by Jack Dylan
“You’ve said it. If you aren’t doing much work in the UK, why on earth aren’t you out there enjoying yourself and organising a bit more income?”
“I suppose I’ve been drifting a bit – feeling badly done by and reckoning if I’m doing no business in the UK I shouldn’t be away spending money.”
“Well if I were you, which I’m not, and I know it’s easy for me to say, but I think you could sell more charter time on the yacht for half of the year, and work on jobs like Ron’s the rest of the year. Sounds like a tempting lifestyle to me.”
“A bit idealistic if you ask me. But I’ll think about it. Might need to think about advertising skippered charters - you see them sometimes in the Sunday papers – always fancied doing a bit of that.”
“Well there you are then. That’ll be a standard fee for one of my consultations.”
By January 2004 Alex was making ends meet with his small chunks of consultancy work. Jack had been absolutely right about ringing round his better contacts to find how he could avoid their strict spending limits – and had been delighted to find that they were as keen as he was to think about small jobs that were simple to administer and avoided the paperwork of endless formal procurement procedures. Through October and November he actually felt as if he was making some money again. December was a non-event, but by January he was starting to see a reasonable amount of work for the spring. The income was just about matching his spending, but it meant he had no surplus for buying himself new clothes or treating himself to a really good dinner.
He decided to take Jack’s advice about the yacht also, and with his help cooked up a small ad for the Sunday Times. It was horrendously expensive for such a small insertion, but he decided it was potentially worthwhile. So he ploughed on with it.
It was more productive than he expected and by the end of January he had dealt with a dozen queries about taking a week on the yacht. Just a few firm bookings, but it looked as if he was in business.
Life had been looking up in other ways too. Maggie was her name and she quickly transformed Alex’s life from the depressive solitude that threatened to make him a prematurely grumpy old man into an almost adolescently excited “lover”. Alex thought that at last things might be working out the way he had dreamed they could. He might be scraping by financially, but he had a girlfriend 12 years his junior, the sex-life of a twenty-year-old, and the prospect of a summer in Turkey with Maggie on the yacht – he was counting the weeks.
.
Chapter 14
London: April 2004
Katharos calls Alex
“Mr Fox.”
The unmistakable tones of Katharos greeted Alex.
“You are a hard man to find Mr Fox. But here we are at last.”
“Sorry about that but things have been a bit complicated since last year.”
“I think you might be interested, Mr Fox, in a little proposition I have for you. Come to my house tonight at 8:00 o’clock and I will explain.”
“Look, I’m in a different position now – I’m separated from Liz, and I’m selling the car. I won’t be doing any more trips like the last one.”
“I know about your situation Mr Fox. I’ll see you tonight.” And with that the line went dead.
Alex held the receiver in his hand and looked at it accusingly. As if he could extract from the inanimate object some apology or some explanation for the extraordinary summons from Katharos.
“Well bugger him,” was his first reaction. “I’m not going to be summoned at the drop of a hat to his bloody Greek presence. Who does he think he is? What makes him think I’ll drop everything and attend to his whims?”
So at 7:55 he was driving towards the Katharos home in Hampstead, still fuming a bit, but curious to know what the old man had up his sleeve. He was driving his sensible car, a 1995 Golf, which could hardly have been a greater contrast to the magnificent Mercedes SLC that had brought him into contact with Katharos in the first place.
He drove into the driveway, braced for the explosion of light from the array of security lights. As before, the door opened before he was out of the car, and the familiar cigar-puffing figure lumbered out of the house to meet him.
“Good efening Mr Fox,” he rumbled, with the voice that had tasted the smoke of countless cigars and enjoyed hundreds of litres of fiery spirits. “What have you done with the Mercedes Mr Fox?”
“I’m afraid it had to go. It’s back with the dealer I bought it from. I needed to have a sensible car for London so it was time to let it go.” He wasn’t going to tell Katharos that he no longer had a garage or driveway, and no longer had the money to keep the expensive old car on the road. Nor did he confess that he hadn’t been able to sell the car – it was sitting waiting for a buyer in the dealer’s garage, and continuing to cost him money. Circumstances were very different from just a year earlier.
“Come inside Mr Fox.”
He followed Katharos into the house and again they went into the claustrophobically plush room at the rear. Iannis Junior was already waiting, standing unsmilingly by the desk. No mezes had been laid out, but the bottle and two glasses were waiting on the small leather-trimmed table between the two armchairs.
The old man groaned down into his chair, then leaned across and poured Metaxa brandy into the two glasses. Alex accepted cautiously, wondering why Iannis Junior wasn’t joining in.
“Eis eiyeiya sas” murmured his host before sipping the brandy from the heavy straight glass. Alex raised his glass and followed suit.
“Now Mr Fox, you will require some explanation. Thank you for coming tonight, but you will understand that the situation has changed for you since last year.”
“I don’t see what…”
“I have a job that I would like you to complete for me. It involves your yacht in Turkey, and a simple task of collecting a small package and bringing it to London for me.”
“Look here….”
