Chapter X

He didn't have to wonder long. An Opel Monza pulled up outside. The doorbell rang. "Chris!" exclaimed Tyler, beaming from ear to ear. "Come on in, mate!"
"No, John. Just grab a jacket, I've got a surprise for you." Tyler was used to Chris Austin's little dramas and was prepared to save his own for a while. He returned a few seconds later and jumped into Chris's car.
"Thought you were going to sell this," he said.
"Oh, I haven't had a chance yet. It's done now and still going strong. I'm sort of attached to it. Much better since I had the brakes done and the front shocks replaced!"
"You can say that again - like riding in a boat, it was, that time we went up to London. God knows how you got it through the MOT! Anyway, what's all this surprise stuff?"
"Well, John. You remember how we always said that we ought to get everyone together and try and work out a way of getting Bob to come clean...."
"Yeah..."
"Well that's what we're going to do. I got in touch with a few of the old crowd and, well, wait and see..."
"What... Mike?"
"Wait and see, John."
"Paul?"
"In a moment."
"How about money?" They pulled up outside a pub. Chris left the engine running long enough for the electric windows to close, then switched off. He followed Tyler into the small country inn they had got to know very well in the past.
"Smells the same as ever", laughed Tyler as they negotiated awkwardly the entrance doors and walked into the red carpeted lounge bar. "Mike! Hey, great to see you again!" called Tyler. A handsome Greek theatrically waved an arm towards a group sitting in the corner. "And Paul - what, you still in business?"
"My business is always in business, John," said the gruff, grey-haired Pole as he stood up and grasped Tyler by the hand. Chris brought a couple of gins over the table and sat down. Michaelis Ziparis sat on his left and smiled gently. He sipped an orange juice. Looking as neat as ever, shirt and trousers pressed to perfection and with short, tidy hair even blacker, if anything, than several years earlier, he was still trying to get his own film into production and had never lost contact with Chris despite the extraordinary change in their fortunes. A direct, intelligent, lean man of considerable artistic talent, he had a personal score to settle with Robert Lindon that was nothing to do with money. He was a proud man and seldom made mistakes. But he had fallen for the American's promises and had never forgiven himself for the consequent downfall of Chris who had almost adoringly followed his advice. Next to Michaelis was Paul Livingstone, a large, noisy man of Polish origin in his late fifties. No one really knew what he did with his time. He owned some properties in London and rented them out, Robert Lindon being one of his tenants for a short while. He had lost little money to the American but he had spent a lot of time ferrying the man around and had always helped him whenever asked. He had responded to Chris's call immediately with: "About time, too, young man. If you'd listened to me long ago we could have finished the business before you got hurt." Not the brightest around, maybe, but solid and dependable and with no fear whatsoever. He maintained that he had killed, and could again, with his bare hands and did so with an ominous lack of feeling or conscience. Opposite Paul sat Brian Hawkins who looked up a little shamefacedly at Tyler. A chubby little man, only his bright blue eyes hinted that his age was actually fifteen years less than the sixty he looked. John Tyler looked at him and the smile sank. "So you're still around too - what's this fellow doing here, Chris?" Tyler didn't like Brian Hawkins.
"Cool it, John," said Chris. "Brian's OK. He's done all he can to cover my involvement, backed me up and he's put up some cash for this exercise..."
"What - the hundred and fifty thousand he owes you?" asked Tyler, sarcastically. "Clever of you to wind up that warehouse of yours just before the receiver came, wasn't it?"
"As a matter of fact, John, it was the only sensible thing I could do - for all our sakes. I would have been just another broken man. What's the use in that? Chris knows I have always accepted that I must repay the pension fund loan. He helped me in the past - we both misunderstood things - that man Bob is responsible for my losing everything else. You need some expertise and I've got some useful knowledge. If you don't want me...."
"Hold it, Brian." interrupted Chris. "John, he's right - the others had the same feeling to start with, but we're all in the same boat really. Brian just managed to hold out better than we did."
"OK. OK. It's past now I suppose." said Tyler. "I just don't know what to believe any more." Brian Hawkins held out a hand and smiled at Tyler. Tyler wiped his hand on his jeans and reached out to shake the other. "Friends?" queried Hawkins.
