‘No,’ Kirk answered, showing his teeth in a mirthless smile. ‘No, we would not accept that proposal. To do as you suggest would mean your using CDCM funds, which I regard as stolen money.’
Erick paused, trying to keep his temper. ‘All right. So how long will you give us to find the money required from an outside source to satisfy your clients?’
Kirk plaited his yellow fingers together, his smile slowly fading. ‘Are you a gambling man, Mr Elgberg?’
‘No.’
‘But you know that, in a game of poker, you can’t ask the other players which cards they hold?’
Erick could hardly mask his impatience. ‘Get to the point.’
‘My point is this, Mr Elgberg. Not only do I not show my cards, but I deal from the bottom of the pack.’ Kirk’s small mean eyes glittered at Erick. He was obviously enjoying making him squirm.
‘Thousands of jobs are at stake, damn you,’ Erick said tightly. ‘Given that we have only a short period to negotiate, what can be done?’
‘Why don’t you just admit defeat, Mr Elgberg? Yours is a Utopian plan, whereas I am a realist.’
‘And that’s your final word?’ Erick looked down at the reptilian Kirk, poised like a snake on the edge of his heavy leather chair.
‘Mr Elgberg.’ Any vestige of a smile had disappeared from the solicitor’s face. ‘I believe that was a highly illegal deal you made with Densby, selling GIANT of Scandinavia for an inflated price. My business is liquidation. I get ten per cent of all GIANT’s assets before any payment to creditors and a large fee from CDCM’s minority shareholders for disentangling them from you. Do you really think I would let that slip through my fingers for the sake of a few paltry jobs? You think you are popular because the media have been on your side until now, but you will find you have made quite a few enemies as well. Envy is a universal human failing, Mr Elgberg, but in Denmark it is stronger than any other emotion. All your so‑called friends will turn against you when you fall. And I mean you, personally, because you created the monster. Mark my words. Strange as it may seem, even an unpopular person like myself will be more highly regarded than you, when all this comes to light.’
Erick clenched his fists. It was as much as he could do to keep himself from encircling Kirk’s wizened throat with his hands and throttling the life out of him.
Kirk’s voice followed him from the room.
‘GIANT will be dead before midday tomorrow. I wish you a pleasant evening, Mr Elgberg.’
* * *
The phone rang at six thirty in the morning. Erick was half asleep.
‘My name is Tim Larsen. I’m a police barrister,’ said an unfamiliar voice. ‘My department is investigating GIANT’s affairs. Is it possible for us to meet at the Politigaarden this morning at nine o’clock? Just boring routine sorting out the solicitors’ mess.’
Larsen entered the room with a uniformed police officer, after Erick had been waiting two hours.
‘I’d like to ask you a few questions,’ he said, sitting down and immediately lighting his pipe. It suited his school mastery looks and quiet contemplative manner. ‘Your full name and date of birth, please?’
Erick told him.
‘So it’s your birthday today. Congratulations.’ Larsen shook Erick’s hand. ‘But I’m afraid we’ve no time for celebrations. You will have to wait for a short time downstairs while we fill in the necessary papers, but from this moment on you may regard yourself as under arrest for conspiracy to defraud the minority shareholders in CDCM.’
Erick was dumbfounded. The thought that he might be arrested had never occurred to him.
‘Can I phone my solicitor?’
‘I’m afraid not. Give me his name and I’ll phone him. Any solicitor in Copenhagen would like to get this call.’
‘Faberson, of Faberson & Jeppesen.’ Erick could not think of any other name.
Larsen puffed a cloud of smoke in Erick’s direction. ‘A very bad choice, if I may say so.’
‘Why?’
‘Mr Faberson himself has just been taken into custody.’
* * *
‘Take off your clothes, fold them neatly and put them on that chair. You’ll get them back later,’ a young police officer told Erick.
Mechanically, he undressed, still in a state of shock. Why were they treating him like this, like a common criminal? He had done nothing illegal; everything had been done according to the best legal advice. He walked into a room full of steam and could not see more than a yard in front of him.
‘This way,’ a voice shouted, summoning him into a white‑tiled area with a cold stone floor. ‘Stand still.’
