Gray offered to obtain copies of the banking forms used in the Seddon case and of the correspondence between Seddon and his counterparty. His efforts, though, were fruitless: the Masterman Bank refused to discuss the subject. The lawyers, too, clammed up. They relied on the confidentiality principle. In principle, they were right. Still, G & M was a house of standing. Accordingly, the reticence of the M. Bank and of its lawyers struck me as odd. Why would they withhold innocent information from a potential correspondent or client like G & M?
Even so, my initial inclination was to give the investigation a miss. The ‘hidden facts’ of the case were of no significance to my research subject. Jack, the publican, urged me to do so. Would it not be better to concentrate on the research work? He noted that I was losing weight and that I appeared to be under stress. He encouraged me to finish my work as soon as possible and to return to my practice at home.
I knew Jack was right. Still, Dennis Gray’s observations spurred me on. To start with, my curiosity had been aroused. In addition, I was keen to familiarise myself with the ruses hidden behind what might appear an ordinary and highly respectable banking practice. In plain words: I wanted to get to the bottom of things.
A session with the Masterman Bank’s employees was of no help. They assured me they had no copies of the correspondence. The ‘file’, so they said, had been closed and the documents shredded.
I knew they were lying. A file may be stamped ‘ad acta’ once the matter was over. In practice, though, the documents would be archived for either five or ten years. True, getting the files from the archives could be cumbersome. But I concluded there was more to it than that: the Masterman Bank was doing its best to thwart the attempts of both G & M and myself to get the real picture. What worried them?
A stint of three days of archival work in the registry of the High Court shed little light on the case. There was no clear record of the dealings between Seddon and the officer in Masterman Bank’s letters of credit department. Still, the officer’s notes of the initial interview revealed that Seddon had indicated that he knew Ng well.
Jack, who showed some interest in my detective work, shrugged. In his opinion the X Bank – as we referred to it in our conversations – wanted to forget all about the subject. They would not welcome an enquiry into its background. Their reticence was, accordingly, understandable.
“You don’t think this is a cover up?” I asked my fiend.
“Hard to tell,” he observed whilst breaking our eyes contact. “But don’t jump to conclusions. For all we know, they simply want to leave well alone. I wouldn’t lose sleep over the case.”