“Well, I couldn’t just let him rot in a jail. I got enough money from my first little venture with George to pay off his entire tax bill including the interest and penalties. Back then, though, it was a simple case of buying the processed stuff in, cutting it, and then selling it on to the smaller dealers outside of London. As I say, we made a huge bundle of dough in a very short space of time. After about a year, we decided that there was far more money to be made by processing the raw opium and then distributing it to the guys from whom we had been buying. But to move into this league you need cash and lots of it. George felt that we needed another investor, someone who had a hard business head and who wasn’t afraid to get to get their hands dirty from time to time. That’s when Oliver Hawkworth got involved.”
“That’s all very interesting, Harry, but you can save it all for the police.”
“Be smart, Jake,” Harry pleaded, “go and take a look at what some nice person has paid into your bank account recently.”
“Nice try, Harry,” I said, “but no, I checked all of my accounts yesterday, and all monies have been accounted for.”
Harry drew on the cigarette Fiona had given him and waved it gently in the air. His initial burst of nervous talking had passed and now his speech was slower and more cautious. “Listen,” he said. “It won’t be long before the Government, here in the UK, legalises cannabis. I know that for sure, from my buddy Oliver Hawkworth. Then the tobacco companies will move in; there’ll be tastefully designed packs, sold in every corner shop and supermarket in the country. The warning on the pack will read something like; “inhaling smoke will make you seriously mellow.”
I said, “But this is now, Harry, and were not talking a little dope here. I suppose, though, that people who deal serious drugs and make very large sums of money out of it are often misunderstood.”
“You are such a wise guy,” Harry said. “OK, so I did it for the money, and as I got it so I spent it. You know how it is with money, Ace.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “Tell me how it is, Harry?”
“Pick up a handful of sand and see how it slips through your fingers before you know it. It disappears like youthfulness. Hell, Ace, I’m not getting any younger. This is my last chance at making enough dough to retire on. Believe me when I say that in this industry it’s a miracle if you make it to retirement, with the type of enemies you make on the way up.”
“So, Harry, is George Ferdinand one of those enemies?”
Harry grinned. “Hell Ace, I know him far to well to be a friend,” he said.
I waited while he fiddled with his cigarette. I knew he’d have something to say about George.
“You think George is a really complex character, don’t you? Decorated army career, ending with court marshal and to top it all a dishonourable discharge. I bet that’s eating away at you, not knowing whom he’s working for or whether it was him who blew up your friend. Real puzzling it must be.”
Dropping the cigarette butt on the floor he stubbed it out with his shoe as he asked Fiona for another. She pushed the pack across the bench towards him, and after taking one he threw them over for me to catch. I brought the automatic up from my side, knocking the pack to the ground, cigarettes splayed over the floor. Harry apologised, making a move towards my feet to pick them up, but seeing the gun-barrel move in his direction he thought better of it and sank back into his chair. We exchanged glances; I shook my head, and Harry smiled.
“No strikes, no runs, no problems,” he said.
“So, tell me how I can stop being puzzled about Ferdinand,” I said.
“He’s malevolent,” said Harry. “ Whatever form that may take, I’m against it. George has a very nasty mind. The only reason we haven’t come to blows and tried to beat each other to a pulp is because I’m such an easy-going sort of slob. But he’s just obsessive about everything having to be in its place and tidy, all of the time. Even the guy’s appearance is impeccable. What a nut.”
I nodded. I had thought that the first time I had met him, those darting eyes and profuse sweating were sure signs that dear old George was indeed fastidious about his appearance and definitely not dealing with a full deck of cards.
“Everyone’s against you, Harry, and yet you are such a nice guy at heart,” I said, and I smiled. I was thinking of Charlie, but I smiled at Harry.
“Round outside means a soft centre,” Harry said with a wide grin.
He pointed to a cigarette near his foot. I nodded and he picked it up, lighting it from his stub. “This man isn’t interested in anything other than himself, he’s not an idealist or intellectual. He thinks with his muscle. Guys like George work themselves into an early grave, always scheming and scamming. Treading on toes and upsetting the wrong people, in wars they appear to be heroes and get awarded honours — or a court marshal!”
“Sometimes both. George said that he had been recommended for some sort of gallantry award at the time he’d been caught dealing smack and cocaine while on active service in a war zone.”
“It was a DSO,” I said.
“Well, there you are. Like I told you, no sex, no drink, and no politics, a dedicated anal retentive if ever there was one. But probably the best guy in Europe with explosives.”
“The best now maybe,” I said. “But before Charlie McIntyre met with his untimely end, he might have been in Charlie’s league — but only in his dreams”
Harry’s face tightened like a clenched fist. He said, “George would not have done that. I don’t like the guy but he would never kill in cold blood, believe me.”
“All right,” I said, “we’ll leave that for a minute. Tell me how Flackyard fits into the picture. And before you start: I’m not a policeman, Harry. My reasons for being here don’t include handing you in at the nearest police station. I’m here for information: set up the facts, and then you can fade as far away from here as you like as far as I’m concerned.”
Fiona rose to her feet and walked over to me.
“Fade?” she said. “Do you know what you’re saying?” She moved across to the equipment like a Luddite and swept some of it to the floor with a crash of disintegrating glass and metal denting as it hit the flagstones.
I said absolutely nothing.
Harry said, “Sure he does, cutie, he’s just too smart to mention it before he has all the info he wants.”
Fiona froze. She said to me, “sorry,” and sat down again.
“I’m not messing with you, Harry,” I said, “I’ll shut you down as far as the UK is concerned but I’ll give you a chance to get out and away.”
“That’s very magnanimous of you, Ace,” Harry said. He was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, massaging his eyebrows and tired eyes with the tips of his large fingers. “OK, so what do you want to know?”
“Who is Robert Flackyard?” I asked.
“Boy, you’re really skipping the easy ones,” he said. “Robert Flackyard; people think a lot of him hereabouts. The image he promotes is that of a legitimate businessman and benefactor to many local charities. He says that a man in such a privileged position of power and wealth, as he is, should put back into the community some of what he has taken out.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
“The guy’s a phoney, he’s nothing more than a Cossack and a crook. His kind are all the same.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, that I’ve paid him a sum of ten thousand pounds a month via an offshore account for protection and an assurance that the local cops don’t come a calling.”
“Protection?”
“Yes, that’s it. I could afford to throw him a load of dough each month, in return for a hassle free existence and because he is a major client of my little venture down here in Dorset. Unfortunately for me, it all backfired when you turned up and swiped my opium from the Gin Fizz. Flackyard tried to persuade you to give it back, but man are you a tough nut to crack, eh?”