talking her through the twists and turns of these structures, all the while etching in my words until my diagram has become labyrinthine, Escheresque in its conundrums. It now covers the whole of the wall space between the door and the fridge.
    I realise it has been several minutes since she has spoken. ‘Are you still there?’ I ask.
    â€˜Yes, of course. I’m just trying to keep up.’
    â€˜Don’t worry if it’s all a bit much to take in. We can go over it again at some point – this is just to give you a sense of the situation. It’s really not an uncommon set-up. In fact, pretty much every business runs its money through these places – it’s all perfectly legal. It’s a standard way that companies have come up with to avoid paying their dues. That’s just how people are – how they’ve always been.’ Darwin had that cold, I want to add, but I don’t because I don’t want to come off sounding too certain, like some kind of evolutionary biologist, secular zealot type, which obviously I’m not. I just happen to know what I’m talking about. ‘But this isn’t about tax avoidance. This is about something much, much worse than that. This is about a cabal keeping their secret, about the vast market they have created. First they sentence the God-fearing masses to death with propaganda about contraception, then they portion up life itself, in the form of hopelessly inadequate delay drugs, and they sell it back to the miserable wretches as they die in their ditches.’
    I pause, not for effect but to recover my composure. It’s mademe pretty angry saying all this. With myself, as much as with them.
    She breathes a rush of static into my ear, the phone like an exotic shell that’s trapped the sound of a warm and perfect sea.
    â€˜You should hear what they have to say about it.’
    There’s the sound of her fingers tapping a keyboard.
    â€˜Are you still at work?’ I ask.
    â€˜No but I can access it here, the comment they sent last time. I only used part of it in the piece I wrote but there was a phrase in there that