Constantine Legacy (Jake Dillon Adventure Series) (19 page)

I stepped into the cool air-conditioned environment
of Ferran & Cardini. The lift descended to the department
quickly and silently. Tatiana was waiting for me as the
doors slid back with a heavy looking briefcase.

It looked like the beginning of a week of hard
work; we had a meeting with the various people involved
with the new European Network. It went as all initial
meetings go; some individuals requiring definitions, and
others wanting copies of memos that had long since been
put through the shredder.

LJ and I seemed to make a reasonably good team;
I turned major objections into minor objections and LJ’s
speciality was ironing out the minor objections. As Ferran
& Cardini were a commercial profit-making organisation,
I thought that the discussions were successful enough but
I could see that Clive Bingham-Carter from MI6 was
going to cause a few problems for us. He insisted upon all
kinds of procedural rigmarole, hoping that LJ would slip
up or get annoyed, or both. But LJ had been weaned on
this sort of thing. He let Bingham-Carter talk himself to a
standstill and then paused a long time before saying, “Oh
yes?” as though he wasn’t sure that Bingham-Carter had
made his point. Then LJ made his point all over again in
careful measured syntax as though speaking to a small
child. LJ would rather split a hair on the back of his neck
than an infinitive.

Roberts was a new, young and intelligent graduate
from Cambridge that the Partners had borrowed from
MI5, in my absence. He was a tall, good looking twenty
six year old who wore tailored suits, went to see plays in
small theatres and was apt to use long words where short
ones would do. He was sitting at my desk when I entered
my office using my computer terminal. I asked him what
he thought he was doing. Flushing with embarrassment he
stood up and quickly introduced himself. He apologised
profusely for being there and informed me that he had
been assigned to work for me, for the time being by Mr
Levenson-Jones. I put him to work at a vacant computer
terminal in the main office; I still wanted to find out more
about Oliver Hawkworth and his business dealings.
Hawkworth had the best lawyers to weave an intricate
web of companies, within companies, within holding
companies. It would be a long task.

On Thursday morning Jasper Lockhart phoned
from a public call box. Tats took the call and said that I
would meet him at the Kensington address that Lockhart
gave her at 9.30pm.

I was busy all that afternoon. At 8.00 pm I shut
down the terminal on my desk and put my laptop into its
case. I’d completed a superficial report of the assignment
in Dorset, marking the Poseidon file “closed” and
submitted it to LJ for initialling. Using his gold fountain
pen he initialled each page without comment then gave
the file to Zara, but his eyes never left mine.

Exotic cars lined both sides of the cobbled street in
that part of Kensington.
Number 21 Charlotte Mews had a pearl blue
Jaguar convertible parked outside with two men in short
sleeved shirts and jeans leaning up against it drinking
cold beer out of bottles. I tapped the heavy lion head
doorknocker against its polished brass back plate and an
attractive young woman wearing a French maid’s outfit
and mask covering her eyes opened the door. “Please,
come in – enjoy,” she said. Her voice sounded familiar,
although she was attempting a very bad French accent.
“Dancing to the left, booze and smokers straight
on and out onto the terrace.” She patted me lightly on the
arse before disappearing into the packed room of dancers.
There was a dense scrum of smokers and drinkers
around the rear of the house; men with gelled hair sticking
up in all directions and girls talking about their latest
man and how much he was worth. In the corner there
was a serious tequila-drinking contest under way and a
man attempting to drink a yard of ale.
I reached the big table at the far end. Behind it was
a very large man wearing an ill fitting dinner suit and a
foul coloured dickey bow.
He said, “There’s only gin, vodka, beer and what
looks like…” He shook the bottle of cream liquid viciously,
“… Bailey’s.” He held it up to what light there was, and
said. “Bailey’s” again. A girl with a long cigarette holder
and wearing a twenties style outfit said, “I really would
recommend my surgeon, he’s done wonders for my tits.”
I took my drink and wandered off through a
doorway into a small but very well equipped fitted
kitchen. A girl wearing a cat suit, complete with long tail
and painted whiskers on her face, was eating canapés and
talking on her mobile phone. I turned around. The girl
who liked her tits was now talking about lipo-suction.
Nowhere did I see Jasper Lockhart. It was just as crowded
outside on the terrace except for a small octagonal
summerhouse at the far end of the walled garden.
Inside were three people all dressed in black. The
soft music came from a CD player and the gentle fug of
reefer smoke drifted around the small dimly lit room.
They all turned their heads slowly as I stepped into the
open doorway.
One removed its dark glasses. “Jake Dillon, you
old rogue, you came after all. Well, don’t just stand there,
come in. Shut the bloody door, will you, you’re letting all
this wonderfully mellow air get away.”
Jasper Lockhart dismissed his two nubile girl
friends, got up and shook my hand vigorously.
“Great to see you, pal,” he said in a slurred voice.
“Great party, don’t you think?” One of them said
as they left.
“Fascinating,” I said. He shook his head a couple
of times in an attempt to sober up, getting up and
throwing open the door to the wooden building he took
great lungfulls of fresh air, which seemed to make him
feel worse and turned him a strange tint of green. After
he had been to the bathroom Jasper Lockhart wanted a
word with me. He went out to his car with uncertain
steps.
The girl in the French maid’s outfit and mask was
holding the shoulders of another girl who was being
spectacularly ill into a flowerbed.

