doesn’t see any change in the level of commitment he’s getting from us. We’re not rocking his boat, so he’s not trying to take us down. And we have a new profit centre.’ Sanjar sounded jaded, as if he couldn’t care less whether First Fabrics made a profit.
‘So Yousef just went out and sorted it with B&R?’ Tony asked.
‘He’d like you to think he did, but it was more of an accident than that. Yousef had gone to see Demis Youkalis, one of our middlemen. To let you know, guys like Demis treat guys like us as if we’re dumb fucks who’ve been put on the planet to mess up his day. Just because the Cypriots got off the plane five minutes before we did. Anyway, Demis wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there for so long he’d missed his previous appointment, which was with the guy from B&R.’
‘Was that Benjamin Diamond?’
‘No idea, mate. Yousef just said, “the guy from B&R”. They got talking, and the B&R guy said how much he liked our stuff, and what a pity we were both putting money in Demis’s pocket when he basically does fuck all for it. So they talk a bit more, then they go to a cafe and try to figure out a different way of doing business. Which is how we ended up where we are, doing business direct with B&R.’
‘Who did Yousef deal with at B&R?’
‘No idea. He used to have regular meetings with them, going through new designs and product ranges, but that was his job. I don’t know who his contact was. It’s not like we would see them socially, know what I mean?’
‘No,’ Tony said. It was a lie but he wanted to hear if Sanjar knew who B&R were. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re Jewish, man. It’s not a problem when it comes to doing business, their money’s as good as anybody else’s. But we’re not going to be their friends, you catch my drift?’
‘I understand,’ Tony said. He glanced at his watch. In ten minutes, Paula would be waiting downstairs. ‘You do know that Benjamin Diamond from B&R died in the bombing on Saturday?’
A long silence. ‘No way,’ Sanjar eventually said.
‘I’m afraid so. Are you sure Yousef never mentioned him by name?’
‘No, he always just said “the B&R guy”. I’m pretty sure he never mentioned a name. So maybe it wasn’t this Diamond geezer that he dealt with?’
‘It’s possible. It just seemed like an odd coincidence,’ Tony said mildly.
‘Shit like that, it happens. You get coincidences all the time, right?’
‘We don’t really believe in them in my line of work. I need to go now, Sanjar. I hope you get to bury your brother with dignity.’
‘We’re trying to keep where we’re doing it a secret, he said gloomily. ‘The last thing we want is any trouble kicking off.’
‘Good luck.’ He ended the call and eased himself off the bed and on to his crutches. He’d had a very uncomfortable encounter with Mrs Chakrabarti that morning. The nurses had reported his absences and the contretemps between Carol and his mother. The surgeon had not been impressed.
‘You work in a hospital, Dr Hill,’ she’d said severely. ‘You should understand that patients have the best chance of getting better if they actually follow the directives of those taking care of them. I was thinking we might discharge you today or tomorrow, but frankly, the way you’ve been behaving, I’m afraid to do that in case you have a relapse.’ Then she’d twinkled a smile at him. ‘I don’t want you playing football before the end of the week.’
She’d told him not to go out. But he didn’t have a choice. Somebody had to pursue the line of inquiry, and Carol had made it plain when he’d called her that it wasn’t high on her list of priorities.
‘I’ll go by myself, then,’ he’d told her.
‘I don’t think that’s one of your better ideas,’ Carol said.
‘What? You think I’ll say something I shouldn’t?’
‘No, I think you’ll fall over your crutches and that poor bereaved woman will have to pick you off the floor. I’ll send Paula, she can chaperone you.’
‘I bet she’ll be really thrilled.’
And so it had been agreed that Paula would pick him up outside the Outpatients Department. He didn’t want to pass the nurses’ station, so he decided to take the emergency stairs near his room.
One flight nearly killed him. He was bathed in sweat, his good leg was aching and his broken knee felt as if it was on fire. He wobbled along to the lift and managed to make it to their rendezvous without discovery. Paula was leaning on her car, parked in the ambulance-only zone.
‘You look like you’ve run a half marathon,’ she said, nose wrinkling in distaste.
‘It’s the jogging pants. They’re all I can get over my leg brace.’ Shaking her head in amusement, Paula opened the door and he let himself drop back into the seat, then swung his legs round and in. ‘Just as well Carol didn’t send Kevin in his Ferrari,’ he gasped as he tried to make himself comfortable.
‘We’d have had to get a crane to get you in and out of that,’ Paula said, getting in the driver’s side.
‘Quite. So, what have you been up to?’
She brought him up to speed with their inquiries into Jack Anderson and his aliases. ‘He sounds a bit of an oddball,’ she added. ‘Apparently, when he was at school, he had this list of goals. Like Michael Heseltine’s “I’m going to be Prime Minister” list.’
Until then, nothing Paula had said had piqued Tony’s curiosity. But this was different. ‘Do we know what was on his list?’
‘According to Steve Mottishead, it was stuff like, get a Ferrari, get a house on Dunelm Drive, make a million by age thirty. Not the kind of thing that most people aspire to.’
