48 Hours - A City of London Thriller (20 page)

“
I’m sorry about this, sir, but we have heightened security
today and I have to select someone from each flight. You are the
lucky one,” the officer said, in a clumsy attempt at humour. “We
won’t keep you long, sir.”

The Peer stood with his arms outstretched and was patted down,
the contents of his pockets in a blue tray next to his open carryon
bag.

“
Thank you, sir. Could you boot up your laptop now, please?
While that is booting up, could you please stand in the scanner
booth? I am obliged to tell you that you will not be subjected to
any harmful rays, but if you decide not to be scanned we reserve
the right to do a full body search.”

“
The scan will be fine, officer. We have to keep the skies
safe, after all,” Lord Hickstead said, without meaning a word. The
scan took less than a minute.

The customs officer tapped a couple of keys on the laptop to
ensure that it was a fully working computer, and then he allowed
its owner to repack his case and board the plane.

***

A minute later the customs officer was standing in a small
windowless office with Inspector Boniface.

“
Inspector, I have to tell you that Lord Hickstead is not
carrying any diamonds. I did a thorough pat down and I searched his
bag. Both he and his bag were then separately scanned; there was no
sign of diamonds or anything else unusual, for that matter.” There
was finality in his tone. “Oh, but there was one thing. As
requested I had him boot up his laptop, and he does have an Icon
for Photopaint on his windows opening page.”

***

The decision not to carry the diamonds with him had been a
sound one. It only needed one random security check, such as the
one he’d been subjected to, to blow the whole scheme. He would meet
with an old colleague from his EU days and enjoy a leisurely dinner
before embarking on the late night meeting that formed the real
purpose for his trip.

As was bound to be the case, the buyer, Mr Van Aart, turned
out to be a shady character, and so not carrying the diamonds was
probably a good thing. In any case, Mr Van Aart had his own methods
of moving diamonds around the world and Arthur Hickstead didn’t
want to know what they were.

Chapter
42

Cafe Zwart, Schiekade 640, Rotterdam. Wednesday.
11:45pm

Hickstead knew that the potential buyer already had the
certificates, the photos and that he had spoken to the diamond
cutter. Van Aart had confirmed that he was satisfied that he could
move the diamonds at a profit, as long as Arthur was prepared to be
reasonable.

Arthur had chosen to stay at, and eat at, the Best Western
Crown Hotel, which was conveniently close to the rail link for the
airport. He was now sitting in a coffee shop less than a hundred
yards from his hotel, waiting for the Dutch buyer.

The door opened and a bell suspended on a wire jangled as it
was displaced by the head of the door. The man who entered was well
over six feet tall, and completely bald. More accurately, his head
was shaven. He did not seem at all threatening, however, and he
smiled under a typically bushy Dutch moustache. Arthur hadn’t
bothered with a disguise, but he wore a hat and glasses which
obscured much of his head and face.

“
Mr Bob Smith?” Van Aart asked as he stood at the only table
occupied by a customer. Arthur nodded, and they shook hands. Van
Aart shouted something in Dutch to the owner and then turned to his
seller.

“
Bob, I am very impressed with the gems. I am even more
impressed that they are legitimate and not stolen. This makes
resale more.....” - he struggled for the word in English -
“.....profitable.”

The cafe owner brought a coffee over, along with a pastry
containing half a peach covered in white icing. “Fruit; you have to
get it where you can, eh, to stay healthy and to live long.” Arthur
suspected that the sugar in the icing alone made the Dutchman’s
efforts at hitting his ‘five a day’ redundant.

The negotiations took almost fifteen minutes, and as soon as
they had shaken hands on an agreed price they heard a melodious
clock strike twelve. Arthur was a little disappointed at receiving
only a quarter of a million Euros rather than a quarter of a
million pounds, but it was still around two hundred and ten
thousand pounds. Van Aart would pay the money directly into an
account in Brussels, held under the name Euro Union Financial
Enterprises. That particular account was already heavily loaded
with money and expenses accumulated over the last ten years, and
kept well away from the inquisitive noses of the UK
Exchequer.

Tomorrow morning the Peer would go to his safety deposit box,
remove the diamonds and hand them to the courier in the shadow of
Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, and the transaction would be
complete.

***

Ever the gentleman, Lord Hickstead held open the hotel door
for the attractive Dutch lady who had come in behind him. She
smiled and thanked him before heading to the bar. He wondered
whether he should follow her. After all, it had been a successful
trip so far, but he had to be up early for his flight and so he
took the elevator and headed off to bed.

As soon as the elevator doors closed the woman, who had been
following him since he had left the airport, watched the display
above the doors, recording that it stopped at the sixth floor. She
took her mobile phone out of her pocket and walked to a quiet spot
in the lobby.

“
Commissaris, this is Imka. The target has left the hotel only
once for a meeting in a coffee shop, and now he has retired to bed,
I think.”

“
Good work, Imka. I will tell the English Inspector. They are
one hour behind us, he will still be available.”

“
Commissaris, the man he met with was Walt Van
Aart.”

“
Are you sure, Imka? I have surveillance photographs of him in
Paris this morning, sent to me from Europol.”

“
I am certain it was him, Commissaris. I was on the
surveillance team in Delft when he met with the
Russians.”

“
Thank you, Imka. I will send the English police his file,
summarised of course. We cannot jeopardise our own prosecution for
the sake of a few diamonds.”

Chapter 4
3

London City Airport, London. Thursday, 8:30am.

DS Fellowes stood on the platform at the City Airport
Docklands Light Railway Station. He was waiting for the next train
to Bank Station in the City. His mobile phone rang. The voice was
one he knew well.