"You're a cunning old devil, Brian," said Tyler, "but I'll give it a go with you and see!" The other members of the strange association were Evelyn Bryant and Gill Chalmers. Evelyn Bryant was a youthful fifty-eight, fit and strong, a close friend of Chris for nearly ten years. Bryant was a natural survivor. A charming man who knew how to entertain and who loved women. He would fall in love at a glance and there was a common love of life that was a bond that had held Chris Austin and him together throughout, despite gaps of months between meetings in the past year or two. Tyler knew Bryant well and also guessed correctly that he had put up some cash - or, more accurately, had undertaken to meet such food and good wine expenses as he could get away with on his gold American Express card for subsequent reimbursement through his company. He had kept his new post as a partner in Pimlico Marketing a quiet secret and had been the only one of the old group to find any success in the aftermath of its collapse. Gill Chalmers was an unknown quantity to Tyler. He never trusted women - particularly Chris Austin's women - and, to date, had been pretty accurate in his judgement. Twenty-four, slim, dark straight hair and with a dark, Italian-looking complexion, Tyler's first impression was of a very attractive young lady.
"Gill, you've heard about John. Well, meet the real thing!" said Chris. "John - Gill."
"Hullo there Gill." Tyler didn't let impressions get to him, nodded towards her, and was about to take a sip of his drink when the girl spoke. Placing her black leather handbag on the table and folding the thin strap gently round it, she leaned over to Tyler, placing a slender hand on his arm. The unnoticeable pressure made his hand return to the table where his glass rested, still in his fingers. Tyler spotted the neat amethyst and diamond flower-shaped ring on her right hand.
"Don't worry, John. I'm going. I just wanted to see if you were really as bad as Chris had made out!" An honest smile flashed across her face and her eyes shone. Glancing at Chris she got up.
"I always said women should never be allowed in pubs!" joked Tyler, a touch uncertain of her relationship with Chris. Evelyn had stood up at the same time and kissed her on the cheek then she walked round to Chris. As she did so her dark blue dress moved as if some silent breeze had caught it and the long pleats shimmered in elongated 'S' shapes from the controlled light band under her breast down to the wilder movement at the hem. She leaned against Chris with both arms resting lazily on his shoulders, kissing him daintily on the lips twice.
"Please take care - and listen to them this time. Remember 'I told you so'" "I..." She put a finger on his lips. He kissed it innocently then realised the inference and a faint smile turned into a rare proper smile. Chris tended to show emotion mainly just with his clear, blue eyes. They could, and had, entranced many a girl not initially attracted by his fairly ordinary appearance but one look would speak volumes, quite disconcertingly so, on many an occasion. At several other meetings in the past Chris would have been forced to divide his attention between the work in hand and the female company that his colleagues would have preferred to have been absent but that he had stubbornly insisted stayed. Evelyn, Tyler and Michaelis, in particular, were pleased to note that he seemed to have learned a little since then. Gill left with a wave to everyone and the four men were alone. Introductions and a notable farewell over, Chris got straight to the point.
"Someone somewhere owes us half a million and a few favours. I don't propose to spend the rest of my life haunted by two hundred and eighty pensioners who think I've screwed up their retirement plans. Nor do I propose to carry on living on bread and water whilst someone in the States is sipping cocktails in the sun. Nobody's going to hand over any money, it would be naive to think that, but we can find out the truth. Where did it go? Who spent what? We can obtain statements and evidence enough to set the record straight. These buggers are alive and still bringing in money from somewhere. Why can't we have a share of their income? Some have got good brains and good contacts. Let's use them and maybe even make a few bob in the process. But, more than anything, they cannot be allowed merely to forget it ever happened. I don't know how we are going to do it and we'll need a team to plan everything. I must make one thing absolutely clear, though: last time I was Chairman or whatever and we got in a mess - this time I'll take a back seat and do as I'm told. I'll soon shout if I don't like it!" Chris had lost none of his verbal control. The tone of his voice was hard but not harsh. He conveyed the sense of frustration that everyone had felt and, above all, a determination not to sit back and let it go on. Despite his own admission of past failure - probably due just as much to others' inability to confront him on an issue successfully as due to his own waywardness - tended to enhance rather than to destroy the faith others had in him. He desperately needed results, though, and he would get none on his own. He needed people around him and a cause to fight for. The great injustice of Bob persuading him to hand over thousands of pounds of other people's money and then being totally unable to account for it and the reimbursement of his own excessive spending in the same period was the cause. He just needed the people.
Tyler looked around. "Is it OK, here?"
"No one can hear us and Mike's agreed to let us carry on this afternoon when he closes." said Evelyn.
"Great." said Tyler. "Look, count me in on whatever you're doing - as long as that bastard is made to understand what he's done. I can't give you any money but you know I'll do whatever I can," he continued. "and I'd have gone after him a long time ago, myself.
"We did, once or twice, John," said Chris, "and look where it got us. We were amateurs playing a professional game. We still are but there's a lot more in our favour now. We know that going cap in hand to Bob or his friends won't work. We know not to ask for outside help, either," he added ruefully. "We haven't got staff worrying in the office now, or police investigating every move we make..."