“Do you know what?” said Jasper Lockhart once
we were seated in his car.
He was looking around the dashboard and under
the seats anxiously. I asked what he was looking for.
“Listening bugs, old son,” he said, switching on the radio.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“I’m being followed, that’s what the problem is,”
he said.
“Really?” I said.
“Absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt,
although I wasn’t sure until today. That’s when I decided
to phone you.”
“I don’t know why you phoned me,” I said. “What
can I do?” I paused. “It’s gone too far for me to get
involved, Jasper.”
“Too far?” said Jasper Lockhart. “What’s gone
too far?”
“Look, I don’t really know too much about it,” I
said, like I’d said too much already.
“You mean the business down in Dorset, don’t
you? All that stuff with George and that chap Robert
Flackyard?”
“What do you think?” I said. “You’ve been
dabbling in some pretty heavy stuff. Can’t Hawkworth
help you?”
“He says he can’t get involved. What’s going to
happen now?”
I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “You know
I could get into some seriously deep shit for just talking
to you.”
Jasper Lockhart said, “Yeah,” about four times.
After what I considered to be an appropriate length
of silence I said, “It was because you tried to con me
that started to make things drop into place you know,” I
said casually. “When you became part of an official MI5
enquiry,” I dropped in for good measure.
Jasper Lockhart repeated the word five a few times,
changing it from a statement to an interrogative. “What
you mean is that they’ll come for me during the night?”
“Well,” I said, “that’s a little melodramatic, this is
England after all. Things like that only happen in films
and spy books, don’t they? No. These guys are good, I
mean really good. Your death will almost certainly look
like a traffic accident or something along those lines.”
“You are joking, I hope.” Jasper Lockhart’s voice
came like an echo of long ago and he leaned heavily
against the driver’s door. He had passed out. The girl with
the French maid’s outfit left her friend and asked if she
could help.
“My friend isn’t feeling well,” I told her. “It’s
probably just too much to drink.”
“Perhaps a glass of water would help.” It took her
a long time to push her way through to the kitchen. In the
meantime Jasper Lockhart shook his head and breathed
heavily. “I’m sorry,” he said, “you probably think I’m a
complete prat.”
“Something like that, but don’t worry about
it, we’ve known each other far too long for it to be a
problem,” I said, “I know exactly how you feel.” I knew
all to well.
“You’re all right, you know that, Jake,” he said.
“But what should I do, go to the police, make a statement
and try to bargain my way out of this mess? Hell, I’m just
small fry. Those fuckers Hawkworth and Flackyard are
the ones.” He closed his eyes at the thought.
I was about to say that a statement at the appropriate
time would be sensible, when the French maid came back
with a jug of water.
“There aren’t any glasses left in the kitchen,” she
said, thankfully without the French accent.
She offered the water to Jasper Lockhart, who
said, “She’s one of them,” in a shrill, excitable voice and
lost consciousness again.
“Is the really big guy with the tux, Australian bush
hat and the foul coloured dickey bow still serving at the
bar?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Frenchy, adding. “He says that this is
the driest do he’s ever been to.”
“Would you do me an immense favour and take
him this note, oh and tell him that he can go home now.”
“OK,” she said and went back inside to the party.
A minute later Vince Sharp came through the
doorway. His seventeen stone frame waddled over to the
Jaguar. “Looks like our baby will be out for the count, do
you want a hand getting him to bed?” Vince asked.
“No, you get off, I’ll get his friends to put him to
bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Oh and Vince, please take off the bow tie, it’s
making me feel very sick.”

