White Lines

by Mel Stein

  ‘It’s Detective Sergeant to you, sonny, and I’m not at all sure that your sister is going to be going home today – or for a long time for that matter. I don’t like drug pushers and the court doesn’t favour them either.’

  ‘My sister isn’t a drug pusher. She may have been duped into taking some drugs but she has no need to sell them.’

  He cast his eyes around the station, now satisfied the policeman was not about to hit him, this time as if trying to give Taylor the message that if the Halid family so desired, they could buy the whole building, the detective sergeant included. Any income from drug-trafficking would be small change indeed.

  ‘Need doesn’t always have a lot to do with things,’ Taylor replied, speaking deliberately slowly, slipping into his Mr Plod mode. ‘I’ve known the sons of millionaires kill for a hundred quid where there are drugs involved; or worse still over a girl.’

  No, he thought to himself, no girl’s worth killing for or else that decorator with the pecs would have gone long ago.

  Nabil Halid seemed lost for words. He was a good-looking boy, there was no doubt of that, his skin mediterranean rather than middle-eastern, his eyes the colour of olives, the lashes feminine in their length, his hair dark and thick, tied back into a pony tail. There the hippie look ended as he was clean-shaven and immaculately dressed despite the early hour of the morning. Taylor had little doubt that this was not a young man who would slob out in front of the television in a tracksuit with a take-away at his side. This was a young man who regarded himself as a crown prince, as the heir-apparent to the family fortunes. So what had gone wrong with the sister? Neil Taylor wasn’t one for playing amateur psychology. Normally he assumed a person was a crook because they had done something dishonest and he was none too concerned about whether or not they’d been abused as a child or were misunderstood by their nanny.

  ‘May I make a phone call?’ Nabil asked, the tone reluctantly polite.

  ‘Of course, sir. You’ll find a public telephone just along the corridor.’

  Nabil bit his lip. He didn’t like to ask what he now had to request but he had no choice.

  ‘I was wondering if I could use your phone. I seem to have left home without any money or charge cards.’

  Neil Taylor nearly smiled. This was good. This was a windfall. Not quite good enough to make him forget the lost opportunity with Janie from the wine-bar, but pretty good for all that.

  ‘Sorry about that. I’d love to help.’ He accentuated the love so that Nabil was left in no doubt that it was the last emotion he actually felt. ‘I’m afraid we can’t allow any private civilian calls, other than the one we allow to our invited guests – and, of course, your sister’s already had the benefit of that. I’m assuming that you don’t want to confess anything to encourage me to arrest you?’

  He paused wanting to see the effect of his refusal on Nabil.

  ‘Who was it that you were wanting to call?’

  ‘Our family lawyer,’ Nabil replied, unable to conceal his frustration. ‘If you won’t let me call perhaps you’d lend me ten pence. I trust your policeman’s salary extends to that.’

  It was the wrong thing to say. Taylor had, until that moment, every intention of making arrangements for Nabil to make the call, but now he decided he needed teaching a further lesson. Ostentatiously he tapped his pockets, carefully avoiding jingling the change in his jacket, then removing his wallet, flipping through the notes he’d budgeted to spend on Janie in front of Halid’s face.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look as if I’ve anything smaller than a twenty. So why don’t you take a seat, relax and I’ll let you know when I’ve finished with your sister. Or maybe someone will come on duty to replace me and from whom you can borrow a coin for your call – that is if you ask them nicely.’

  Someone to replace him. That sounded good. He shouldn’t be on duty at all. He’d done his stint last night but when Tucker had phoned in sick they’d not hesitated to rouse him out of a bed he seemed just to have tumbled into.

  Nabil began to bluster. He was not used to being treated this way and he did not think a reverse charge call to his father telling him he’d not even been able to arrange a call to Henry Freeman, the family solicitor, would go down very well. Of course, he should have rung before he’d left home, his father had told him to do so, but he’d thought he’d be able to cope with it all himself once he’d got down to the station, that everybody would roll over and kow-tow to his every whim. Yet, he wasn’t coping. Not at all.

  ‘Can I at least see my sister, Detective Sergeant?’ he asked, making a point of getting his rank accurate, then adding the word, ‘Please.’

  Taylor stood for a moment as if considering a request that might be within his gift if he pulled a string or two and then shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, sir. You call your solicitor when you’ve cracked a way of doing that, and perhaps by the time he gets here, then he’ll be able to see her; but family visits at this moment in time? No, I don’t think so. Although if you’d like to get your father down here, then obviously I’d reconsider. No promises, mind. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got some paperwork to complete on your sister’s case.’

  He looked at his watch. Ten in the morning. Probably too early to try and make his peace with Janie. No phone call, flowers, chocolate or champagne were likely to wangle his way into her bed.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got a good few more hours yet. Overtime you understand, Mr Halid. We poor coppers need to make all the money we can … Down to the last ten pence.’ And with that parting shot he left Nabil Halid angrily checking his Rolex watch.

