He leant back in the reclining chair, savouring the fine spirit from the large brandy balloon glass. He reflected and always struggled with the finer points of morality; his mind became argumentative and then his thinking process collapsed in an exhausted and agitated state, leaving him confused and angry with himself. He knew part of the reason for this and those reasons were sound, and he did not have to excuse them. There were other factors too, over which he had no control and which he had been forced to fight for survival. But he had always come through. Yet it now seemed to be starting all over again. Admittedly it was on a very different playing field, with different people, and he wondered if he had the strength left to fight it. He had wondered that virtually all his life.
Dillon had stayed the night at The Old Colonial Club. Waking early, he decided against breakfast, instead leaving quietly by one of the staff exits and went straight to the nearest tube station. In a toilet cubicle he reverted back to the blonde wig and moustache and from there went to the north-London home of an old friend and retired journalist. He didn’t recognise Dillon at first, but Jack Logan was extremely pleased to see his old friend. Dillon spent most of the day with him, sifting and reading through his handwritten notes and some of the old saved newspaper cuttings of the Brinks Mat robbery at Heathrow in 1983. Jack Logan had worked for The Times newspaper; he’d covered the story for them and, what had started out as a bit of a scoop for him, eventually ended up as a life-changing obsession, even to this day. But he was pleased to be of help, even though Dillon admitted to him that he didn’t know what it was he was exactly looking for.
At around 4.00 p.m., Dillon thanked Logan for his time and hospitality, caught a cab to the nearest tube station and made his way back into the city. He found a seat on his own by an exit door. At the next stop, a large smiley-faced middle-aged woman came and sat herself down beside him and promptly started to tuck into a chocolate bar and two bags of crisps. Dillon’s thoughts drifted and mulled over the assignment; at each stop the odd whiff of cheese and onion crisps wafted pass him as the doors opened. He was still not a hundred percent certain about where his enquiries were leading him. Was the notion of the gold bars in Dorset being part of the Brinks Mat robbery at Heathrow merely something he had conjured up in his own mind? He didn’t have time to answer the question. He was jolted back to reality as a stop approached and the large woman sitting next to him struggled to get herself onto her feet and out through the exit door as quickly as possible. Dillon got off at the next stop and went straight to the rest room to remove the disguise and to change out of the tweed jacket and corduroy trousers into something else. From there he went straight back to The Old Colonial Club.
Meanwhile, Vince had been trawling every public register and database in the forlorn hope of finding more information about Rosie Poulter. For this he was using a piece of software that he’d written during his social engineering days. This hacker’s software was able to be left to its own devices; accessing databases easily through firewalls, entering side and back doors, or any other weak point of entry, any Government or agency computer and search for whatever it could find. After eight hours it had only collected what they already knew.
Issy had been working all morning on case notes for one of her clients, sending everything back to her office over the Internet. In the afternoon she’d had a call from one of her friends and had gone out for a late lunch, returning to the apartment at around 6.30 p.m.
She entered the apartment. Someone closed the door behind her and someone else placed a gloved hand over her mouth. She had almost passed out with shock, but they had held her upright and dragged her into the living room. The man behind her whispered in her ear, “My friend will remove his hand if you promise not to scream. Nod if you agree. If you make any sound it will be your last. Do I make myself clear?”
Issy, weak at the knees and feeling a little nauseous, nodded slowly.
“That’s good. Now go and sit down in that chair over there and keep your hands where we can see them. And keep very quiet and still.”
Issy eased herself into the armchair and placed her hands on her lap as she was told. She couldn’t help the trembling or make the feeling that she was going to be sick, go away.
They stood on the other side of the room, giving her time to recover, and then one of them said, “This shouldn’t take up more than a brief moment of your time, Miss Linley. We just want to know where Jake Dillon is. Tell us and we’ll leave.”
The words were spoken quietly, but with an edge to them.
Issy was trying to muster up her courage. She could see that these men were roughnecks, but did not speak as she would expect a hardened criminal to do. She had been so frightened that she had hardly taken any notice of them, but now she was taking in everything about them. She raised her hand up to her mouth as if she was about to be sick.
One was slightly shorter than the other and had cropped dark hair, but there was a basic likeness. They were both wearing well-cut suits that could have been purchased from any high-street tailor. The one who had so far done all the talking spoke quietly but with a badly disguised northern accent. It was blatantly obvious that they worked out and that there was no way she could deal with them physically. She guessed they were in their mid to late thirties. During this quick appraisal she realised that even if she did scream she doubted whether anyone would hear. There were five apartments in the building and none of the other residents ever returned home until well after 7.30 p.m.
“Do not underestimate us, Miss Linley. If you lie, I’ll know. And the consequences to you will be extremely severe, I assure you.”
It was the one who had grabbed hold of her as she’d come through the front door who spoke.
Her eyes roamed from one to the other and it was then she saw the butt of a pistol protruding from under one of the jackets. Her heart missed a beat.
“Why should I lie? After all, I can’t lie about something I don’t know, now can I?”
Her voice was shaky. But she knew it would be foolhardy to mess with them.
“I really don’t know where he is.”
“That’s the wrong answer, and being difficult is not going to help you. We know that you’re the most likely person he’d tell. So it follows that you must know where Dillon is.”
“How quaint. If I did know, do you really think I’d tell you or be cooped up like this? I would most definitely be with him.”
They quickly exchanged glances. The taller one said:
“Miss Linley, we’re trying to help him, he’s in serious danger.”
“Oh really? It’s you who should be helped. Breaking in and scaring the living daylights out of me. Why couldn’t you wait outside like normal civilized people? Never heard of a phone?”
“In our experience, you wouldn’t have responded to a normal request.”
“Well I’m bloody well not responding to this except to tell you to leave at once. I don’t know where Jake is and, if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You must be out of your minds to think that I would.”
“We really don’t want to hurt you, Miss Linley.”
“But you’re going to anyway. It must be simply terrible for you, you sadistic thugs.”
Issy had fully recovered now, her strength of character had returned and she was now really glad that Dillon had not told her where he was. He’d anticipated something like this to happen and she now fully understood his worst fears without rancour. Jake was Jake and she knew what she had entered into. She also understood why Tatiana had given him an ultimatum; their relationship or the job. She knew that he still felt the pain, but he was a realist, and so was she.