“But this time I am prepared to pay you for your trouble. I will pay you £5,000 for the safe delivery of the package, and I happen to know that this would be very useful to you.”
“Look, I don’t like the sound of this at all. Why would you pay me for something that could be posted? I really don’t want to get involved in anything illegal – as I assume this is?”
“Mr Fox, I have taken considerable trouble to check up on you and your business. I know everything there is to know about your debts, your old office, your failure to find work, and the trick that your wife has played on you.”
“Now hang on there, that’s none…”
“Mr Fox I think you should listen. You need the money I can give you, and what I am asking will be of no trouble to you at all. Everything will be arranged and it is just a discreet way of bringing some merchandise to me that is of a very personal nature.”
“Look – it is obviously smuggling of some sort that you are asking me to be involved in. I’m in enough of a mess as it is without getting into worse trouble.”
Alex stood up defiantly and was slightly disconcerted by the lack of reaction from Katharos or his son. Neither moved to restrain him. They looked faintly bored with his predictable response. There was something else to come.
“Iannis, show Mr Fox the photographs.”
Alex felt a brief moment of giddiness as he tried to keep up with what was happening. Iannis Junior lifted a brown envelope from the desk behind him, and slipped from it a set of black and white photographs. They were 10 by 8 inches, and glossy, but as they were spread out on the desk for Alex to see, he at first couldn’t make sense of them. There were dated close-ups of what he realised was the back of his old Mercedes. A shot of the interior of the boot made no sense at first, but the next shot suddenly opened the flood-gates of realisation. It showed a compartment in the boot that was not normally visible or accessible. Behind the left rear wheel arch, there was a generous space which ran from the wheel arch to the rear of the car. On the right hand side of the car it provided space for the he
avy duty battery. It hadn’t really struck Alex that there wasn’t a matching volume on the left. The photograph showed how the floor of the boot had been skilfully remodelled to leave a slight recess to match the battery tray, but sealed with inconspicuous silicone gel was a panel that could be removed to reveal a space large enough to hold three or four wine bottles – not that it would be used for something so innocuous.
The next photographs gave Alex the most sinking feeling of being trapped that he had ever experienced. There was what amounted to a picture story starting with the empty compartment in London the previous spring; the car in Greece; an unidentifiable hand placing a package in the compartment; and next, dated after Alex and Liz’s return to London, another unidentifiable hand removing the package. The final photograph showed the package opened out on what looked like a garage floor, revealing six smaller plastic-wrapped bundles, familiar from all those television stories of successful interceptions of drug smugglers.
“You’re blackmailing me,” Alex croaked. It came out more as a hoarse whisper than the firm accusation he intended. “You set me up and now you’re blackmailing me.”
“Mr Fox I didn’t ask you to contact me. I didn’t ask you to present me with an opportunity to re-start a route that I thought was history. You presented yourself to me, and the offer you made to take packages to my relatives was your idea not mine. You presented yourself to me and I could not refuse the opportunity. Don’t tell me you were so naïve not to think there was something a little out of the ordinary going on? No matter. We are where we are today. I would prefer not to use these photographs. There is no suspicion of any sort relating to your last trip, so you are totally safe unless you force me to send this evidence to the authorities. Look at it as my insurance policy to ensure that you provide me with one more little service, which will be of no inconvenience to you, and for which I am prepared to pay you generously.”
Alex’s brain was gradually piecing together the new information that was assailing him. It wasn’t just data, but it was an emotionally charged revelation that made it harder to process.
“How did you know about the yacht?” He challenged Katharos, who laughed without a smile and said,
“Mr Fox, I see that you really have no idea how much information I have about you. Would it surprise you to know that you have £125.75 in your bank account, and that you have no further money due to arrive until after you have invoiced your friend in Bristol?”
“I demand to know how you get this information. I am going to walk out of here and go to the police with this scam.”
Alex made to go for the door, but hesitated with his hand on the door handle feeling un-nerved once again by the lack of movement from either Katharos to restrain him.
“I see you are thinking Mr Fox,” rumbled the old man in a sickeningly self-satisfied way. “You know that I will have ensured there is nothing to be found in this house and no record of any wrong-doing on my account. The police will investigate your car, which I know is still sitting in Putney, and will find traces of smuggled and highly illegal substances. All I need to do is maintain I know nothing about it, or perhaps to say that you approached me to try to sell your smuggled drugs. I can apologise for not letting the authorities know but I didn’t take you seriously at the time – I obviously should have. They will find no way of involving me, but even if they fail to convict you, you will find that your new girlfriend is not willing to remain with a drug smuggler; your clients will not wish to use you; and your ex-wife will not thank you for ending her career also. So you see the only person you can damage is yourself Mr Fox.”
“I don’t believe a word of this. You’re bluffing. You’d be in serious trouble if I went to the police. I’m leaving right now, and I don’t advise you to try to stop me.”
“By all means Mr Fox. I wish you good night. I anticipated that you would need time to think about all this. I will telephone you tomorrow with your instructions. Good night Mr Fox.”
