The 2084 Precept (32 page)

I went straight up to him. Morose-looking
was definitely an accurate description for this guy. Maybe he had a
ghastly wife. Maybe he couldn't afford a divorce. Maybe he had a
whore as a mistress. And maybe he had gone heavily into debt
financing expensive gifts to ensure she prolonged her pretense of
liking morose-looking guys. Whatever, I suppose that having to trek
around following somebody all day long is enough to make anyone
morose. Or maybe he was just morose by nature. Or maybe he wasn't
morose at all, maybe he just looked that way. Irrespective, it made
you want to ask him why he didn't solve everything by stepping out
in front of one of those London buses. There are plenty of buses in
London, no planning required.

"Excuse me," I said.

"Yes?" he asked, removing his gaze from a
pair of hideous jeans, the design, in my view, as nauseating as the
price tag.

He had a pockmarked face, one of those skin
diseases you can get when you're young and you can't do anything
about for the rest of your life. Well, as we know, we all have our
crosses to bear, some more than others of course. He looked a bit
older than me, his dark hair was already going grey, not unkempt
exactly but it could do with a haircut. He had thin lips, I have
never liked thin lips, and his left eyelid had started to take over
part of the eye, making him look as if he were permanently halfway
through a wink. He was wearing a suit which didn't fit around the
shoulders, an off-the-peg item. And he was sporting a blue and
white striped tie which reached only half-way to his waist,
accentuating a passable amount of beer-induced corpulence. And also
accentuating the fact that nobody had ever educated him to ensure
his tie reached the level of his belt, no more however, and also no
less. But it complemented the shirt, one of those with a collar
that can never be ironed properly.

For all of that, he was a clean-shaven
fellow, and he had a fairly clean appearance overall.

"Why are you following me?" I asked. No
beating about the bushes for me today, thank you very much.

"Following you?"

"No, that wasn't my query. My query was
'why'."

He studied me for a moment and came to a
decision.

"Perhaps we could find a place for a
coffee," he said, "and I will explain."

"Perhaps we could. And hopefully you
will."

We headed in the direction of Leicester
Square and found ourselves a place to have a coffee.

"It has to do with Obrix Consultancy
Partners," he said after we had ordered. "A Mr. Jeremy Parker."

I said nothing, looked at him.

"May I ask what your connection to Mr.
Parker is?" he asked.

"No, you may not.
You
are the one who
was going to do some explaining. Kindly proceed."

"Well, as I said, it has to do with a
certain Mr. Jeremy Parker. We are interested in certain of his
activities and consequently in anyone who has contact with him,
other than bona fide employees of his own companies needless to
say."

"We? Who are 'we'?"

"We are a police department."

"A police department? What police
department?"

"We are attached to New Scotland Yard."

"
Attached
? What does that mean?"

"Well, we are a special services unit. We
tend to operate on unusual cases, ones that cannot necessarily be
pursued in the normal manner. We cooperate with various departments
including the Serious Organized Crime Agency, the Counter Terrorism
Command, the Serious Fraud Office and even MI5 and MI6 on occasion.
A 'man-of-all-trades' department, if you like, let's put it like
that."

"Put it any way you wish," I said, "but I
need to see some identification and I also need to make a note of
your name and your superior's name as well."

"My name and identification is not a
problem," he replied, pulling out what I believe is referred to as
a warrant card from his inside pocket and showing it to me. "But I
am not at liberty to divulge my superior's name. And any enquiries
you might wish to make regarding myself would have to be made
through the normal channels. Although," he continued with a slight
cough, "I wouldn't recommend that."

"You wouldn't? Why not?"

"Well, such things are confidential and
subject to a complicated process, involving, among other things,
ratification of the person or persons making the enquiry. It tends
to take a long time."

"It tends to take a long time, does it?
Well, now that is a very interesting piece of information. So…and
you are Tom Delsey, assuming your identification is not a fake. It
looks fairly genuine though, not that I have the tiniest idea of
how to judge these things. And you work for a special services
unit."

