48 Hours - A City of London Thriller (2 page)

As the last of his guests walked towards
the bank of elevators I stepped into Toby’s office and closed the
door behind me. Toby sat at his desk, leaned back in his mega
expensive
stressless
office chair, and visibly relaxed. He placed his hands,
fingers interlocked, on his ample stomach.

Before I had a chance to speak, Toby screwed up his face as if
he was in pain and said, “You’re here to hand in your notice,
aren’t you?”

“
No,” I replied instantly. “It’s more important than
that.”

The expression on Toby’s face slackened and a possible smile
crossed his lips on its way to becoming a smirk. “Nothing’s more
important than that, Josh.”

I slid a sheet of letter sized paper across his desk. There
were four items printed on it: the text message, the email text and
the two photographs. Toby lifted his Armani glasses off his nose
and rested them on his head as he squinted to read the text without
the help of his prescription lenses. After a moment he laid the
paper flat on the desk. His expression seemed halfway between a
smile and a frown.

“
Surely this is a joke?” he said, clearly unconvinced. I did
not reply in words, but simply shook my head.

“
No. Maybe not, then,” he said as he took a second look at my
printout.

Toby was by far the brightest man I knew, only a year older
than me at thirty four years of age. Most people assumed he was
actually older, as his dark hair was already showing signs of
greyness at the temples. His expensive glasses framed deep brown
eyes which always seemed to twinkle with a hint of mischief, but he
could be deadly serious when necessary. He wasn’t particularly well
qualified, but he was so well informed on every subject that he
gave the impression of brilliance, tempered by laziness. Not one
for unnecessary exercise, or any at all if it could be avoided,
Toby was often described as ‘larger than life’, a polite way of
saying that he was borderline chubby. He liked to research
everything to death. If he met a quantum physicist in a bar he
would study quantum physics for days on the internet, in libraries
and in magazines until he could converse intelligently with his bar
buddy, should they ever meet again.

It is this love of detailed research which has made him such a
brilliant loss adjuster. Along with a photographic memory, his
research enables him to know as much about an insured loss as the
insured. By the time a paint manufacturer attends a settlement
meeting for an insured loss relating to a fire at his factory, Toby
will have found out what products were mixed to make the paint,
their flammable qualities, the appropriate regulations for safe
storage, the factory regulations relating to fire protection and
safety, and the current market price for the paint
produced.

Toby believes that knowledge is power, and he has been proved
right so many times that most of the major insurers rely on him to
ensure that they never over compensate their customers. Despite his
hefty fees, the money he saves his clients every year swamps the
sums he commands in payment for his services.

After another few seconds glancing at the printed sheet, he
sat forward in his chair, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He looked
me in the eye, his expression signalling to me that he had already
come to a conclusion.

“
Do you want my advice?” I nodded. “OK, this is what we
do.”

I took notes on a yellow legal pad faintly lined in blue, each
page serrated along its length so that it could be torn out and
filed. By the time he had finished speaking I had a long list of
‘to do’ items. He spoke slowly, in his quiet and reassuring voice,
and I jotted down what he said almost verbatim.

1) Your flat may be small but in Greenwich it still has to be
worth £250k, and as you own it outright, you can raise a £200k loan
on that, try Roddy at Chartered Equitable, he’ll get your
application processed fast and at a preferential business to
business interest rate.

2) You have at least £50k in accrued bonuses, paid holiday
leave and expenses due by the end of the year, I’ll get those
advanced.

3) The mortgage will take weeks and so you will sign a
promissory note in my favour, using the flat as collateral and I’ll
loan you the £200k from my partners account for 60 days.

4) I’ll call the my contacts in the City of London Police, the
Metropolitan Police will be too slow to act, and I should be able
to get you in to see someone today. Tell them everything, including
your plans to raise the cash.

5) I want you watched 24/7 to see if we can spot your
blackmailer. I suggest you call Vastrick Security, tell them to
bill the firm, we can sort out the costs later. I want someone on
your tail by the time you leave the office tonight.

6) I’ll cancel my afternoon and do some research, this must
have happened before and if it has the insurance companies will
know about it.

When he had finished speaking he asked me to read back the
list, which I did, with Toby elaborating further on each point I
recalled. By now Toby was sitting upright, his glasses back on his
nose. He was staring intently into my face.

“
Josh, it’s taken me ten years to train you, to get you to
where you are now, so don’t you dare waste all of that effort by
getting yourself killed, all right?”

I assured him that averting imminent death was already a
priority for me, and on that note we parted. We both had things to
do, if I was to live long enough to see West Ham losing yet again
on Saturday.

Chapter 3

Hong Kong Suite, City Wall Hotel, London: Wednesday,
2pm

The hand that clutched the gold Cross fountain pen was not
that of a young man; it was heavily veined and had a mat of dark
hair across the back of the hand spreading down each finger as far
as the knuckle. The fingers were long, slim and well-manicured. Nor
was this a manual worker’s hand. At each wrist was a crisp white
double cuff, held together with simple gold cufflinks in the shape
of a square. The Egyptian cotton shirt from Thomas Pink in London
was tailored to the wearer’s needs, and so the cuffs were perfect
in length and the left cuff was cut more generously to accommodate
the heavy bracelet and case of the watch that banded its wearer’s
tanned wrist. The time on the Breitling Old Navitimer Mecanique
displayed two o’clock as the writer signed off the letter with a
flourish. The signature read Bob, but Bob was not the name of the
writer. It was a simple, common and unremarkable nom de
plume.

‘
Bob’ checked his BlackBerry, but found nothing worthy of his
interest, and set it back down on the antique desk that was part of
the exquisite furniture which adorned his five hundred pounds per
night suite. Opening the drawer, Bob revealed six mobile phones,
each with a white label adhered to its rear. He picked the phone
with the label that read “Josh”, reinserted the battery and
switched it on. It was time for another message.

