Harry was biding his time, waiting until I had to move away from the window, but what he hadn’t allowed for was double jeopardy. Fiona pushed open the door, her gun pointed at his genitals. I joined her inside, closing and bolting the door behind me.
The three of us stood there in silence until Harry, having regained his composure, said, “Welcome to the dream factory, people.”
Fiona and I stood there and said nothing.
“Who the hell are you people anyway? I know you’re not cops,” said Harry.
“No, were not cops, Harry. But I can call one if you like?” You could cut through the tension that had mounted inside the cellar.
“So, tell me, Harry, why did you plant a bomb under my boss’s car? Was it him you were after or the opium inside the glove compartment? Or did a little bird inside Ferran & Cardini give you a call and tell you that LJ’s car was going to be moved?”
“You’ve got it all wrong, Ace,” said Harry. He was tanned darker than the last time I’d seen him, and the skin where his watch had been was like a white bangle. His wrinkled forehead was covered in beads of sweat and he kept wetting his lips with the end of his tongue.
“What’s the use of explaining,” he continued. “I really thought you were an OK sort of guy, a little stiff assed at times, but OK. No hard feelings. As they say back home, Ace, when Fall comes you can always tell which trees are the evergreens!”
“Well, where you’re going, Harry, it’s going to be winter all year long,” I said.
He looked across at me and gave a rueful smile.
He said, “Son, why is it I get the feeling that you’re shouting at me from the other side of the highway when all you’ve got is small talk on the sidewalk. If you get my meaning.” He was cold and as hard as the northern mistral winds of Southern France.
“How did you get into this racket?” I asked him quietly.
“Can I sit down?” he asked.
I nodded, but kept the automatic aimed at him.
“Look, we’ve all got problems, Ace,” Harry said, as he sat down heavily, “and they have to be put into perspective; the trouble is that problems look big close up.” Fiona got out her cigarettes and threw one to Harry along with a lighter. He took his time lighting one up.
“You don’t have to play games, I know all about your enterprise here,” I said.
“Yeah, so tell me Ace, what do you know?”
“What I know, is that I came here to retrieve certain items from a sunken boat off the coast of Dorset. Simple enough, wouldn’t you say, Harry? But something obviously went wrong on the night she went down - didn’t it? I’d guess that just before the Gin Fizz was deliberately scuttled someone or something became a problem. Your precious consignment of opium goes down with the boat. More than likely the pickup was late and the captain panicked. This must have made you very unhappy, Harry. Especially as you’d almost certainly had to pay extra to have it transferred to the Gin Fizz just off the French coast.”
“I’m introduced to a certain gentleman by the name of George Ferdinand, who turns out to be an exsoldier by the name of George Thomas Ferlind, who served in the same regiment, and at the same time as our Cabinet Minister, Oliver Hawkworth. As I see it, he is either working for Hawkworth or with you, Harry. Either way he is in a sweet position to keep an eye on Robert Flackyard and his activities down here in Dorset.”
“Yeah, you are right up to a point Ace, the opium should have been picked up just before she was scuttled. The guy sent to collect it was thirty minutes late, by the time he arrived that little weasel of a captain had put the Gin Fizz on the bottom,” said Harry reflectively. He nodded and suddenly began talking quickly.
“I got involved with this racket, because, well, because I needed the dough.”
“I met George in a bar in London about three years ago, and I suppose we hit it off instantly because for the next two hours I went through the whole mess back home. My pal Marcus Cohen was on a tax evasion charge at the time and it looked as if he would be going to the pen for a serious amount of time.”
“Well, I couldn’t just let him rot in a jail. I got enough money from my first little venture with George to pay off his entire tax bill including the interest and penalties. Back then, though, it was a simple case of buying the processed stuff in, cutting it, and then selling it on to the smaller dealers outside of London. As I say, we made a huge bundle of dough in a very short space of time. After about a year, we decided that there was far more money to be made by processing the raw opium and then distributing it to the guys from whom we had been buying. But to move into this league you need cash and lots of it. George felt that we needed another investor, someone who had a hard business head and who wasn’t afraid to get to get their hands dirty from time to time. That’s when Oliver Hawkworth got involved.”