“
Sarge, our man has arrived and is heading to the DLR station
as predicted, so I am now handing him over to you. He should be
standing on the platform any second.”

Fellowes saw Hickstead arrive on the platform, and smiled in
approbation when he noted the next Bank train was scheduled in one
minute’s time.

“
Okay, thanks Andy, I’ll take it from here.” Fellowes ended
the call just as the driverless train approached.

No matter how many times he travelled this route, Arthur
Hickstead felt uncomfortable about riding a train with no driver.
It was disconcerting to stand at the front of the train and watch
as the rails passed beneath it at fifty miles per hour. In the
middle of the carriage sat DS Fellowes, apparently immersed in the
pages of a fantasy novel. The chances of losing His Lordship were
nil, but they didn’t want to risk missing a clandestine meeting
where diamonds could change hands.

Brad Fellowes wondered whether the Peer knew who he was
getting into bed with when he was dealing with Walt Van Aart. A
quarter of a million pounds in diamonds was small beer to a crook
like Van Aart; the Dutch Police seemed surprised that he would
bother to meet Lord Hickstead personally. Unless, of course, Van
Aart was aware of the real identity of the seller, and felt that he
could use His Lordship’s European political clout to his own
advantage at some time in the future.

The file said that Van Aart led an organisation known as the
Geest Mafia, which in English means the Ghost Mafia. The
trafficking of people, diamonds and drugs in the southern half of
the Netherlands, including all of Amsterdam south of the river, was
their speciality. Another gang called the Matroos, or the Seamen in
English, ruled the northern half of the Netherlands. Van Aart was
dangerous.

The train terminated at Bank station and Brad Fellowes tailed
the Peer until he stood on the platform waiting for the next
westbound Circle Line train. So far they had guessed his route
correctly, and Brad nodded to DS Scott of the Met., DCI Coombes’
sidekick, who would take up the trail from here.

DS Fellowes left the tube station and headed towards the
Vastrick Offices at Number 1 Poultry, less than a hundred metres
away.

Chapter 44

Vastrick Security, No. 1 Poultry, London. Thursday,
9:30am.

Dee Conrad’s Operation Peer Down and the Police Operation Peer
Pressure were going well. Our own file was thick with incriminating
evidence, albeit mostly circumstantial. Inspector Boniface had been
really good about keeping us informed as to what was going on, even
to the extent of a midnight call the previous night.

He had also called Don Fisher to inform him that the Peer had
flown to Rotterdam without the diamonds but nonetheless to assure
him that we were getting close, and that the blackmailer would be
punished. Apparently Don wasn’t particularly impressed, and
Boniface got the impression that he still wanted to kill the “old
geezer”. Odd that Fisher should refer to Hickstead as the old
geezer when he was only six years older than the aging rocker
himself.

A phone rang. We all went for our mobiles but it was DS
Fellowes who received the call. He spoke for a while and the DS
hung up, after issuing the instruction, “Stay with him, we’ll get
back-up.”

He turned to the rest of us. “OK, that was DS Scott. It seems
that Lord Hickstead has just entered number 2 Parliament Street,
opposite the Palace of Westminster. According to the doorman,
probably an MI5 operative, he’s staying in the Chief Whip’s private
apartment on the fourth floor. DS Scott virtually had to get a
warrant to extract that information.”

“
Thanks, Brad,” Dee said in reply. I felt a small stab of
disapproval. When had she started calling him by his first name?
“That would explain why you couldn’t find him registered at a
hotel. If only we could get in there we might be able to close this
case. He must be hiding the money, painting and diamonds
somewhere.”

We looked up the address on Google Streetview; it was a white
rendered building which had probably been several separate
buildings at one time. I had passed it many times and never looked
at it twice, yet now it might be at the heart of the case against
Hickstead. It was galling to hear that we were more likely to get a
search warrant for Windsor Castle than for the Chief Whip’s private
apartment.

Chapter 45

No. 2 Parliament Street, London. Thursday, 9:30am.

DS Scott was standing on the other side of Parliament Street,
from where he could see the entrance to the apartment building, and
he was engaged in conversation with a motorcycle courier dressed in
black with gold lettering on his jacket, which read City Slicker
Couriers. The courier looked just like thousands of others in and
around the City, but this one was very different. Constable Knott
was a police motorcyclist from the traffic section, seconded to CID
for covert surveillance. The reasoning behind the disguise was that
no-one in London gives couriers a second look.

As they stood together talking, their attention was on the
apartment entrance. The team felt sure that His Lordship would pass
on the diamonds sometime soon and they wanted to be there when he
did. Such had been the police focus on the Peer since he landed at
City Airport that morning that they had not noticed he was also
being followed by someone else.

***

Dirk stood at the corner of the street, watching the latest
policeman to follow Lord Hickstead. It had been a busy morning.
Dirk had been warned that the police would have a tail on the Peer,
and so he knew he must be careful. Dirk had dutifully waited at the
airport until Hickstead appeared. He hung back and watched as a
plain clothes policeman followed at a distance, radioing in his
location. The man then dropped back and allowed the target to head
towards the DLR platform. Dirk felt a little uncomfortable. The
boss had insisted he got himself a haircut and buy a dark suit.
Dirk couldn’t remember the last time he had worn a collar and
tie.

Hickstead stepped onto the train and a casually dressed young
man entered the same carriage, his eyes fixed on the target. The
man had a phone fixed to his ear. Dirk was convinced he had spotted
the new tail.

After an uneventful journey into the City, and a mad dash
across Bank Station, the police tail nodded to a man standing on
the platform and then walked away, almost brushing past Dirk as he
exited.

The policeman who had picked up the tail at Bank Station was
now standing opposite the building that Hickstead had entered an
hour ago.