‘A Rolls?’ Erick frowned. ‘Did you sign the cheque?’
‘He gave me an ultimatum. Either I signed or I was dismissed. You have to do something!’
‘I will,’ Erick agreed. ‘Send him in.’
Roger came hotfoot into his office a few seconds later. He began to speak, but Erick held up his hand. ‘Karen tells me you intend to buy a Rolls on the company account. You must be out of your mind. Imagine turning up in that in front of some poor sod who’s in the process of losing his business and being evicted from his home.’
‘It’s secondhand ,’ Roger told him truculently. ‘It only costs a few thousand more than the car I have now. It’s no big deal.’
Erick stood up. ‘Oh, come on, Roger. Don’t be deliberately obtuse. I’m not having it and you’ve made matters worse by threatening to dismiss Karen. Climb down off your high horse and be more realistic.’
‘If you won’t back me up by sacking her, I’ll resign.’ Roger moved closer to reinforce his threat. He pushed his face aggressively towards Erick’s. ‘And you know I can do you a lot of harm.’
‘You’d better tell me exactly what you mean by that?’ Erick was suddenly very calm.
Roger backed off, realising he had gone too far. ‘You know what I mean. If I walked out, this business wouldn’t last five minutes.’
‘Do you think I wouldn’t be able to find another MD?’ Erick studied Roger’s expression, knowing what he had really meant. Doubtree knew too much about Mirage Consulting and, if dismissed, could use his inside information about the company to devastating effect. ‘Either you apologise to Karen,’ said Erick, picking up some papers and leafing through them casually, ‘or you are out of here within thirty minutes.’
Roger drew in a deep breath and backed down. ‘All right. I’ll apologise.’ He left the office, not meeting Erick’s eyes.
He threw the papers down and paced the room. What had Doubtree meant precisely by that word ‘harm’? Blackmail? Would he really take his information to the police, who might well decide to bring in the Fraud Squad to investigate Mirage Consulting’s methods?
Changes would have to be made to the set up of the company. If Karen were in sole charge, he would have nothing to worry about.
She knocked and entered closing the door behind her. ‘Roger’s apologised,’ she said, ‘but I don’t like having him around. He really upsets me.’
‘We’ll get rid of him,’ Erick promised. ‘It won’t be easy, but I’ll think of a way.’
* * *
‘Here’s another cheque Roger wants me to sign.’ Karen placed it in front of Erick. ‘I can cope with daily problems, but this man is supposed to be my superior and I think he’s useless, specially at a time when the company is getting bigger and bigger. You should get rid of him now.’
Erick picked up the cheque from Karen. It was made out to Roger Doubtree in the sum of five thousand pounds.
‘It’s an advance on his wages. Not for next month, but for two months ahead. If I didn’t have to sign all the cheques, he’d be into next year’s by now.’
‘OK. Leave it with me. I’ll have a word with him.’
Erick decided to approach Roger as discreetly as possible and took him to lunch. He waited till after the main course before talking business.
‘You’re a highly qualified person,’ he said, ‘with enormous managerial skill. I think you should consider moving on with a brilliant reference from us.’
Roger slammed down his knife. ‘Are you sacking me?’
‘Let me finish. My proposal is that it might be possible to offer you a golden handshake in return for all the hard work you’ve put in.’ Taking a pen from his pocket, Erick wrote the details of a generous pay‑off on a sheet of paper.
Roger did not even look at it. ‘So you’re writing me off? Are you sure that’s wise? I know everything about your company! And I’m not leaving just with one year’s salary.’
‘So what do you want?’ Erick leaned back. Roger had taken the bait and it was now a just a question of reeling him in.
‘I want a hundred grand up front and double my salary for the next two years.’
Erick was quiet for a while before calling the waiter for some coffee.
Roger said impatiently, ‘Are you going to accept my terms or not?’
