48
HOURS
A City of London Thriller
J Jackson Bentley
©Fidus Publishing 2013
Second Edition (re-edited & formatted for tablets)
First published on Smashwords by Fidus Publishing in the United Kingdom 2011
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Cover Design by Altered Images, original photo by manandhiscam altered and used under Flickr Creative Commons License Deed/attribution; see license at www.flickr.comphotos/manandhiscam
Acknowledgements & Authors Note
For authenticity, I have kept locations and places exactly where they appear in reality. Obviously in any work of fiction it is necessary to have fictional locations but where this has been done the fictional locations are situated on real streets or in real areas of London. Most buildings given a historic background exist and can be seen by walking around London. One is fictional and it is for you to find out which one.
I have taken very few liberties with the transport arrangements mentioned in the book, and most journeys can be travelled as described. Believe me, I have travelled many of these routes hundreds of times.
I am grateful to the experts in gems, firearms, physical combat, loss adjusting, insurance and banking who freely and enthusiastically give their time to allow us authors to maintain authenticity.
I reserve my most grateful thanks for Sue W, my editor, who has proof read and improved all of my books since my first book was published by Macmillan in 1994.
Finally I acknowledge the assistance given by Fidus Books on taking the City of London Thrillers into electronic format for the Kindle.
J Jackson Bentley, London.
Prologue
Threadneedle Street, City of London, Wednesday, 11am
The rain was persistent but not heavy. It drizzled down like sugar onto strawberries. At first the tiny droplets sat on the wool worsted of my suit as if on a newly waxed car. Then, within seconds, capillary action sucked the water into the fabric until it became saturated. I hadn’t moved far along the slick pavement before the rain had soaked through the lining of my jacket and into my thin summer shirt.
It was still warm, and the rain that hit the warm concrete paving vaporised, sending a thin mist swirling around the feet of the people rushing for cover. The skies were darkening by the second, but not as rapidly as the mood of the commuters struggling to unpack pocket sized umbrellas that took longer to erect than Ranulph Fiennes’ Arctic tent.
A Starbucks coffee shop was quickly looming on my left. The dull green lighting scheme seemed to brighten as the contrast with the naturally lit street increased. I stepped into the doorway and shook the excess water droplets from my jacket in much the same way as a wet dog shakes its sodden pelt. The windows in the shop were already steaming up, and a long line of men in ruined silk ties and women with flattened hair queued to order a serving of comfort in a cup.
I waited patiently as the machines coughed and spluttered out order after order, sounding like some geriatric patient in a hospital waiting room. The rich, dark coffee odour was thick in the air. There was no need to ingest the caffeine. You could just breathe it in.
My spirits lifted as I held the hot cup in my hands and blew gently across the surface of my Caramel Macchiato, as if my breath produced some super cooling breeze that would make the scalding brew instantly consumable. With no tables available I propped myself up against a shelf and set down my drink next to a blueberry muffin.
I sighed and let the tension flow from my body. I was about to lift my cup and see how many layers of skin the superheated concoction would dislodge from the inside of my mouth when I heard three successive beeps. A text message had arrived on my BlackBerry.
I took the BlackBerry from my pocket immediately, as we all know it is important that you don’t offend your mobile phone by ignoring it, even for a few seconds, and so I flicked a couple of buttons to reveal the text message:
“Mr Hammond,
If you do not pay me £250,000.00 in the next 48 hours, I will kill you after noon on Friday! Check your emails for instructions.”
Chapter 1
Starbucks, Threadneedle Street, London. Wednesday, 11:10am
I was still wondering which of my certifiable friends had sent the text message when the phone beeped again, this time sounding a long single throaty tone. I had an email. I crushed the last of the muffin into my already full mouth and struggled to chew as the cake dehydrated my mouth to the extent that swallowing became almost impossible. I thought I might choke, and then when I read the email, I did.
“Hi Josh,
OK, here is the deal. You pay me £250,000.00 (details of bank account to follow) within 48 hours and you get to live. If for any reason I don’t get that money you die by noon Friday. I appreciate this is a shock and perhaps you are wondering if I am serious. Please see attached photos.
Regards,
Bob
PS: Usually blackmailers tell you not to call the police etc. etc. This is both boring and unproductive as people always do. Feel free to call the police or anyone else you care to, the fact is it will take you 48 hours to persuade them that this isn’t a wind up and by then you will either have paid me or be awaiting your fate.”
I sipped my coffee nervously, the base of my glass cup tinkling against the ceramic saucer as I waited for the attachments to open. The phone told me that there were two pictures to display; josh1.jpg and josh2.jpg. It took a while, but they slowly began to appear. Line by line, left to right, the pictures were revealed. The process reminded me of the old BBC teleprinter, revealing the soccer scores as they happened on the TV screen on a Saturday afternoon.
The first picture was a head-and-shoulder close up of me walking along the street. It had been taken less than an hour earlier, and I appeared to be looking straight at the camera. I thought it was rather a good picture of me. Anyone who knew me would instantly recognise my fair hair with its tousled style, the blue eyes in my clean-shaven face, and the lean, muscular build I had acquired as a result of playing in a local squash league. The definition was so good I was sure I could actually see wispy hairs growing out of my ears. Bob, my new friend, had also rather worryingly photo-shopped red crosshairs onto my forehead.
The second photo was equally sharp, and showed me sitting in a client’s office earlier that morning. I seemed to be leaning back in the chair, one hand scratching the back of my head. I recognised my shirt, the one I was still wearing. The buttoned cuff had ridden up a little as I stretched, showing my watch. This one had a target superimposed onto my back.