Текст книги "48 Hours"

Автор книги: Jackson J. Bentley

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Chapter 16

Nour Jewellery Design, Hatton Garden, London. Friday, 11:50am.

The shop was small but beautifully furnished. It had the appearance of a consulting room as there were no gems on display, but each of the two magnificent carved walnut desks carried a brochure showing exquisite jewellery. Abasi Nour was a neat Egyptian man with a pencil moustache and a linen suit which was unsuited to the weather. He rose from his chair as Bob entered the shop, having been buzzed in through the security door.

“Mr Josh, how nice to see you again,” the shop owner said cheerily as he greeted the tall moustached man with the unconvincing toupee. His own hair was dyed jet black and carefully styled to cover his whole head.

The two men sat down and Bob handed over his business card. It read “Josh Hammond, Senior Loss Analyst.”

“Mr Nour, as you know this first transaction....”

Mr Nour held up his hand to stop Bob speaking. “Halima, could you leave us please?” The spectacularly attractive olive skinned girl at the other desk rose, smiled and exited through the door at the back of the shop.

“Sorry, Mr Josh, but we cannot be too careful. Now, you were saying.”

“Mr Nour, this is the first bonus payment of the year. There is another due later in the year, which will be a little larger, I hope. And I would like to do the same again if this transaction is beneficial.”

“Yes, indeed, London City bonuses are both legendary and generous to humble merchants like myself.”

“Shall we get on?” Bob prompted. “The money has been transferred.”

“Yes, sir, I will just confirm.” The Egyptian pressed a button on his phone and waited. After a moment he spoke a few sentences in Arabic before switching to English. “Asif, I am so distressed to disturb you on this special day but can you confirm that the funds are cleared to my account as agreed?” He listened to the reply for a moment and then bade his bank manager farewell in Arabic.

“My bank manager is sitting at home with his laptop and has confirmed payment, so we may now proceed.”

Abasi Noor opened a secret drawer in his desk by sliding back an intricately carved panel. He reached in a brought out a velvet pouch.

“As you requested, I have purchased only the very best round diamonds from Antwerp. These are all classified as colourless category D, or what we call best blue white. They are also internally flawless, they are extraordinarily rare. They have been cut for maximum brilliance, not for maximum carat size. But as you will see they are all large diamonds. You may not know that a diamond that is twice the size of another is usually almost three times more expensive. Please, take a look.”

Even under the harsh fluorescent lighting the diamonds looked magnificent. Bob had acquired them to sell on, but he was reconsidering now that he had been besotted by their beauty.

“I have the invoice from Antwerp. Losi Van Serck cut these diamonds personally as a favour to me and the certificate attached to the invoice shows the quality, cut and carat.”

Bob looked at the invoice made out to Mr Nour. The Egyptian had paid two hundred and twenty five thousand pounds for the jewels, making an easy mark up. Usually he would have to integrate the diamonds into a unique designer gold necklace to achieve a mark up like that. But Bob was happy. These diamonds could be transported anywhere in the world and were ready to be traded.

A few minutes later Bob was walking along Greville Street in the direction of the Farringdon Tube Station, sending the last text on the “Josh Phone” before discarding it. After a short tube journey to Kings Cross, where he removed the glasses, moustache, hairpiece and garish City boy’s tie in the gentlemen’s toilets, Bob hailed a taxi and headed back to his hotel for a celebratory lunch.

Chapter 17

City of London Police HQ, Wood St, London. Friday, Noon.

Dee was chatting and joking to try to distract me, but it wasn’t working. It had been over half an hour since the money was transmitted, and all we had seen or heard was Boniface taking an urgent call. He had yelled “How did that happen?” and stormed out of the office without another word.

I had a horrible feeling that my money was gone forever. My phone was still in the dock and it buzzed again. I read the message aloud.

“Thanks Josh,

That was easy. Perhaps I didn’t ask for enough. Next time I’ll be more realistic. You’ll be hearing from me again.

Bob”

I put my head in my hands. Dee put her hand on my back.

“He’s winding you up, Josh, now that he’s got what he wanted. In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s apprehended over the weekend. This is a murder investigation now.”

What Dee said made sense, but I wasn’t convinced. I was still pondering her remark when Boniface appeared, his face like thunder. He spoke calmly despite his agitated appearance.

“Josh, first of all let me assure you that your money is safe. We are tracking it, but we have a problem. The account we sent your money to is held at the Sharia Islamic Bank of Arabia close to Regents Park. Unfortunately we can’t raise them on the telephone to find out the customer’s details because it’s Friday and the Bank is closed for the Muslim weekend. It’s also Ramadan, and so getting hold of people at home is going to be tricky, as the London Central Mosque has a variety of activities going on today.”

