Valda is on trial for murder and it’s the biggest scandal since Profumo.

Murdered singer Renee Porter is the link between a Russian oligarch and a key political player - what she knew was dynamite. Can Valda work out what it is before she pays the ultimate price?
Lawyer Jack Lauder is in Belfast dealing with the case of a young well-heeled Russian woman at the special request of up and coming Labour MP Dustin Stanhope acting on behalf of his ‘friend’ oligarch, Oleg Lagunov.
Valda and her band, The G-String Girls, are performing in Belfast as part of a UK tour. Was it the hand of fate that led her to Jack that night or does she have another agenda? Can Jack ever be entirely sure that Stanhope wasn’t behind this coincidence? Although he does not yet know it Valda and her band mate, Renee, are also tied up with Stanhope and Lagunov, two of the London high society power brokers who quaff Moet in their clubs whilst they decide the fate of others.
When Renee is found dead in the bath, Valda is branded the “jealous femme fatale” and charged with her murder. Jack puts his reputation and his life on the line to defend her; he is fast falling for this enigmatic singer even though he knows she is not always 100% honest with him.
Meanwhile the Fleet Street hacks salivate at the prospect of the Trial of the Century. Valda and Jack have little time to gather the evidence which will save her whilst carefully watching their backs as Oleg Lagunov plays only for the highest stakes.
Readers who enjoy John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon will find this book right up their street.

THE DRAGON’S TALE

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

The broken English made the voice sound sinister. The man said
they
were on their way and Gerry Montrose was under no illusions that the
They
in question was the Dolguruki, the Russian Mafia. He put down the house phone and crossed to the window, looking out over the Golden Horn. It was the Sea of Japan, which the stars of this one illuminated, but it was no less spectacular a sight than Seraglio Point on the Bosphorus. Right now, though, Gerry couldn’t have been less interested in the natural world. Apart from the wish that he was back in his Hong Kong apartment with the woman who lounged now on the cheap sofa, the Australian lawyer wasn’t thinking of anything other than how to get out of this mess.

The other thing was he had an unanswered message on his cell phone and he would have liked to respond to see if he could get some advice but the short messaging service was new and it didn’t work yet in this part of Russia. It came from an English ex-colleague, a lawyer called Jack Lauder. It was ironic but Jack would have enjoyed the view out of this window. A mountaineer Jack had viewed the night skies from a few inhospitable places on the earth’s surface. But that wasn’t why Gerry was thinking about him now and the quizzical text on the cell, telling him to be careful what he wished for. Instead the Australian barrister was thinking about what he would give to have his old friend here right now. Because Lucky Jack Lo-dah, as their Chinese colleagues had nicknamed him, might well have an idea about what to do in this situation.

The unnatural world in which Gerry had got himself embroiled not only emulated the worst features of the natural one but took them to excess. He had somehow contrived to get himself immersed in the violent world of gangsters, in which narcotics and prostitution were a currency and contract killings could be arranged for relatively minor sums of money as if life had no value at all. It was a world he was used to back in Hong Kong, but only from an objective standpoint. He’d prosecuted and defended these people for years. But this time he wasn’t engaging with this world in his professional capacity. When he had set out on this path the perils had brought with them the euphoria of a sense of destiny, the idea that he had been put on this earth to achieve this quest. And it was a quest, and back then he’d had a sense of control, derived from the knowledge that he was not without bargaining power. It was like playing poker in a rich man’s casino. You shouldn’t be there if you weren’t pumped up by the thought of the competition.

The truth now, though, was the euphoria had gone. Everything here conspired to bring you down. This hell-hole in the depths of Siberia; it was supposed to be one of the world’s great cities but it was derelict and run down, the people undernourished, drab of dress. Drunks sprawled comatose across the squares and public parks, driving all the decent people away. The crooks carried Kalashnikovs openly on the streets and didn’t give a stuff for the police. Half of them were the police anyway. The buildings were ramshackle, the roads pitted and in need of repair. For all the Russian bravura and the talk of a new, modern state, freed of Soviet shackles; this was a Third World country, lawless, its economic infrastructure destroyed, its people destitute. What gave it clout in the world was an under-employed military, many of whose former employees, made redundant by the state, had gone into private practice and added to the gangs which preyed on the common people. The rump which remained of the Armed Forces was a dangerous lunatic. It had taken over the asylum and now carried a big stick, a nuclear arsenal. There was an air of menace everywhere.

