Chameleon - A City of London Thriller

by J Jackson Bentley

  “Ah, it is a pity; I made more money on the stake out than I took in the cafe that entire two weeks,” Franco lamented as he departed to the kitchen.

  Dee arrived exactly on time and sat with her colleague. She took his hand in hers and squeezed it gently. She hadn’t seen him since he had been back to Newcastle after the shooting.

  “Are you OK, Pete?” she asked, genuine concern in her voice.

  “No, Dee, I’m not. Not really. It’ll take a while yet. But I want to keep busy.” Dee nodded in understanding. She had been obliged to rest up for almost two months after being shot twice in quick succession last year, and it nearly drove her insane. She rubbed both of her old bullet wounds unconsciously as they always ached more in cold, damp weather.

  “It is the beautiful Miss Conrad!” Franco enthused as he lifted her right hand to kiss it. “I live in the hope that someday you will return my affection and return to Sicily with me as my wife.”

  Dee smiled as she replied.

  “Firstly, it’s Mrs Hammond now.” Dee displayed her ring finger, and Franco looked crestfallen. “Second, Mrs Bagio might have something to say about that, and, thirdly, you don’t come from Sicily, Frankie, you were born in Chislehurst.” Her suitor replied in a whisper, dropping all pretence of an Italian accent.

  “Congratulations, Mrs Hammond, but please keep your voice down. The tourists lap this stuff up.”

  ***

  In the hour that they spent together, Pete explained all that he had been able find out about Gillian Davis’ childhood. He produced an article from the Financial Times that explained the generous nature of Ms Davis’ sell off of Celebrato, and handed the press cutting and the file to Dee.

  “Simon has done a lot of the work, and I’ve added the insights I gained in Hampshire. If you turn to the back page you’ll see something interesting.” Pete waited for Dee to turn the pages.

  There, in the back of the manila folder, was a Google map showing the exact location of Denton Miles III’s estate near Lynchburg, Virginia. It was accompanied by a satellite version of the same plan, and a photograph of the plantation house which occupied the site.

  “Sooner or later she’ll end up there, you know, Pete.”

  “Maybe sooner than you think.” Pete pulled a post-it note from his wallet. “As of yesterday Gillian Davis has a search and arrest warrant out on her, issued under orders from MI5. According to your friend in MI5, they believe that she has fled the country. Oddly enough, they believe she flew out of Newcastle.” Pete’s Geordie accent suddenly seemed more pronounced.

  “I’m flying to the US with Katie tomorrow. If Ms Davis shows up in Virginia, I’ll make sure I’m there. I’ll have to clear it with Tom Vastrick, but I don’t foresee any problem with me spending a few days tracking down an assassin with a price on her head.” Dee’s focus altered and she stared into the distance, way beyond the dark wet pavements of Piccadilly. Geordie tried to regain her attention and succeeded in a dramatic fashion.

  “Before you think about bringing her in, you might want to look at page eleven.”

  Dee turned to page eleven, where she saw a full colour headshot of a handsome American man with salt and pepper hair and George Clooney style weathered face. She looked down at the notation that identified him as Denton Miles III and gasped when she read the short bio Simon had prepared.

  “I don’t believe it!” she blurted, finishing the sentence with a string of unladylike expletives.

  Chapter 46

  Director of Operations Office, MI5, London, Thursday 7pm.

  Maureen Lassiter wanted to go home. She was tired and emotionally drained and she was needy. She knew that Barry would be at her apartment and she needed some desperate, physical activity to take her mind off things. Barry wasn’t the best lover in the world but she didn’t have to encourage him to handle her roughly. As she got older her passions grew stronger and all embracing lovemaking made the years slip away. In the midst of her passion she felt like a girl again.

  Her mobile phone rang with a tone that sounded like an old fashioned bell telephone ringing in the distance.

  The news wasn’t good. The two clowns in Cuba had managed to lose Gillian Davis and now they were relying on their back up plan; wait for her to return to the hotel and snatch her. They actually seemed confident that this was still overwhelmingly likely, and had gone as far as hiring an outside team for the snatch. Maureen wasn’t so confident. Thom Passarel and Jared Stevens had been the victims of cutbacks. They were now only part time and they received little or no training. They were well out of touch.

