No Mercy (38 page)

'Four hundred million?'

Drago's expression had now become apoplectic. Paula
decided they were now seeing the real Drago, the man who
had escaped from the inferno of Armenia, probably
injuring or killing
anyone who stood in his way. Tweed
reached for the cafetiere, refilled Paula's cup, his own, then
offered to refill Drago's. The reaction was a brutal wave of
his huge hand, refusing the offer. They waited, sipping
their coffee.

It was obvious Drago was fighting for self-control.
Gradually he settled back more peacefully into his large
chair. He gazed at Tweed and rested a shaking hand on the arm of his chair before he could speak in a normal
voice.

'You know which of the four is responsible for this act of
treachery?'

'Not yet. My next visit may enlighten me.'

'Then I shall leave immediately for
...
the plant.'

'Dartmoor?'

'My destination is my affair.'

'Now.' Tweed leaned forward. 'I will tell you what you are
going to do. You will stay here at Jermyn Street until you
hear from me. Is that clearly understood?' he said grimly. 'There are factors - dangerous international factors - you know nothing about. Your intervention could ruin my
investigation.' Tweed stood up abruptly, his tone still grim.
'I rely on you to do exactly as I have suggested. Do not stir
from here. You don't know enough. I do. Thank you for your hospitality. I must keep moving. Time is not on our
side.'

Paula had also stood up, was about to follow when Drago
gently took hold of her arm. He whispered so only Paula
caught what he said.

'You know, my dear, if Tweed was available I would hire
him at a huge sum to take over control of Gantia.'

As they climbed into their car the invisible Harry called out
quietly from the rear.

'No one came near the c
ar while you were away. The
desperate enthusiasts are just beginning to appear, hurrying
on foot to their jobs.'

'Desperate enthusiasts?' queried Paula, puzzled.

'The ones with bosses who arrive at eight in the morning.
To check up on their staff.'

'How on earth do you know that?' she wondered.

'Got a drinking pal who works in a big firm. He told me
he does that. Said life has become a pressure cooker, that in a few years' time at this rate half of them will end up in a
hospital or an asylum.'

'He's got a point,' said Paula as they drove along the deserted Mall. 'Quality's gone out of the window. Speed,
speed, speed is all they think of.'

'And,' Harry concluded, 'some of them walk miles now
the Tube and the trains are so bad.'

'Are we heading for that stockbroker's?' she asked. 'The one whose name Professor Saafeld found on a screwed-up
ball of paper under the foot of the first skeleton we found on
Dartmoor?'

'You are perceptive.'

'I'll navigate,' she said, an A to Z of London open on her
lap. 'Haldon Street is a turning off Threadneedle Street.'

'Will they be open? It's very early,' Harry wondered.

'If they're not, we'll find a parking slot and wait.'

'It's that building on the right,' she warned as Tweed crawled
down Haldon Street.

He'd have had to crawl in any case. Even at this early hour the traffic had become dense, moving at five miles per hour. Tweed stopped, signalled left as he saw a Buick backing out
of a parking space. Behind him a driver who had decided it
was his pressed his horn nonstop.

'Hysteria starts early,' Paula mused as Tweed slid inside
the now vacant slot. The driver of the car behind shouted
something foul and made a rude gesture with his finger as
he drove past. Tweed ignored him as he alighted outside
the building with double doors and a legend etched in a
window:
dorton, kenwood
&
smythe, stockbrokers.
A light
was on behind the glass. Was probably on all day - Haldon
Street was narrow, hemmed in by tall blocks. The sun
would never penetrate down inside this backstreet
canyon.

'Be as quick as we can.' he informed Harry before closing
the door.

Paula was already pressing a large ancient bell. She had
to wait, Tweed alongside her, until the left-hand door was
opened, the hinges creaking. A small man stared at them
as though they were the last people on earth he wanted to
call.

'You investors?' he demanded in an effort at politeness.

'We are investors in information,' Tweed said with a
pleasant smile, holding up his identity folder.

'SIS? You've come to the wrong place.'

'No, we haven't. Could I have your name?' He pointed to
the etched names in the glass. 'There are several of you.'

'I'm Smythe, the only one left. I guess you'd better come
in. Ladies first. Take a pew - you'll have to shift papers off chairs.'