“That’s all very interesting, Harry, but you can save it all for the police.”
“Be smart, Jake,” Harry pleaded, “go and take a look at what some nice person has paid into your bank account recently.”
“Nice try, Harry,” I said, “but no, I checked all of my accounts yesterday, and all monies have been accounted for.”
Harry drew on the cigarette Fiona had given him and waved it gently in the air. His initial burst of nervous talking had passed and now his speech was slower and more cautious. “Listen,” he said. “It won’t be long before the Government, here in the UK, legalises cannabis. I know that for sure, from my buddy Oliver Hawkworth. Then the tobacco companies will move in; there’ll be tastefully designed packs, sold in every corner shop and supermarket in the country. The warning on the pack will read something like; “inhaling smoke will make you seriously mellow.”
I said, “But this is now, Harry, and were not talking a little dope here. I suppose, though, that people who deal serious drugs and make very large sums of money out of it are often misunderstood.”
“You are such a wise guy,” Harry said. “OK, so I did it for the money, and as I got it so I spent it. You know how it is with money, Ace.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “Tell me how it is, Harry?”
“Pick up a handful of sand and see how it slips through your fingers before you know it. It disappears like youthfulness. Hell, Ace, I’m not getting any younger. This is my last chance at making enough dough to retire on. Believe me when I say that in this industry it’s a miracle if you make it to retirement, with the type of enemies you make on the way up.”
“So, Harry, is George Ferdinand one of those enemies?”
Harry grinned. “Hell Ace, I know him far to well to be a friend,” he said.
I waited while he fiddled with his cigarette. I knew he’d have something to say about George.
“You think George is a really complex character, don’t you? Decorated army career, ending with court marshal and to top it all a dishonourable discharge. I bet that’s eating away at you, not knowing whom he’s working for or whether it was him who blew up your friend. Real puzzling it must be.”
Dropping the cigarette butt on the floor he stubbed it out with his shoe as he asked Fiona for another. She pushed the pack across the bench towards him, and after taking one he threw them over for me to catch. I brought the automatic up from my side, knocking the pack to the ground, cigarettes splayed over the floor. Harry apologised, making a move towards my feet to pick them up, but seeing the gun-barrel move in his direction he thought better of it and sank back into his chair. We exchanged glances; I shook my head, and Harry smiled.
“No strikes, no runs, no problems,” he said.
“So, tell me how I can stop being puzzled about Ferdinand,” I said.
“He’s malevolent,” said Harry. “ Whatever form that may take, I’m against it. George has a very nasty mind. The only reason we haven’t come to blows and tried to beat each other to a pulp is because I’m such an easy-going sort of slob. But he’s just obsessive about everything having to be in its place and tidy, all of the time. Even the guy’s appeara
nce is impeccable. What a nut.”
I nodded. I had thought that the first time I had met him, those darting eyes and profuse sweating were sure signs that dear old George was indeed fastidious about his appearance and definitely not dealing with a full deck of cards.
“Everyone’s against you, Harry, and yet you are such a nice guy at heart,” I said, and I smiled. I was thinking of Charlie, but I smiled at Harry.
“Round outside means a soft centre,” Harry said with a wide grin.
He pointed to a cigarette near his foot. I nodded and he picked it up, lighting it from his stub. “This man isn’t interested in anything other than himself, he’s not an idealist or intellectual. He thinks with his muscle. Guys like George work themselves into an early grave, always scheming and scamming. Treading on toes and upsetting the wrong people, in wars they appear to be heroes and get awarded honours - or a court marshal!”
