Plantation A Legal Thriller

by J M S Macfarlane

  Chapter 70

  The next day, Robert Ashby arrived at his office for another early start as he was to return to Athens that afternoon.

  Overnight, a fax letter had come in from Texas Fire & Guaranty. Reading between the lines, Chuck Fairweather was concerned about the newspaper reports. And in a roundabout way, he was asking whether they were true. Ashby wrote back to Fairweather, saying that essentially, all was well and that he’d contact him soon to let him know what was going on. But after dictating the letter, he knew he couldn’t put him off forever. Sooner or later, he would have to explain the difficulties which had been thrown in his way after he’d returned to London. Whether it would affect Plantation’s partnership with the Texans and the plans they’d shared before his father’s death, remained to be seen.

  However, not all was doom and gloom. The Crown Assets Office had also written to him, saying they were willing to discuss the proposal his father had offered them before his death – that Plantation would compensate the British Gallery if the time of payment was negotiable and Plantation had recovery rights in advance.

  He dictated a second letter saying that he would be happy to meet them during the week that he was back in London and asked them to set up an appointment with his secretary.

  Just as he finished this, Simon Wells came into his office and slumped down in a chair. He looked tired and dishevelled.

  “What happened to you ?” said Ashby.

  “Bill Waterford – he has the capacity of a whale for alcohol. After we left the hotel, Meredith and I took him to three pubs and two clubs. Then, he took us to an all-night bar in Soho where we left him at three in the morning. When I got home, it was almost time to get up and go to work. My wife wasn’t impressed.”

  “Americans work hard and play hard. Listen, can you do something while I’m away ? Uh, just close the door......Try to keep your eyes and ears open for anything involving the board, Grenville, Black or Batistin. I’ll ring you every so often to let you know how things are going in Athens. But I must have someone here who can tell me what’s going on behind the scenes while I’m away. And make sure that you and Ed Meredith receive all the incoming letters and calls and that none of it's diverted.”

  Wells merely nodded and said “Not a problem.” Then he took out his handkerchief, mopped his brow, got up, saying “Sorry, I don’t feel at all well,” and headed down the corridor to a room where he could lie down.

  A short while later, Ashby received a visit from Meredith himself who, unlike Wells, was none the worse for wear.

  “I took the precaution of having lots of cream with my dessert – usually does the trick,” said the solicitor as he took out the affidavits for the injunction hearing. Ashby read them, then both of them went to a nearby law firm for him to sign them on oath.

  Then after a flight from Gatwick later that afternoon, he was in Athens at around six o’clock local time.

  This time, he ordered the taxi driver to take him direct to the Perikles Hotel in Omonia which was away from the city centre, to the north. The journey lasted over an hour through stifling queues of traffic heading away from the airport into the centre of the city. When he arrived, the fare was five times what it had cost him two weeks earlier, even though the hotel where he’d previously stayed was a couple of miles away.

  The Perikles Hotel was positioned at the side of a very busy junction of the main streets at Omonia Square. Although not a guest house or a pensione, it was fairly small with only one upstairs floor. Downstairs was a large restaurant area. As it was around half past seven, the dining area, to the side of the front reception, was blasting out a racket, with the noise of guests, recorded music and singing.

  There was no-one to help Ashby with his bags and so he took them up to the small front desk area where there was a young woman in her early twenties reading a magazine. He said he had a reservation and asked for Mr Stefanides but the girl couldn’t speak English and went off to find someone else.

  In the restaurant, a man was shouting through a microphone in a ceaseless stream of Greek before another female singer began her rendition of a top forty hit, accompanied by muzak.

  A man and a woman came out of the restaurant together. He was in his late forties and she was in her early twenties. They both walked past him without a word to each other and went down the corridor.

  After a quarter of an hour wait, an older woman appeared, asked him for his passport and to sign the register. She was fat and bored and eyed him distrustfully. Then she yelled out something indecipherable in the direction of the restaurant whereupon a short man popped his head around the corner. From what Ashby could understand, the man was to carry the bags upstairs.

  “Mr Stefanides – is he here ?” he asked the woman.

  “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock – he is here at ten o’clock.”

  On the way up to his room, the porter said “You like a lady for tonight, mister ? I can get one for you – very nice.”

  Ashby declined the offer, saying he was tired out and that after dinner, he would go to straight to sleep.

  “Our restaurant is very good, you like it,” said the porter. After giving the man a tip and closing the door, Ashby could hear the pounding beat of the music directly below him and the muffled applause and yelling of the audience.

  The room was basic and hadn’t been cleaned that well. From his window, he could see the ebb and flow of the traffic junction. Street lights illuminated the area, almost as bright as daylight. He would have to sleep with the window and curtains closed, to shut out the noise of the traffic. Then again, the din from downstairs was almost as loud and with luck, one might cancel out the other.

  After splashing some water in his face to revive himself, he decided to get something to eat and see the floorshow.

  The girl with the magazine was back on the reception and ignored him as he looked through the open door into the dining area. The room was filled with smoke and the smell of shashlik cooking in the adjoining kitchen.

  There were around twenty or thirty tables. All of them were occupied by men, most of whom appeared to be factory workers, taxi-drivers or labourers. They were having dinner or drinking beer or ouzo, cigarette in hand while playing cards or watching the cabaret. This consisted of a youngish woman standing on a low dais, belting out a song to the accompaniment of a cassette recording. At the end of the song, the men applauded half-heartedly and the singer was replaced by another girl who put on a different cassette and began to thrash out a different song.

  Ashby took a table at the back of the room. After his order was taken, he looked around him at the diners in the audience and the parade of performers who would each sing a song, only to be replaced by a different girl who would do the same.

  Across from him, a few Greek taxi-drivers sat together. They appeared to be enemies of a small group of ethnic foreigners, possibly Albanians who were dead drunk and shouting at the girls to go off with them. Just as one of the girls had finished singing, she was grabbed by a drunk. This caused an uproar with growls and threats being made. Things were about to take an ugly turn.

  The taxi-drivers who were also drunk but fired up for action, were ready to pounce and begin breaking furniture over the Albanians’ heads. From nowhere, the fat woman who had taken Ashby’s passport suddenly appeared and started yelling at them to calm down or the police would be called.

  During his meal, Ashby noticed that at the end of each song, the singer would depart and be followed by a man from the audience. After an absence of almost an hour, she would be back on stage and sing another song from her repertoire, then wander off again.

  Needless to say, that night, he was unable to sleep until the performances and the movement in the corridor subsided at around two o’clock in the morning. Then calm descended until the drone of the traffic on the junction outside, started again at five.

  He awoke at nine o’clock. After a night of doing battle with the lumpy mattress, the noise and some insects wh
ich kept buzzing overhead and hitting the walls, he’d decided, that whether he met Stefanides or not, he wouldn’t be spending another night at the Perikles. At least the sun was out, as were several thousand motorists hurtling in wave after wave through the central junction at Omonia.

  He took breakfast downstairs in the restaurant which was now empty and quiet. Two cups of coffee later, to restore himself to consciousness, it had gone ten o’clock and he went out to the front reception.

  Someone was seated at the desk, reading a Greek newspaper. Their face remained hidden. It was obviously a man from the look of the reader’s thick, gnarled hands.

  “Mr Stefanides ?”

  “Yeah – who wants him ?”