48 Hours - A City of London Thriller

by J Jackson Bentley

  “Welcome, gentlemen. How may I help you?” He stopped beaming when he saw the warrant card. In fact, I thought I saw fear in his eyes as he looked quickly from the Inspector to me. That was not unusual. Some of my Middle Eastern clients only ever saw their police when they were about to be taken into custody so that they could be given the opportunity to confess.

  “You are Mr Abasi Nour, with a bank Account at the Sharia Islamic Bank of Arabia, Regents Park?” The nervous Egyptian nodded. “You have just had two hundred and fifty thousand pounds transferred into your account from a Mr Josh Hammond?” The man nodded again. “Then meet Mr Josh Hammond in person.” Mr Nour blanched, and collapsed into his chair.

  ***

  Five minutes passed whilst Halima made her ashen boss some hot sweet tea. Mr Nour was normally a swarthy man with typical Middle Eastern colour, but now his complexion was pallid and yellow. He looked ill.

  Inspector Boniface had explained earlier that there was no chance that Mr Nour was Bob. He simply didn’t fit the profile. He was sure that Bob had used Mr Nour to break the chain between me and my money. With any luck we would get our first description of Bob.

  Under gentle questioning from the Inspector the whole story unfolded. Just over forty eight hours ago, Wednesday afternoon, Mr Noor had received a call from a man claiming to be Josh Hammond. He said he had been recommended by Sir Max Rochester, who was a respected customer.

  This Josh had been paid a bonus of a quarter of a million pounds (I wish) and wanted to hide it from his ex wife’s lawyers. He wanted to convert it into something small and transportable that he could hide easily. Diamonds had seemed the perfect option. The trouble was that he needed to do it quickly, because next week the auditors would be looking to split the marital proceeds.

  Mr Nour had agreed to purchase the finest diamonds available from Antwerp, apparently the world centre for the supply of fine, cut diamonds. He had even managed to procure diamonds cut personally by Losi Van Serck, the acclaimed artist in the field of diamond cutting. The diamonds had arrived this morning, and Josh Hammond had apparently collected them.

  ‘Mr Hammond’ had visited the shop twice and on each occasion he had stayed for only a few minutes. Mr Nour handed over a business card. It was my business card, or at least on first pass it looked like my business card. On closer inspection it had different phone numbers. The landline number was correct, but it had a red pen stroke through the middle. The fax number and the mobile number were not my numbers.

  “He told me not to call him at work because calls could be recorded,” Mr Nour explained.

  “Presumably you asked for some form of identification?” Mr Nour’s eyes brightened as if he had suddenly been redeemed. He opened a drawer and withdrew two sheets of A4 paper. On the first was a scan of a driving licence; on the second was a scan of a passport. In both cases the name was Josh Hammond but the details were all wrong. The photo was of a middle aged man who looked nothing at all like me, with a mane of unkempt hair and a big moustache. Neither photo was flattering.

  “He emailed those to me when he made the order. It must have been a different Josh Hammond. This has all been a confusing error.”

  “Mr Nour, do you have CCTV coverage of your meeting with Mr Hammond?”

  The Egyptian disappeared into the back of the shop and returned a moment later with a shiny CD Rom.

  “This is today’s CCTV coverage,” he explained, handing over the CD. Boniface laid it to one side and spoke quietly.

  “Mr Nour, the money you received for your diamonds will be frozen in your account until we have resolved whether or not it is yours to keep.” Boniface saw the look on my face and shook his head almost imperceptibly, inviting me to remain silent. “If this man contacts you again you must call me immediately. Now I need three things - a police technician to examine your computer, a description of the man who claimed to be Josh Hammond, and a full description of the diamonds you handed over.”

  “I have a photo of each of the diamonds and their certificates. Halima can email them to you. As for the man, he appeared very much like you see in these pictures. I would say he was almost six feet tall, a little overweight, he wore a badly fitting toupee and he was wearing a Breitling Navitimer Mecanique wristwatch. I have been selling Breitling watches for thirty years and the Mecanique, a French version, is very rare now, and very valuable.”

