The Namedropper

by Brian Freemantle

  She grinned briefly at the continuing pedantry. ‘Which brings me to a financial question I forgot. What debts, outstanding or unpaid credit or store card liabilities or financial court orders do you have against you?’

  ‘None.’

  Lesley came up to him again. ‘None?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘What about a mortgage? Or car finance? Or overdrafts?’

  ‘I own my apartment in Marylebone outright. I do not have a car. Or any overdrafts.’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s amazing!’

  ‘That’s how it is. How I choose to live.’

  ‘Professional gamblers really don’t gamble, do they?’

  ‘Not this one.’

  Lesley Corbin moved on to another document in the American pack. ‘As well as the birth certificate we’ve already talked about, Dan wants at least three photographs of you, a copy of your parents’ marriage certificate and a copy of your passport. And now we’ve got to add your divorce papers.’ She looked up again. ‘Have you brought it all, as I asked?’

  ‘I’ve brought them but I want to know why he wants it all?’

  ‘I’m just relaying the request,’ Lesley said. ‘Dan wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t necessary. Like I said, it’s all going to be couriered so it will all be safe.’

  As he handed each item over Jordan said, ‘The exchange of statements from the other sides? Will I be shown them, before the case?’

  ‘Inevitably Dan will take you through them; that’s the whole purpose of an exchange, to isolate factual errors or outright lies.’

  ‘So we’ll be able to gauge whether they’re working together, to set me up?’

  ‘I only mentioned that as a possibility and I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t because that’s all it is and quite an unlikely one at that,’ said the lawyer. ‘If it is and Dan can prove it, that’s you off any divorce or alienation of affection hook and all the other damages claims. Which is the good news. The bad news could be that it would establish a case for attempted deception, which would make it a crime to be heard in a criminal court with you as the major prosecution witness. And would almost inevitably attract the publicity back here you want to avoid.’

  Jordan walked directly down Chancery Lane, crossed Fleet Street into El Vino and huddled himself into the furthest corner of the back bar with a large glass of Chablis, not so much to drink as to justify his occupation of the secluded table. His feelings during the conference with Lesley Cordin had gone up and down like an elevator, finishing at ground or even basement level. He realistically supposed that it didn’t even come close to the exchanges that were to follow – his first lesson, the woman had called it – but it had been far worse than he’d expected. His high point had been Lesley’s acceptance of where his income came from, but as their conversation – and her demands for evidence – progressed, he’d objectively realized that lawyers representing someone as determined as Alfred Appleton appeared to be wouldn’t believe it so readily as she had, whether or not there was any connivance between the commodity trader and his wife. Despite Lesley’s repeated insistence that she had been offering the most outside of all outside possibilities, which she now regretted, Jordan had clung to the hope of it being dramatically proven in court to provide his absolute, guilt-free salvation. Which now it couldn’t be. His lowest point was Lesley Corbin’s easy but unarguable illustration of how a finding of collusion could result in a criminal prosecution with an even greater risk of the publicity he was so desperate to avoid. The worst feeling of all was of being incarcerated in an ever-tightening, constricting straightjacket from which he couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to escape suffocation.

  Harvey Jordan immediately recognized the self-pity that had brought him down before and didn’t want – wouldn’t allow – again. He hoped Lesley Corbin had been right about there always being a way out and that the way he had in mind would materialize. He really did have a lot to do to make it work.

  Eight

  Since the legal tightening up of the money-laundering legislation demanding proof of cash receipts and profits – most directly targeted against the proceeds from drug trafficking – it had become much more difficult for Harvey Jordan to operate his well established, and so far foolproof, scheme to obtain tax evidence of his supposed income. When he had first embarked upon his career, casinos had been far more casual than they were now monitoring the big chip purchases against money paid out when those same chips were cashed in. In the much mourned early days Jordan had been able to buy £50,000 worth of chips with the stolen identity money, then move from the most crowded tables too frequently for any one croupier or pit boss to remember the minimal stakes he placed against what he won or lost. He would then return to the caisse to get a tax receipt for all but a little of what he’d changed in the first place. Jordan estimated he actually did win on fifty percent of his casino outings – always betting evens – and every time he did it represented a bonus.

  Since the legislation Jordan believed he had isolated the casinos that noted the chip-purchasing amounts against the money reclaimed, which had greatly reduced his choice and made getting the necessary paperwork that much harder. And now he was confronted with a demand to at least double – possibly even treble – his receipt collecting to satisfy not just his well organized and regulated return to the English Inland Revenue but an American court and its assembled lawyers if a source were demanded for the cash he was to deposit with Lesley Corbin’s firm for the forthcoming divorce hearing.

  Jordan reassurred himself that he could overcome the casino difficulties from horse racing. By visiting some courses without making any effort to evade the still feared surveillance he could also actually prove to the opposing American legal teams that he genuinely was a professional gambler. By buying betting slips from on-course bookmakers in full public – and hopefully photographed – view and milling around them again at the end of a race, he would appear to be collecting his winnings, whether there were any or not and which was immaterial. All he needed was the date, place, race title and name of the winning horse. And to insist, if he were challenged, that he hadn’t been able to retain the slip. He would, though, keep those with which he did coincidentally win.