"But we have got someone on our tails," interrupted Tyler, who went on to explain his extraordinary experience earlier in the day. The others listened in silence.
"We had expected a move against Chris or, maybe, myself," said Michaelis seriously, "but, of course, we did knot know that you would also be so resourceful and go yourself, John."
"Your phone's been tapped," said Paul to John, "and we want them to believe that Chris is still staying in Newbury for a while. That's why Chris gave you the number. It's a house in Bancroft Road on that estate. The girl..." He jerked his head towards the door Gill Chalmers had gone out earlier, "... has rented it and is going to make it known that Chris is shacked up there with her. Chris has been around a few times and should have been noticed by now. And the way people like Collette Turner, June Franklin and Harry Gordon will gossip, he might as well put up a notice on the door saying 'here I am, come and get me'!"
Evelyn laughed. "Michaelis here arranged for Chris to stay somewhere else and put in one of his actor friends to carry on. Last night was our fault. The guy went to a party at the pub near the Newlands School and left alone in the morning. He's been doing this for a few weeks now to see if anyone attempted anything. We thought that as soon as they got close they would see that it wasn't Chris and go away - and that way we would get a clue as to who it is that's after him. What must have happened was that last night - this morning - another guy got in the right place at the wrong time. Our fellow was a block away. He scampered pretty damn quick and we got nothing. He's not so keen now. Christ, we didn't expect them to kill the bugger."
"What about the other one?" asked Tyler.
"No idea." replied Michaelis. "Could well have been what the police say - genuine accident, hit-and-run. You know, 'scared driver leaves scene' type of thing."
"Damn!" shouted Chris. "I don't want to sound ungrateful, John, I mean thanks for trying to find me and all that but we are going to have to be more careful with what we do with you now if you're not going to be put away for manslaughter or something. That would suit these guys that are after me down to the ground. Actually, I think the quicker we get ourselves sorted out and out of harm's way, the better."
"Who do you think it is that's after you, Chris?" asked Evelyn.
"I don't know, Evelyn. I used to joke about being done in but it looks pretty real from what John says. It just doesn't sound professional enough for any of the big boys - or someone protecting some information I don't even know I've got in the first place. It's a pretty chancy thing, taking pot shots at someone in the dark with the front of a car, for heaven's sake."
"No." Michaelis had been staring at the ceiling while Chris was talking. "There's a group - or maybe just someone - who wants to kill Chris or badly injure him - enough to shut him up for good. They find out where he's staying. They see that someone got run over a few weeks ago and try to do the same thing. That way they can stand a good chance of it being linked with the first one and no one will think that much more of it. The fact that Chris happens to be the victim of a madman terrorising the streets of a quiet housing estate is a bit of extra news but that's all. Do it another way and they create a direct link to themselves one way or another. Doing a few others first makes sense, you know. In fact, I think we can let our actor friend go back to the boards. They'll be made to believe Chris is still around - Gill and the others will see to that - and they will have another go soon."
"You mean that someone else is going to get run down?" queried Brian Hawkins.
"Yes." stated Michaelis.
"Jesus!" exclaimed Brian. "Is that really necessary?"
"What the hell else can we do?" Chris came in again. "Like the rest of you, I'm not very happy about people getting attacked but I agree with Michaelis - these guys are going to do what they've planned to do. If we just forget it and I go off and stay somewhere else they'll find me eventually, so I've a vested interest. If we go to the police and tell them then I'm still in danger and John's right in the shit - they'll make certain of that. That's why it's so bloody annoying that they've got something on him. In a way, we've got to do something now and I reckon we leave them to play with themselves in Newbury and get the hell after Bob."
"He's right," said Evelyn. "One false move and you're buggered John. If they're anything to do with the New York mob the police'll be on your doorstep as soon as any one of us contacts Bob or looks like making waves for anyone over there."
"I'm not sure Bob has got that sort of connections," said Paul. "I know we all hate the man's guts and Chris fell into some pretty nasty people's hands last year but that was of his own making. Those people would have finished you off by now if they'd wanted to - and," turning to Michaelis, "they wouldn't put down a guy with a car or worry about impressions. Find you - bang - you're out! That's their style. No frigging around an estate at four in the morning for weeks." He had, with his chubby fist, thumped the table at the end of each sentence to emphasise the points.
"Who else, Chris, has got a grudge against you?" asked Brian. "Enough to have a go but not smart enough to do it in other than the thick-headed way we're seeing."
"...apart from June Franklin's husband and a few others I can think of!" joked Tyler.
