Frank. The sheet of paper has details of a bank account. This is in your name. You can access it online via the website. It is linked to a separate and completely legitimate UK account in the name of a security consulting company called Northern Security. This company is owned by you and is also completely legitimate. In the post office box in Liverpool there is paperwork detailing a highly successful two years you traded in stocks to explain the funds in the accounts. If you do not access the account nothing will happen. If you do access it, the contents are yours to do with as you wish. If you report the account to your superiors nothing will happen: the account is absolutely legal. You have, according to the UK tax records, reported the earnings and paid the correct tax. The account contains twenty-five million US dollars. There are no strings.
The voice stops. Frank waits but there's nothing else. Unsure of what to do he replaces the handset before picking it up again and listening. There's nothing. Frank taps the mechanism. Nothing. He replaces the handset.
With the sheet of paper in his hand, his face illuminated by the soft glow of the overhead reading light, Frank looks out of the window at the darkening sky. The 777 is heading east into the night. Frank switches off the light and watches the plane get swallowed by a towering stack of black cloud.
Acknowledgements
As with the first book in this series, there are a number of people who have, again, been instrumental in getting me to this point.
I'm grateful to clinical psychologist and one-time Maghull High stud poker champion, Dr Andrew Peden for the psychological detail and suggestions, as well as for some pithy early readings of the text. For valuable detail on Merseyside Police procedures, and for guiding me through the workings of the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, I have Stewart Newton Parkinson to thank. Graham Herring also provided some worthwhile police information that prevented me looking more foolish than normal.
In Los Angeles, I have Mark Cigolle and Kim Coleman to thank for their local knowledge, gracious hospitality and extremely good margaritas.
There are also people who didn't object to being murdered (Jonny and Catherine Lea who, although not named, were the inspiration for the unfortunate dentists), and a host of people who loaned me their names (Peter Moreleigh, Sebastian Ross-Hagenbaum and Angela Salt among them). Needless to say, none of them are remotely like their characters in this book.
Other people who deserve thanks are Tara Wynne, my agent at Curtis Brown; Bev Cousins and Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, my publishers at Random House (Australia and UK respectively); Margrete Lamond for early readings and encouragement; my editors, Elena Gomez and Elizabeth Cowell; my son, Danny, for keeping me focused with some of my wilder ideas; my daughter, Sophie, for ensuring the medical side of things was kept within believable limits and, most deservingly, my wife Annie, for everything.
Down Among the Dead Men Page 41