Tweed couldn't place his voice. It wasn't Cockney, but it
did have undertones of the way Harry spoke. At the same
time it was well educated. Smythe was not the public's idea
of an occupant of the Surrey stockbroker belt. He wore a shirt open at the neck, hadn't shaved, his dark trousers had
a sharp crease, his black shoes were polished. An odd
mixture of apparel.

Paula was seated at the large ebony table, having carefully
removed a pile of papers, stacking them neatly on a
sideboard. She had prepared a chair for Tweed. As he sat
down Smythe lifted another pile off a chair, dumped it on the floor. 'Junk,' he said. Turning the chair round, he sat
leaning forward against its back, his shrewd eyes gazing at
them.

'You're Smythe,' Tweed began. 'What happened to
Dorton?'

'Retired with a pile at the height of the boom. Went off to the Bahamas with a playgirl. He was shrewd in some ways,
stupid in others. The playgirl has probably eaten her way
through half his fortune already.'

'And Mr Kenwood?'

'Disappeared overnight about three to four months ago. Just walked. Not like him. Never heard a word since.'

'Could you describe Mr Kenwood? Height, weight, age -
that sort of description?'

He listened while Smythe gave surprisingly precise data.
It fitted in every detail the professor's description of the
first skeleton discovered on Dartmoor, just off the track.
Tweed knew that at long last he had identified the fourth
body.

'Could you give me some idea of his work and his clients?'

'Confidential.' Smythe grinned. 'Don't wave that folder at
me. He dealt with some very big investors, was secretive
about who they were. Which was proper. We all worked our
own clientele.'

'When you say big, how big?'

'Well, he was the only one of us who plunged his clients
into the dotcom debacle. I didn't phrase that well. He always
warned them it could be another South Sea Bubble, but
some of them insisted on diving in big.'

'Four hundred million pounds big?'

'My God!' Smythe threw up both hands. 'That really
would be pushing it.' He lit a cigarette. 'There was one client
who seemed to grow money who went into dotcom as
though money grows on trees. Woody — that's what we called
Kenwood - did let slip drinking with me in a pub that he hoped his biggest client didn't shoot himself.'

'So it was a man — not a woman?'

'Come to think of it, he said he hoped this client wouldn't
put a gun to
their
head. So it could have been a woman. Yes,

242
I suppose it could have been. Ken was a ladies' man. If a
woman investor came to us I'd let him cope with her.'

'You must have a record of clients for the tax people,'
Tweed suggested.

Smythe drank some more cold coffee from his still fairly full mug. After placing it on the edge of the table, he walked
over near to Paula, pulled open a drawer, took out a small
leather-bound book and waved it.

'Details are all in here. Highly confidential.'

'We need to borrow that, Mr Smythe. This is a murder
investigation.'

'Got a search warrant?' Smythe asked with a smirk, confident he'd scored a point.

'No, I haven't,' Tweed admitted.

'Then you don't go nosing into our - now my - clients'
lives.'

He dropped the book back into the drawer, closed it and
came back towards where Tweed was standing. As he did so
Tweed glanced at Paula. She nodded. Tweed's elbow
shifted, knocked the almost full mug of cold coffee on to the
floor. The mug broke into pieces, liquid pooled across the
floor.

'I'm so sorry.' Tweed took a plate off the table, bent down, began picking up pieces of broken china, collecting them on
the plate. Smythe crouched down and also began collecting wreckage as Tweed apologized again.

Paula opened the drawer very quietly, grabbed the leather-
bound book, slipped it into her shoulder bag and closed the drawer carefully. It was a trick they had used before on rare
occasions to obtain much-needed evidence. She was
checking her watch as the two men stood up and Smythe
looked across at her.

'Now I'll need a mop to clean up this mess of coffee,' he
grumbled.

'I'm so sorry,' Tweed repeated. 'I think this would be a
good time for us to leave.'

'So do I,' snapped Smythe.

'We may now have the final key,' Paula said, a rare note of
excitement in her voice, as they approached their car.

'If that notebook tells us who invested four hundred
million in a dotcom that crashed, you're right,' Tweed agreed
as they arrived at their parked car.
'If it
does,' he added.

23

Paula suggested taking over the wheel while Tweed looked at
the record book. He agreed. As they settled themselves a
voice from the back, Harry's, called out in a whisper.

'It's OK. No one came near the car.'

'You know where we are, Harry?' Tweed asked.

'Should do. One of my favourite pubs is at the end of this street. Why?'

'Because you're going to act as a courier to return this
book to the place we've just visited. Just hand it in, answer
no questions, get out of the area.'