  It was typical of a jeweller to be able to describe a watch with precision and yet only be able to give a vague description of the wearer.

  “Thank you, Mr Nour. My understanding is that Breitling watches are individually numbered. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, each one is registered to protect the brand against replicas and fakes. But obviously I did not see the number.”

  I thought that was too much to hope for, but nonetheless Bob had slipped up. He was fallible after all, and I took heart from that.

  “Thank you, Mr Nour,” Boniface said, shaking his hand. “A technician will be here within the hour. I can assure you that we will try our level best to find your gems and also the man who misled you.”

 

  Chapter 18

  City of London Police Station, Wood St, London. Friday, 5pm.

  I was exhausted. It had been a long day.

  The police had eventually managed to freeze the money in the Sharia Islamic Bank of Arabia but there was some doubt as to whether I would ever get it back. Mr Nour had sold the diamonds in good faith to a man who had two hundred and fifty thousand pounds delivered to Nour’s account. The Egyptian had even made sure that ‘Josh Hammond’s’ money was in his account before he let the diamonds go. Finally Nour had copies of a scanned passport and driving licence that probably would have fooled me. Either he lost a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of diamonds, or I lost the cash, and if I was being honest I had traded the money for my life, which was now hopefully safe from Bob, who was potentially a double murderer.

  Boniface and I were covering the emails Bob had sent to Nour and the fax number on the business card. Neither led anywhere. The email had been sent from josh.hammond@48hours.co.za which we had known was a dead end since yesterday morning. The fax number was a YAC number, a free service that allows email users to have faxes converted to email and forwarded on. The number led straight back to the email address.

  I was still in Boniface’s office reading through my statement concerning the morning’s grim find when Dee came in with a Detective Sergeant from the financial crimes team. Boniface gestured to them to sit down, but they both seemed excited. They handed a sheet of paper to me and to Boniface and asked us to read it to ourselves. It read;

  Breitling Research: Dee Conrad & DS Peter Fellowes.

  The Navtimer watch was introduced in 1952 and went out of production around 2003. The Old Navtimer edition was produced in the period 1993 to 2002. The Mecanique was a special French limited edition of just 1000 pieces. Breitling HQ is in Grenchen Switzerland.

  DS Fellowes has been in touch with Breitling HQ in Grenchen, Switzerland and they confirmed that the majority of owners do register with them to guard against theft and forgeries. They said, “When you are paying thousands of pounds for a watch you want to know it is genuine.”

  Each Old Navtimer Mecanique is marked with the model reference number, A11022 and a unique Breitling registration number. Of the 1000 Mecanique watches 143 are unaccounted for or have never been registered. Most are registered in France, where they were predominantly marketed but 78 are registered to people currently living in the UK, 66 of the UK based owners are French nationals and 4 are known Breitling Dealers. That leaves 8 in British private ownership. Unfortunately Breitling cannot give us names or addresses without an international warrant, which is unlikely to be granted as we are on a fishing expedition here.

  However, there is a ray of hope. Breitling watches are serviced and maintained at Tonbridge Wells and Dee Conrad has been in contact with the manager there. He has maintenance records of 12 watches bearing the r
eference A11022. He was not keen to share that information but after a bit of sweet talking he agreed to email Dee a list of the names and the towns to which the serviced watches were returned. He said we will need a warrant if we want any more than that. Here is the spreadsheet he sent.

  NAMETOWN

  D. AllinsonEdinburgh

  S. BentleyOxford

  F. CozeeLondon

  A. Hickstead Leeds

  L. HoulierLondon

  D. JulliardSt Helier

  H. LaurentManchester

  T. Morrissey Wigan

  K. PascalGlasgow

  N. Van Doren Rotterdam

  G. Weissman London

  A. Wasir Birmingham

  I decided to be the first to make an observation.

  “If my reasoning is correct, we have potentially eight watches registered to individuals who are not French and are not dealers. The spreadsheet you’ve procured has eight people who appear to be non-French. Even if I’m wrong on a couple of the names, it means that our man is almost certainly on that list.”