A jet of hot water hit his face so hard that he coughed.
‘Turn around,’ the voice shouted again. ‘Now bend forward. That’s it.’ The hose was turned on again. ‘Right. Now dry yourself.’ A coarse towel landed across his shoulders.
After that he waited alone in a white‑painted room for three hours. Eventually the door was unlocked and he was taken outside and handcuffed.
‘Where are you taking me?’ Erick asked the policeman who was pushing him along the corridor.
‘You’re off to court. You’ll find yourself in good company.’
In the back of the police van were Jan, Aage Madsen, Per Densby, Faberson and Jeppesen.
Erick sat down on a wooden bench beside Jan. Before the van left they were handcuffed to their seats. They sped through the narrow, busy streets of Copenhagen, unable to talk because of the intolerable noise made by the police escort’s sirens.
As soon as they had arrived at the court building and the back doors of the van were opened, hundreds of flashbulbs exploded simultaneously. They continued to pop as the men were led through the crowd of journalists, who bombarded them with questions, up some stairs and into the court room where the six men stood together in the dock.
The judge came in and shuffled his papers. Tim Larsen spoke a few words. The judge nodded, rose and went out. Erick and the others were pushed towards the side door of the court room, down the stairs and back into the van.
‘What happened?’ Bewildered, Erick turned to Faberson.
He said grimly, ‘We were all remanded for three months.’
They were taken to Vestre Faengsel, a remand prison located in Valby opposite the Carlsberg Brewery. Once there, the six men were quickly separated.
Erick followed a prison officer to the second floor to Cell 211. On a blackboard next to the door his name was already written.
‘Go in.’ The officer held the door open.
Erick hesitated on the threshold. Once he entered this confined space, there was no way back.
‘I’m sorry Life doesn’t come with any guarantees,’ the officer said philosophically, ‘but I’m sure one day you’ll be able to look back on this as something you’ve put behind you. My name is Rasmussen by the way. We’ll be getting to know each other quite well.’ The door slammed. The key turned twice and a shutter was pushed across.
Nothing could have prepared Erick for the sense of total isolation which flooded him at the metallic sound of the key. The cell was comfortless and filled with the odour of despair.
All his ambitions had come to this. He had achieved nothing.
From now on, he would have to live inside himself. He would have to keep the images of Andrea, Christian and Lisette at the forefront of his mind and blank out the ignominy of his prison cell.
Suddenly he was in a wide dark tunnel. Everything around him was vague and indistinct. He slid forward, hitting the walls, painfully he managed to twist himself round and turn towards the light. He reached towards it. The light .had two strong metal bars across and would not open. He used whatever left of his strength. Then he could not breathe.
He rushed towards the metal door. Blindly he hammered his fists on the scratched surface, screaming as loud as he could. The shutter in the door opened and one peering eye looked through the flap. It closed with a hard click. Footsteps receded along t
he echoing corridor.
Erick slid to the floor where he retched with fear and vomited with despair, before mercifully he fainted.
CHAPTER TWELVE
_________________________
London, 10th July 1965
‘I’m curious to see who would marry someone like you. We must make a foursome one evening.’ John had telephoned Arthur the day after being released from Reading. His friend had been his eyes and ears while he had been imprisoned. They had grown to trust each other completely.
John and Catherine arranged to meet the newly weds in a pub opposite San Lorenzo, in Beauchamp Place where they were going to eat. Arthur arrived alone, wearing green trousers, a camel‑coloured jacket, green bow tie and black velvet hat which he did not remove. He looked rakish but sophisticated. He apologised for Diana’s absence, explaining that she didn’t like pubs and would join them in the restaurant.
Shortly after they had taken their seats there a tall blonde approached their table. She wore a shiny pillar box red trouser suit and matching high‑heeled shoes. On her head was a jaunty red vinyl butcher’s boy cap against which the bleached blonde mane looked almost white. Gold‑framed reading glasses hung from a chain around her neck. Every head turned to watch her approach, and she knew it.