Natalia’s apartment was an example of the run-down state of the country, just as she was an example of how it had preyed upon its own people. Inside the building in which the apartment stood the plaster was peeling off the walls; the dank, dark corridors were awash with pools of water and other more noxious liquids, the breeding ground of the mosquitoes which plagued the place. The people in the building shut their doors and consumed a vicious form of vodka. There was despair everywhere and he could see why Natalia had been so desperate to get away. The gap between the rich and the poor in this society was the distance to the large orange moon which looked down on the comedy with a quizzical smile on its broad face. The moon looked really close here in the night sky - like you could stretch up one of those three-ply ladders and bridge the gap.

The sight of the Golden Horn couldn’t hold his attention and he was drawn back to the present. The only sound in the room was of mosquitoes whining in the air until they incinerated themselves on the red hot bars of the insect trap. The ominous zap and sizzle of their immolation gave rise to images which didn’t help his mood. The sense of elation, derived from the assumption of control, was ebbing away. The thought that he might have presumed too much was the first time he’d experienced the fear of failure since he’d entered with such abandon into a quest not unlike that of a knight of the round table - its
raison d’etre
was the rescue of a damsel in distress.

The feeling of depression had eclipsed his jovial, antipodean mood. Obviously it was that first contact, with its sinister undertones, which had dampened his spirits and which he now had time to ponder. What had he expected? That these gangsters would sound like old friends meeting for the first time after an age apart? Even on the Nigata ferry he hadn’t really had the time to think it through. That voyage had been his first rest in an exhausting dash across half a continent. He had passed the first part of it drunk and the second part asleep. But now, when he had relaxed for an hour or two, and had made love to the woman he had come here to rescue, he had nothing to do but wait for a denouement over which he had no control because he didn’t even know the rules of the game. The thought hit him hard that he was out of his depth. He wasn’t used to that. He had left Hong Kong with all the confidence of a following wind; it had driven him, without a moment’s hesitation, the two thousand or so miles it took to get here. Here was Vladivostok. And here he felt scared out of his wits because this was a country where life was cheap.

He didn’t know why Jack came to mind right now except maybe the obvious one that the Englishman would be a useful ally to have in a crisis like this. He was a chess player, always a few moves ahead but his mystical approach to the world marked him out as an eccentric. Their world views were diametrically opposed but Gerry loved the man like a brother. Infuriatingly blinkered some of the time, he could be an absolute revelation the next. The other thing about him was he always came through. He was there when a mate needed him. Take now for instance: within moments of the subject being broached he’d stumped up fifty grand sterling of the cash Gerry needed to get this job done and he’d shelled it without hesitation. No questions, just that laconic, quizzical comment. There was none of that tell-tale silence over the phone which signified the bat of the eyelid, the moment of the measuring of whether the friendship was worth this amount of hard cash. No, he’d just wired the money as soon as the banks opened. Good old Jack! What had he said, though, in his understated, Pommie way? Be careful of what you wish for! As if he understood even without being told.

Gerry pulled himself together. Jack wasn’t here. He was on his own. Well, that wasn‘t strictly true. Natalia was here too but more in body than in mind. She was a nervous wreck. The mob would smell her fear. Right now she was reclining on the lumpy sofa unaware that Gerry was watching her reflection in the glass. Her hair was the feature he’d first noticed about her in the Macau night club where she worked. It was as luxuriant and golden as the cornfields of the Steppes; and those long tresses were the perfect setting for the most beautiful bone structure he had ever seen, crowned by shining, blue eyes, the colour of lapis lazuli. God had put this woman together. Gerry had seen a few beauties in his time but none like this. When she walked, ten thousand miles away a thousand ships launched. She was a fairy tale princess and Gerry had decided to rescue her from her tower, the nightclub at which she had worked, which was a thinly-disguised brothel and a brutal prison for these girls, all of whom had been lured here from Mother Russia by a mixture of trickery and force.

Natalia was fortunate. She was highly prized because of her beautiful skin and long, golden hair and so she was reserved for only the wealthiest of guests. If you wanted to enjoy this woman you parted with a king’s ransom. Unlike some of her colleagues, she didn’t have to screw thirty men a night. She might get away with two or three, one if he was prepared to pay the full rate, as Gerry was. But it was only a matter of time, because, like the others, she was perishable goods and one day, when her looks had long diminished, she would be forced to work as hard as the others and take whichever men her masters ordered.