I wondered whether Bob had done this deliberately, or whether he was just a lucky son of a bitch.

The day meandered on at a snail’s pace. The police were as frustrated as I was. Bob was still their best suspect for a double murder, after all. Tracking my money seemed the best way to track the man. The IT guys had pinged his mobile phone several times without success. I had a sneaking feeling that we would find it in the hands of a homeless man sometime next week.

The good thing was that the money had not moved and so, theoretically, I still had my quarter of a million pounds. It was almost two o’clock when Inspector Boniface’s phone rang again. Before the caller was put through, Boniface put the call on conference and began recording it. He held his finger to his lips as an instruction to us to keep quiet.

“Inspector Boniface speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hello, my name is Asif Al Maheel. I am the manager of the Regents Park Branch of the Sharia Islamic Bank of Arabia. You have been leaving messages for me.”

“Thanks for calling back, Mr Al Maheel. First of all, let me apologise for interrupting your weekend. I wouldn’t have done so if this was not an urgent matter. If it is at all possible I need you to go to the bank and check whose account had two hundred and fifty thousand pounds paid into it at noon today.”

“Oh, I don’t need to go to the bank for that information; I was expecting a payment of that amount by noon today from a Mr Josh Hammond. It arrived on time and I called my customer to inform him so. But I am afraid I cannot disclose his details without a very good reason, or maybe a warrant. I would have to speak to our legal department on Sunday.”

“Mr Al Maheel, we don’t have time to wait until Sunday, I’m afraid. We are hot on the trail of a double murderer, and your customer may be in danger.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. “Inspector, please, I hope you are being honest with me. In good faith I will give you his name, but on the condition you do not involve the bank.”

“I can assure you, we just want to speak to your customer. We are happy that the bank is not involved.”

The speakerphone chirped again.

“My customer, and my friend, is the owner of Nour Jewellery Design of Hatton Garden.”

“Will he be at his premises today? I believe it is the Sabbath?”

“Oh, yes. Abasi is not the good Muslim that he might be. Please call me if you have any problems. I am at your service, Inspector. Goodbye.”

***

As we waited on the pavement for a car to pick us up, Dee took me to one side. Her hazel eyes were bright with intent. Her face was perfect. Dee was probably in her early thirties. Her hair always shone. She had a pert nose and a generous mouth beneath it. Her make-up was generally understated, but great cheekbones made cosmetics redundant. I had never really met a woman like her before. No more than five feet eight inches tall, she looked elegant and well proportioned, but I had been assured that in a fight she could take out men twice her size.

“Josh, theoretically my assignment is over but I want you to know that I’m going nowhere until I think you’re safe. Are you comfortable with that?” I nodded dumbly. I could have kissed her, but then again I had felt like kissing her since we’d met.

An unmarked car pulled up and Boniface slid in beside the driver, leaving Dee and I to take the back seat. As soon as the doors were closed we moved off at speed towards the Barbican. The driver could easily have been a cabbie; he knew all the shortcuts. We drove down Long Lane before cutting up onto Charterhouse, avoiding the one way system. A minute later we were skirting around St Etheldreda’s Church and onto Hatton Garden. About half way up on the right hand side we found ‘Nour Jewellery Design’.

We left the car and walked towards the shop. Unlike every other shop in Hatton Garden, which is famous throughout the world for its wall to wall jewellery stores, Nour had no jewellery on display, just large decals showing the most lavish pieces I have ever seen. The writing on the windows made it clear that Nour would procure the best diamonds and finest gold for you and then fashion them into unique works of art that you could wear.

Boniface pressed a button on the wall and held his warrant card against the glass. The door buzzed and he pushed it open. We followed him in. A stunning olive skinned girl sat at the desk facing us.

“Can I help you?” she asked. The accent was more East End than Middle East. Boniface asked for Mr Nour and the girl slipped her long perfectly manicured fingers under the edge of the desk, almost invisibly. A moment later Mr Nour opened the door at the back of the shop. He beamed in anticipation of doing business with wealthy customers.

“Welcome, gentlemen. How may I help you?” He stopped beaming when he saw the warrant card. In fact, I thought I saw fear in his eyes as he looked quickly from the Inspector to me. That was not unusual. Some of my Middle Eastern clients only ever saw their police when they were about to be taken into custody so that they could be given the opportunity to confess.

“You are Mr Abasi Nour, with a bank Account at the Sharia Islamic Bank of Arabia, Regents Park?” The nervous Egyptian nodded. “You have just had two hundred and fifty thousand pounds transferred into your account from a Mr Josh Hammond?” The man nodded again. “Then meet Mr Josh Hammond in person.” Mr Nour blanched, and collapsed into his chair.

