Maureen Bellamy

Maureen Bellamy is 46 and for nineteen years has looked after the papers, schedules and people of the Carrow warehouse. Born in Croydon, the daughter of an insurance broker and a typing teacher, she studied secretarial work at night and joined the company as an office assistant. Today she is the administrative manager, responsible for the manifest and the payroll, and whoever walks through the office door without knocking soon regrets it.

She lives in a brick house in Ealing, with a living room of chintz curtains, an always clean desk and a steel filing cabinet where she keeps receipts, contracts and letters, all in colored folders. She wakes at 6, sprays her hair with hairspray at the hallway mirror and leaves yesterday's newspaper folded on the desk. She likes to say order is the only form of charity she practices.

She is of medium height and firm bearing, with an angular face, careful makeup and red hair teased with hairspray. She wears large-framed glasses on a small chain, a navy skirt-and-blazer set with shoulder pads, a white bow blouse and holds her clipboard of papers always pressed against her arm. She is efficient, brusque, controls papers, schedules and people, and doesn't like to be questioned.

About the warehouse, she says the safe was expecting a million in pesetas, but on Friday, at 7 p.m., 6,800 gold bars arrived on their way to Hong Kong, to go out Tuesday, and that only she, Nigel and head office knew. She explains that staff entry is by card at the parking-lot barrier and time clock at the gatehouse, and that the front door only opens with a key. She says that on Monday she saw Nigel count 1,800 pounds in fifty-pound notes, drawn from a fat envelope.

Maureen knows the manager who knew about the gold before everyone is the one asked what she knew. When the detective says she gave the manifest to the thieves, she presses the clipboard against her arm and tells him to measure his words: nineteen years of paperwork without a penny out of place. The pride of an exemplary employee, or brusqueness as a fence: the pressed clipboard holds both.