Eastman replaced the phone and admitted a frown to the pallid moonscape of his face. It was an unpromising start to the day. Nu-Celeb was not the only iron that he had in the fire-the celebrity calendar business had been created as cover for a raft of other, less legal activities that had made him a millionaire many times over. But it still irked him that he could take a bath to the tune of twenty large on the whim of a bunch of scrubbers like Mink Parfait. Half-caste scrubbers at that. Melvin Eastman did not subscribe to the dream of a multicultural Britain.
A key player in one of Eastman’s other business activities, a narrow-featured man in a black bomber jacket and baseball cap named Frankie Ferris, was sitting against the wall. He had a mug of tea in one hand and was smoking, tapping the ash into the bin with nervous and unnecessary frequency.
Folding the newspaper and placing it carefully in the same bin, Eastman turned to Ferris. Noted the pallor of his lips and the faint shake of the cigarette between his fingers.
“So, Frankie,” he said quietly. “How’s it going?”
“I’m awright, Mr. Eastman.”
“Returns coming in? Everyone paying their way?”
“Yeah. No problem.”
“Any special requests?”
“Harlow and Basildon both want ketamines. Asked if we can do ’em a trial batch.”
“No way. That stuff’s like crack-strictly for coons and mentals. Go on.”
“Acid.”
“The same. Anything else?”
“Yeah, the Ecstasy. Everyone suddenly wants the butterflies.”
“Not the doves?”
“Doves’ll do but butterflies are best. The word is they’re stronger.”
“That’s bollocks, Frankie. They’re identical. As you know.”
Frankie shrugged. “Just telling you.”
Melvin Eastman nodded and turned away. From his desk drawer he took a plastic bank envelope, and handed it to Frankie.
Frankie frowned. Turned the envelope over incomprehendingly.
“I’m only giving you three fifty this week,” said Eastman quietly, “because it’s clear that I’ve been overpaying you. You did six fifty at the blackjack table in the Brentwood Sporting Club last Friday.”
“I’m s-sorry, Mr. Eastman. I…”
“That kind of behaviour attracts attention, Frankie, and attention is very bad news indeed. I don’t put a grand a week in your pocket for you to piss it away in public, understand?”
Eastman’s tone and expression were unchanged, but the edge of threat was very close to the surface. The last man to seriously displease his employer, Frankie knew, had washed up on the mudflats off Foulness Island. The dogfish had had a go at his face and he’d had to be identified by his teeth.
“I understand, Mr. Eastman.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, Mr. Eastman. I’m sure.”
“Good. Then let’s get to work.”
Handing Frankie a Stanley knife from his desk, Eastman indicated four sealed cardboard boxes which were stacked against one wall. The boxes’ stencilled sides indicated that they contained Korean-built document scanners.
Cutting across the seal, Frankie opened the first box, revealing the advertised hardware. With care he removed the scanner and its Styrofoam mould. Beneath were three tightly filled, sealed polythene bags.
“Do we need to check them?”
Eastman nodded.
Frankie cut a small incision in the first bag, drew out a wrap of paper, and passed it to Eastman. Unwrapping the paper, Eastman touched the tip of his tongue to the off-white crystal, nodded, and returned it to Frankie.
“I think we can take the jellies and the Es on trust. Just see if Amsterdam’s sent us doves or butterflies.”
“Looks like doves in this one,” said Frankie nervously, peering at a bag of Ecstasy tablets. “Must be using up old stock.”
The same operation was applied to the other three boxes. Carefully, Frankie packed a rucksack with the bags of Ecstasy, temazepam, and methamphetamine crystal, topping the load off with a T-shirt and a pair of dingy Y-fronts.
“The butterflies go to Basildon, Chelmsford, Brentwood, Romford and Southend,” said Eastman. “The doves to Harlow, Braintree, Colchester-”
His phone rang, and he held up a hand, indicating that Frankie should wait. As the conversation progressed he glanced at him once or twice, but Frankie was staring out over the shop floor, apparently engrossed in the progress of a fork-lift truck.
Was he using? Eastman wondered. Or was it just the gambling? Should he offset the morning’s stick with a bit of carrot-push a couple of fifties into his back pocket on the way out?
In the end he decided not to. The lesson had to be learned.
9
Faraj Mansoor,” said Charles Wetherby, returning his tortoiseshell reading glasses to his top pocket. “Name mean anything to you?”
Liz nodded. “Yes-person of that name bought a fake UK driving licence last weekend in one of the northern ports… Bremerhaven, I think? German liaison flashed him to us yesterday.”
“Any terrorist form?”
“I ran him through the database. There’s a Faraj Mansoor who’s on a long list logged by Pakistan liaison of all those spoken to or contacted by Dawood al Safa in the course of his visit to Peshawar earlier this year.”
“Al Safa the ITS bagman? The one Mackay was telling us about yesterday?”
“Yes, that one. This Mansoor-and it’s got to be quite a common name-is identified as one of half a dozen employees of an auto repair shop on the Kabul road. Apparently al Safa stopped there and looked at some second-hand vehicles. Pakistan liaison had a couple of guys on his tail and when al Safa moved on they dropped a man off to list the employees.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Wetherby nodded pensively. “The reason I’m asking is that for some reason I can’t presently fathom, Geoffrey Fane’s just called me with a request to be kept in the loop.”
“About Mansoor?” asked Liz, surprised.
“About Mansoor. I had to tell him that, as things stood, there was no loop.”
“And?”
“And that was it. He thanked me and hung up.”
Liz allowed her eyes to wander round the bare walls. Wondered why Wetherby had called her to his office for a conversation which could easily have taken place over the phone.
“Before you go, Liz, is everything all right? I mean, are you… OK?”
She met his gaze. He was someone whose face, try as she might, she could never quite summon from memory. Sometimes she could recall the dead-leaf brown of the hair and eyes, sometimes the wry asymmetry of the nose and mouth, but the precise collision of his features evaded her. Even now, facing him, he seemed elusive. As always, a subtle irony seemed to pervade their professional relationship, as if they met at other times and on some different basis.
But they never had, and outside the context of their work Liz knew very little about him. There was a wife who was supposed to have some sort of chronic health problem, and there were a couple of boys at school. They lived somewhere on the river-Shepperton, perhaps, or was it Sunbury? One of those Ratty, Toad and Mole places out to the west.
But that was about the limit of her knowledge. As to his tastes, interests, or what car he drove, she had no idea.
“Do I look as if I’m not OK?”
“You look fine. But I know this Marzipan business hasn’t been easy. He’s very young, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He is.”
Wetherby nodded obliquely. “He’s also one of our key assets-or promises to be-which is why I gave him to you. You debrief him, say nothing, and let me see the product-I don’t want him declared for the time being.”
Liz nodded. “I don’t think he’s registered on Fane’s radar yet.”
“Let’s keep it that way. We have to play a long game with this young man, and that means no pressure from this end whatsoever. Just concentrate on getting him solidly dug in. If he’s as good as you say he is, the product will follow.”