Billy said, “Here, I’ll help you, Dora,” and he got up and went behind the bar.
Salter said, “Bloody lucky for me you came along. What was it you wanted to see me about?”
“Something special,” Dillon said. “Very hush-hush, but mixed in is a lawyer who called on a prisoner at Wandsworth using a phoney name. One George Brown.”
“How can you be sure he was a lawyer, or not, for that matter?”
“Let’s put it this way. The way he handled himself would seem to indicate that he knows his way round the criminal system. I thought you might recognize him.”
He took four photos of the mysterious Brown from his inside pocket and spread them out. Salter looked them over. “Sorry, old son, never seen him before.”
Dora came over wrestling with the cork of a bottle of Krug and Billy followed with an ice bucket. He put it down on the table and looked down at the photos. “Blimey, what’s he doing there?”
There was a slight, stunned silence and Dillon said, “Who, Billy, who is he?”
“Berger—Paul Berger.” He turned to Salter. “You remember how Freddy Blue was up for that fraud case nine months ago, taking down payments for television sets that never arrived?”
“Sure I do.”
“This guy, Berger, was his lawyer. He came up with some law nobody had ever heard of and got him off. Very smart. He’s a partner in a firm called Berger and Berger. I remember because I thought it sounded funny.”
Dillon said to Dora, “Get me the telephone book, will you?”
Billy poured champagne. “Was that what you wanted?”
“Billy, you just struck gold for us.” Dillon raised his glass. “Here’s to you.” He took the champagne straight down and got up. “I’ll phone Ferguson.”
He moved down the bar and made his call. After a while, he came back. “Okay?” Blake asked.
“Yes, Ferguson’s having a check via BT.”
“Let’s hope they don’t have a Maccabee on their information service staff,” Blake said.
“Hardly likely. They can’t be everywhere, so no sense in getting paranoid.”
“And what’s a Maccabee?” Salter asked. “Sounds like a bar of chocolate to me.”
“Anything but, Harry,” and Dillon held out his glass for a refill.
His mobile rang and he switched on, taking out a pen and writing what Ferguson told him on the back of a bar mat.
“Fine, we’ll be in touch.” He switched off and nodded to Johnson. “I’ve got his home address. Camden Town. Let’s move.”
He got up and Salter took his hand. “Hope you find what you need.”
“Glad to have been of service, Harry.”
“Not as bloody glad as I am,” Salter said.
ELEVEN
The address was in a lane called Hawk’s Court off Camden High Street. “Fifteen—that’s it,” Blake said, and Dillon slowed.
The street was lined with villas built on the high tide of Victorian prosperity and varied greatly. It was obviously what real estate agents call an up-and-coming area, with young professionals moving in and improving the properties they had bought. The result was that some of the houses looked seedy and rundown and others had new windows and shutters and brightly painted doors with brasswork.
Number fifteen filled neither category. It wasn’t exactly rundown, but it didn’t look particularly up-market. Dillon turned at the end of Hawk’s Court. There was an old church there, very Victorian in appearance, with a cemetery. There was a gate through railings, one or two benches, a couple of old-fashioned street lamps. Dillon turned, drove back, and parked on Camden High Street at the side of the road.
They walked back. Blake said, “How do you intend to handle this?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Dillon told him.
“Well, we can’t just leave him around like a loose cannon after speaking to him.”
“We have a suitable safehouse where he could be kept,” Dillon said.
“And what if Judas misses him? Smells a rat?”
“What have we got left, Blake, four days? Maybe the time has come to take chances. Let’s find this Berger and put the fear of God in him. To hell with him anyway. Marie and Hannah are more important.”
They opened the gate, went up a few steps, and rang the doorbell. The house stayed quiet and dark. Dillon tried again. “No good,” he said finally. As he turned to Blake, the door of the next house, one of the rundown variety, opened and a young woman appeared.