2) You have at least £50k in accrued bonuses, paid holiday leave and expenses due by the end of the year, I’ll get those advanced.

3) The mortgage will take weeks and so you will sign a promissory note in my favour, using the flat as collateral and I’ll loan you the £200k from my partners account for 60 days.

4) I’ll call the my contacts in the City of London Police, the Metropolitan Police will be too slow to act, and I should be able to get you in to see someone today. Tell them everything, including your plans to raise the cash.

5) I want you watched 24/7 to see if we can spot your blackmailer. I suggest you call Vastrick Security, tell them to bill the firm, we can sort out the costs later. I want someone on your tail by the time you leave the office tonight.

6) I’ll cancel my afternoon and do some research, this must have happened before and if it has the insurance companies will know about it.

When he had finished speaking he asked me to read back the list, which I did, with Toby elaborating further on each point I recalled. By now Toby was sitting upright, his glasses back on his nose. He was staring intently into my face.

“Josh, it’s taken me ten years to train you, to get you to where you are now, so don’t you dare waste all of that effort by getting yourself killed, all right?”

I assured him that averting imminent death was already a priority for me, and on that note we parted. We both had things to do, if I was to live long enough to see West Ham losing yet again on Saturday.

Chapter 3

Hong Kong Suite, City Wall Hotel, London: Wednesday, 2pm

The hand that clutched the gold Cross fountain pen was not that of a young man; it was heavily veined and had a mat of dark hair across the back of the hand spreading down each finger as far as the knuckle. The fingers were long, slim and well-manicured. Nor was this a manual worker’s hand. At each wrist was a crisp white double cuff, held together with simple gold cufflinks in the shape of a square. The Egyptian cotton shirt from Thomas Pink in London was tailored to the wearer’s needs, and so the cuffs were perfect in length and the left cuff was cut more generously to accommodate the heavy bracelet and case of the watch that banded its wearer’s tanned wrist. The time on the Breitling Old Navitimer Mecanique displayed two o’clock as the writer signed off the letter with a flourish. The signature read Bob, but Bob was not the name of the writer. It was a simple, common and unremarkable nom de plume.

‘Bob’ checked his BlackBerry, but found nothing worthy of his interest, and set it back down on the antique desk that was part of the exquisite furniture which adorned his five hundred pounds per night suite. Opening the drawer, Bob revealed six mobile phones, each with a white label adhered to its rear. He picked the phone with the label that read “Josh”, reinserted the battery and switched it on. It was time for another message.

“Josh,

Hi, it’s Bob again. Just a reminder that time is at a premium. I hope that you realise the seriousness of your position. If not, you will get a reminder later today. Best not to wear your favourite suit for the next 24 hours.

Bob.”

The man pressed the send button on the unregistered Nokia pay-as-you-go phone, bought with his grocery shopping at Sainsbury’s yesterday. When the message had been sent he switched the phone off again, removed the battery and laid it in the desk drawer between another Nokia carrying the name Richard and an Ericsson phone labelled Sir Max.

Bob stood up and walked over to the bed, where he bent down and retrieved a briefcase from underneath. The case was black leather and as anonymous as the phones. It was monogrammed with the letters PD. Not that these were his initials - they weren’t, they were simply the first two adhesive letters he had randomly alighted upon from the sheet of adhesive gold leaf letters supplied with the case. He clicked open the case and laid it on the red Oriental silk bedspread over the likeness of a Chinese dragon picked out in golden thread. Inside was an odd looking gun - perhaps rifle might have been a more accurate description. The gun had a shoulder stock, eighteen inch barrel and a bulky magazine. Bob checked the magazine with its odd projectiles and replaced it in the briefcase. He was unconcerned about leaving his fingerprints or DNA on the gun or the case as, in common with ninety nine per cent of the population, he knew that the authorities did not have his biometric details on record.

Bob walked across the deep pile carpeting and slipped into his Burberry mackintosh. It was London, it was August, and rain seemed inevitable. Carrying the briefcase, he exited the suite and headed towards the West End to do a little shopping before his five o’clock appointment.

Chapter 4

City of London Police HQ, Wood St, London: Wednesday, 2pm

I sat in the lobby on an old carved wooden bench in the historic building that housed the City Of London Police, and which probably had not changed much in the last hundred years. Unlike London’s busy Metropolitan Police stations, this station was quiet, and the occasional uniformed policeman who passed by me was exceptionally smartly dressed. The plain clothes police here would have looked at home in a bank anywhere in the City.

A man approached the bench. He was smiling. I took in the smart suit, the pale blue shirt with the cutaway collar and the dark blue woven silk tie. My contact looked like a Conservative politician. He was perhaps in his mid-thirties, rather tall, with short cropped hair and steel coloured eyes He came to a halt in front of me and so I stood. The man extended his hand.

“Mr Hammond.” It was said as a statement. “I am Inspector Boniface; perhaps we could talk in my office.” I accepted the invitation to follow the Inspector to his room, and we walked side by side along a sterile corridor with walls half tiled in sickly green glazed tiles which would not have looked out of place in a Victorian public lavatory. The woodwork was dark stained and equally gloomy.

The policeman followed my gaze, and seemed to read my mind. “Awful, isn’t it? But we can’t change it. This is a listed building and the interior fixtures are of historic interest, apparently.” His tone of voice suggested that he didn’t share that viewpoint. I rather liked him already.

We reached an office with a half glazed door and walls. The glass was ridged with bevelled vertical strips that were frosted to permit light transfer to the corridor without invading the privacy of the office’s occupants.

The policeman ushered me inside, where the modern office furnishings and technology appeared starkly incongruous. This was a room that Sherlock Holmes might have used for consultations. The outside windows were glazed with the same small opaque panes of glass used elsewhere in the building, and they were raised at least four feet from the ground, so that no-one could see out or in easily. The radiator was of the old hospital column variety, and set in the back wall was a black painted Victorian fire surround and grate.

I sat down in a modern chrome and leather swivel chair, and he took his place in a matching chair on the opposite side of the modern beech desk. At the invitation of Inspector Boniface I retold my story so far, even though it was obvious that the Inspector was familiar with events to date. When I had finished speaking I waited hopefully for his response. A look of resignation crossed the Inspector’s face, and I guessed what was coming.

“Mr Hammond, I have to be honest with you here. I’m not sure that there’s very much we can do to help you yet.”

“You mean until after I’ve been killed?” I replied. The tension in my voice was tangible.