  CHAPTER 8

  Mark Rossetti sat with his second cup of coffee of the morning. There was an odd feeling in the offices of Ball Park Productions that something monumental was about to happen. A fuse had been lit and everybody had withdrawn to avoid the explosion.

  The headlines in the morning papers had all been about the arrest of Dominique Halid; but the focus of the stories had been her famous and powerful father, the media magnate who always tried to shrink back from the spotlight. One of the tabloids had obtained an old photo of the girl with her breasts virtually out of a tight dress, another had a picture of her holding her father’s hand on the way to a movie premiere. Neither of them were calculated to please Mohammed Halid any more than the sensational nature of the story against the background of what were less than sensational facts.

  ‘I can’t believe the old man let it get this far,’ said Nick Donaldson, the company’s Head of Sport.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mark asked, a little naively.

  ‘She’s a bit wild is our little Dominique, but she’s not what you’d call really bad. There’s been a bit of trouble before and our esteemed owner seems to have been able to smooth it over.’

  ‘So what happened this time, do you reckon, Nick?’

  The question was asked by Richard Conway, the company’s star director. Conway had achieved a certain reputation in the business. If there was a sniff of a story then he would be on hand to direct a programme about it. If there wasn’t even a sniff then he’d create a smell by making a programme in any event. He was the despair of the company’s lawyers and the bogeyman of their insurers. It took a maverick like Mohammed Halid to recognise the talents of a maverick like Richard Conway and, perhaps of more significance, to tame them sufficiently to enable him to focus on his undoubted talents. It had been one of Halid’s masterstrokes to have Conway work under Donaldson and then to put them both on the main board of Ball Park. They seemed to work like gin and tonic, one both diluted and complemented the other, making him less lethal but never totally removing his kick.

  Nick Donaldson was a bull of a man, an Oxford rugby blue who’d probably been good enough to play for England if he’d not caught the media bug. Short cropped curly hair, a mis-shapen nose, a cheerful smile made lop-sided by the absence of a couple of teeth he’d not been vain enough to have had replaced.

  Richard Conway was the complete opposi
te, small, wiry, totally dependent upon thick glasses which some of his camera crew delighted in hiding to give them the chance to watch him stagger around like Mr Magoo in vain search of them. Whilst Donaldson never spoke without thinking and even then slowly and carefully, Conway fired out his words in an endless stream of staccato messages, each almost inevitably upsetting someone in the target area. He seemed oblivious to this fact, just as he seemed right now to be uncaring of the minefield through which he tip-toed in extracting information about the arrest of his boss’s daughter.

  ‘What happened, Dickie?’ Donaldson replied, knowing full well that Conway hated to be addressed in that luvvie-mode. ‘What happened, is that our leader depended upon our junior leader and our junior leader in the shape of Nabil, fucked it up big time.’

  Mark was not at the offices often enough to understand in sufficient detail the political in-fighting that seemed to be a daily way of life for the Halid family and those who worked for them.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ he said, curious all the same.

  ‘Very simple,’ Donaldson continued in the concise way he would use to present a new project to the board. ‘It appears, or so it is alleged, that Mohammed entrusted the immediate release of his daughter from Her Majesty’s custody to his son. Within a relatively short space of time, son, one Nabil, so seriously pisses off the copper in charge, that daddy has to go down to the station himself accompanied by big-time expensive lawyer, Henry Freeman. Eventually the not-so-happy family are reunited, but that’s not the end of the story. Charges are pressed, not dropped. Mo has a fight on his hands and Nabil fails the test. Somehow I don’t think Mo’s going to be in the best of moods when he turns up, particularly as someone seems to have tipped off the tabloids to enable Dominique to feature in the later editions.’ Donaldson spread the papers out on the desk. ‘In a way you have to admire these guys, getting all those details together so quickly and all before dawn breaks over the metropolis. Nice to know somebody works while London sleeps.’

  ‘So where’s Mohammed now?’ Mark asked, knowing they were all due to meet later that afternoon for a scheduling brief.

  It was Conway’s turn to click into gossip mode.

  ‘Well, if past history is anything to go by, he’s either sulking or throwing a temper tantrum.’

  The phone rang, Donaldson’s direct line, to interrupt the speculation. As the noise level around him continued unabated he put his finger to his lips and mouthed the word, ‘Mo’ as if in the presence of a deity. It was a tribute to the personality of the company’s head that one moment his staff could be chatting about his daughter, the next jumping to attention because they realised he was back in the game.

  Donaldson’s contribution to the telephone conversation appeared to be somewhat limited. The occasional ‘sure’ or ‘yes’ or ‘certainly’, but apart from that there was merely nodded acquiescence. From the expression on the face of the Head of Sport what Halid had to say was both of interest and a challenge. Eventually he replaced the receiver and puffed out both his cheeks.

  ‘Well, Dominique or no Dominique, Mo’s really going for it this time. He wants the ESL.’

  ‘Don’t we all,’ said Conway, ‘but wanting’s not always getting as my apple-cheeked old grannie used to say.’

  ‘It usually is where Mo is concerned. Can’t remember the last failure, can you?’

