Crypt-O Currency

Count Vasile Morvath dealt with death in 1476. Taxes took longer. He is five hundred and eighty years old. He lives at the top of a long dark drive in Alderley Edge, sleeps in a sideboard with a doily on it, and two years ago, on the advice of a nineteen-year-old from the night shift at the big Sainsbury's, he put six chests of gold into Bitcoin. Now HMRC would like a word. They would like his date of birth, his National Insurance number and an explanation of why their records say he is dead. They are sending Mr Dredge, who has never lost a folder and has never been seen to blink. A comic novel about brown envelopes, the Mersey ferry, a cleaner called Ethel and a lawyer who bills in six-minute units, and about who the real bloodsuckers are. Bromborough is very nice. Ask anybody from Birkenhead.