‘Oh Mom, I’m so worried about him. It’s so hard pretending he isn’t far away, trying to do this on his own — needing our help, doing this coin stuff,’ Karabo whined.

‘What did you say?’ asked Anathi sitting up.

‘Something about coins. I had a vision and saw William telling Edward about selling coins, but he was showing him something on his computer. He said they were going to arrange a dump a pump or something?’ said Karabo, trying to remember what William had said.

‘Pump and dump, Karabs. It’s a way of inflating virtual currency prices and then selling them before anyone else knows so that people can make a killing off their stock by hurting everyone else. It’s not allowed in regulated stock markets and frowned upon in general, but in an unregulated market, like the coin exchanges, they can do it,’ explained Anathi, taking another sip of her hot chocolate.

‘Clever William. If it works, it will be amazing and could deplete Edwards wealth significantly. If it doesn’t, I fear the worst will happen to that young man,’ Anathi said, shaking her head and spooning more cake into her mouth.

‘How do you know all of this, mom?’ asked Karabo, leaning towards her mother as she watched her swallow the cake before answering.

‘Well, after Jez was kicked out of Cedric’s office, she came to me for help,’ explained Anathi. ‘I wasn’t exactly friendly, as I didn’t trust her and still believed that William was a traitor. Anyway, she told me what was happening and that you had sent the message. I knew you wouldn’t have believed it unless you knew for certain. So, I had to come up with a crazy story to see Jez at work,’ said Anathi, taking another big spoon of cake and filling her cheeks.

‘What story, mom?’ asked Karabo, impatient to know what idea would stop any suspicions being raised by Edward’s spies.

‘Well, just because the Malagasy Government doesn’t want anything to do with Jez, doesn’t mean that the French and the South African Governments don’t. I am working on a campaign to recognise Jez through my international contacts. If we make enough of a fuss about Jez’s heritage, the Malagasy Government will have to take her in and remove the ban on her and maybe even us. It’s a great campaign and ruse. That way we get a chance to discuss William and what he is working on, without raising any eyebrows.’

‘But what about Cedric? Did you manage to convince him?’

‘Of course, I did. Once I explained everything, I actually thought he was going to burst into tears or explode with pride. He is William’s biggest fan again and is ready to pull the trigger. He now has a dedicated team of staff members on this project whizz kids who know about the coin exchanges,’ explained Anathi, leaning across the table as she took Karabo’s hand. ‘We are going to get that pig. If this is the last case I ever work on, Karabs, I want it to be the one that puts Edward English behind bars.’

Since William had shown his father how he was turning their ill-gotten money into cryptocurrency, which could then be legitimately turned into cash or goods, Edward had become increasingly enthusiastic about the project. To date, William had ‘cleaned’ half a million dollars and then doubled the value of the money. Edward’s shift in attitude did nothing to improve Charles’s attitude towards William. There were days when William would have to run twice a day to deal with his jibes without retaliating. He knew Charles was doing everything in his power to see him crack, and he would hurt him badly in a fight. He couldn’t risk ruining this entire operation to prove that Charles was the world’s biggest jerk. But if there was any way he could ruin him, he’d take the opportunity without a second thought.

William’s primary focus, over the past couple of months, was to make sure he could build up a believable online profile — which would ensure the virtual currency community accepted him and shared their know-how. So far, he was definitely on the right track and had over 200,000 followers on social media. Now part of the community, he’d created an entirely believable persona (despite struggling to get the Star Wars jokes at times).

When he explained the scheme to Cedric, he’d nearly been caught. After he charged the phone, he hid it very carefully because he knew Charles did a regular sweep of his room. But Charles wasn’t as careful as he liked to think he was. Since Harrison had arrived, he was a little distracted. Just by being there, Harrison had deflected a large amount of attention from William, spending hours with Edward discussing the American arm of the business. Harrison could also shut Charles down every time he opened his mouth, and he knew better than to take Harrison on. As father’s favourite child, Harrison was nice by English family standards but cruel if he needed to be and ruthless in business. He was also nice enough to William and even joined him on a few runs (along other routes). William was under no illusion as to what Harrison was capable of, and he knew that Harrison despised Charles and probably didn’t care too much about William at all. As the baby brother, he was no threat to Harrison’s plan to take over Edward’s business eventually.