Inside the garage they saw some attempt had been made to improve conditions, with a couple of industrial heaters and three neat rows of chairs set out on the newly swept floor. There was hardly any light though and it took a few minutes for their eyes to adjust. Then gradually they saw familiar faces around them and the newcomers slid into seats next to Brains, who seemed to be looking round for someone. Ray was about to ask where John was when, momentarily, the lights flickered, dimmed, and finally the room was in complete darkness.
Shastri caught his breath audibly, then laughed nervously when a powerful arc light on the floor before them was switched on to reveal the slight familiar figure of John Forbes. For a moment he stood in silence, his head bowed. A murmur of unease ran through the team, to see him so grave‑faced and silent, just standing there. Eventually he began to speak in a voice that sounded hoarse and strained.
‘I apologise for the surroundings. Not the ritziest we’ve ever had but very shortly you’ll appreciate my choice. I’ve called you together here for two reasons. The first is the one I gave you on the phone. The Company has been given a chance by a foreign organisation to diversify into a new designer drug. The potential profits are huge, but so are the risks.’
He stopped. It was as if he had lost the flow of his speech.
‘John, are you all right?’ someone asked when he did not continue.
Ignoring the question, he continued. ‘Sadly, one of the risks has already become apparent. I’m deeply sorry to have to tell you that for the first time in fourteen years we have suffered a life threatening security breach. The foreign organisation has come into possession of a complete list of the Invisible Company’s personnel – yes, your names and mine, business and private addresses, and the names of all our business connections and family.
There were exclamations of disbelief as people looked around in panic.
‘I don’t understand,’ said William Webster, getting to his feet. ‘If the operation’s blown wide open, how come you want us to branch out? What about damage limitation, deny ability, and everything we have practised over the years? As well of course as the obvious: getting to the bottom of how this happened?’
‘It’s very obvious,’ said Ramona calmly, her finely arched eyebrows raised superciliously. ‘One of us must have talked. That’s the only way.’
‘It wasn’t us...,’ her brother started to bluster.
John held up his hand for silence. ‘That won’t be necessary. In accordance with the agreement we made in Richmond when we started the Company, the informant has already been dealt with.’
There was absolute silence for a moment as his audience thought back to the meeting in a quiet South London suburb when each of them had taken a solemn oath of silence and agreed to abide by the consequences should they fail to keep it.
John nodded over the heads of his seated audience and a low humming filled the room as the hydraulic ramp of the open inspection pit beneath him was activated and slowly drew level with his feet. There was something lying on it, they saw. A long oblong shape shrouded in dark canvas. He bent and drew back a corner of the cover.
William Webster was first to his feet to check out the identity of the informant, but even before he saw the still pale face, he knew who was lying dead on the ramp.
David Kennedy had informed on the Invisible Company and had paid the price.
For a few moments pandemonium broke out. People crowded around the body, unable to believe the evidence of their eyes.
‘But – he was your friend,’ a stunned Shastri told John before his sister tutted at him and pulled him away by one arm.
‘Oh, man, this is heavy,’ Eugene kept repeating. ‘I mean, Dave... that’s heavy.’
‘I suppose there’s no doubt about this?’ Ray Immerman said in clipped tones. ‘You must have been very sure of your ground before taking this decision?’
‘Please take your seats,’ John said, now fully in control, feeling he had come through the worst.
Standing next to the body, he continued. ‘I was very sure. Our prospective partners gave me his name as evidence of good faith.’
‘Don’t give us that,’ Webster burst out. ‘What “good faith” would that be, then? David would never have sold out. They must have forced him to give the information. He’d never have betrayed us willingly!’
‘No, he didn’t,’ John confirmed in a low voice.
* * *
It had been a harrowing day for him.
The Clarks had picked David up in Maidstone. It had been a delicate operation with Jim and Neil following David’s car in a panel van for a couple of miles. At a traffic light Jim calmly walked from the van, opened the unlocked passenger door and pointed his gun at David as he slid in beside him. At the White Feather pub’s car park close by, which was not overlooked from the street, David was asked to get out of the car and into the panel van. A blow to the back of his head had knocked him unconscious. Handcuff on wrists and ankles secured him in the back of the van.
David’s pocket’s were emptied and his car locked. The keys were placed in the exhaust, ready for the person the brothers had asked to drive it to an agreed destination.
Blindfolded and gagged, David came to ten minutes later to find himself in the back of a van, covered in heavy carpets hardly able to breathe.
They had driven him to the garage in Dalston and interrogated him about his family’s confrontation with Grattini’s employees.
It had been decidedly unsubtle: a man and a woman had forced their way into his house one day while David was out. Fiona and the children had been seriously scared, without being touched, but worse was to follow on his return. When in front of the children and his wife he flatly refused to give them the information they sought, the woman took the youngest child, Carol, from the room and went upstairs. There was an ominous silence, and David started to protest angrily. Suddenly frenzied screams rang out from the four year old. David sprang up, ready to attack the man. His gun went off, a bullet hitting the floor inches in front of David’s foot. Calmly the woman returned and threw several locks of hair on the floor in front of them.