‘Write your resignation on that serviette,’ Erick said quietly, ‘then pack your things and be out of Mirage Consulting’s premises within one hour. If you do that, I will write you a cheque for a hundred and fifty thousand in full and final settlement.’ He showed Roger a cheque already written for that sum, made out to him personally, and held it between his hands, ready to tear it up. ‘If you don’t accept this offer here and now, you’ll get nothing.’
‘I’ll resign when we get back in the office,’ Roger muttered.
‘Now. Unless you want me to sack you.’
Roger grabbed the pen Erick held out and quickly wrote five lines on a paper serviette.
‘It was nice doing business with you.’ Erick handed him the cheque. ‘Now get the hell out of here before I lose my temper.’
After Roger had left Mirage Consulting, having cleared out all his effects, Karen came into Erick’s office. The tension had drained from her with Roger’s departure. She looked calm and in control – if a little young for what he was about to offer her.
‘I would like you to become Managing Director of Mirage Consulting , with overall responsibility,’ he said. ‘And I want you to be in charge of all our operations abroad.’
‘Erick!’ she gasped.
‘How does it feel at the top of a multinational company?’
‘I think... I think this is more than I have ever dreamed of in my life!’
* * *
A week later, Ben Bancroft, Mirages legal advisor, asked to have a private word with Erick. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from the police.’
Erick sat down heavily.
‘It sounds as if Roger has cashed the cheque and still decided to spill the beans.’
Erick felt as if he could not breathe. His heart had begun to hammer hard against his ribs. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re going to take a formal statement from him this afternoon. I’ll see them tomorrow and find out what can be done.’
‘How do you know about this?’
Bancroft smiled. ‘ Those foreign holidays and cash hand‑outs have come in handy at last.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I don’t think we should worry too much. It might just amount to a damage limitation exercise. If we could only get someone to teach Doubtree a lesson...’
Immediately after the solicitor had left his office, Erick picked up his telephone and called John Forbes.
* * *
‘All right.’ John picked up a toy helicopter from his desk and toyed with it. ‘He just needs to be taught a lesson. Have you got his address?’ John asked casually. After Erick had written it down, he smiled and said, ‘Right. Now forget all about Doubtree. I think I know the very people to settle this. They will be paying him a call shortly and after that I’d be surprised if we have any more trouble.’
Erick waited impatiently next day for Ben Bancroft to get back from a meeting with his contacts in the police force. One, he knew, was a Detective Inspector in the Fraud Squad, – the three others of lower rank, working in specialist squads in London.
As soon as Bancroft walked into the office, Erick said, ‘Are we still in business?’
‘We are if you’re prepared to shell out four thousand,’ he said. ‘That’s their price. One thousand each.’
‘Pay it. But I don’t like it, Ben. I’d feel happier if we had some hold over them. Have any of them been on holiday at our expense?’
Bancroft nodded. ‘Of course. And I’ve offered our Inspector another jaunt to the Seychelles for which he’s bitten my hand off. If you’re prepared to authorise a few more thousand, I’ll arrange for him to be photographed enjoying the high life, in the company of myself and a few oth
er dubious characters. Mind you, they have to make a bit of noise and take a statement from me, before shelving the case due to lack of any hard evidence.’
‘Do it,’ Erick said shortly. ‘We must have something to use or we leave ourselves wide open to these charges.’
Bancroft nodded. ‘I want you to know, Erick, that I’m not just throwing a thousand pounds at each of my police contacts. Nothing so blatant. The way it works is that I’ve told them I can get cheap tickets, late cancellations, for just two hundred pounds. Naturally, I pay the travel agent the full whack.’
‘And is that the way you go about it with our other contacts? The court officials and so forth?’
‘Yes. Holidays, tickets to hot shows, discounts on cars. No clumsy bribes in cash. We have to have it put to them in an acceptable form. Softly, softly catchee monkey.’
‘Good,’ Erick said. ‘Okay, Ben, do it your way. If we can get the police off our backs, I think our friend Doubtree is in for a little shock which should warn him off pulling any more stunts like this.’
* * *
‘How did you persuade Roger to withdraw his statement?’ Erick asked John when they next met.
