Dillon decided to let Vince run with his enquiries into Rosie’s life. In the hope that he might dig something up from a more detailed search of the archived records held on the Government’s databases. Especially as trudging through the millions of old scanned documents was not a strong point of his.
He went through to the open-plan lounge and, sitting down at the oak dining table, went through Latimer’s list of names and addresses again. It was then that stirrings of a notion began to come to him.
Dillon had not paid too much attention to the pieces of art he had found. He’d been far more interested in the gold. From his mobile phone, he downloaded the images he’d taken of the paintings he’d found in the secret room onto his laptop computer. The first thing he recalled was the pristine condition that everything was in — almost as if it had only recently been put in there. They were unmistakably old masters and without a doubt, stolen. He would have to go back to Lyme Regis or even try one of the other addresses.
Julian Latimer, MP, was feeling uncomfortable and not quite so confident during a meeting with Tommy Trevelyan. These meetings were never pleasant, but there was too much at stake to ignore him or to show a lack of respect by not turning up. The location of the venue had been kept a secret until the very last second, as to be almost ridiculous. Trevelyan never took chances, was fastidious about the planning and execution of every security aspect, and always considered carefully who he was being seen with and who not to be seen with. Latimer accepted that it was an immensely sensible thing to do, but as a naturally gregarious extrovert, found Trevelyan’s paranoia extremely boring.
On this occasion they had met on the thirty-second floor of one of his most prestigious construction sites. A new office building in the heart of London’s financial quarter that Trevelyan’s construction company was nearing completion on. The two leather club chairs that had been specially placed facing each other in the centre of the bare concrete floor, were all there was. Trevelyan had thought it safer to meet after the workforce had left for the day. It was not only extremely quiet up high with only the birds for company, but also more difficult for anyone attempting to listen in on their conversation. They were there to discuss the current problems. But Tommy Trevelyan liked to conduct his meetings in a civilised and orderly manner, and that’s why they were drinking tea from fine china cups with saucer, poured out of a large Thermos flask by his chauffeur.
Trevelyan was never a pleasant man to spend time with. Apart from pouring over his account ledgers, nobody really knew what his other interests were. He was a small muscular man, hard-featured, yet, at times when it was necessary, could produce a surprising charm. It wasn’t clear whether or not he was married, divorced or even possibly gay, and nobody was willing to ask. He did have staff that included a housekeeper, cook and a personal bodyguard and chauffeur. His aim in life, it seemed to those who knew him best, was to make other’s lives a misery and to profit by doing so. He had always ruled by fear, but just once in a while he would meet someone who was not intimidated by it. Such a person was Charlie Hart, who had declined his offer to attend the meeting on the grounds that he would learn nothing from it that he didn’t already know. He knew what the problems were and it was up to Trevelyan to sort them out, as he had already appointed himself to that role.
No-one else would dare speak to Trevelyan in this way and like all bullies, Trevelyan was at the top of the tree, but he always backed off. There had always been something about Hart he just could not place. He was sure about his honesty in his dealings as any man he’d ever met. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder when dealing with Hart, and there were very few men he could say that about. Just the same, he never liked to lose any form of control and it annoyed him that Hart had been so contemptuous of his suggestion that a meeting was imperative.
There was little harmony at the meeting — it was a no nonsense appraisal of what had gone wrong in Dorset and whether there was a need for urgent redistribution. Had Jake Dillon been successful in finding the gold bullion and stolen artwork? Nobody knew the answer to this. But they all knew what had to be done: Find Dillon. This was the subject that Julian Latimer did not want to discuss — he was a politician, not a hoodlum hell-bent on murder.
And then Trevelyan raised the issue that Latimer had hoped would not come up. “What puzzles me, Julian, is how the bloody hell did Dillon discover the address in Lyme Regis?”
The question was a cloaked accusation that hung in the cool cement-tainted air with Trevelyan staring at Latimer with a cold, hard look formed across his unsmiling face.
“Well, he didn’t get the list from me,” Latimer said indignantly. “My copies are firmly locked away in the safe. And they’re still there.”
“I assume that you’ve checked?” asked Trevelyan, whilst pulling out a packet of black Russian cigarettes from his jacket pocket, which he believed gave him an air of sophistication and the international jetsetter. In reality he was just another sad old bugger with a serious smoking habit.
“Of course I have checked. They are all there.”
“So presumably the thought must have crossed your mind that perhaps someone had caught sight of them, at some time?”
“Why should it? After all, my copies never leave the confines of my safe and I have no others in my possession. Someone has obviously seen or been told about Hart’s, Hammer’s or your own.”
“Highly unlikely, I would have thought. Hart lives in a property that has a security system better than Fort Knox. Hammer is as paranoid as Hart about security, so that rules them both out. As for myself, someone would have had to get past dogs, bodyguards and a state-of-the-art security setup. So that just leaves you, I’m afraid, Julian.”
“You’re forgetting the Conners. Either of them could have been careless, let slip to someone.”
“Again, highly unlikely. I’ve known Harry Conner and his wife for nearly forty years. It’s not even a possibility, Julian. He did everything that he should have. It wasn’t his fault that it all went bloody pear-shaped from that moment.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Latimer said nervously.
“I can and I am, Julian. Especially where Harry Conner is concerned. Now, are you one hundred percent sure that no one has been inside your flat? Nothing disturbed or in the wrong place?”
“Of course. I’m extremely particular about tidiness. I would have noticed immediately if anything were out of place.”
The truth was that once he’d checked that nothing was missing from the safe in his bedroom, he had taken the rest for granted.
“Yet Dillon has got hold of at least one address and we don’t know how many more he has.”
“Interestingly, the police didn’t find the room. Even though they had dogs with them when they returned later. Which, I suppose, tells us that the gold is safe.”
“They wouldn’t have been looking for anything like that. And anyway, everything is very well hidden. However, there’s been a serious breach of secrecy, which poses a problem to me, Julian. You should know me well enough by now to know that I can’t let this go without finding out who has been careless enough to, unwittingly or otherwise, assist Dillon in obtaining this information. I will have my people make enquiries. I’ll find the bastard, and when I do I’ll have him taken care of.”
Latimer had listened to the aging gangster in silence. He’d wanted to laugh at the melodrama, but part of him was terrified by what he was hearing.