Almost bald‑headed, Carol clung to her mother, who seemed paralysed by shock.
Another threat followed, directed towards his wife, and then David crumpled and gave them everything they wanted.
After David had confessed to the Clark twins he had wept and pleaded for his life, begging for a second chance, mentioning a letter lodged with a solicitor, offering to relocate in another country and never to come near the Invisible Company again.
Dispassionately, the Clarks relayed this to John over the telephone.
He confirmed that there was no change to their orders, but was thunderstruck by the speed with which the brothers carried them out. Before John could ring off the radio telephone line, he heard the two shots, one to the head and one to the heart, that killed his former cell‑mate and trusted friend.
For a minute John sat paralysed looking at the black telephone. He started shaking, feeling as if he was going to vomit. By taking deep breaths, he slowly regained control of himself and scared that someone might come in and see him, he walked out into the garden, leaving the door open behind him.
The sound of those shots still echoed in his head hours later.
* * *
‘Intolerable pressure was brought to bear on David,’ he told his hushed audience. ‘The lives of his wife and children were threatened. In the face of that threat, he gave in.’
‘So he loved his family,’ said Brains wildly. ‘For that you killed him?’
‘No, not for that,’ John said calmly. ‘David was killed because he lied and covered up. I might have overlooked the fact he’d given them the information, fearing for his kids – if he’d come to me directly afterwards and let me know what was going on. Instead he covered his tracks and left us all wide open to an organisation that wants in on our operation. Fortunately I’ve managed to agree terms with them. But if I hadn’t,
or if they’d decided to put their own people into England, then more than one person would have died as a result of this, you can be sure of that – or they could have chosen to post the information they now had to the police, waited for our arrest, smiled at our long sentences and then taken over. Maybe with David promoted into a prominent position.
Ramona rose from her seat and came towards John. She knelt down beside the body and gently drew the canvas cover back over it. ‘Poor David,’ she said. ‘I liked him. He was a nice man – but weak. Weak as water.’ She folded her hands and said loudly: ‘May your God be with you.’
She got up briskly, dusting herself down as she spoke. ‘We can’t afford for people to see the rest of the Company the same way. John did the right thing by us, if you ask me.’
‘Thanks, Ramona,’ he told her, grateful for the show of support. ‘And I’d like to assure everybody here that David’s family will be taken care of. You have my word for that.’
* * *
John dreaded the meeting, but it had to be faced.
He arrived at the substantial and respectable villa in Maidenhead around ten o’clock. Fiona Kennedy, face scrubbed clean of make up and hair tied back, was wearing a floral housecoat when she opened the door to him, obviously ready for bed. She smiled to see John who was a popular visitor to the Kennedy household and inwardly he quailed at the pain he was to inflict on her.
It was the worst thing he had had to do all day, worse even than hearing the shots which had killed his old friend. Seeing Fiona’s welcoming smile give way to a rictus of despair, he held her in his arms, as much to hide his own guilt‑stricken expression as to comfort her.
John told her that David had been killed while in West Scotland, planning a new import route, swept overboard as Francis Morell had been that first time.
‘But he said he would be home tonight? Nothing about going all the way to Scotland.’ she said, bewildered.
‘Maybe he changed his plans and was going to phone you. He didn’t tell me either. I got a phone call from someone in the village.’
She seemed to believe him and, good Army wife that she was, woke the children and told them the news herself before breaking down. John wondered how much she guessed. She’d been threatened by Grattini’s people, must have known of the deal David did with them, but never by so much as a flicker of an eyelash did she reveal that she regarded her husband’s death as anything other than a tragic accident.
If that was the way she wanted to play it, he was relieved to go along with it. He felt chilled to the marrow when he left the cosy family home. He wanted soft arms, warmth, some loving kindness, and Mona would give him that, whatever the hour.
Even if, in his heart, he no longer believed he deserved it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
_________________________
Virginia Water, April 1979
It was Paul Dockett’s first day working in London.
Being the chief cashier in a bank owned by an Indian group was certainly a new experience, but he had known it would be different, when he decided to take the job. It would take some months to get used to, but without this gamble he would have been stuck for the rest of his working life in the Ascot branch, where he had already been for more than twenty years. Seeing the same faces every day, hearing the same jokes, the same complaints from the local customers – with younger and younger new managers pushing him around.
Working in London’s Mayfair was going to be different. A real challenge.
Everyone at BCCI had been friendly and polite, he thought, walking towards the tube station in Piccadilly. He had noticed though that when the bank staff were not talking directly to him they switched from talking English to Indian, even if he had been told that it was against the bank’s policy. At the interview he had accepted that he would be one of the odd ones out. His superior had said it openly, that the bank was keen on not being regarded as only a bank for the Indian and Arab community, and the best way of showing this was to employ traditional English bank staff.
The streets were dark and rubbish was piled up everywhere. Maybe he could not even get a train home. ‘The winter of Discontent’ had forced him to take the very first train to London that morning. Now he waited for over two hours in a pub lit by candle light.
