“What’s he like?” he repeated. “It’s hard to say in a few words. He was made a colonel at thirty-five. Which means he is no fool? They say that when officers are up for promotion,” Adrian paused, “it’s probably just a load of old bollocks, but I’ll tell you anyway. Officer candidates at that level are invited to a small gathering of notables in Army circles. The candidate has to endure his peers’ scrutiny as well as their child like behaviour throughout the evening. Not only is he bombarded with an array of obscure questions, but they’re also watching to see if for instance he drinks out of the finger bowl.” I smiled and nodded.
“Oliver Hawkworth was served with some sort of Californian prune crumble just to see how he negotiated the stones. But he fooled the lot of them by swallowing every one of the little blighters. I couldn’t say whether it’s all true, but it’s certainly in character. Nearly all of those men around that dinner table went onto become some sort of advisor to the Government. To this day they still meet up once a month for a big gut bash and a cosy chat. They’re the sort of people who have devoted a lot of time and expensive training to detect the difference between a vintage bottle of Dom and Spanish sparkling wine.”
“He earns around a million a year and that’s only what he declares.”
I whistled softly. Adrian went on, “He obviously pays tax on some of it, and very unofficially sits on six or seven boards who like to have a member of the old boy network. Hawkworth’s big contribution is that he can influence affairs abroad, is tenacious and extremely charming. He has personally financed at least two successful take-over bids in South America that we know of, and is always quick to put a few hundred thousand into the hands of a discontented general. His reward is always by way of holdings in some of the region’s largest and wealthiest national companies. As he is persona gratis with most of the Presidents, it really is gambling without risk.”
The phone on his desk rang. “Vass.” Adrian rubbed his eyes.
“Complicated wiring diagram?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just run off a copy in the normal way, show the technical people before you destroy the original.” He was listening intently. “Well, just show them the part that hasn’t got the originator’s name on it.” He hung up.
“Hell’s struth,” he said, “they’ll be asking me if they can go to the coffee machine next. Where was I?”
“I wanted to ask you about land deals,” I said. “Isn’t that how he’s made his fortune?”
“Partly true, but his family is one of the wealthiest in England, don’t forget.”
Adrian lit one of his own rolled cigarettes, then spent what seemed like minutes removing shreds of tobacco from his lip.
“Hawkworth has the Midas touch where land acquisition deals are concerned. He buys a parcel of land at rock bottom price and then sells it at a premium almost immediately. Nothing clever or wrong in that, you might say, except that in every transaction the same Development Company’s name crops up. Can’t for the life of me, think what that is at present, but anyway, it’s always very large sums of money changing hands. Some have speculated that it’s nothing more than an elaborate money laundering racket, but no one can prove that, of course. Others say that it’s a Member of Parliament abusing his position. But again that is only speculation. He is extremely careful to always cover his tracks. So you see, Oliver Hawkworth keeps on making vast sums of money and then some more again.”
The phone rang. “Phone me back, I’m busy,” Adrian barked into the mouthpiece and hung up immediately. He turned back to his monitor screen, asking: “You understand what this column is?” He tapped the screen with his pen.
“Well, I’m no expert,” I said, “but I gather that these abbreviated prefixes are a record of his personal weaknesses or traits that he may have such as women, drink, membership of drinking clubs and the like.”
“Absolutely spot on,” said Adrian.
I pointed to the letters ‘CI‘. “An accessory to an illegal act,” Adrian said as quick as a shot.
“Meaning something he has been prosecuted for?” I said.
“Hell, no,” Adrian replied in an astounded voice.
“He’s never been within a hundred metres of a law court, let alone inside one. No, for anything about which the police know anything it’s another sort of prefix entirely — it’s ‘PL’ for that.”
“What about a ‘BR’?”
“Bribery of a public servant.”
“Let me guess, once again not prosecuted?” I said.
“No, as I told you, it had to be a ‘PN’ prefix if it’s been made public. It would be a ‘PP’ if he had been accused of bribing a public servant.”
“Anything for illegal selling.”
“That would be a ‘RT’ prefix,” said Adrian. Now I was beginning to understand how the system worked and I’d found the item I wanted.
The next morning I got Tats to show me the revised notes relating to the new European Network. After shredding them into a million tiny strips, we went through it all again. I thought about Oliver Hawkworth. Two items about him were still hazy. I phoned Adrian from my mobile. “That matter I spoke of earlier this morning.” “Yes?” said Adrian.
“Tell me, why was his file so conveniently to hand on your hard-drive?”
“Even you need a security clearance to pull the records of a Cabinet Minister.”
“Very simple. He’d already asked for your records only the previous day.”
“As you are well aware, anyone who has been or is a civil servant has a file past and present.”
“Oh,” I said, and heard Adrian chuckle as he hung up. Of course he could just be having a laugh. But the fact was, I wasn’t laughing.
Chapter 24
The plain-clothes policeman led me along the softly carpeted corridors of power; austere men in military uniform looked quietly down from dark paintings lost in a penumbra of varnish. Mr Oliver Hawkworth MP was seated behind a vast oval mahogany table, which was polished like a guardsman’s boot.
A slim mahogany clock stood discreetly against a panelled wall pacing out the silence. On Hawkworth’s table a banker’s lamp with a green glass shade marshalled the light on to four heaps of papers and newspaper clippings.
Only the crown of his head was visible. He continued with what he was doing, allowing me to feel embarrassed for interrupting his private study. The policeman motioned me to a hostile looking chair in front of the table.
Hawkworth ran a finger across the open book and scribbled in the margin of one of the typewritten sheets with a gold fountain pen. He turned over the corner of the page and closed the green leather cover.
“Smoke.” There was no trace of query in his voice. He firmly pushed the silver box across the table with the back of his hand, put the cap on his pen and clipped it into his inside jacket pocket. He retrieved his cigarette from the ashtray in front of him, put it into his mouth, drew on it without releasing his grasp on its filter, mashed it into the ashtray with controlled violence, disembowelling the torn shreds of tobacco from the lacerated paper with his immaculately manicured nails. He brushed the ash from his jacket.
“You wished to see me?” he said.
I lifted the lid of the small silver box. I took a
cigarette and lit it with a match I then blew it out and tossed it towards the ashtray, allowing the trajectory to carry it on to Hawkworth’s pristine paperwork. He carefully picked it up, snapping it in two before placing it into the ashtray. I drew on the strong tobacco.
“No,” I said, stripping my voice of interest, “not really.”
“You are discreet — that’s good.” He picked up a sheet of paper, and held it under the light and quietly read from it a potted history of my career in Army Intelligence.