48 Hours - A City of London Thriller (21 page)

Dirk lifted his mobile phone to his ear. “Gordo, you still
close by?”

“
Yep, I can see you standing on the corner, but it’s really
difficult to keep parking up here. I’ve been moved on three times
already.”

“
I need you in case he takes a taxi. If he leaves on foot I’ll
follow on my own, OK?”

“
OK, Dirk.”

***

Lord Hickstead had changed his clothes and was now standing at
the kerb holding a briefcase. The doorman had walked to the corner
to hail a cab for him. Luckily it was sunny and the cabs were
looking for customers. In the rain you couldn’t get a cab for love
nor money.

“
I think we’re off,” Sergeant Scott said to the motorcycle
cop, who put on his full face helmet before testing the built in
microphone. HQ answered immediately and made it clear that they
wanted a running commentary.

The Peer stepped into the black cab, and after a moment it did
an illegal U turn and headed towards the Palace of Westminster. As
it passed Big Ben, or St Stephen’s Tower as it is more accurately
known, it had been joined by a motorcycle courier and a blue
Vauxhall Corsa.

“
Bloody hell, Gordo, couldn’t we run to something better than
this?” Dirk asked as he slid the seat as far back as it would go,
realising he was still bent nearly double in the compact
space.

“
Boss said it had to be something inconspicuous,” Gordo
muttered apologetically.

***

The unwitting convoy of cab, motorbike and Corsa proceeded
along Victoria Street and then north along Grosvenor Place,
skirting Buckingham Palace Gardens.

Against the odds, they all made it around an exceptionally
congested Hyde Park Corner to exit onto Knightsbridge and the A4.
They hadn’t travelled far along Knightsbridge when the black cab
turned into Brompton Road and indicated a right turn. The motorbike
followed, but the Corsa, a few cars behind now, had to wait to
turn.

Dirk and Gordo both swore, but they need not have worried
because the convoy came to an abrupt stop just a hundred metres
away on Cheval Place. By the time the Corsa arrived on the scene,
Lord Hickstead was climbing the steps into a building. The wall
next to the front entrance bore a brass plaque on which was
engraved the words CitySafe Depository.

This area of London was unfamiliar to the Corsa driver, but he
soon discovered that Cheval Place was actually a mews. It was very
narrow and, whilst the motorbike could pull over to one side, the
Corsa was not going to be able to squeeze past the cab, which was
still standing outside the depository. Gordo turned right onto a
one way Street called Rutland Street, and then he turned right
again onto Fairholt Street so that he was parallel to Cheval
Place.

“
OK, Gordo, His Lordship has obviously got a safety deposit
box in there. We have to assume that he’s retrieving something
valuable. Here’s what we do.” Dirk outlined a rough plan and Gordo
agreed, even though he had extreme concerns.

***

Lord Hickstead pressed the buzzer on the security panel and
announced himself. The door buzzed and a tough looking man in
uniform opened the door with a smile, beckoning the customer
inside. In a few minutes he was past the metal grillage which
protected the strongroom security guard and at the entrance to the
strongroom itself. The door stood open. It was about ten feet in
diameter and it was at least two feet thick. A mixture of brass and
titanium locking bolts were arranged in three rows. The safe was
virtually impregnable and the depository was fully manned twenty
four hours a day, every day of the year, so breaking in overnight
or at a weekend wasn’t possible.

The Peer looked into the vault. There were boxes of all sizes,
from letter sized to kitchen cabinet sized. His personal box was
one of the largest; it was called a ‘half cupboard’. It was sixteen
inches wide and half the height of the vault at around three feet
six inches tall. He tapped in a six figure code and a small beep
announced the opening of a discreet panel in the door. Behind the
panel was a keyhole. Lord Hickstead took his key from his pocket.
It was rather unusual in appearance, similar to a Yale lock blank
key with no notches along the edge. Instead it had tiny depressions
or craters drilled into the flat sides. He slid the key into the
keyhole and heard tiny rods slip into the depressions. Once they
were in place he was able to turn the key ninety degrees to the
right, and the lock disengaged.