“Sometimes both. George said that he had been recommended for some sort of gallantry award at the time he’d been caught dealing smack and cocaine while on active service in a war zone.”
“It was a DSO,” I said.
“Well, there you are. Like I told you, no sex, no drink, and no politics, a dedicated anal retentive if ever there was one. But probably the best guy in Europe with explosives.”
“The best now maybe,” I said. “But before Charlie McIntyre met with his untimely end, he might have been in Charlie’s league – but only in his dreams”
Harry’s face tightened like a clenched fist. He said, “George would not have done that. I don’t like the guy but he would never kill in cold blood, believe me.”
“All right,” I said, “we’ll leave that for a minute. Tell me how Flackyard fits into the picture. And before you start: I’m not a policeman, Harry. My reasons for being here don’t include handing you in at the nearest police station. I’m here for information: set up the facts, and then you can fade as far away from here as you like as far as I’m concerned.”
Fiona rose to her feet and walked over to me.
“Fade?” she said. “Do you know what you’re saying?” She moved across to the equipment like a Luddite and swept some of it to the floor with a crash of disintegrating glass and metal denting as it hit the flagstones.
I said absolutely nothing.
Harry said, “Sure he does, cutie, he’s just too smart to mention it before he has all the info he wants.”
Fiona froze. She said to me, “sorry,” and sat down again.
“I’m not messing with you, Harry,” I said, “I’ll shut you down as far as the UK is concerned but I’ll give you a chance to get out and away.”
“That’s very magnanimous of you, Ace,” Harry said. He was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, massaging his eyebrows and tired eyes with the tips of his large fingers. “OK, so what do you want to know?”
“Who is Robert Flackyard?” I asked.
“Boy, you’re really skipping the easy ones,” he said. “Robert Flackyard; people think a lot of him hereabouts. The image he promotes is that of a legitimate businessman and benefactor to many local charities. He says that a man in such a privileged position of power and wealth, as he is, should put back into the community some of what he has taken out.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
“The guy’s a phoney, he’s nothing more than a Cossack and a crook. His kind are all the same.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, that I’ve paid him a sum of ten thousand pounds a month via an offshore account for protection and an assurance that the local cops don’t come a calling.”
“Protection?”
“Yes, that’s it. I could afford to throw him a load of dough each month, in return for a hassle free existence and because he is a major client of my little venture down here in Dorset. Unfortunately for me, it all backfired when you turned up and swiped my opium from the Gin Fizz. Flackyard tried to persuade you to give it back, but man are you a tough nut to crack, eh?”
“Don’t be bitter, Harry,” I said. He kneaded his soft brown face again with his huge hairy hands, and as his eyes and nose emerged from the open fingers he smiled a humourless smile.
“And Ferdinand,” I said, “how did he get along with Flackyard?”
“OK. Flackyard is indifferent, as he tends to be around all people. George is just a little too creepy around him for my liking.”
“Have you ever gone into a room and heard any conversations between them that perhaps you weren’t supposed to hear? Any talk of hardware, for instance?”
“Well, thinking back, there were a few times when the talk just stopped when I walked in on them, but I’ve never overheard them actually talking.”
“Never, and that’s all?” I said. “Listen, Harry, we’ll play it your way, if you like.”
“But let me remind you that we’re in a sound proofed room in the middle of the night with only the sea to keep us company. I’d like to think that we could continue our conversation in a gentlemanly manner. Or perhaps you’d prefer that I work you over a little and then string you up on that hook over there and pump your veins full of that shit you’ve been producing, let’s say one hundred percent pure. That should send you on your way to Mars. The choice is yours Harry, you can walk out of here free, or I’ll give you to the local police, and they can carry you out in a black body bag.”
“Just try,” Harry said.
“You’ve got me mixed up with all those nice guys, Harry. I will try.” I said.
There was a short, sharp silence.
“Hey, Ace, I’m no smack head,” said Harry. His tan had disappeared now.