“
Josh,

Hi, it’s Bob again. Just a reminder that time is at a premium.
I hope that you realise the seriousness of your position. If not,
you will get a reminder later today. Best not to wear your
favourite suit for the next 24 hours.

Bob.”

The man pressed the send button on the unregistered Nokia
pay-as-you-go phone, bought with his grocery shopping at
Sainsbury’s yesterday. When the message had been sent he switched
the phone off again, removed the battery and laid it in the desk
drawer between another Nokia carrying the name Richard and an
Ericsson phone labelled Sir Max.

Bob stood up and walked over to the bed, where he bent down
and retrieved a briefcase from underneath. The case was black
leather and as anonymous as the phones. It was monogrammed with the
letters PD. Not that these were his initials - they weren’t, they
were simply the first two adhesive letters he had randomly alighted
upon from the sheet of adhesive gold leaf letters supplied with the
case. He clicked open the case and laid it on the red Oriental silk
bedspread over the likeness of a Chinese dragon picked out in
golden thread. Inside was an odd looking gun - perhaps rifle might
have been a more accurate description. The gun had a shoulder
stock, eighteen inch barrel and a bulky magazine. Bob checked the
magazine with its odd projectiles and replaced it in the briefcase.
He was unconcerned about leaving his fingerprints or DNA on the gun
or the case as, in common with ninety nine per cent of the
population, he knew that the authorities did not have his biometric
details on record.

Bob walked across the deep pile carpeting and slipped into his
Burberry mackintosh. It was London, it was August, and rain seemed
inevitable. Carrying the briefcase, he exited the suite and headed
towards the West End to do a little shopping before his five
o’clock appointment.

Chapter 4

City of London Police HQ, Wood St, London: Wednesday,
2pm

I sat in the lobby on an old carved wooden bench in the
historic building that housed the City Of London Police, and which
probably had not changed much in the last hundred years. Unlike
London’s busy Metropolitan Police stations, this station was quiet,
and the occasional uniformed policeman who passed by me was
exceptionally smartly dressed. The plain clothes police here would
have looked at home in a bank anywhere in the City.

A man approached the bench. He was smiling. I took in the
smart suit, the pale blue shirt with the cutaway collar and the
dark blue woven silk tie. My contact looked like a Conservative
politician. He was perhaps in his mid-thirties, rather tall, with
short cropped hair and steel coloured eyes He came to a halt in
front of me and so I stood. The man extended his hand.

“
Mr Hammond.” It was said as a statement. “I am Inspector
Boniface; perhaps we could talk in my office.” I accepted the
invitation to follow the Inspector to his room, and we walked side
by side along a sterile corridor with walls half tiled in sickly
green glazed tiles which would not have looked out of place in a
Victorian public lavatory. The woodwork was dark stained and
equally gloomy.

The policeman followed my gaze, and seemed to read my mind.
“Awful, isn’t it? But we can’t change it. This is a listed building
and the interior fixtures are of historic interest, apparently.”
His tone of voice suggested that he didn’t share that viewpoint. I
rather liked him already.

We reached an office with a half glazed door and walls. The
glass was ridged with bevelled vertical strips that were frosted to
permit light transfer to the corridor without invading the privacy
of the office’s occupants.

The policeman ushered me inside, where the modern office
furnishings and technology appeared starkly incongruous. This was a
room that Sherlock Holmes might have used for consultations. The
outside windows were glazed with the same small opaque panes of
glass used elsewhere in the building, and they were raised at least
four feet from the ground, so that no-one could see out or in
easily. The radiator was of the old hospital column variety, and
set in the back wall was a black painted Victorian fire surround
and grate.

I sat down in a modern chrome and leather swivel chair, and he
took his place in a matching chair on the opposite side of the
modern beech desk. At the invitation of Inspector Boniface I retold
my story so far, even though it was obvious that the Inspector was
familiar with events to date. When I had finished speaking I waited
hopefully for his response. A look of resignation crossed the
Inspector’s face, and I guessed what was coming.

“
Mr Hammond, I have to be honest with you here. I’m not sure
that there’s very much we can do to help you yet.”

“
You mean until after I’ve been killed?” I replied. The
tension in my voice was tangible.

“
Not exactly, although I realise that this must be rather
upsetting.”

“
Upsetting!” I felt anger rising inside me. “Upsetting is
losing your house keys. Being killed for no reason whatsoever is a
little more than upsetting.”

“
I really do understand,” the Inspector sympathised. “The
problem is this; you have received an anonymous threat by text,
which may or may not be a sick joke. I know you don’t see it that
way, but we have no evidence to suggest it could be anything more
serious at this moment in time. From this Police Station alone, the
City of London Police have had to handle over a thousand death
threats of all kinds in the City since the banks were bailed out by
the government. Some were very specific, others were very graphic,
but they all came to nothing, despite time and effort spent trying
to find the culprits. As a result, it is our official position that
such threats are almost always made by people who are simply
letting off steam.” He paused for breath, and to gauge my reaction.
“However, I accept that your threat may be a little more credible
because it asks for money and because you have clearly been
specifically identified and targeted. With that in mind, I propose
the following.

First, I’d like you make a detailed statement – while you’re
at home this evening will be fine - outlining the threat and naming
anyone you can think of who may harbour unfriendly feelings towards
you. Concentrate on your business dealings to begin with. For
example, your pursuer could be an insured person whose claim you
reduced or rejected. Second, we sit you down with a high tech
specialist who will try to track the person threatening you by
tracing his electronic communications, and third, we will help you
with the transfer of the money, being sure to electronically tag it
and trail it. That, at least, should help to keep you safe, if the
threat turns out to be credible.”