Inside the box sat the oversized briefcase containing the
painting, a holdall courtesy of Don Fisher and a bag of diamonds
donated by Josh Hammond. It was time to start converting the
remaining goods to cash. He was meeting Van Aart’s man in an hour,
and he had a meeting tomorrow with a London based Sheik who used
the Peer to gain access to the highest levels of the last
government. The Sheik was also rather keen to own the Churchill
painting.

The last item in the box was possibly the most controversial;
it was a brown envelope containing a series of Polaroid photographs
which had been taken last year. Hickstead was not a man for gadgets
or technology, but who on earth uses Polaroids any more, he
wondered. He already knew the answer. He had paid a German
journalist ten thousand Euros for ten poorly composed and badly lit
photos, taken by an impoverished but good looking German boy. The
photos had no artistic merit, but the faces in them were
recognisable and what they were doing was likely to disgust and
shock many who saw them.

Lord Hickstead placed two items into the briefcase he had
brought with him and locked his safety deposit box. He had a busy
day ahead of him.

Chapter 46

Cheval Place, London. Thursday, 11 am.

Constable Knott was now about a hundred yards from the
depository; he was sitting astride his motorcycle with a clipboard
in his hand, trying hard to look inconspicuous.

He saw the target exit the depository and start walking up
Cheval Place in the direction of Montpellier Street, where he would
have a chance of hailing a taxi. The policeman put his full face
helmet on and put his clipboard away. As soon as His Lordship
reached the end of the road he would follow; until then he would be
too obvious.

At first he wasn’t sure whether or not he was seeing things. A
short man appeared from nowhere and moved close up behind the Peer,
before using his foot to kick at back of the target’s knee.
Naturally the older man’s knees folded and he ended up on the
ground, breaking his fall by instinctively stretching out his
hands. In the process he let go of the briefcase, and his assailant
picked it up, held it to his chest and ran.

The constable was already off his bike and was yelling into
his headset that the target was down and a mugger was escaping down
a side street. The policeman was normally very quick on his feet,
but he discovered very quickly that motorcycle boots are not made
for running. By the time he got to the Peer the uniformed security
guard from the depository was already helping the man up, and so
the policeman directed his attention toward the mugger.

The policeman ran around the corner onto Montpellier Walk and
nearly ran into a smartly dressed man carrying a green Harrods bag
who was coming in the opposite direction. The man looked alarmed,
but he quickly regained his composure and said, “I think the fellow
you’re chasing turned left down Fairholt.”

Knott called out his thanks as he ran around the corner in
time to see the mugger starting a small car and driving away at
speed. He read the registration plate out loud to Control,
informing them that this was a one way system and the only way out
was via Brompton Road. If they could block that quickly enough,
they would catch the mugger.

The constable walked back to his bike and waited for back
up.

***

The plan had worked well. As soon as Gordo was out of sight of
the policeman he had passed the briefcase to Dirk, who placed it in
the Harrods bag and walked nonchalantly in the direction of the
crime scene.

The motorcycle cop raced around the corner and nearly knocked
Dirk over. Dirk pointed in the direction the mugger had gone, and
the policeman hurried on his way. The constable had seen a smartly
dressed man in a suit carrying a distinctive green Harrods bag, and
had no reason to suspect him of anything. He had been too
preoccupied with chasing a mugger, after all.

Dirk crossed the road and pressed himself against a wall as a
police BMW raced into Cheval Place.

***

Gordo slowed down as he put distance between himself and the
crime scene, so as not to attract attention. He reached the end of
the road and realised that he could only turn right. It was a one
way system and cars were coming from the left. He manoeuvred into
the roadway and realised that he was heading back to Cheval Place,
but there was nowhere else to go.