“A hundred per cent pure won’t just send me to Mars, it’ll send me to the undertakers.” He folded his arms tightly.
“Harry, you can be sure I won’t kill you. Not with the first needle anyway.”
“You will survive for the second dose and the others until I decide to hand you over to the authorities. By then you will be so dependent on the stuff, you will beg me to let you have a hit. You’ll talk, Harry, believe me. Look upon it as sales research – hell, it’s probably tax-deductible.”
Harry’s head sank forward and he rocked gently in his seat as he tried to wake out of the nightmare in which I existed. When he continued to speak it was in an impersonal monotone. “George Ferdinand used to work for Flackyard. George had a great respect for him. Even after we had enough money not to worry, George would continue to say ‘sir’ to him. George had contacts all over Europe, and they all liked him. Maybe you find that hard to believe, but it’s true. George had only to whisper about something he wanted done and bingo, it was done. He has always arranged the supplies of the opium, while my end of the business was to process and sell.”
“How did the opium usually arrive?” I asked.
“Always by ship, once a month. The cross channel ferry from Cherbourg to Poole has been our regular mule, if you like, for well over a year. There is a French side to this operation. They would send a diver down at night, while the ferry was in dock, and he’d secure the opium in a specially designed watertight metal case to the hull using magnetic clamps.
“As the port authorities never check the outside of the hull below the water line this has been an extremely safe and effective way of transporting our supplies to the UK. All we had to do was listen on a short wave radio to the shipping talk and when the ferry started her approach into Poole Harbour we would dive from inside the boathouse using a powered underwater sled to get out to the ship quickly. As you are aware, only an expert diver would be able to get under the hull of a moving vessel and remove the metal case that was held on the bilge keel by the magnetic clamps.”
“Who dived at this end, Harry?” I asked quietly.
“Well, at first George did, until that is recently…” He let the words hang in mid air and then went on smugly. “That is until he met up with his old chum Rumple. What a piece of luck, and how easy to get him on board. In fact it was as easy
as taking candy from a kid.”
“How many times did Rumple dive for you?” I asked.
“Three times,” Harry said, holding up three fingers.
“Go on.”
“As you can now see, this house has played a vital part in what we did.”
“Once the opium was back here, we would process and distribute it, all from this house. George had contacts with haulage companies all over the place.”
“The drivers would be paid well for carrying in their cab a briefcase. This was full of smack on the way to the cartels up and down the country. It’s as easy as that, Ace. How am I doing?”
“You’re doing OK,” I said. “Your boat; did George ever use that?”
“Sure, he’s a far better sailor than I’ll ever be, he borrowed it whenever he wanted. It was Flackyard borrowing it whenever it suited him that made me sore. I’d never trust the guy alone, I don’t care if he is the local Mr Big, there’s something not right about the guy.”
“Tell me more about Robert Flackyard,” I said.
“Flackyard drives around town in his flash chauffeur driven cars like he was a king. Thinks he owns the place. He has sent George along at night to borrow the boat like he’s doing me a favour. Flackyard the wise guy. One day I get back here; he’s down in the cellar, helping himself to the goodies.”
“‘I’ve gotcha red-handed,’ I say, smiling like I’m joking. ‘My dear Mr Caplin, I’ve never been caught red handed, in my entire Life.’ He says – nonchalant as you like. ‘So who cares?’ I say. ‘I do,’ he says, ‘and I’m the only one,’ and off he drives with my smack in his pocket.”
“He’s in up to his neck with a few politicians both locally and in London.”
“Only last week, there was a group of Japanese business tycoons over. The official reason for their visit was to strengthen trading relations. Hell, they were here to negotiate a narcotics deal with Flackyard, and to sample some of ours,” Harry raised his head and said, “you’re not kidding me about letting me fade away, are you? Because if I’m shooting my mouth off for nothing…”
Constantine Legacy (Jake Dillon Adventure Series) Page 17