‘First, the name,’ said William calmly.
‘Assem Rashidi.’
‘Have you ever met him?’
‘No.’
‘Then how can you be sure he’s the one they call the Viper?’
‘Maria had a brief fling with him. That’s how we met.’
‘And you trust her?’
‘She’s the only person I do trust.’
William recalled Lamont’s words: ‘Never forget, your old school chum isn’t your friend, and he never will be. But that doesn’t mean you don’t stick to your side of the bargain. You’ll have to, if you’re going to secure his trust.’ He extracted one of the cellophane packets and handed it to Heath. It disappeared instantly.
‘What about the other hundred?’ said Heath.
‘Not before you tell me where Rashidi goes at five o’clock every Friday afternoon.’
‘Number twenty-four The Boltons.’
‘Is that where he lives?’
‘No idea. That wasn’t part of our bargain. Pay up.’
William extracted the second package and handed it over. ‘If your information isn’t kosher,’ he said, ‘I’ll personally drag you back here, put you on the rack and I’ll be the one tightening the screws.’
‘That’s not very friendly,’ said Heath, ‘considering I’m working on something even bigger for my old school chum.’
‘Any clues?’ said William, trying hard not to sound excited.
‘Not yet. But if I pull it off, I’ll need enough money for me and Maria to disappear.’
‘Disappear to where?’ asked William. But Heath, unlike Bess of Hardwick, had already escaped.
6
‘BRAZIL WOULD BE my bet,’ said William.
‘Why Brazil?’ asked Lamont.
‘Heath let slip during our first interview that his girlfriend came from there.’
‘Two and two don’t always make four,’ said the Hawk. ‘But if his first two pieces of intel turn out to be accurate, your old school chum might prove invaluable in the long run.’
‘And expensive.’
‘Not if Assem Rashidi turns out to be for real,’ said Lamont.
‘He’s real enough,’ said William. ‘However, according to Interpol, that’s not the name on his birth certificate, but it’s certainly the one he goes by nowadays.’
‘You still need to convince me that it was money well spent,’ said Hawksby. ‘What else do we know about him?’
‘He was born in Marseilles in 1945,’ began William, checking the Interpol report. ‘His father was an Algerian farm labourer who fought alongside the French Resistance during the Second World War, and was killed by the Germans only weeks before hostilities ended.’
‘And his mother?’
‘The daughter of a local politician from Lyons, who didn’t acknowledge his grandson until he was awarded a place at the Sorbonne, from which he graduated with honours.’
‘And after that?’
‘He attended business school in Paris, and like so many second-generation immigrants –’ Adaja raised an eyebrow – ‘he worked a damn sight harder than his indigenous rivals, which resulted in him being snapped up by the Lyons tea importers, Marcel and Neffe. After just three years, at the age of twenty-seven, he was posted to the company’s Algiers office as regional director, the youngest in the firm’s history.’
‘How did that work out?’ asked Hawksby.
‘He resigned without explanation after a couple of years, and no one at Marcel and Neffe was quite sure why, because he’d doubled the company’s profits during that period.’
‘So did he resign or was he sacked, and they simply didn’t want to explain how he managed it?’ said Lamont.
‘With that in mind, I’ve asked the fraud squad to carry out a full Companies House investigation on our behalf. See if they can throw any light on his unexpected resignation.’
‘Even more mysterious,’ said Adaja, ‘is that five years later he returns to Lyons unannounced, takes over the company and appoints himself chairman. No one knows where he got the money from. And if anyone asked, they were either sacked, or were never seen again.’
‘I’m pretty sure,’ said William, ‘that Marcel and Neffe is nothing more than the respectable front for what Rashidi’s really importing, and it’s not tea. After Britain joined the EEC in 1973, Rashidi and his mother moved to London. She now lives in The Boltons, and my old school chum assures me that he visits her every Friday afternoon at five o’clock.’
‘Do you think she’s aware that her son is leading a double life?’ asked Lamont.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jackie, coming in on cue. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on Mrs Rashidi for the past few days, and she gives every impression of being a model citizen. She does the ladies who lunch circuit, attends the occasional concert at Wigmore Hall, likes Debussy and Strauss, sits on the local committee of Médecins Sans Frontières, and never misses Sunday-morning mass at the Brompton Oratory. It’s either an elaborate smoke screen, or she has no idea what her son’s up to.’
‘I presume,’ said Hawksby, ‘her house is now under constant surveillance?’
‘Night and day,’ said Lamont. ‘But other than a few local tradesmen, and the occasional visit from the parish priest, no one else has darkened her doors.’
‘Does she employ any staff?’ asked Hawksby.
‘A chauffeur, who used to be a corporal in the Guards, a cook and a housekeeper, who’ve been with her for years,’ said Adaja.
‘I assume you’ll all be out in force waiting to see if Rashidi turns up at five o’clock next Friday? Not that visiting one’s mother is a crime.’
‘Yes,’ said William. ‘A retired solicitor who lives across the square was only too happy to allow us the use of his top-floor flat, and more important, he didn’t ask any questions.’
‘Then let’s hope that Rashidi’s weekly visit to his mother is something we can rely on, in which case it will have been two hundred pounds well spent.’
‘And it’s possible there’s more to follow,’ said William. ‘OSC hinted that he was working on something even bigger.’
‘Like what?’ asked Lamont.
‘No idea, but he says it’s going to cost us a damned sight more.’
‘Then it had better be a damned sight bigger,’ said the Hawk.
‘It has to be one of two things,’