At the next junction he could either go right and pass the
crime scene, or left and up to Brompton Road. He took the left
turn. He could see Dirk walking in the same direction carrying the
Harrods bag, and was contemplating picking him up - although that
wasn’t the plan - when a police car headed straight towards him.
The BMW screeched to a halt, and Gordo was trapped.

***

Dirk saw the police helping Gordo out of the car and hurried
away from the area, eventually flagging down a taxi. He gave the
Boss’s address, and relaxed on the back seat of the cab before
making the inevitable call.

“
Boss, I have some good news and some bad news,” he said, as
if starting to tell some bad joke.

Chapter 47

New Scotland Yard, London. Thursday, 1pm.

By the time Dee and I arrived at Scotland Yard with Inspector
Boniface, Lord Hickstead had been there for over an hour. So far he
had been seen by a police doctor, who could find no injuries
whatsoever, and he had been asked to identify the alleged mugger,
which he could not do as the mugger had approached him from
behind.

We were told by DCI Coombes that CCTV footage showed the
incident in full, but quite honestly the mugger could have been
anyone wearing dark clothing. Worse still was the fact that
Constable Knott could not identify the mugger either, and he had to
admit he had not actually seen the suspect getting into the car. He
had assumed it was the mugger, mainly because of the timing of
events and the fact that the streets were otherwise empty. A
reasonable assumption, in my view, but not everyone shared that
view.

“
Nothing!” Detective Chief Inspector Coombes shouted in
frustration. “We have nothing!” He stormed off, and Inspector
Boniface rolled his eyes. We were all sitting in a meeting room,
being briefed on the day’s events, trying to piece together exactly
how everything had gone so horribly wrong.

“
So what was in the briefcase?” Dee asked generally. Gathered
around the table were Detective Sergeants Scott and Fellowes,
myself, Dee and Inspector Boniface.

DS Scott answered. “We don’t know. We went through that car
with a fine toothed comb, and no briefcase. We’ve even had uniform
search the whole area, and they came up with nothing. The bloody
thing seems to have just vanished.”

“
He could have thrown it away when the car was out of sight,”
Dee proffered.

“
True, but why would he bother? As far as he was concerned
he’d got clean away with only a courier on his trail.” DS Scott was
clearly irritated, and looked thoroughly miserable.

“
What about Lord Hickstead? What does he say about the
briefcase?” Boniface asked.

“
He says that the briefcase contained some copies of private
family papers, wills and that sort of thing, all of which he can
have copied by his lawyers who hold the originals. He just wants to
leave, and he isn’t being particularly helpful.”

“
Sounds odd to me,” I said. “Why travel halfway across London
to get some copies of papers out of a safety deposit box when your
lawyer has the originals? It doesn’t make sense. I assume we’re all
thinking the same thing, that he’s just had the diamonds stolen
from him?” All heads nodded.

“
He must be worried, because Europol informed us that early
this morning Van Aart transferred a quarter of a million Euros to
the bank account of Euro Union Financial Enterprises, the main
signatory being one Arthur Hickstead. I guess that was the payment
for the diamonds,” DS Fellowes contributed.

***

“
Is everything in place?” Inspector Boniface asked. It was.
“Right. Thank Lord Hickstead for his assistance and offer to take
him home. In any event, escort him out of the building,
understood?” The person on the other end of the phone seemed to
understand.

The video screen lit up, showing a blue screen bearing the
name of the projector company. After a few seconds the picture
changed to show a wide view of a comfortable room, where a middle
aged man with a balding pate and overly long grey hair sat on a
sofa.

It was my arch nemesis, Lord Hickstead. I didn’t know how I
felt. I should have been angry, but he looked so defeated, so
unthreatening. He must have been really shaken up by the day’s
events, I thought. I had to remind myself that this was my
blackmailer, and that I shouldn’t be feeling sorry for him. He
looked vulnerable. It was that very vulnerability which Inspector
Boniface was hoping to exploit.