‘Meet Diana.’ Arthur stood fondly and pulled out a chair for her. As he made the introductions, John had difficulty taking his eyes off her. He guessed that she was older than his friend. Not a natural beauty, there was something hard and contrived about her appearance, but for presentation and sheer physical presence he gave her top marks. Arthur sat smiling slightly, seeing his friend busily assessing the new arrival.
‘So, you’re the great John Forbes,’ she said, fixing him with narrow eyes. She had a high girlish voice and a broad Cockney accent which she made no attempt to disguise.
‘You have an advantage. Arthur told me precious little about you,’ John joked back.
‘At least you’ve married a normal man,’ Catherine remarked to Diana.
‘Nothing much to tell about how we met. I came, he saw, I conquered.’ The answer was deliberately flip, as was the way she pursed her red‑painted lips and blew Arthur a kiss.
‘I wouldn’t say you conquered me exactly,’ he demurred. ‘But from the day we met I saw what a team we’d make. After that, it was just a matter of convincing you.’
‘You’re not kidding!’ Diana lit a cigarette and fixed her eyes on Catherine. ‘I was living very happily with someone else,’ she confided. ‘But Arthur pestered me every day with flowers, chocolates, a watch, holidays, furs – once he even had a new red Mini delivered with a huge red bow tied around it. Think of any seduction technique – he tried it.’
Catherine laughed. ‘Well, it certainly paid off.’
‘Don’t believe everything she tells you,’ Arthur cut in. ‘My Di loves to exaggerate.’
And she also loves to examine people, John thought shrewdly, noting the way Diana directed all her attention to Catherine, repeatedly drawing her into the conversation, offering her a cigarette and even lighting it for her. When she wanted to emphasise a point, she was making, she would tap Catherine’s hand, her long scarlet talons outlandish against his wife’s smooth pale hands.
John saw the amused expression in Arthur’s eyes as he caught his old friend studying Diana. It was a real puzzle, thought John. Okay, they’d never discussed it, but he’d have laid a pound to a penny that Arthur preferred men to girls. He’d certainly given that impression for as long as John had known him.
He registered the way Diana leaned in closer to Catherine, saw the covert glance she directed down the low‑cut neckline of her blue satin dress. Suddenly the penny dropped. With the girls still talking animatedly, John raised one eyebrow and said softly to Arthur, ‘Is she on the level – your wife?’
He nodded. ‘She is now. Took the pills, had three months of electrolysis and I paid for the final operation in Tangier six months ago. Now she’s on at me for a new pair of Bristols – looks like she’s studying Catherine’s form. Apparently the hormones she’s on have left her short changed in that department!’
He laughed at John’s expression. ‘Well, you did ask. It surprised me as well, if you really want to know. I never thought I would fancy a TS, but I certainly fancied Brian McPhee. Went to hell and back to turn himself into Diana St. Claire. Now she’s Diana Black, my almost lawfully wedded wife, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
John raised his glass in a silent toast. At that moment Diana finishing telling a particularly lurid story about the lengths Arthur had gone to court her.
Catherine laughed. ‘Is that true?’ she asked Arthur.
He shrugged his shoulders and kept his mouth tightly shut.
Diana turned towards John and lifted her glass. John smiled and held his glass forward. Who was he to judge Arthur’s choice. If Brian or Diana made his friend happy, it was only for him to accept the fact.
‘I’ve got used to the old sobersides now,’ said Diana and pinched Arthur’s cheek. ‘Reminds me of my old dad, he does. My father has a junk shop in Canning Town – empties people’s houses after they’ve kicked the bucket, so I know the second‑hand business. Arthur’s is just a poncier version of that really, isn’t it?’
He raised his eyebrows and changed the subject.
* * *
‘I take it you intend to start a new venture, John?’ he asked.
‘Nothing lasts forever. I presume you found some new suppliers while I was away? Good. Well, now I’m setting up an organisation to import raw hemp and distribute it to wholesalers who will handle the processing themselves. Strictly speaking I shan’t be dealing in drugs so the risk is comparatively low while the potential profit is enormous. Do you want to come in on it?’
