Constantine Legacy (Jake Dillon Adventure Series)

by Andrew Towning

  “OK,” I said.

  Java Kye actually is slang for coffee and drinking chocolate respectively. This sophisticated small café bar in Kensington has a reputation for exquisite coffee, and from the moment you step in your senses are lifted with the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans from around the world. You fight your way through a selection of American and European newspapers with a few glossy magazines added for colour. Inside it’s a fusion of what’s now and memorabilia of a bygone age, stage set superbly to amuse the rich and famous. I heard someone saying, “… God, I feel like shit this morning, but I have to say what an absolutely excellent party.” It was 12.30 in the afternoon.

  “Espresso, please,” I said. Alex’s skull shone through his thinning hair over a copy of the Financial Times.

  “Hello Alex,” I said. He didn’t look up. The girl behind the counter gave me the coffee and my change; only then did Alex murmur, “Bring any baggage with you?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” I said. I’d forgotten this man was paranoid. His brief but frequent stays in prison had left him with a skilful technique in rolling cigarettes thinner than matchsticks, an obsession about being followed and a lifelong aversion to any food that wasn’t healthy.

  “We’ll sit over there at the back so I can see who comes in.” We moved towards the rear and two vacant chairs.

  “Did you go round the block a couple of times to make sure?”

  “Relax, will you.”

  “You have to play by the rules,” said Alex. “Only careless fools don’t have rules, and they get caught.”

  I thought that was pretty good coming from the man who got caught at least once a year. “Rules,” I said over the top of my coffee cup. “I didn’t know that you were an advocate of rules.”

  “Well, I am now,” said Alex. “Rules, you’ve got to know what to do in any situation, so that you can do it before you even think about it.”

  “Sounds like something the psychiatrist at that last prison told you. What sort of rules are we talking about here, Alex?”

  “Depends, mate. Like if you’re at sea and your boat starts to sink, always jump off the high side. That’s a good rule, if you should ever be in that situation.”

  I said, “But I’m not expecting to be at sea on a sinking boat in the near future.”

  “Oh no?” said Alex. He leaned forward. “Well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that, mate.” He gave me that conspiratorial wink of his and a little snort.

  “What are you hearing then, Alex?” I always found it difficult to believe that Alex Chapman was a man who could keep a secret. He was such a transparent rogue. But he had as many secrets as any other man did. Alex was the archetype professional computer hacker and thief.

  I ordered another espresso coffee for us both.

  “What am I hearing?” he said, repeating my question.

  “Well, I keep hearing about you and that firm you work for, all over.”

  “Where, for instance?”

  “Well, I’m not at liberty to reveal my sources as they say, but I can state without fear of contradiction that you in particular my friend are as hot as a red chilli pepper as far as a certain person is concerned.”

  He paused, and I didn’t press him, as he is a man who hates to be hurried.

  I waited. He said. “Certain parties, let’s say the whispering in the jungle, is that you are hard on the heels of something very special?”

  It’s important to know when to be cagey and when to admit the truth. I nodded. Alex was pleased to be right. He went on, “If you were an individual associated with the illegal buying and selling of certain types of hardware, shall we say…” He looked at me quizzically.

  “Yes,” I said a little doubtfully.

  “So you agreed to supply a certain group of individuals overseas with this hardware, and were planning to finance it with the proceeds from the sale of packages recovered from a boat at the bottom of the English Channel, that doesn’t even officially exist. Imagine then, suddenly finding out that these foreigners who had signed the perforated side of the contract were planning to pay you in funny money. And that the firm employed to dive down and recover these packages, were now holding on to them. You’d be right cut up, wouldn’t you?”

  “If the packages came out of this sunken boat that doesn’t exist, you mean?” I said attentively. But my mind was already on this revelation about Robert Flackyard and illegal arms dealing. As I had thought he was using his party loving playboy lifestyle to take him around the globe as a cover. The association with drugs was purely to finance these deals. Alex came back into focus, saying…

  “Yes, mate. The bloke involved in getting these packages out of the boat for this individual would suddenly become a spare part in a garage. If you get my meaning.”

  I got his meaning.

  Alex said, “I wouldn’t like to be quoted as to who finds you superfluous to requirements, but I hear the air in Bournemouth can be very chilly even at this time of year.”

  To say that I didn’t like the situation would have been the understatement of the millennium. I knew that I would have to re-contact LJ very soon or he would be calling Fiona Price to find out where I was. I didn’t much like the idea of Alex knowing so much about the firm’s business. But he had confirmed what I had suspected from the start. There was definitely someone inside the firm leaking information about this and possibly other assignments.

  At this stage I still had no idea who this person might be and nothing substantial with which to confront him or her. But that might change after I’d spoken to another old acquaintance who still walked the corridors of power.

  * * * I left Alex, walked around the corner and jumped into the first of a long line of waiting black London taxis. The jovial face of the cab driver looked back at me through the rear view mirror as he asked me where I wanted to go.

  “Straight to Soho, and no sight seeing, thank you,” I said. He smirked and pulled out into the traffic. I knew exactly where to find Jasper Lockhart at two-thirty in the afternoon.