"Correct."

"Well, I don't think much of your special
services training. As a sleuth, you are close to useless. For a
subject who has no reason to suspect he is being followed to notice
you, you would have to be deficient to quite a degree. Inept would
be a more precise word, wouldn't you agree? And in any case, why
use only one person? Extremely unprofessional I would have thought.
And was it you driving the blue Nissan?"

"Your comments are understandable, Mr.
O'Donoghue, but are based on a false premise. First of all, this is
not a matter of high priority for us—not at present anyway. And
secondly, I wasn't too concerned about your noticing me. Believe
me, if that had been a concern, there is no way you would have been
able to observe us at all. We are merely interested in watching you
to find out which other people you contact. Eventually we would
have wanted to have a conversation with you, but that is happening
now, so not a problem. And yes, it was me driving the blue
Nissan."

"How do you know my name? And why would you
want to know who I am visiting? And why would you want to have a
conversation with me? For your information, I am a perfectly
typical, honorable, law-abiding member of the general public, not
someone you could classify as one of your criminal elements."

"Well, checking up on somebody's name is not
exactly an onerous task for the police, obviously. Nor is there
anything illegal about it either. And as for your other two
questions, Mr. O'Donoghue, the simple answer is because of Mr.
Parker on the one hand, and on the other because you are a new
acquaintance of his. A foreign resident one at that."

"Why because of Mr. Parker?"

"Well, Mr. O'Donoghue…what exactly is the
nature of your acquaintanceship with Mr. Parker?"

"I am not sitting here in order to be
interrogated, Mr. Delsey. Please get that straight. I am highly
pissed off, to put it mildly, at being followed in the first place.
I resent the intrusion into my personal life. And I specifically
resent the fact that the intrusion into my personal life has been a
concealed one. It still would be in fact, were it not for your
inadequate methods. So…what about Mr. Parker?"

"Yes. Well…we received a visit from a young
lady."

"You received a visit from a young
lady?"

Yes. She had some specific comments to make
about a certain Mr. Jeremy Parker. He apparently accosted her
outside of a pub one evening and invited her to a meeting in his
offices the next day. A meeting which, apparently, would be a
particularly lucrative one for her. She did in fact attend the
meeting and he paid her an advance of €100,000. Without a contract
even. We know that for a fact, she allowed us to check her bank
account. A most unusual event."

"Sounds like it," I said.

"Yes…well it turned out not to be the most
unusual event in that meeting."

"No?"

"No. What was more unusual was that he
offered her a further €400,000. And all she had to do to earn it
was attend a few more meetings. Not your normal daily occurrence. A
highly unnatural proposition. Difficult to believe."

"Pretty weird, yes."

"Yes. But that was also not the most unusual
part of that meeting. The most unusual part was that he claimed to
be an alien."

"An alien? What's so unusual about that?
There are thousands, maybe millions of aliens in this country."

"Not that kind of alien, Mr. O'Donoghue," he
said. "An alien from outer space."

"Outer space? An extraterrestrial lifeform?
Oh…so he's some kind of lunatic?"

"Well, what does it sound like to you, Mr.
O'Donoghue? You should be able to judge that better than I can.
After all, you are acquainted with him."

Yes I was. But I was also thinking of that
additional €400,000 and the rest. It was of course clear to me that
this interest on the part of the authorities could blow up any
chances I might have of collecting more money from Jeremy. But it
wasn't a foregone conclusion by any means. Not yet. So I decided my
best plan was to continue playing dumb.

"He seems perfectly sane to me," I said.

Yes…well…hmm. Anyway, the young lady
certainly believed he was a lunatic and was convinced that he might
even be a dangerous one. She didn't go back for the next meeting.
She went to the police instead. And after the usual bureaucratic
convolutions, the matter ended up on our plate. And we did two
things initially. We documented her statement and we asked her to
sign it. And we checked up on Jeremy Parker."