‘Who said I did?’
‘I want to know,’ Erick persisted. ‘As a partner in this business and as possible chairman of the new venture, I insist on it.’
John smiled. ‘He was picked up Saturday night, taken out of bed and brought to Epping Forest outside London. There he was stripped naked, wrapped with brown packing Sellotape from his feet to the top of his head, leaving just his nose clear, laid in the black velvet interior of a coffin with a breathing tube, which existence he did not know about, and then buried so that he could hear the earth falling on top of him – until everything finally became deadly silent. The next morning when he was dug up, he’d had a change of heart.’ John shrugged. ‘Gentle persuasion.’
Erick was shocked. ‘You call that gentle?’
John sighed and threw an arm around his shoulders. ‘Your problem has been resolved and we carry on with our master plan. You should thank your lucky stars you’re not having to slop out in some odious prison.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
_________________________
London, August 1979
Detective Sergeant Malcolm Fox pushed aside the file marked ‘MIRAGE CONSULTING (UK) LTD’ and leaned back wearily.
This investigation had been a disaster, he thought. Not that he had been directly involved, but as the officer in charge of pushing the paperwork through for CID over that month, he had been aware of what was going on.
Why a few weeks ago, had his two colleagues suddenly dropped all interest in working on Mirage? They’d excused themselves as having more important work to do, in spite of the incriminating statement they’d obtained from the firm’s previous Managing Director, Roger Doubtree, before inexplicably he withdrew everything. That both officers on the case had suddenly asked their superior for time off to go on holiday with their families did not fit naturally with their being busy. And trips to the Seychelles were not exactly commonplace for officers of their rank.
Malcolm Fox was not naive. He took it as a realistic possibility that Elgberg had bribed the two police officers to drop their investigation but he had not of course the slightest proof and combing through the file had given him very little to go on.
Doubtree changing his mind seemed ever more serious. It was unlikely this was just “money talking” as he was known to have received a huge payoff from Elgberg previously. Getting him to withdraw his statements and keep quiet, subsequent to this had to involve heavy‑duty threats, perhaps even on his life.
If instructions had come from above to let Elgberg be, Malcolm Fox would not have objected, but he should have been told. Why did they always keep him out of everything?
Fox enjoyed his work. He never worried about the hours he worked or the tedium the job often entailed, so long as the investigation produced a result. Gathering details, the intricate unwinding of complicated criminal schemes, gave him immense pleasure. Everything else, including his private life took second place. He was proud of his nickname of ‘Foxy’ and tried to live up to it.
Malcolm Fox was ambitious. He wanted a better house with more space. He wanted his wife to be able to stop teaching.
To be forced to work with two police officers he did not like or trust was a problem, but he had no intention of declaring open war on them. The force did not encourage whistle blowing and to draw his superiors’ attention to what had gone on in this investigation could signal the end of his own career.
He picked up the file again and glanced at the report on Elgberg. An interesting character, he thought. Maybe he should keep a discreet eye on him. Someone with Elgberg’s background, intelligence and business competence, plus a slightly reckless tendency to sail close to the edge, was bound to make another mistake sooner or later.
Malcolm Fox took out his private note pad and for five minutes jotted down some salient facts about Erick Elgberg, before closing the file and putting it in the OUT tray.
PART FOUR
A SEA OF TROUBLE
CHAPTER THIRTY
_________________________
Scotland Yard, Victoria, London, Monday, 24th September 1979
‘And we have no criminal record on John Forbes?’ Detective Chief Inspector Jeremy Adrians from C11, Crime Intelligence, asked his colleague Chris Mills of the same rank.
‘No. There’ve been several investigations. All come up with absolutely nothing,’ Mills answered. ‘The Dorset Constabulary confirmed that he’s a wealthy man and has lived all his life in Cerne Abbas.’
‘And the tax people?’