  A young oriental hostess wearing nothing but a thong showed me to a table near the main stage. With a smile, I was asked what I wanted to drink and informed that the next show would be starting in five minutes. On the raised circular stage, three polished chrome tubes, about two inches in diameter and attached at the base and on the ceiling, stood alone. From behind, I felt a hand on my left shoulder and the words, “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this.”

  Looking round, Jasper Lockhart’s face was grinning boyishly down at me.

  “Jake Dillon, you old rogue, what brings you to this salubrious establishment.”

  “Actually you do, Jasper.” I said matter of factly. The firm dealt with him when we had to, but always one had the feeling that he was likely to walk off with your wallet if you took your eyes off him for even a minute. He gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder before starting to walk off towards the stairs leading down to what the sign said were the private dance rooms. “Come on,” he said, “It’s quieter down there.”

  He had an accent like an announcer at a country gymkhana. Professional instinct prevailed over personal feeling. I followed him downstairs, where he headed straight for one of the rooms in which a red haired girl of no more than twenty moved around the pole in time to the music, for those who craved the intimacy of a personal dance or two. I endured five minutes of the spectacle, while Jasper watched the nubile young thing rhythmically gyrate up and down and around the pole, even upside down in time to the music.

  When she had finished he slipped another twentypound note inside her G-string, gently patting the bare cheek of her arse as he asked her if she would be working later. Apparently she would.

  The downstairs bar area was much quieter. Jasper insisted on buying more drinks, although he had already been drinking heavily. He was wearing a handmade Italian suit with the jacket collar partly turned up at the back; his tie was askew, and stained with splashes of pasta sauce
from lunch. He usually produced in me a feeling of amusement, but I was far from feeling like laughing today.

  “Nice holiday in Bournemouth?” He was always fishing around for stub ends of information that he could peddle. He squeezed a slice of lemon into his drink, gnawed at the yellow pulp and sucked the rind.

  I said, “What are you looking so happy about, have you just won the lottery?”

  “Fat chance of that,” he said, giving a brief laugh. He threw a peanut in the air, catching it in his mouth. His face had the chiselled features of a film star; long shiny hair swept backwards over his head and struck his collar, while an artful wave fell forward across his forehead.

  “You look younger every time I see you,” he said. Jasper Lockhart was a congenital liar - he told lies outside working hours.

  In the world that I had left behind, forms of address among those men working together varied. There’s ‘sir’ used by those high and mighty civil servants, who do not wish to pursue any form of relationship, the ‘nickname’ used by those who have never grown up. The Christian names of friends and the surname form of address among those who think they are still at university. Only men like Jasper Lockhart are called by their full name.

  “What are you doing this afternoon? Fancy a little drive down to Hampshire? I’ve just bought myself a small country place, got a couple of the dance girls coming down with me. Make up a foursome, if you like? Back in time for last orders, what you say?”

  “You are living it up,” I said, “you’ve come a long way since 1998, haven’t you, Jasper?”

  In 1998, Jasper Lockhart overheard, and covertly recorded a conversation between two junior ministers in the corridors of power, which he promptly sold, to three separate tabloid newspapers for undisclosed sums. He was immediately fired from his job, threatened with a prison term for breaking the Official Secrets Act. But, nothing more came of it, except that Jasper had the last laugh on the Government at that time. In a way it was this incident that gave me the idea for the new European Network. Now Jasper made a living by hanging around and offering hospitality to foolish people with access to secret or semi-secret information.

  “Yes, I live well,” he said, “picked up my new Jag convertible last week, had it specially painted in the colour of my choice – you’re right, life’s just one long party.”

  At the next table a small group of advertising executives and their clients sat drinking Champagne at one hundred and fifty pounds a bottle, paid for with the generosity that only an expense account brings. Extolling the virtues of their particular strategy to generate higher sales volumes of a particular software system or something as interesting, no doubt.

  Jasper took a sip of his cocktail, and crunched the bright red cherry while talking at the same time. “Could sell you a morsel of information you’d like I reckon.”

  “The private email address of the Prime Minister?”

  “Very funny, but keep the wisecracks to yourself.”

  “What have you got,” I said.

  Looking around furtively, he said, “It’s going to cost you a grand.”

  “Look, Jasper, just give me the sales pitch, we’ll get to the estimates later.”

  “Well, I got a call from a certain party in Winchester the other day. This chap’s a real high-class operator, only gets into very expensive houses, if you know what I mean. I’ve got to know all the breaking and entering boys.”

  “Anything they pick up unusual or official looking, I get to see very quickly.”

  “They know I’ll pay top dollar with no frills attached. Anyway, this villain unbeknown to him is doing over a high profile Cabinet Minister’s country residence, on the outskirts of Winchester, when he flips through the desk and finds a rather tasty leather desk diary. Knowing I’m a collector he passes it across to me for five hundred notes. What I’m offering you is just one page…”

  I caught the attention of a hostess over Jasper Lockhart’s shoulder and it amused me to see him spin round as if the boys in blue were just about to lift him out of his very expensive jacket.

  I said, “A vodka lime soda and another of whatever my friend is drinking, but can you ensure that there are two pieces of lemon and at least three cherries, please.”