If you ever get clear away from a dangerous or
difficult situation by abandoning a large number of your
personal possessions, you may feel a compelling need of
certain things you have left behind, like your seventy-foot
luxury power cruiser. Don’t send for them, because that’s
how Robert Flackyard was traced.

I asked Zara for a box file and wrote “Fulcrum”
on the front. Into that I put copies of Jasper Lockhart’s
bank statements and his written statement that he had
made the day after the party. A precaution in the event
that he or possibly I met with an unfortunate accident.

I secured the file with the firm’s official seal and
locked it into the top drawer of my desk. So far it had
no file number and had not been entered onto the firm’s
computerised system. It was my little secret, for now.

Vince Sharp had left a file on my desk, so I flicked
open the front cover.
The report was thorough, with satellite images to
support the maps laid out before me. Flackyard’s yacht
was moving south and looked as though it had made
good time, sailing through the Bay of Biscay and the Gulf
of Cadiz. I wondered - was she heading for the Strait of
Gibraltar and on into the Mediterranean or would she
sail on down to the coast of Africa?
That evening, LJ called me into his office for a drink.
He had been harassed to hell and back, organising the
administrative protocol for the New Network, so much
so that I’d hardly seen him all week. I knew that BinghamCarter was still making things difficult for us. BinghamCarter, mid 40s, divorced twice, propped up the corner of
the bar at his club, twenty-four hours a day. What he was
giving up in food he was gaining in influence. BinghamCarter was trying to get certain Foreign Office people to
assert their considerable power on the Partners of Ferran
& Cardini. His motive was quite clearly to get control of
the New Network for M16, and more importantly for
himself. LJ said that, at the meeting I had missed, he had
taken the liberty of putting me up as convening chairman
of the field-training group.
I told him that I might be away for a few days. LJ
said he thought that might be the case. He blew his nose
loudly and smiled dryly from behind his big handkerchief.
“I’ll convene the meeting and you delegate your vote to
me.”
“It will be all right.”
“Thank you, that would help me enormously,” I
said, and drank to his success. LJ came from behind his
desk and stood in front of the large portrait of Winston
Churchill. Taking hold of a corner he gently raised it and
then stepped back to satisfy himself that it was straight.
“Did you check with Interpol about Harry
Caplin?” I asked him.
LJ gave a histrionic sigh. “Don’t you ever give up?”
he said. “You are quite impossible, Caplin has never been,
and is not our concern. Miss Price has been assigned, I
am told, to the team searching for Caplin and Flackyard,
somewhere in southern Europe.” We stared at each other
for a minute or so.
“Oh, very well, I’ll see if I can find out where they
are.” He closed his eyes, gulped down his claret and
leaned back in his chair like a worn-out roll of carpet. He
said, “That liaison officer from Scotland Yard - what’s he
called, Jefferson - was on the phone today. He said they
can’t keep Jasper Lockhart locked up and available for
questioning unless they’re considering charges.”
“I’ll clear that in a couple of days,” I said. “He’ll
make no complaint; he wants to be kept in custody – he
feels safe there.”
LJ said, “Look, I realise it’s not yet quite over, but
I’m feeling a certain amount of pressure from upstairs in
respect of this Poseidon business in Dorset.”
“No! You look,” I said, “I didn’t ask you to hold
the door open. But don’t start closing it now that I’m
half-way through.”
LJ got up and paced the office, his hands clasped
behind his back as he walked up and down the room.
“Careful not to slam it on my fingers,” he told me,
“there’s a good boy. Oh, I know that you have a thousand
reasons for not slipping up, but remember what the man
who fell off of the high building said to a resident on the
seventeenth floor as he fell past him. So far so good.” LJ
smiled blandly.
“Thank you for those kind words of
encouragement,” I said.
LJ walked across to his map cupboard, and his
secret stash of alcohol. He spoke over his shoulder.
“There are certain things which if I know about I must
act upon. As it is I’m happy enough to leave them. But if
you get it wrong I’ll tear you to shreds and anyone you
try to protect will be torn up with you.”
“What about another drink?” I said.
“Well, old son, it’s a jolly good thing you like
sangria,” replied LJ self-consciously.
LJ thought I was heading for the land of flamenco
dancers and sherry.