‘They too confirm he’s a high bracket taxpayer going back many years. They’ve also looked into his income several times, but come up against a firm of high powered chartered accountants, prepared to slug it out in court over each extra penny they demand. However,’ Mills went on, picking up a sealed plastic evidence bag from the desk, ‘that doesn’t necessarily rule out what this letter tells us. Namely that he finances drugs operations.’
‘Maybe. Although in my opinion it was written by someone with a very serious grudge against this John Forbes.’
Both officers looked at the letter. Adrians took it from Mills. He knew how overworked the force was, but with the few scraps of information they already had and these detailed allegations it seemed to him, it would be a grave mistake not to investigate Mr Forbes.
‘I think there’s too much here for us to dismiss as mischief‑making by someone with a grudge. What about the twelve people this David Kennedy mentions, all supposedly major figures in the drugs trade? The Reading prison connection is easy to check out. He also states clearly that if we receive this letter he’ll be dead. In my opinion that leaves us no option but to start an investigation.’
‘We have one hundred and sixty David Kennedys on our register. Let’s look at each of them for starters.’ Mills paced the room, hands in pockets. ‘I wonder where this poison‑pen letter’s been all this time? It’s taken seven months to reach us.’
‘Probably the usual thing,’ Adrians replied. ‘Someone’s been asked to post it after a stipulated time. Kennedy knew his life was in danger, so he wrote the letter and gave it to his solicitor to post if he disappeared for six months or so. The letter’s dated January, but the postmark is just two days ago.’ He took a coin out of his pocket and flipped it into the air. ‘Heads or tails?’
‘Heads.’ The coin landed as Mills had predicted. ‘Right. I’ll look into David Kennedy,’ he said. ‘You get the mysterious John Forbes.’
Adrians slipped the coin back into his pocket. ‘Imagine if this letter were genuine! This drugs outfit could be one of the biggest in Europe, and right under our noses! John Forbes would be quite a catch.’
‘And not only for the drugs,’ said Mills thoughtfully. ‘If, as you say, Kennedy knew he was a marked man, we have Fo
rbes on a murder charge too. That should put him away for life – a decent collar. And a pat on the back for us. So let’s get stuck in, convince the guv’nor it’s worth slipping a bit of money the grasses’ way.’
Adrians still looked doubtful. ‘He’s not going to go for that. Forbes has no form and his wife’s titled. Wouldn’t you know it?’
‘Who’s taking care of the drug angle – Customs?’ Mills changed the subject.
‘We’ll give them Forbes’s gang members’ names and whereabouts – on the strict understanding that we get first crack at the man himself.’
‘The key to all this isn’t Kennedy or the rest of Forbes’s gang. It’s actually here in the postscript.’ Mills got up and started walking restless between the desks.
Adrians stared at the few hastily scribbled lines tacked on to the end of David Kennedy’s letter from the grave: ‘He has killed before. Check out Duncan Grace. John Forbes was responsible.’
‘You’ve pulled the file already?’ enquired Mills.
‘Duncan Grace was small‑time compared to Forbes, though he was Mr Big in South London. Owned a few pubs in the Wandsworth area, ran a string of pushers. Must have stepped on Forbes’s feet, somehow. He simply vanished one day. Into thin air.’
Mills looked annoyed. ‘No body, nothing really. Any brief would insist that Mr Duncan Grace is abroad, living the high life, enjoying the profit of his crimes. Maybe we should talk with his old friend.’
‘Someone called Derek Harvey is mentioned as a close associate for many years.’ Adrians thought for a moment then continued, ‘There’s always a second in command, isn’t there? Maybe this Harvey is still around. Let’s see if the old organisation is run by him or someone else now. Yes, I think we come at this from Duncan Grace’s end, see where that takes us. With a bit of luck, we’ll hit Forbes with a double whammy.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
_________________________
Cerne Estate, Dorset, March 1980
‘It’s my fourteenth birthday soon,’ Michael began tentatively.
There was no immediate answer from his father. The statement had pulled John up short. Where had the years gone? Images of happier times flashed through his mind.
‘Is that a hint?’ he said at last. ‘What present are you hoping for?’