  It was going to involve a lot of late nights and a considerable amount of travelling, even if he restricted himself to race meetings conveniently around London, which he couldn’t do all the time because, as he’d told Lesley, a professional gambler only followed certainties. And until the American ordeal was over his role had to be that of a very visible and successful professional punter, not that of someone whose identity he had stolen. That reflection physically stopped Jordan, half dressed in preparation for another unwelcome and unwanted day.

  Realistically nothing was more important than what was happening – or about to happen – in America and his doing everything possible to reduce whatever damage might come from it. But he had no idea how long it was going to be before it was resolved: however, whenever, it might be resolved to his benefit. But until it was, he couldn’t begin to think about any further identity thefts. It could, he supposed, be as long as a year. Which made it the most frightening uncertainty of all and it hadn’t even been on his list of questions to ask Lesley Corbin or Daniel Beckwith.

  Again, unsettlingly, Harvey Jordan felt the tightness of the slowly crushing straightjacket he now found himself in.

  Dr James Preston was a small, electric-haired man who fussed nervously around his disordered office, his unbuttoned white coat flapping about him like startled wings, head jerking constantly about him in an apparent search for something mislaid or forever lost. Not looking at Jordan he said, ‘You’ve got some notes? Samples?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Jordan. ‘The appointment was made by my solicitor, Lesley Corbin. It’s for a legal case.’

  ‘Legal case?’ demanded the venerealogist, frowning directly at Jordan for the first time.

  ‘In America,’ offered Jordan.

&nb
sp; The man flustered through a hamster’s den of papers on his desk, finally coming up with a confirming official letter from Lesley Corbin. Looking up again he said, ‘HIV, negative or positive? Any venereal infection?’

  ‘To prove I am not suffering from anything.’ Jordan supposed he should be amused by the shambling, mad doctor imagery, but he wasn’t. As Lesley had reminded him the previous day there was nothing amusing in the situation in which he found himself.

  Preston stared from beneath his upright shock of pure white hair. ‘You think you have caught something?’

  ‘It’s to guarantee that I haven’t infected someone. Anyone.’

  ‘Ah!’ exclaimed the man, in final understanding. He went back to the appointment slip. ‘It doesn’t say,’ he said, as if offering an explanation of his own.

  That’s what it’s for.’

  ‘You suffered from anything in the past?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s possible for me to find a trace, if you have.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ insisted Jordan.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Have you got any discharge? Irritation? Rashes? Need to pass water frequently?’

  ‘No. No symptoms, if those are the symptoms.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive,’ sighed Jordan, again. Why the hell had Lesley Corbin picked this man?

  ‘When’s the last time you had a full medical examination?’

  ‘I’ve never had a full medical examination.’

  ‘Who’s your regular doctor, from whom I can obtain your records and case notes. I’ll need you to sign the authority for me to ask for them, of course.’

  ‘I don’t have a regular doctor.’

  The white-haired head came up again. ‘What do you do if you are ill?’

  ‘I’m never ill. If I were I’d go to a hospital.’ To have a regular doctor meant records being created and invisible men didn’t have records.

  ‘This is for court purposes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll need to give you a full medical, as well as giving you the specific examination that’s been asked for. I can’t do one without the other.’

  ‘Why don’t you do that and get it over with?’ demanded Jordan, impatiently.

  Jordan later decided he wouldn’t have agreed so readily if he’d known it was going to take almost three hours. He had to supply five phials for all the necessary blood tests and two for urine examination, as well as a faeces sample. There were two sets of chest and lower body X-rays and his blood pressure and rate was tested not just by an arm cuff but on a treadmill meter. His lung capacity was measured by his blowing into an asthma tube and his vision to the very bottom line of the alphabet chart. Although a prostrate assessment was ticked on one of the blood test cards the doctor also insisted upon a rubber gloved anal examination, which was a great deal more uncomfortable than with the later, narrower colostomy probe. The final forty-five minutes was a verbal exchange to discover any illnesses or complaints Jordan could have conceivably suffered during his remembered childhood up to that day, whether or not it had required doctor or hospital consultation, followed by a determined effort by Preston to complete a medical history of Jordan’s parents.

  At the end the doctor said, ‘I think you’re the only person I’ve ever examined who never suffered a single childhood illness, nor has needed any medical advice since.’

  ‘I guess I’ve been lucky.’

  ‘And you’re sure you can’t remember a single illness from which your parents suffered?’

  ‘Seems I’ve inherited their healthy genes.’

  ‘What were the causes of their deaths?’

  ‘They died together in a car crash,’ said Jordan, which was a lie. His father had died first, of cancer, and his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother of pneumonia but Jordan was bored and impatient to end the pointless encounter.

  ‘You’re responsible for payment, I assume?’

  ‘Wrongly,’ said Jordan, who’d anticipated the approach. ‘Your secretary will have the name and address of the lawyer who booked this if it’s not on the note you’ve got there. Send your account to her, along with the results.’