  “That would be right if one hundred and forty three of the watches were not registered. The unregistered watches could all be in London,” DS Fellowes countered.

  “Or none of them could be in the UK at all. It is at least a lead,” I said optimistically.

  Dee chirped up. “Am I the only one seeing this? The fifth name down, L Houlier of London, whose initials are LH.”

  The room fell silent.

 

  Chapter 19

  Pendolino Train, First Class Carriage, Kings Cross. 5pm.

  Bob sat in the seat and relaxed. The East Coast line was experimenting with the Pendolino that had proved such a success on the West Coast route. He was a regular rail traveller across Europe and found the Pendolino less comfortable than the Eurostar or the old GNER 225s.

  He closed his eyes and pondered as the odours of dinner cooking in the dining car permeated the carriage. This line was one of the last to preserve the dignity of passengers by offering a Silver Service dinner in a dedicated dining car.

  Bob idly wondered whether the slimy Abasi Nour was in jail yet. He doubted that the Egyptian would ever get his hands on the two hundred and fifty grand that had been used to secure the diamonds. Sir Max had once let slip that Nour had provided him with some investment gems, no questions asked, along with a legitimate diamond studded tiara for his daughter’s ‘coming out’. Bob remembered being amazed that Debutante Balls for the privileged classes still took place in the twenty first century.

  The diamonds were now secure in a safety deposit box in London, and all signs of Bob, his alter ego, had been eliminated.

  Bob was content that neither the CCTV nor the photos in the passport or on the driving license could be used to trace him. He had barely recognised himself with the glasses, wig and moustache. He imagined that the best description the police would get from Abasi Nour was that his ‘Josh Hammond’ was a tall middle aged man from East London.

  Of course, Bob couldn’t have done all of this on his own. Faik Al Khufi, his faithful young friend, an Iraqi asylum seeker, had proved to be a talented photo editor. His photoshopping skills had produced a masterful passport photo page and a convincing photo card driving license.

  Bob would use his influence to keep Faik in the UK, at least until he had outlived his usefulness. He began to drift off as the train left the station. He was looking forward to a weekend with the family, and soon Richard Wolsey Keene would receive his forty eight hour ultimatum. Bob had little doubt the spineless banker would pay the one million pounds he was demanding, especially when he discovered that Sir Max had paid such a heavy price for being stubborn.

 

  Chapter 20

  Brompton Place, Knightsbridge, London. Friday, 6:15pm.

  As we turned off Brompton Road into Brompton Square I marvelled at the beautiful buildings facing me. They were town houses, but town houses that were so large it was hard to imagine that they could exist in London, where property was so expensive.

  DS Fellowes and Dee had driven into the City to speak to Andrew’s boss before he departed for the weekend. Inspector Boniface, his driver and I were looking for the house where Mr L Houlier lived.

  The car pulled up outside a magnificent porticoed house with four floors. The house was immaculate. The grey granite stone walls had been cleaned and renovated some time in the recent past. The stone steps were worn. They were rounded at the edges and the entrance to the house itself had a depression in the stone where generations of tradesmen, deliverymen and visitors had stood, waiting to be attended to. Inspector Boniface left the police constable in the car and walked up to the door. I tagged along. The Inspector was just about to press a white pearlescent button surrounded by a ring of intricately cast brass-work when the door opened.

  A young man of Latin appearance stood inside looking at us. He smiled.

  “I saw you coming up the steps on the CCTV,” he said, answering our unasked question, pointing at a carved Lion’s head which looked as though it might have been an original fixture but which, on closer inspection, contained a tiny lens in the lion’s open jaws.

  “Mr L Houlier?” Inspector Boniface asked.

  “I’m one of them,” the young man replied. “My father is also L. Houlier. He is Leon and I am Luc. Which one of us do you want to see?”

  “Actually we would like to speak to whoever owns an Old Navitimer Mecanique watch.”

  “Ah, my Grandpa’s old Pilot Watch, the Breitling, yes?”

  “Indeed. May we come in and have a chat about the watch?” Boniface showed the young man his warrant card and introduced me as a colleague.