Arthur pulled a face. ‘What would I do? It’s hardly up my alley. I’m strictly fine art even if some of it is a bit hot.’
‘Why don’t we buy a shop and you can help me that way? It could be an operational base for us which won’t be directly linked to me or any criminal activity whatsoever.’
‘Provide a respectable front?’ Arthur nodded slowly. ‘Sounds okay to me – so long as we agree that the shop part will be strictly legit. Yes, it’d do me no harm to have my name above a door. And I think I know just the place in Mount Street.’
John grinned. ‘I thought you would.’
Tell me one thing, ‘Arthur queried. ‘Why do you want to start this new operation? You’re already a wealthy man, happily married and still less than thirty. Why not just concentrate on the house and estate? It sounds a perfect life to me.’
John hesitated, searching for the right words. ‘I’ve spent my working life up to now as a criminal. As a profession, though, crime is a meaningless pursuit if you’re only in it for the money. But if your aim is power – ultimate power – and you’re able to grasp it, that’s an achievement that’s second to none.’
His voice was calm and reasonable but with an underlying note of cold conviction that told Arthur how far he had come since that summer day when he’d first stepped nervously into the shop in Aldford Street. In the subsequent years Arthur had at first been something of a mentor to John, teaching him about art and antiques. While John was in prison, he had willingly done favours for his friend inside. Now it seemed John intended them to move on to a new phase in their relationship. It would as always be mutually beneficial but this time John would be in command. Arthur knew this talk of power was his way of making that perfectly plain.
Accept it and prosper. Disagree and he’d be out of the picture so far as John was concerned. Arthur shrugged his shoulders. For his own shop and the other benefits which he knew would follow, he could live with that. And now he could afford to buy Diana that new fur she’d been bending his ear about. Yes, every cloud was mink‑lined when you hitched your wagon to that of John Forbes’s.
* * *
At the end of July, David summoned the whole team and tol
d them to come to a pub on the corner of Richmond Bridge. They had been warned to use public transport and to arrive separately.
The meeting was timed for 1.30, when the pub was at its busiest. There was much excitement and laughter when the men met each other again. David, after checking that everyone had arrived, gave each of them the address of a house not far away, used by film and television companies for location shots. Comings and goings by different people would not cause any curiosity among the neighbours.
When the men and Ramona had arrived John stood up, holding a sheaf of notes. ‘We’ve all read about Ronnie Biggs’s escape from Wandsworth Prison. Good luck to him! But in my opinion, robbing trains and banks is out‑of‑date. We’re not going to do anything like that. Our concept of crime is completely different. We’ll be businessmen first and foremost. That our product might end up being converted into an illegal substance is not our concern. But,’ he said, looking seriously at each face, ‘if anything should go wrong, every one of you will undoubtedly end up back in prison.’
Their faces remained impassive. John went on, ‘This organisation will import and market unprocessed hemp. We will never be associated with anyone other than the grower, who lives in Morocco, and our selected wholesalers. We will never deal in anything else, especially hard drugs. We will never carry, or even possess, guns. We will have our own intelligence unit, which will specialise in our sole product, raw hemp. Anything suspicious that any of you see or hear must be reported immediately to William Webster. We will retain someone who will attend court during all the major drug cases. We must know everything and everybody in our chosen field in order to be the market leaders in our specialised product.’
He paused, letting these points sink in before continuing. ‘The organisation which we are setting up will be known as the Company.’
‘The Invisible Company,’ David interjected.
‘Exactly,’ John agreed, ‘and with invisible staff. No high living or big spending will be allowed. No flashy cars. You will also be restricted in your circle of friends. The first time you’re involved in a fight or attract police attention in any way will mean instant dismissal.’
The room was silent. Every eye was upon him.
‘Our biggest risk,’ John continued, ‘unless the police or customs discover us bringing the hemp into the country or delivering it to our wholesalers, lies in our internal security. Every member of this team has a duty to safeguard the others. Disloyalty will not be tolerated. If any one of you is picked up by the police, you will not listen to deals, you will not say one single word, however innocent, about any of your colleagues or the Company itself. You will simply keep silent until our solicitor arrives. Do you understand?’