  Maureen listened to their timetable for the plane taking off from Cuba with Davis on board and the estimated landing time at Brize Norton Airfield, then she said her goodbyes and hung up.

  Before placing her mobile in her bag she dialled her own phone. It was an odd feeling. She hadn’t rung that number in the ten years she had been living there. What would be the point? Normally there would be no-one there. Maybe in the future when she and Barry were together...

  “Maureen?” Barry sounded impatient and tetchy. Her message was not going to improve his temperament.

  “Barry, I think she’s gone. The part timers are convinced she has no idea they are watching her, but my guess is that she spotted them a mile off and they won’t be seeing her again.”

  Barry swore loudly, frustration and anger getting the better of him.

  “OK. She’s travelling on her own passport so put her name on the Terror Watch List at every airport which takes direct flights from Cuba, and there aren’t that many. Concentrate on the short haul flights, like Panama. She will arouse suspicion if she travels long haul without her luggage.” He paused. “With any luck we’ll get her overnight. Anyway, you may as well come home, I need you here.”

  Maureen Lassiter closed down her work station and set off for home. She decided that she would allow Barry to work out his frustrations on her if he wanted, as long as his pent up aggression had a carnal outlet.

  Chapter 47

  Green Earth Fashions, Church Place, London, Thursday 9pm

  It was dark and cold outside by the time Dee and Katie exited Green Earth by the side door. The alleyway into which they alighted was narrow and poorly lit, but a warm and comfortable car was waiting for them just a few yards away.

  Dee stepped out first and kept Katie behind her whilst she scanned the alleyway. There were no hysterical fans around. It was too wet and too cold. No-one was visible in the line of sight that Dee had established between the exit and the car.

  She was just about to usher Katie into the alley when she noticed the barest wisp of water vapour dissipating into the darkness. She breathed out herself and noticed that her warm expelled breath formed a noticeable cloud. Someone was hiding and trying to conceal their exhalations. Dee turned and whispered to Katie, asking her to go back inside until Dee came back to collect her. Katie looked down the alley but saw nothing amiss, and a puzzled frown formed on her face. Nonetheless, she trusted Dee’s instincts and did as she was asked.

  ***

  Dee had wrapped up tight and warm. She was wearing a heavy coat and scarf over her jeans and polo neck sweater. She unbuttoned the coat and removed the scarf from her neck, keeping her leather gloves on. If there was an attacker in the alley she needed the freedom to move easily and use her martial art skills. Additionally she had no intention of giving any assailant the chance to throttle her with her own scarf.

  She walked casually down the alley towards the recessed doorway where she had noticed the wisp of vapour and then, as a diversion, she called out to no-one.

  “Katie, tuck in behind me. You never know what might happen.”

  She had barely finished the sentence when a figure leapt out in front of her. She could see it was a man, and he was holding something at chest level with both hands. Whatever it was it looked dangerous, and it was aimed at Dee’s head.

  “Bitch!” the man shouted. “I’ll make you pay!” His angry voice was dis
torted beyond recognition.

  Dee marvelled at the fact that almost all amateur assailants felt an urge to issue a warning before acting, whereas if they acted and yelled at the same time the victim would be caught unawares. Dee sensed, as much as saw, something coming towards her face and swivelled to avoid it, whilst launching a kick at the assailant’s outstretched hands. A stream of cold liquid splashed onto her coat which absorbed the most of the noxious liquid, but a little sprayed over her ear. The smell of the liquid hit her senses and she was outraged. The strong chlorine smell told her that someone had been trying to blind her by squirting bleach into her eyes.

  At the same instant she recognised the odour, her foot connected with her assailant’s weapon and his wrists. He grunted as the force from Dee’s kick cracked his left wrist and dislocated his outspread left thumb. Then he screamed.

  ***

  The scream wasn’t that of a man who had sustained minor injuries to his hands. He screamed as if he was dying. Dee flung off her bleach covered coat and wiped her stinging ear.