Ann and he were the only one who knew, that when he was offered the new job by Mr Abdul Assiz, the deputy manager for international affairs, Paul had been promised he would be promoted to assistant manager within a month and if that went well he would be in line to become one of the three managers in charge of a new branch in Regent Street soon to open. Before Paul had said anything in reply Mr Assiz had taken him by taxi from the bank’s impressive head office in 101 Leadenhall Street, in the City, to the premises in Regent Street.
Standing on the internal balcony, looking out over what was going to be the banking floor, Paul had accepted the job.
Soon he could call himself ‘bank manager’. That was the only thing that mattered.
‘How did you do, love?’ Ann asked as soon as he opened the front door to their house in Virginia Water.
‘Fine. Certainly a big change, but it went all right. I must have opened four new accounts in just one day. Where’s Elisabeth?’ He knew he had grown moody because of his unhappiness with not being promoted or moved to another branch after all those years with his former employers, but with that behind him, now he was looking forward to a new start.
‘We should do something tonight,’ he suggested. ‘I mean, to celebrate. But the miners will probably put the Kybosh on that as well.’
‘Hi ,Dad,’ his fifteen‑year‑old daughter came rushing down the stairs.
‘How are you? Have you done your home work? Shall I help you?’
‘No, Mum did it.’
Virginia Water was usually regarded as too expensive an area for a bank cashier, but they had been able to buy the house there with the money inherited from Ann’s grandfather, combined with a cheap mortgage from the bank.
The inheritance had also enabled Ann to give up her job as the manager’s secretary in the same branch. They had blamed the stress of it for the fact that she did not immediately become pregnant on marrying Paul. The change of pace had helped and now they had lived in the house for nearly ten years. Ann loved her life and was happy with her part‑time job at one of the local estate agents.
It was an uneventful suburban life. Some might even have called it narrow boning. But to Paul Dockett, content in the company of his attractive wife and beloved daughter, it was all he had dreamed of. He couldn’t imagine ever doing anything to jeopardise his ideal uncomplicated existence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
_________________________
London and Esher, May 1979
The injection of money from John Forbes had turned Mirage Consulting into a thriving organisation which now employed fifty people. One of these was an Irishman called Sam O’Sullivan, whom Arthur had recruited to become chauffeur, handyman and minder to Erick.
Mirage’s stock, acquired from the companies it had put into liquidation, was stored in a huge warehouse in Hammersmith. It was a regular Aladdin’s cave, the volume of goods so large that the more saleable items were constantly offered to a network of market traders, builders or retail stores for cash by the Company’s own sales staff. One Sunday in every month the warehouse was opened to the public.
Mirage had by now liquidated 124 companies and formed 32 new concerns out of the wreckage. These were usually sold back to the previous owners at a profit with payments spread over five years, as the old proprietors knew more about the products than anyone at Mirage and were delighted to be back in business without the burden of large debts.
Erick and Andrea flew to Australia and established a similar company in Sydney, Mirage Consulting (Australia) Pty, with an Australian partner. The Australian concern set up a sister company in New Zealand.
They flew home via New York, where Erick asked
a head‑hunting company to find a suitable managing director for a new Mirage to be set up in the USA. He also hired a private investigator to check out every persons name the company came up with. He was looking for someone slightly desperate for a new start or drastically wanting to improve his or her situation in life.
* * *
Roger Doubtree, the London MD, widely regarded as pompous and snobbish, was unpopular at Mirage Consulting. Although Erick was aware of this, he also recognised Roger’s ability to get the job done. His salary was set at £50,000 a year plus bonuses, but Karen had told her boss that Roger had several times asked for money in advance, which had to be sanctioned by her as she signed all company cheques.
Her relationship with Erick remained unchanged from their earlier days. So long as he occasionally complimented her on her looks and gave her a hug now and then, she was happy.
Ben Bancroft, Mirage’s full time legal advisor, worked unusual hours, often arriving at midday and leaving early, or else coming in at dawn and staying till midnight. Erick accepted this as he had no doubt that Bancroft was loyal to the Company. He had developed important contacts with officials at the Law Courts, obtaining valuable information about companies facing trouble before they actually received letters from the court notifying them of judgments or winding up petitions. Bancroft then immediately approached these companies, offering an alternative way out of their situation.
He also improved their contacts within the police force. Often Erick was asked to sanction payments in cash, which Bancroft used to reward court officials and police officers with exotic foreign holidays and other luxuries.
All in all, a highly successful, tightly run ship, Erick told himself before taking Andrea and the family off for a cruise around the Greek islands aboard L’Acquisition.
* * *
‘I’m not going to stand for this any longer!’ an angry Karen shouted at her employer.
‘Take it easy. What’s the matter?’
Erick had been back in the office precisely one hour. Deeply tanned from days on the deck, hair almost white from the sun, he wasn’t yet into the swing of things at Mirage, mind still floating free as the sea‑wind above the beloved yacht.
‘It’s Roger! He’s had the nerve to put his company car up for sale and intends to buy a Rolls‑Royce.’