"And?"

"And he is indeed a lunatic. Or rather, he
was. He made a miraculous recovery and was eventually released back
into the world inhabited by you and I. And successful in business
since then, all legal and above board."

"Well now…" I said.

"There is not much we can do at this stage.
He could simply deny the alien part and defend the money side of it
as a warrantable business transaction, perhaps a more justifiable
transaction than the one explained by the young lady. The point is,
he has done nothing wrong yet. Nothing provably wrong."

"So why your interest?"

"As I said, it is not a priority for us. On
the other hand, we share the young lady's views that something very
strange is going on. The payment, for a start. And he
was
a
certified lunatic, and therefore he might still be one. Or it could
be some kind of a fraud. Or he could be dangerous. Perhaps
violently so. Or it could even be some kind of perverse sexual
entrapment, with, given the amount of money on offer to the young
lady, some particularly nasty and perilous elements involved."

"I suppose," I said.

"Yes…well. We don't know. We haven't the
faintest idea. We simply decided to observe him for a while and see
what cropped up. And what cropped up was you, and I was assigned to
watch you. Not something I have been taking too much trouble over,
as you have explicitly and succinctly pointed out."

"Hmm…an interesting story, Mr. Delsey," I
said.

"Yes it is," he replied. "And since I have
spoken to you openly and candidly, Mr. O'Donoghue, perhaps you
would be so kind as to return me the favor."

"I have no objection to that, Mr. Delsey. I
know nothing at all about your interesting story, whatever the
veracity of it may turn out to be. And in case you haven't already
snuffled around some more in my personal affairs, let me tell you
that I am a business consultant. Based in Germany. A legal resident
there. I work anywhere in Europe. I am currently working for two
U.K. clients, United Fasteners in South Audley Street and Obrix
Consultancy Partners just off the Strand. Both are holding
companies. And before you decide to start messing around checking
my bank accounts, let me tell you that I have received payments
from both clients and I continue to do so. I am providing them with
my services in return."

"No comments from Mr. Parker about being an
alien?"

"No. You couldn't possibly imagine I would
have any interest in working for a lunatic claiming to be an alien.
Or could you?"

"Not really. Point taken. And what kind of
payment or payments have you been receiving from Jeremy Parker. Or,
alternatively, from his holding company?"

"That is none of your business, Mr. Delsey.
But let me tell you two things. Firstly, the payments I have
received are in line with the services provided, and relate to work
performed both last year and this year, as the invoices show. As
regards the Obrix company, I do not invoice them on a monthly basis
and there are consequently amounts still outstanding for this
year's work. In other words, I will be receiving further payments.
Secondly, if you possess the authority to do so, please check my
German tax returns for as far back as you want. All of my income
has always been declared and I pay the resulting taxation in full.
On time. Every time. And that includes making the quarterly advance
payments. O.K.?"

"That is O.K., Mr. O'Donoghue. There is no
need to be annoyed. We have no reason to wish to check up on your
financial affairs, nor do we have any intention of doing so."

Not for the moment, they didn't. It would no
doubt be a troublesome cross-border request which would need to be
appropriately justified. It would involve bureaucracy, it would
involve work. But he and his boss could of course change their
minds on the subject whenever they felt like it.

"Do you," he continued, "have anything at
all that might assist me? Have you seen or heard anything unusual?
Any peculiarities concerning Mr. Parker himself or his group of
companies?"

"No," I said, using my thoughtful tone of
voice, the one which denotes considered truthfulness, integrity as
pure as the driven snow. Or undriven snow, come to that. "Quite
honestly, nothing at all, nothing whatever."

"Well," he said, gazing at me meaningfully,
"I am sure you understand our interest in this affair. Something is
not right, as I am sure you agree. In our experience, when large
amounts of money start to float around for no apparently rational
purpose, there is more often than not some kind of criminal
activity involved."