  “Son of a bitch!” she muttered. “This is undiluted bleach.” In a second she had both feet planted on the pavement and was ready to beat her opponent into the ground. Her training had kicked in instinctively, and she had adopted a closed, long and high stance. In other words, she was presenting a closed or limited view of her body. Her feet were wide apart with her weight resting equally on each foot, and, she was standing tall, ready to deflect any incoming blows or to launch an attack.

  The man stumbled towards her, his arms crossed over his face, still screaming.

  “I’m blinded!” he cried as he moved ever closer. Dee felt she had no alternative. It could be a bluff, and in any event he had started the fracas. She threw out a series of combination punches to his unprotected midriff and chest, hearing a satisfying gasp as his lungs deflated. She finished with a hard kick to the groin which would have flattened her attacker’s testicles or sent them up as far as his throat.

  ***

  The assailant lay on the ground, crying and sobbing that he was blind, by the time Katie came out into the alley with the security guards. Dee knelt beside the injured man with her scarf ready to act as temporary restraints.

  “Bobby,” she called, referring to one of the security men by name. “I need a torch and some bottles of water as soon as you can.”

  Dee dragged the man’s arms away from his face but it was too dark to see who he was. He resisted.

  “Stop rubbing the stuff into your eyes, you stupid sod,” she shouted.

  She pulled his arms behind his back and tied them together with her scarf, wrapping the ends around his ankles for good measure. Trussed up like a turkey, she was saving him from himself as much as restraining him.

  The torch arrived, and Bobby pointed it into the man’s face as Dee opened the water bottles and squirted the contents of each into her assailant’s eyes. He yelled and screamed but he could not resist. Dee held his head up and, opening one eye at a time, she squirted water in, rinsing out the bleach. When she was happy that both eyes were thoroughly rinsed, she took her own handkerchief and one from Bobby. Folding them carefully, she placed one over each eye.

  Katie came to Dee’s side and saw the man’s blistering red face for the first time. She shrieked his name in shocked surprise.

  “Rob Donkin!”

  ***

  By the time the paramedics had arrived and squirted a gooey salve into the young man’s eyes, he was in shock. He wasn’t moving but he was still groaning. The paramedic took a syringe, tapped it and injected Donkin’s left arm. Donkin noticeably relaxed, and the paramedic removed his restraints, holding the scarf out for Dee to take. He looked at her coat.

  “You’re covered in it as well,” he noted. “Do you need me to take a look?”

  “No, it’s only on my clothes. I’ll be fine. Just get him to hospital before the stupid little sod loses his eyesight.”

  Back in Green Earth offices, Dee discarded all of her outer clothing and washed any signs of bleach from her skin. Katie came in with some Green Earth branded clothing and some Tea Tree balm, which she tenderly applied to the red patches on Dee’s skin. Once Dee was fully dressed she examined the damage more closely. She had a couple of red patches on her ear and on her neck, and she could expect to lose some hair colour, but generally she was fine.

  Dee looked over to thank Katie for her help and saw tears in the younger woman’s eyes.

  “I didn’t see anyone in that alleyway, Dee; I would have walked right into that. I don’t know how I would have coped if you had been hurt protecting me.”

  Katie then rushed into Dee’s arms, pushing the older woman back against the countertop.

  “That what you pay me for, Katie,” Dee reminded her soothingly, as she hugged her young friend and kissed the top of her head.

  ***

  An hour later in the hotel suite the two women were relaxing in their pyjamas and robes when they heard a brisk knock, followed by a muffled voice from the other side of the door.

  “Dee, it’s DC Knox. We met last year.”

  Dee checked the TV monitor that showed who was outside the door, just to be sure. She smiled as she saw Detective Constable Knox of the Metropolitan Police, whose round friendly countenance Dee recalled with warmth. She invited him in, and they spent a few minutes reminiscing in the hallway about the case in 2009 where they met.

  Eventually the two old friends came into the lounge area and Dee introduced Katie Norman. Katie’s hair was brushed out, her face was make-up free and natural, but the thirty year old DC was still besotted with the star. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  “I can’t believe I’m meeting you face to face,” he spluttered, losing any cool or ‘street cred’ he might have imagined he possessed.