  “So, you too are French, Monsieur Boniface?”

  “Not for three generations, Luc.” The Inspector fell silent as we stepped into the cathedral-like space that served as the entrance hall. It was a glorious pastiche of gold and Italian marble. Every metal surface was gilded to an identical patina and had the look of ancient, much buffed gold. But it was a clever deception because the air conditioning grilles looked exactly the same. The marble flooring did look original, as it was the same kind of old brown marble flecked with grey that one associates with London Museums. In places it had cracked and had been expertly repaired. The wooden staircase, the tall skirting boards and carved picture rails were a rich dark hardwood and in the middle of the edifice was an astounding chandelier, which was suspended from two floors up by a long gold coloured rod and chain.

  Luc could see our astonishment, and filled the silence with an explanation.

  “Yes, it is very grand. I sometimes forget how impressive it appears to visitors. When you live here all of the time you become complacent and take the grandeur for granted.”

  Luc explained that the house had been created from two houses that backed onto one another. It had a front door on both streets. The houses had been bought and refurbished by Dmitri Lubenov, the Russian oil and gas billionaire better known to the English for his patronage of a Premiership soccer team, unfortunately not my team, West Ham.

  “We live here because my father is the London representative of Muscovia Natural Resources. Also because when Dmitri took up residence he found that his Rolls Royce would not fit in the garage, despite the architect specifically designing it for the car. That architect was found floating in the Thames a month later.” Luc winked and smiled at his own joke. “Our place in Paris is a simple apartment and so this is a big step up for us.”

  Luc led us into a reception room that was ornate but modern. There was a flat screen TV that must have measured all of seventy two inches, and it was surrounded by speakers and a computer console. Luc invited us to sit down. We took a seat on Chesterfield sofa, the leather of which was so highly polished that it was difficult to sit on without sliding off onto the floor.

  Inspector Boniface spoke. “You said the watch was your Grandfather’s. Is he still around?”

  “Non, he passed away ten years ago, when I
was still quite small, but he left his watch and memorabilia to me. My father was not overjoyed, as I suspect my Grandpa knew very well. They had a strained relationship.”

  “When you say memorabilia……..” Inspector Boniface began.

  Luc stood and beckoned us to a display case in the corner of the room. One shelf was filled with medals, framed pictures of a young pilot and in the middle an Old Navitimer Mecanique watch; the much discussed Breitling.

  “My Grandpa was a pilot in France. He was a test pilot for the Super Entendard before a career flying for Air France. He was an adventurous man and he saw my father as being too boring. He had hopes of me continuing the Houlier’s buccaneering adventures.” Luc smiled with affection but his eyes betrayed his sadness and loss.

  “Do you or your father ever wear the watch, Luc?” I asked.

  “Father never, me rarely; I would be frightened to wear it regularly, knowing it is probably valued at five thousand pounds. It is better on display here, as a tribute to Grandpa Houlier.”

  “Could we just check the back of the watch, please?” the Inspector asked.

  Luc walked over to a box concealed in a wooden panel in the wall. A small panel opened out of the wall on hinges. It had been invisible before Luc pressed the panel to open it. The young man flicked a switch and took out a key fob.

  Standing in front of the display case, he pressed the key fob and a minuscule diode changed from red to green. Luc then unlocked the door with the key. He reached in and took the watch with a care and reverence that spoke more of its sentimental value than its cash value.

  Boniface took the watch from him carefully and looked at the rear of the case. It was marked A11022. It was the real Mc Coy but, sadly, probably not our real McCoy. Nonetheless, Boniface took no chances and as he passed the watch back to Luc he asked, “Has the watch been here all day?”

  Luc relocked the cabinet and replaced the key fob, resetting the alarm.

  “Of course. I have been here alone all day and in any event the watch has not been out of the case for months. Is there something wrong with the watch, Inspector?”

  “Nothing at all, Luc, it isn’t the one we were looking for. If I were you I’d take good care of it. Your Grandfather was obviously a special man and the watch is a fitting tribute to his affection for you.”