“Sounds like something the psychiatrist at that last prison told you. What sort of rules are we talking about here, Alex?”
“Depends, mate. Like if you’re at sea and your boat starts to sink, always jump off the high side. That’s a good rule, if you should ever be in that situation.”
I said, “But I’m not expecting to be at sea on a sinking boat in the near future.”
“Oh no?” said Alex. He leaned forward. “Well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that, mate.” He gave me that conspiratorial wink of his and a little snort.
“What are you hearing then, Alex?” I always found it difficult to believe that Alex Chapman was a man who could keep a secret. He was such a transparent rogue. But he had as many secrets as any other man did. Alex was the archetype professional computer hacker and thief.
I ordered another espresso coffee for us both.
“What am I hearing?” he said, repeating my question.
“Well, I keep hearing about you and that firm you work for, all over.”
“Where, for instance?”
“Well, I’m not at liberty to reveal my sources as they say, but I can state without fear of contradiction that you in particular my friend are as hot as a red chilli pepper as far as a certain person is concerned.”
He paused, and I didn’t press him, as he is a man who hates to be hurried.
I waited. He said. “Certain parties, let’s say the whispering in the jungle, is that you are hard on the heels of something very special?”
It’s important to know when to be cagey and when to admit the truth. I nodded. Alex was pleased to be right. He went on, “If you were an individual associated with the illegal buying and selling of certain types of hardware, shall we say…” He looked at me quizzically.
“Yes,” I said a little doubtfully.
“So you agreed to supply a certain group of individuals overseas with this hardware, and were planning to finance it with the proceeds from the sale of packages recovered from a boat at the bottom of the English Channel, that doesn’t even officially exist. Imagine then, suddenly finding out that these foreigners who had signed the perforated side of the contract were planning to pay you in funny money. And that the firm employed to dive down and recover these packages, were now holding on to them. You’d be right cut up, wouldn’t you?”
“If the packages came out of this sunken boat that doesn’t exist, you mean?” I said attentively. But my mind was already on this revelation about Robert Flackyard and illegal arms dealing. As I had thought he was using his party loving playboy lifestyle to take him around the globe as a cover. The association with drugs was purely to finance these deals. Alex came back into focus, saying…
“Yes, mate. The bloke involved in getting these packages out of the boat for this individual would suddenly become a spare part in a garage. If you get my meaning.”
I got his meaning.
Alex said, “I wouldn’t like to be quoted as to who finds you superfluous to requirements, but I hear the air in Bournemouth can be very chilly even at this time of year.”
To say that I didn’t like the situation would have been the understatement of the millennium. I knew that I would have to re-contact LJ very soon or he would be calling Fiona Price to find out where I was. I didn’t much like the idea of Alex knowing so much about the firm’s business. But he had confirmed what I had suspected from the start. There was definitely someone inside the firm leaking information about this and possibly other assignments.
At this stage I still had no idea who this person might be and nothing substantial with which to confront him or her. But that might change after I’d spoken to another old acquaintance who still walked the corridors of power.
I left Alex, walked around the corner and jumped into the first of a long line of waiting black London taxis. The jovial face of the cab driver looked back at me through the rear view mirror as he asked me where I wanted to go.
“Straight to Soho, and no sight seeing, thank you,” I said. He smirked and pulled out into the traffic. I knew exactly where to find Jasper Lockhart at two-thirty in the afternoon.
A young oriental hostess wearing nothing but a thong showed me to a table near the main stage. With a smile, I was asked what I wanted to drink and informed that the next show would be starting in five minutes. On the raised circular stage, three polished chrome tubes, about two inches in diameter and attached at the base and on the ceiling, stood alone. From behind, I felt a hand on my left shoulder and the words, “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this.”
Looking round, Jasper Lockhart’s face was grinning boyishly down at me.
“Jake Dillon, you old rogue, what brings you to this salubrious establishment.”
“Actually you do, Jasper.” I said matter of factly. The firm dealt with him when we had to, but always one had the feeling that he was likely to walk off with your wallet if you took your eyes off him for even a minute. He gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder before starting to walk off towards the stairs leading down to what the sign said were the private dance rooms. “Come on,” he said, “It’s quieter down there.”
He had an accent like an announcer at a country gymkhana. Professional instinct prevailed over personal feeling. I followed him downstairs, where he headed straight for one of the rooms in which a red haired girl of no more than twenty moved around the pole in time to the music, for those who craved the intimacy of a personal dance or two. I endured five minutes of the spectacle, while Jasper watched the nubile young thing rhythmically gyrate up and down and around the pole, even upside down in time to the music.
When she had finished he slipped another twentypound note inside her G-string, gently patting the bare cheek of her arse as he asked her if she would be working later. Apparently she would.
The downstairs bar area was much quieter. Jasper insisted on buying more drinks, although he had already been drinking heavily. He was wearing a handmade Italian suit with the jacket collar partly turned up at the back; his tie was askew, and stained with splashes of pasta sauce from lunch. He usually produced in me a feeling of amusement, but I was far from feeling like laughing today.
“Nice holiday in Bournemouth?” He was always fishing around for stub ends of information that he could peddle. He squeezed a slice of lemon into his drink, gnawed at the yellow pulp and sucked the rind.
I said, “What are you looking so happy about, have you just won the lottery?”
“Fat chance of that,” he said, giving a brief laugh. He threw a peanut in the air, catching it in his mouth. His face had the chiselled features of a film star; long shiny hair swept backwards over his head and struck his collar, while an artful wave fell forward across his forehead.
“You look younger every time I see you,” he said. Jasper Lockhart was a congenital liar — he told lies outside working hours.
In the world that I had left behind, forms of address among those men working together varied. There’s ‘sir’ used by those high and mighty civil servants, who do not wish to pursue any form of relationship, the ‘nickname’ used by those who have never grown up. The Christian names of friends and the surname form of address among those who think they are still at university. Only men like Jasper Lockhart are called by their full name.
“What are you doing this afternoon? Fancy a little drive down to Hampshire? I’ve just bought myself a small country place, got a couple of the dance girls coming down with me. Make up a foursome, if you like? Back in time for last orders, what you say?”
“You are living it up,” I said, “you’ve come a long way since 1998, haven’t you, Jasper?”