***

Five minutes passed whilst Halima made her ashen boss some hot sweet tea. Mr Nour was normally a swarthy man with typical Middle Eastern colour, but now his complexion was pallid and yellow. He looked ill.

Inspector Boniface had explained earlier that there was no chance that Mr Nour was Bob. He simply didn’t fit the profile. He was sure that Bob had used Mr Nour to break the chain between me and my money. With any luck we would get our first description of Bob.

Under gentle questioning from the Inspector the whole story unfolded. Just over forty eight hours ago, Wednesday afternoon, Mr Noor had received a call from a man claiming to be Josh Hammond. He said he had been recommended by Sir Max Rochester, who was a respected customer.

This Josh had been paid a bonus of a quarter of a million pounds (I wish) and wanted to hide it from his ex wife’s lawyers. He wanted to convert it into something small and transportable that he could hide easily. Diamonds had seemed the perfect option. The trouble was that he needed to do it quickly, because next week the auditors would be looking to split the marital proceeds.

Mr Nour had agreed to purchase the finest diamonds available from Antwerp, apparently the world centre for the supply of fine, cut diamonds. He had even managed to procure diamonds cut personally by Losi Van Serck, the acclaimed artist in the field of diamond cutting. The diamonds had arrived this morning, and Josh Hammond had apparently collected them.

‘Mr Hammond’ had visited the shop twice and on each occasion he had stayed for only a few minutes. Mr Nour handed over a business card. It was my business card, or at least on first pass it looked like my business card. On closer inspection it had different phone numbers. The landline number was correct, but it had a red pen stroke through the middle. The fax number and the mobile number were not my numbers.

“He told me not to call him at work because calls could be recorded,” Mr Nour explained.

“Presumably you asked for some form of identification?” Mr Nour’s eyes brightened as if he had suddenly been redeemed. He opened a drawer and withdrew two sheets of A4 paper. On the first was a scan of a driving licence; on the second was a scan of a passport. In both cases the name was Josh Hammond but the details were all wrong. The photo was of a middle aged man who looked nothing at all like me, with a mane of unkempt hair and a big moustache. Neither photo was flattering.

“He emailed those to me when he made the order. It must have been a different Josh Hammond. This has all been a confusing error.”

“Mr Nour, do you have CCTV coverage of your meeting with Mr Hammond?”

The Egyptian disappeared into the back of the shop and returned a moment later with a shiny CD Rom.

“This is today’s CCTV coverage,” he explained, handing over the CD. Boniface laid it to one side and spoke quietly.

“Mr Nour, the money you received for your diamonds will be frozen in your account until we have resolved whether or not it is yours to keep.” Boniface saw the look on my face and shook his head almost imperceptibly, inviting me to remain silent. “If this man contacts you again you must call me immediately. Now I need three things – a police technician to examine your computer, a description of the man who claimed to be Josh Hammond, and a full description of the diamonds you handed over.”

“I have a photo of each of the diamonds and their certificates. Halima can email them to you. As for the man, he appeared very much like you see in these pictures. I would say he was almost six feet tall, a little overweight, he wore a badly fitting toupee and he was wearing a Breitling Navitimer Mecanique wristwatch. I have been selling Breitling watches for thirty years and the Mecanique, a French version, is very rare now, and very valuable.”

It was typical of a jeweller to be able to describe a watch with precision and yet only be able to give a vague description of the wearer.

“Thank you, Mr Nour. My understanding is that Breitling watches are individually numbered. Is that correct?”

“Yes, each one is registered to protect the brand against replicas and fakes. But obviously I did not see the number.”

I thought that was too much to hope for, but nonetheless Bob had slipped up. He was fallible after all, and I took heart from that.

“Thank you, Mr Nour,” Boniface said, shaking his hand. “A technician will be here within the hour. I can assure you that we will try our level best to find your gems and also the man who misled you.”

Chapter 18

City of London Police Station, Wood St, London. Friday, 5pm.

I was exhausted. It had been a long day.

The police had eventually managed to freeze the money in the Sharia Islamic Bank of Arabia but there was some doubt as to whether I would ever get it back. Mr Nour had sold the diamonds in good faith to a man who had two hundred and fifty thousand pounds delivered to Nour’s account. The Egyptian had even made sure that ‘Josh Hammond’s’ money was in his account before he let the diamonds go. Finally Nour had copies of a scanned passport and driving licence that probably would have fooled me. Either he lost a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of diamonds, or I lost the cash, and if I was being honest I had traded the money for my life, which was now hopefully safe from Bob, who was potentially a double murderer.

Boniface and I were covering the emails Bob had sent to Nour and the fax number on the business card. Neither led anywhere. The email had been sent from [email protected] which we had known was a dead end since yesterday morning. The fax number was a YAC number, a free service that allows email users to have faxes converted to email and forwarded on. The number led straight back to the email address.