  Jasper smiled in relief and embarrassment.

  He said, “Phew, for one moment…”

  “Yes, you did, didn’t you.”

  At the next table one of the ad-men said, “…but excellent copy stateside.”

  “What do you think, then?” Jasper Lockhart ran his tongue round his mouth in an attempt to dislodge the particles of lemon and cherry.

  “So you’re still doing a bit of ‘Politico black marketing’ on the side,” I said.

  “Well, we’ve all got to live, haven’t we?” This was a man with little or no scruples; he would even rob his old granny of her pension. Given half a chance.

  “I’ll want a second opinion?” I said.

  “I haven’t told you what’s on the page yet.”

  “You aren’t going to tell and trust, are you?” It didn’t seem like him.

  “You must be joking. All you’re getting is just the first and last word.”

  “OK, what are these words?”

  “The first word is ‘Italian,’ the last word is ‘hardware’. Thought that might make you sit up and pay attention.” He used a toothpick to remove a stubborn piece of lemon, from between his teeth.

  “I don’t get the bit about ‘hardware’.”

  “Weapons, you moron.”

  “So, what about them.”

  “Don’t take the piss, Dillon! Retired Italian Generals?”

  “We don’t get involved with the military, past or present.” I pretended to think deeply. “There’s a chap called Jerry Franklin at the U.S Embassy, here in London. More his kind of thing, I’d say.”

  “Listen, pal, it’s got the name of your firm on the same page.”

  “I’m not deaf, you know,” I said irritably, “I didn’t write it.”

  “Well,” said Jasper Lockhart somewhat subdued. “I’m just trying to wise you up.”

  “That’s as may be, but still no sale.”

  The drinks came. In Jasper Lockhart’s iced glass were three bright red cherries. Two slices of lemon and a slice of lime clung to the edge.

  “Well, I didn’t think they’d do that,” he said in a breathless voice, and to tell you the truth, nor did I.

  I said, “How big is it?” He raised his eyes to me, and only with difficulty remembered what we had been talking about. “How big?” He measured about fifteen centimetres by ten with his fingers.

  “How thick?”

  “About three centimetres – why?”

  “Doesn’t sound like a grand’s worth to anyone I know.”

  “Hilarious, I’m only selling one page for a grand.”

  “You always did like a laugh,” I said.

  “So make me an offer then.”

  “Nothing. As I’ve already said, the firm doesn’t get involved with military stuff.”

  Jasper Lockhart speared the cherries with a cocktail stick after chasing them around the bright pink drink.

  “Look, I’ll tell you what I’m prepared to do.” I said. “Bring it to my address here in London at nine this evening, and please be on time. I’ll have Vince Sharp, my department’s special operations specialist, come along as well. But, I can tell you now, I don’t think there’s a flying pig’s chance, that he’ll be able to get the Partners interested in it. Even if he does, payment will be by the normal route, and you know how long that can take, so don’t go spending it just yet.”

  The ad-man at the next table said, “But the market in India is enormous!” I knew that Jasper Lockhart was acquainted with our friend Oliver Hawkworth the Cabinet Minister and owner of the Gin Fizz. They had both worked at the Treasury around the same time. Either he hadn’t put the connection with Ferran & Cardini together yet and was trading off the cuff, or he did know, and was playing a game
of cat and mouse.

  * * * When I got back to the hotel, the plastic plants were still heavy with dust, and there was a different middle aged man sitting at the small reception desk clipping his fingernails with a pair of oversized scissors. I remembered the name I had given his Slavic friend. “Fisher,” I said. He reached back without looking, unhooked my room key and cracked it down on the worn desktop without a pause in his manicure routine.

  “Visita’ waiting for ya’.” He said with a heavy Cockney accent. He stabbed the scissors upward. “In ya’ room.”

  I leaned forward until my face was close to his. His razor had missed parts of his face and his rancid breath smelt of stale coffee and cigarettes, with a little dash of rotten food between the teeth thrown in. “Do you always let strangers into your guests’ rooms?” I asked.

  He stopped what he was doing – without haste. “Yeah, when they tell me they’re related or official, I do. You got a problem with that – ‘ave ya’?”

  I picked up my key, and began to climb the stairs two at a time. “Yeah,” I heard him say again.

  I went up to the third. The light was on in my room. I switched off the hall light, put the key in the door and turned it quickly.

  I flung the door open wide and moved through it stooped.

  Since joining the firm’s special operations department, I’ve gone through life making sure there is no light behind me when entering a darkened area, scanning rooms for listening bugs and hidden cameras. This becomes second nature and then on one occasion it all becomes worthwhile.

  However, this was not one of those occasions.

  Spread-eagled full length on the floral patterned bedspread was the seventeen stone weight of Vince Sharp; an old leather bush hat was parked over his face.

  Chapter 19

  “Steady, big man - it’s only me.” The words came muffled from somewhere under the bush hat and the sentence ended in a chesty cough. All of Vince Sharp’s sentences ended in a cough. A hand removed the hat from his constantly jovial round face. I straightened up, feeling ever so slightly foolish.