With that Iannis Junior swept the photographs into their neat pile once more, slipped them into the envelope and closed them in the desk drawer. He then reached behind Alex to open the door for him, and with a display of politeness that had only the merest hint of threat ushered Alex down the hallway and out to his car. Alex found himself meekly going along with the process, and let himself into the driver’s seat of the Golf. Rather than close the door Iannis Junior leant forward so that his head was inside the car beside Alex’s.
“You will realise I think that my father is a very careful and well-organised man. If you discuss any of this with your friend Jack, or with anyone else, we will know. All you will achieve is to involve them in the case as accessories after the fact. If they don’t go to the police they are guilty. If they do go to the police the consequences for you are unpleasant and inevitable. Good night.”
The door closed with a firm, solid, confident thud. Alex felt like the small child who has blundered into an adult world where the rules and the stakes were very different from anything he had experienced before.
He drove slowly back to Clapham, looked around carefully as he locked the car, and let himself into the flat with the air of a man expecting to find a nasty surprise behind the door. He looked up and down the street one last time, eyeing carefully the mini-cab that drove past, before pouring himself an unusually large malt whisky and sitting lost in thought.
Chapter 15
William in Dublin
William’s story
One significant side-effect of his involvement in the reading group was to give William the inclination to try to write himself. Lavinia encouraged him, and promised to give him honest feedback when he produced something. He decided to try to write a practice-piece about his life to date. Not as a testament, but as something that he needed to stand back and have a think about, and something that he surely could write about if he could write about nothing else. So shortly after the chance encounter with James in St Stephen’s Green, William sat himself down and started to type. He imagined Lavinia reading it at first, but once past the first few paragraphs the writing and recollection took on an independent life of its own and no longer needed an audience in mind. He didn’t title it, but just started:
My start in the auctioneering business was as accidental as it was fun. Back in Edinburgh after the complete cock I’d made of my career plans I was still really in student mode. Pints of Deuchars in the Canny Man were an easy substitute for my pints of Guinness in Toners, Mulligans, and all those other welcoming refuges round central Dublin. Having turned down the offer from VSO I couldn’t, I thought, go back to them. Perhaps I should have. The offer of research then the failure of funding really was a good explanation for my behaviour, but in my youthful mindset I didn’t find it easy to retrace my steps.
“The path of least resistance”, was what my mother used to accuse me of taking. That really annoyed me at the time because it was absolutely accurate. I was so easily led I now feel a flush of shame, but best not to dwell on it. Davy, my entrepreneurial auctioneering friend, provided the perfect path of least resistance. I didn’t have to fill out applications or go for interviews.
We were at first useful “runners” for Davy’s father, who would send us in his Volvo estate car to the seemingly endless sequence of auctions in the countryside around the city. We didn’t even have to do the research, he just told us where to go and what to look for.
Davy had learned the business without consciously realising he was doing it. Years of watching his father meant that he knew the basics, could recognise quality, and knew what would sell quickly in the city. Within weeks we were supplementing our earnings from his father by picking up items on our own behalf, and passing them on through the big auction houses. No wonder my mother disapproved. We made enough money to finance our social life by working a couple of days most weeks. It was irregular, and some weeks were lean, but others were unexpectedly profitable. If you have ever felt that roll of notes in your pocket from an unexpectedly g
ood deal, or a lucky win on the horses, you will know just how addictive it is. You instantly forget the bad weeks and enjoy a sufficient “high” to see you through to the next one.
A strange convention in Edinburgh is the combination of legal practice and estate agent. It is normal there for a firm to be equally active on both fronts. Some add the auctioneering business and it becomes a virtuous circle. The estate agency feeds the legal business with conveyancing. Both create opportunities for the auctioneering business either clearing houses that are sold or furnishing those that are bought. It is the ultimate “well as it happens we could help you out there” business. Many clients become customers for all three businesses.
To cut a long story short, the path of least resistance led to Davy’s father suggesting to us that we take the lease on a shop next door to his friend Sandy’s legal and estate agency business. It was actually a sublet of part of Sandy’s building and was part of the same façade. We could share facilities, have a ready stream of business, and be a little more respectable and established than the wandering dealers that we were becoming.
So naturally we did that. And naturally enough business flourished.
I still had lots of friends in Dublin, and some of my old year-mates now worked in London, so my social life became a three-ring circus between the three capitals. International rugby weekends provided some of the annual structure, but so did all the other conventional excuses for supposedly civilised debauchery and drunkenness that were the staple diet of the well-educated professional class in Dublin and Edinburgh.
I didn’t miss a chance for those weekends where hazy memories and mind-numbing hangovers were the norm. It was on one of those International rugby trips to Dublin that I woke up one Sunday morning in Jury’s Hotel in Ballsbridge with someone snoring gently beside me. I had no recollection of meeting her but assumed I had lured her back to my room. It was part of a pattern that is probably recognisable as an indicator of serious personality disorder and certainly of alcohol abuse, but it goes something like this:-