"Harry Gordon would be a lot happier if you were away," said Evelyn. "He called a while ago and tried to get me to take you to Greece. Scared stiff about his own skin, he was. With you out of the country he could happily blame you for everything and get away with it. Keith had a go at him as usual and reminded him that you had actually saved his bacon already by taking the rap for those dockers' pensions..."
"That's what I was thinking about," said Chris, quietly. "In all honesty I can't think of anyone who would seriously want to do anything bad to me - at least anyone who knew the truth - but those dockers probably still do blame me for the thirty grand that they never saw. Harry wouldn't know how to do anything but they could..." He paused. For a while he had actually quite enjoyed the limelight of his trial and had begun to believe the simplified story that had been put together by his defence. Persuaded to invest hundreds of thousands of pension fund money under his control in ventures suggested by Bob Lindon he then finds that those ventures don't exist. Instead of admitting to colleagues then that he has lost the money he tries to track it down. In attempting to get the funds back he is put in touch with people who turn out to be New York mafia and they merely take another hundred thousand and tell him to keep quiet or else. He learns of investigations by the DTI and leaves the country, scared for his life from one organisation and his freedom from another. There was rather more to it than that. There had been threats but they were veiled more than specific and he had never been scared - just very confused. His period of 'disappearance' had enabled him to have time to collect his thoughts and to return to face the music. He would only see the New York representatives again if he were to have given accurate descriptions and more information about how he had made contact. That he had never done and never would. It had been bad enough, though, beginning to believe an act of being frightened. Actually being scared was much worse. Tyler's news had, in fact, brought that home sharply and, for the first time, he genuinely was beginning to get scared. He was tempted to come clean and, at least, shorten the discussion by excluding, at least, the mafia connection, but it seemed to be going that way anyway. He could, though, easily see a couple of angry dockers trying to get their revenge. A quirk of fate meant that they were after the wrong man as it was Harry Gordon and his associates that had had their money. The same Harry that he had lent over fifteen thousand to and saved from jail by supporting him in Court and keeping quiet. Everyone sympathised with 'poor Harry'. "That fart Harry." he said with disgust. "I bet he's been crowing about how he didn't know anything and how I never paid him what I promised. And he's only got to have said something like that to a few of those dockers..."
"Which he would, to save his own skin..." agreed Evelyn.
"...and next thing I know, they've driving up my arse. Jesus Christ! Looks like Harry's dropped you in it, too, John."
"Trouble with Harry," said Tyler, "is he never thinks anything through. I don't think he deliberately does things - they just happen as a result of something he says or does."
Brian Hawkins, Paul Livingstone and Michaelis Ziparis had listened to the exchange for a while, then started talking amongst themselves. Their reason for being there was Bob Lindon and, whilst they wanted to keep Chris out of trouble, there were plans already afoot which needed to be changed following Tyler's story.
Michaelis brought the five together again. "OK. We all agree we cannot stop what is happening in Newbury. Forget it." He swept the table with his hand as if to brush the subject onto the floor where he wanted it to stay. "Now we must find Bob Lindon first and talk." Paul was about to say something but Michaelis put his hand up to stop him. "Talk to begin with. Let him think we are friends and forgive him. 'Help us now Bob and you will have no more problem with us.' Make him feel comfortable. Maybe even we can give him a deal. A real one. For the first time he will see real money can be made. We will make him feel like the King. He will have a happy face and just as he starts to think all is fine...we strike." Michaelis cut through the air with his forearm. "He will know it is a trap - he is a clever man - we will not disappoint him. But we will have him alone and what we haven't learned before then in a friendly way we will get in an unfriendly way. I hope it will not be necessary. We will make Bob work for us. For the rest of his life or until he pays us, say, three million dollars, every cent he gets is ours."
"Well, I've already spoken to him..." Tyler spoke almost apologetically, hoping that he had done the right thing.
"Bob? You've spoken to him? Good. Good, John! What did he say?" Michaelis was enthusiastic.
Tyler was relieved. "Not knowing what you people were planning...I, er, well just thought I'd call him and tried the last number I had for him...."
"Yes, John. OK. What did he say?" Michaelis' enthusiasm was coloured by impatience.
"Give him a ticket and he'll meet Chris anywhere except here." said Tyler, rather more briefly than the conversation itself but nonetheless accurate.
"Good. Now we can move to the next stage," said Michaelis. Evelyn proposed a break for lunch at this point and they moved into the restaurant. Relaxing now, the conversation turned to what each had been doing in the intervening period. Tyler rapidly caught up with the few weeks' start the others had on the plans and wondered to himself whether there would ever be an end to it all. It looked like being a long day but he was glad to be in on the action and, with the exception of Brian Hawkins, had a lot of faith in the chosen team. Tyler proposed the toast:
"To getting the job done."