  ‘Getting his daughter off a drugs charge?’ Conway retorted like a shot.

  Mark looked puzzled. These men had worked together long enough almost to have their own form of communication and he was a stranger in their country still learning the language. He knew all about the ESL, the European Super League. It had been dreamed of for years and now it was about to become reality.

  ‘I thought the rights for that were long gone,’ he said.

  ‘So did everybody except our Mo. He’s had the lawyers working overtime and has been able to persuade the ESL management committee that they have to put it out for re-tender unless they want to be dragged through every court in Europe for the next five years.’

  ‘Bright lawyers,’ Mark commented.

  ‘No doubt, but bright Mo as well,’ Donaldson continued, ‘you’ve never really seen him operate when he’s all fired up. If the lawyers have done something it’s because Mo told them; if they found something then it’s because he told them to go look.’

  ‘What does he want us to do?’ Conway asked.

  ‘Meet with him,’ Donaldson replied.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Like now.’ Donaldson’s tone reflected exactly what he’d been instructed by Halid.

  ‘So we just drop everything?’ Conway asked.

  ‘Seems so. He wants us on the boat just as soon as we can get there.’

  ‘The boat, eh? Must be serious. All luxuries, no interruptions. Where’s it berthed?’

  ‘Nowhere glam, I’m afraid. Not for us a jolly jaunt to the Riviera. It’s beautiful Southampton. He’s sending the car for us right away.’

  Mark had just sat and listened. If the company got the rights then obviously he’d like to be a part of the commentary team, but until then there didn’t seem to be a lot he could do. He rose to his feet to leave the two men to prepare for their journey.

  ‘I guess I’ll be off then. Places to go, people to see.’ It didn’t sound very convincing. In fact he had nothing to do for the rest of the day and the only person he wanted to see was Patti who’d told him only that morning that she’d be out of circulation for a while, working on a new project, the details of which she had shown no inclination to confide to him. Whether it was sudden, unexpected, convenient or simply fictional, he had no idea. He had no idea at all with Patti at the moment. Were they still going out together or were they going nowhere at all? The events that had happened to them should have welded them closer together, but at the moment seemed rather to have forced them apart. Donaldson put his hand on Mark’s shoulder and pushed him back into his seat.

  ‘The people and the places will have to wait, Rossetti. His master commands and we must obey, just like the Daleks. The invite to the boat was for three not two. I don’t know what you’ve done right – or some may say wrong – but you’re coming with us.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘You’ve got time for one quick call, as the police say. You can call your lawyer, or your date. Either way it’s to say that you’re cancelling.’

  Mark smiled and shrugged, pleased, yet vaguely embarrassed, to be part of the team.

  ‘I don’t need to make a call.’

  ‘And all those pressing appointments?’ Conway asked waspishly, sensing he might have found a weak spot in yet another human being, which if he probed long and hard enough would give him hours of enjoyment.

  ‘I lied,’ Mark said, taking the wind out of Conway’s sails, and as Donaldson laughed, the receptionist called up to say their car was ready.

  CHAPTER 9

  It took him about an hour on board Mohammed Halid’s boat before Mark realised just how far he had travelled. Not just that day because the ride in the car to the coast had been swift and smooth, his two companions relatively quiet, both dozing on and off in the sure knowledge their employer would expect them to be fully awake for the rest of the day. ‘And probably most of the night too,’ Conway had said. ‘Once Mo gets hold of an idea, he’s like a dog obsessed with a bone. He worries at it, and then worries at it some more, until he’s buried it where nobody else can find it. Then, just when you think it’s lost for ever, he digs it up and carries it around in triumph.’

  The bone in question was not yet buried. The bone was Ball Park’s agenda to get the television rights for the ESL and, to Mark’s surprise, he was regarded by Halid as a vital component.

  ‘You see, Mark, you have a certain status in this world of football.’

  Mark couldn’t resist a wry smile.

  ‘You wouldn’t have said that a couple of years ago, Mohammed.’

  ‘Mo. Everybody calls me Mo. It’s more western, more appropriat
e. We’re all friends here. These guys only think they work for me. Really I work for them. Believe me, Mark, soon I’ll be working for you. You understand football and you understand football people. Nick here is a jack of all trades. Golf, tennis, basketball, women’s mud-wrestling. You name it and he knows a bit about it. A bit, mind you, not a lot. He’s not an expert, not like you are when it comes to football. Richard, great with the cameras, knows exactly what his audience wants to see. But he’s an artist. So, I have a dilettante and an artist; and now I also have an expert. You’re my team and I expect my team to win. Not at all cost, you understand, but fairly and because you’re the best.’

  He poured himself a cup of Turkish coffee, so strong that it seemed the spoon might stand up in it. There was a drinks cabinet in the corner, towards which both Donaldson and Conway cast longing glances, but all that was on offer was coffee and some water. Halid wanted his men focused and alcohol was likely to blur that focus.

  Mark had no proof that Halid knew of his alcoholic past, but he suspected he had done his groundwork. He guessed that he did not undertake any venture without doing all the research he felt necessary.