  “I’m always happy to meet one of Dee’s former boyfriends,” she teased. Knox flushed and spluttered again before Dee rebuked the young starlet with a single word. “Katie.”

  DC Knott composed himself and explained that Donkin had managed to get hold of some commercial strength bleach which contained around thirty to forty per cent concentrate, whereas domestic bleach contained only around five to fifteen per cent concentrate when compared to the whole volume of the container. It seemed the enraged publicity seeker had then poured the solution into a plastic water cannon designed for children’s water fights in swimming pools. It became clear that Dee’s kick must have sent the nozzle back in Donkin’s direction, dousing him with a face full of bleach. To make matters worse, the plastic container had cracked as well, pouring the remaining contents all over the would-be assailant.

  Donkin had well and truly been “hoist by his own petard”, in the words of the Detective Constable, who continued; “You may have saved him from blindness with your quick action, Dee, but the medics say it’s too early to tell. His eyes are badly burned.”

  Katie came over and sat beside Dee, holding her hand. Neither woman would have wished this on Rob Donkin, but they both knew that the idiot could have blinded them both had Dee not reacted as she did. They both concluded that there was little or no chance that, having filled their eyes with aggressive bleach, Donkin would have stayed around to rinse out their eyes with clean water. He was a coward at heart, and they rightly assumed he would have run away.

  In the next forty five minutes DC Knox took down their statements, acknowledged that they were free to fly to the USA as planned, and then stood to leave, hugging Dee and telling her that he was delighted that her gunshot injuries from the previous year had healed so well.

  “Don’t I get a hug too?” Katie demanded.

  DC Knox didn’t wait for a second invitation, and Katie winked at Dee over his shoulder as Dee simply shook her head and smiled.

  Chapter 48

  Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, Friday 8am.

  The cruise had been fun, and Gil had even managed to grab a couple of hours’ sleep, but in a few hours she had crossed that narrow
channel of the Atlantic Ocean separating the Bahamas from the USA. The Port Everglades Cruise Terminal was a far cry from the terminal in Nassau; to begin with it was filled with cruise ships four times larger than her own. The brilliantly white ships bore different cruise line logos, the most prominent being Royal Caribbean, and were ultra modern in their design. Gil walked down the gangplank onto the concrete jetty a couple of hundred dollars lighter than when she embarked. She was no gambler. In a few moments she reached the terminal building and, for the first time ever, she was standing in the ‘US Passports Only’ queue.

  “So, Miss Miles, you have a US passport and this is the first time you have used it?”

  “Yes. I read on the Homeland Security website that US passport holders should present their US Passports on entry and exit.” Gil had been expecting a mild inquisition, even though entering the US from the Bahamas through Fort Lauderdale was an extremely casual experience compared to entering the US via one of the major airports.

  “Welcome to the USA, Miss Miles, and congratulations on achieving dual nationality. Enjoy your stay.” The border control officer handed Gil back her new passport and smiled before summoning up the next passenger.

  Gil was in sunny Florida. The sun was shining but the temperature was in the low sixties Fahrenheit as it was still early. The average daytime temperature in January and February was around low seventies. Amply warm enough after the severe winter she had survived in the UK.

  She had a free weekend ahead of her before she travelled north to Virginia, and so she left the ferry terminal, crossed the road and stepped onto a free air conditioned coach, decorated to resemble a cruise liner. The decals down the side of the bus read “Disney Cruise Lines”. Gil was joining numerous other cruise passengers and was heading to Walt Disney World. As soon as she sat down the video screen lit up, and Mickey and Minnie Mouse beckoned her to the “Happiest Place on Earth”.

  The coach doors closed with a hiss and the bus moved off to make the three and a half hour journey to The Grand Floridian Hotel in Orlando. Built on the lakeside overlooking Disney’s Magic Kingdom, it was one of the most exclusive resort hotels in the USA. Gil relaxed into her reclining seat and smiled to herself. No-one had any idea where she was, she had millions in her Cayman Island account under the name of Talgarth Business Services Inc, and she was on her way to meet her hero, Donald Duck. Life didn’t get any better than this.