I opened the wrong door on the fiftieth floor and saw what the most powerful woman in the company had been hiding — the next morning she put eighty-five thousand dollars on the desk.

Four point one million dollars, and the job, and everything she is.

Lars had been building that petition since about June. She knew because a board member had told her in September.

And what she needed from me was a witness statement.

She had four. Two directors and two of her own staff, all of whom would say she was working normally and had no difficulties.

She wanted a fifth, and she wanted it to be mine — because I am the night cleaner on the fiftieth floor, and a statement from a man who has nothing to gain and no reason to lie is worth more than four statements from people with share options.

That was the whole idea and it was a good one and she is very clever.

And what she wanted me to sign was a lie.

The draft was in the folder. One page. It said, in the third paragraph, that in four years of working on that floor at night I had never observed the Chief Executive in any physical difficulty or requiring assistance of any kind.