I was still in Boniface’s office reading through my statement concerning the morning’s grim find when Dee came in with a Detective Sergeant from the financial crimes team. Boniface gestured to them to sit down, but they both seemed excited. They handed a sheet of paper to me and to Boniface and asked us to read it to ourselves. It read;

Breitling Research: Dee Conrad & DS Peter Fellowes.

The Navtimer watch was introduced in 1952 and went out of production around 2003. The Old Navtimer edition was produced in the period 1993 to 2002. The Mecanique was a special French limited edition of just 1000 pieces. Breitling HQ is in Grenchen Switzerland.

DS Fellowes has been in touch with Breitling HQ in Grenchen, Switzerland and they confirmed that the majority of owners do register with them to guard against theft and forgeries. They said, “When you are paying thousands of pounds for a watch you want to know it is genuine.”

Each Old Navtimer Mecanique is marked with the model reference number, A11022 and a unique Breitling registration number. Of the 1000 Mecanique watches 143 are unaccounted for or have never been registered. Most are registered in France, where they were predominantly marketed but 78 are registered to people currently living in the UK, 66 of the UK based owners are French nationals and 4 are known Breitling Dealers. That leaves 8 in British private ownership. Unfortunately Breitling cannot give us names or addresses without an international warrant, which is unlikely to be granted as we are on a fishing expedition here.

However, there is a ray of hope. Breitling watches are serviced and maintained at Tonbridge Wells and Dee Conrad has been in contact with the manager there. He has maintenance records of 12 watches bearing the reference A11022. He was not keen to share that information but after a bit of sweet talking he agreed to email Dee a list of the names and the towns to which the serviced watches were returned. He said we will need a warrant if we want any more than that. Here is the spreadsheet he sent.

NAME TOWN

D. Allinson Edinburgh

S. Bentley Oxford

F. Cozee London

A. Hickstead Leeds

L. Houlier London

D. Julliard St Helier

H. Laurent Manchester

T. Morrissey Wigan

K. Pascal Glasgow

N. Van Doren Rotterdam

G. Weissman London

A. Wasir Birmingham

I decided to be the first to make an observation.

“If my reasoning is correct, we have potentially eight watches registered to individuals who are not French and are not dealers. The spreadsheet you’ve procured has eight people who appear to be non-French. Even if I’m wrong on a couple of the names, it means that our man is almost certainly on that list.”

“That would be right if one hundred and forty three of the watches were not registered. The unregistered watches could all be in London,” DS Fellowes countered.

“Or none of them could be in the UK at all. It is at least a lead,” I said optimistically.

Dee chirped up. “Am I the only one seeing this? The fifth name down, L Houlier of London, whose initials are LH.”

The room fell silent.

Chapter 19

Pendolino Train, First Class Carriage, Kings Cross. 5pm.

Bob sat in the seat and relaxed. The East Coast line was experimenting with the Pendolino that had proved such a success on the West Coast route. He was a regular rail traveller across Europe and found the Pendolino less comfortable than the Eurostar or the old GNER 225s.

He closed his eyes and pondered as the odours of dinner cooking in the dining car permeated the carriage. This line was one of the last to preserve the dignity of passengers by offering a Silver Service dinner in a dedicated dining car.

Bob idly wondered whether the slimy Abasi Nour was in jail yet. He doubted that the Egyptian would ever get his hands on the two hundred and fifty grand that had been used to secure the diamonds. Sir Max had once let slip that Nour had provided him with some investment gems, no questions asked, along with a legitimate diamond studded tiara for his daughter’s ‘coming out’. Bob remembered being amazed that Debutante Balls for the privileged classes still took place in the twenty first century.

The diamonds were now secure in a safety deposit box in London, and all signs of Bob, his alter ego, had been eliminated.

Bob was content that neither the CCTV nor the photos in the passport or on the driving license could be used to trace him. He had barely recognised himself with the glasses, wig and moustache. He imagined that the best description the police would get from Abasi Nour was that his ‘Josh Hammond’ was a tall middle aged man from East London.

Of course, Bob couldn’t have done all of this on his own. Faik Al Khufi, his faithful young friend, an Iraqi asylum seeker, had proved to be a talented photo editor. His photoshopping skills had produced a masterful passport photo page and a convincing photo card driving license.

Bob would use his influence to keep Faik in the UK, at least until he had outlived his usefulness. He began to drift off as the train left the station. He was looking forward to a weekend with the family, and soon Richard Wolsey Keene would receive his forty eight hour ultimatum. Bob had little doubt the spineless banker would pay the one million pounds he was demanding, especially when he discovered that Sir Max had paid such a heavy price for being stubborn.