  Preston was on the internal phone before Jordan finished speaking, his face clouding at the confirmation of what Jordan had told him. The doctor said, ‘Solicitors are very dilatory in settling their accounts. Will you please tell Ms Corbin that I expect payment within the period stipulated upon my invoice?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jordan, without any intention of doing so. ‘You didn’t tell me how my examination went?’

  ‘I have obviously to wait for all the tests results but there’s every indication of your being remarkably fit: nothing obviously wrong at all.’

  Apart from you knowing – and a record now existing – of every physical detail about me, thought Jordan.

  The irritating medical examination, for which he’d allowed only an hour, completely disrupted Jordan’s schedule, leaving him with only thirty minutes to keep the afternoon appointment with the photographer. In the taxi taking him there Jordan decided to abandon until the following morning the intended visit to Hans Crescent to check for any further correspondence in his Paul Maculloch name; he was anxious to begin at once his money-manipulating casino tour.

  Jordan had booked for passport photographs, waiting until he got to the studio to add three larger prints and agreed at once to the obviously increase fee, interested only in getting the picture session over as quickly as possible. He was back in the Marylebone apartment by six and out, showered, changed and with £20,000 from the bedroom closet safe to begin the chips-for-cash receipt switch by eight. For an hour he played poker at the high stakes table of one of his favourite gambling clubs in Brook Street, Mayfair, before quitting £2,300 ahead to move to the roulette room. There he moved between three tables, increasing his winnings by another £7,000 before dropping £6,000 in an unstoppable consistent slide. By the time it did stop he was down to his poker profit. It took him another hour playing blackjack to take his winnings up a further £1,500. He cashed in and got his tax receipt for winnings of £24,500. Throughout Jordan remained constantly alert but failed to isolate anyone paying any particular attention or interest in him.

  Jordan hesitated for a moment as he left the club, turning to the doorman for a taxi, but abruptly deciding, without any reason, to walk into Park Lane. When he reached Park Street the darkened interior of the last car in the parking line at the corner was briefly illuminated in the headlight beam of an approaching taxi, perfectly enabling Jordan to see a man he remembered at every table at which he’d played that night.

  Nine

  ‘Being followed!’ Lesley Corbin frowned but smiled very slightly as well. The combination made her nose wrinkle.

  ‘I believe so,’ said Jordan, discomfited by her doubting expression.

  ‘When, how, did you come to believe that?’

  ‘Three nights ago. I’d been gambling, in Mayfair. When I came out of the club I saw a man, waiting in his car. He’d been in every room in which I’d played, during the evening.’

  ‘Watching you?’

  ‘I hadn’t been aware inside. I only recognized him outside, in the car.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Jordan, further discomfited by the emptiness of what he was saying. He had abandoned the intention to go to Hans Crescent and that night returned to the same Mayfair club, where he’d lost almost £5,000. He didn’t see the man in the club or isolate anyone waiting in a car when he’d left to take the same route to Park Lane for a taxi.

  The woman wasn’t frowning any more but the smile was hovering. ‘You haven’t thought you’ve been followed since?’

  ‘I haven’t been aware of it,’ qualified Jordan. ‘They watched me pretty effectively in France without my suspecting it, don’t forget. Do you think they’ve begun some sort of surveillance here?’

  Lesley humped her shoulder
s. ‘They could have, although I would have thought they’ve already got all they need for their case as far as the adultery is concerned.’

  ‘So I’m becoming paranoid?’

  The smile widened. ‘I didn’t say that. Or think it. They might have decided it’s necessary, now that Dan’s got involved and confirmed you’re going to contest the accusations.’

  ‘Could you ask him what he thinks? I don’t like the idea of my every move being watched.’

  She hunched her shoulders again. ‘There’s nothing we can really do about it, if they are.’

  ‘It’s an unsettling feeling.’ He’d have to check Hans Crescent tomorrow, Jordan realized. By now there’d probably be something from his new City bank if nothing else in the name of Paul Maculloch.

  ‘It’s not actually against the law, although if you could prove it we could apply for a harassment order. Proving it would be a problem. And attract publicity to the case in America, which we don’t really want, do we?’

  ‘We’ll leave it,’ decided Jordan.

  ‘That’s probably best,’ agreed the lawyer. ‘I’ve got more from Dan. And I’ve got the medical report and the photographs.’

  ‘And I very definitely want to talk about Preston!’ declared Jordan.

  ‘I want to talk about Preston, too,’ said Lesley. ‘You’d better listen to me first.’

  ‘You first, about everything,’ agreed Jordan. He saw that Lesley Corbin had several, separated sets of paper arranged in front of her on her desk.

  She selected the smallest of the files. ‘Dan’s emails. There’ll definitely need to be what he calls a financial lodgement, in view of what you do for a living. He’s talking of an initial tranche of $100,000, which I’ve roughly converted to around £55,000.’ She looked up. ‘Is that all right?’

  ‘If you mean can I provide that much in cash, the answer’s yes, but on the understanding we reached earlier.’ Not just a trip to Hans Crescent, Jordan thought: he’d need to get more out of the safe deposits at the Royston and Jones bank. What was set aside in Marylebone was gambling stake money. And at the moment it amounted to less than he’d started out with. His resentment against Alfred Appleton was building by the day.