Gerry reminded himself that Natalia was not a whore. It still offended his middle class sensibilities for anyone to think that he had taken up with that kind of girl. She was a victim - of the worst form of oppression; of her poverty and of her own predatory countrymen. There were no jobs for young women in the former USSR now that the nation had embraced capitalism, so it wasn’t strange that many young women were taken in by the promise of work in the tourist industry abroad. She had believed that a job with the Society of Friends of Macao was the opportunity of a life time, and it never occurred to her that it was too good to be true. The Society’s headquarters turned out to be a pleasure palace for the businessmen of China and Hong Kong, and a house of torture and humiliation for the daughters of Russia, who had been no strangers to this throughout their history. These girls were the successors of the odalisques of the Ottoman Empire, of the concubines of the aristocrats of China. The east, both near and far, had traded in the fair-skinned women of Russia for centuries.

Right now, Natalia’s face was creased with worry. Gerry was worried too, although he’d never let her see that. His attempt at humour hid the fact that he knew he was breaking the rules. He wouldn’t go out on a limb like this, with no back-up, against the Triads in Hong Kong, so why did he think Vladivostok should be different? Somehow he’d assumed it would be less sophisticated; they’d be gorillas here, only after one thing. Give them the money and they would ride off into the sunset. The truth was he’d never really thought about it enough. Bowled along on a wave of enthusiasm and of the sheer justice of the cause, only now was he doing the due diligence. What if they took the money and decided to teach him a lesson too?

They
, the Dolguruki, were the Moscow gang whose name meant “the long-armed”, which they had taken from the Yuri Dolgoruki who had first fortified Moscow back in the 12
th
century. After the
glasnost and perestroika
had legitimised capitalism in the Soviet Union and it had broken up into squabbling factions, the gang’s tentacles had stretched to all parts of the old Soviet empire; it was the Triad of these parts. He was stupid to deal with them but Natalia was the prize. He had sold everything he could, pawned what he could not, called in every dubious favour, borrowed from every friend he’d ever had, losing some in the process, to buy her out of her bondage to this inhuman gang which claimed it owned her until its manufactured debts were redeemed. Of course, the con was that the more she tried, the higher they went. His strategy was to knock them out with one big payment. Half a million Yankee dollars. He was a big earner and a big spender himself, not a great saver, hence the call on his debtors and then on a friend or two, of whom by far the most generous had been the sole Englishman among them. In the process he’d put on the line every good opinion he’d ever earned and he’d made himself a moving target for Macau’s Red Poles, the Triad hit men whose business he’d interfered with when the Russians sent their prize hostess home because she‘d stopped working - i.e. she’d moved in with him. So the half a million dollar question was: is she worth it? Yes. That was why he’d come to Vladivostok.

She interrupted his thoughts, “What are you thinking about?”

He smiled, still staring out over the sea, “Jack Lauder,” he replied, “mate of mine back in England.”

“Nice guy?”

“Oh yeah. The best! Despite the fact he’s a Pom!” She frowned because she didn’t understand the reference and he didn’t try to explain. He just said, “You’ll love him when you meet him,” and that made her smile because she was always buoyed by his confidence, that western belief in the fact that you can do anything if you turn your mind to it. Secretly though, he was thinking, wish you were here, mate! Jack would have an angle; he’d know what to do. His love of chess made him great at thinking on his feet. “And he’s fearless!” he added for Natalia’s benefit and, even if she didn’t fully understand, once again she gave that big smile. What he would give for the real one to light up her face again! He was going to make it happen. He clenched his fist and he was suddenly back in another apartment with fearless Jack, reckless Jack, lucky Jack Lo-dah.

The apartment in mind was a penthouse overlooking Telegraph Bay in Hong Kong, and he had a picture in his head, a clear memory, of Jack talking in his eccentric way about the carpet of moonlight across the bay (he had fantastic recall for poetry and could recite Chaucer to Dylan Thomas at the drop of a hat). “Oh for some seven league boots!” was the line he‘d come up with. One of the female guests, Diana Lundy, the estranged wife of a Hong Kong Government lawyer, was celebrating her newly won freedom by submerging herself in as much champagne as she normally did men. Well drunk, she challenged the British lawyer to a feat of daring. “You’re a mountaineer, Jack” she teased, “bet you daren’t hang from the balcony rail.” She hadn’t expected him to take it up but she was a stupid bitch too. He could speak with authority as he was a notch on the Lundy gun, which had brought down a few bulls. “I wonder if he ever did her,” he mused aloud, because Jack was far too British, far too precious, to ever talk about things like that. He laughed out loud, much to Natalia’s surprise.

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