Read Online A Poison Tree (Time, Blood and Karma Book 3) by John Dolan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Dolan
Ads: Link
decided to pour poison in my ear; invited me to act upon my vaguest and most ill-founded suspicions; then rubbed its hands in glee as I obeyed. And so, while Claire took a shower upstairs, I found myself rifling through her bag for evidence of culpability – since evidence of innocence is impossible to find. With alternate sensations of embarrassment and slyness, I examined the clutter that she carted around with her.
And then I found something.
It was a small piece of paper tucked into her purse. On it, in Claire’s handwriting, were the words , 23-25 August, Imperial Hotel, Kensington
The sensible Braddock said this was a discovery of no consequence, that I should be ashamed of myself for my shabby actions. Like Macbeth’s conclusion on life, my imagining about Claire was a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury yet signifying nothing. The other Braddock, however, copied the words and filed them away for future reference.
Then I opened my Conan Doyle and read The Adventure of the Red-Headed League .
8
JAMES
The Thai Airways flight to Bangkok out of Heathrow was almost full and Jim Fosse was one of the last passengers to board.
He took his seat in business class next to a smartly-dressed Japanese man who was engrossed in some World Bank report.
“Can I get you a drink, Mr . Fosse?” asked the purple-clad stewardess. “I am afraid there will be a slight delay before we take off. Heathrow is very busy this evening.”
“A scotch on the rocks, please.”
“And anything else, sir?”
“Only your phone number.”
Jim checked his watch. It was coming up to twenty past nine. The night flight was scheduled to arrive in Bangkok a little before four o’clock in the afternoon. He still had plenty of time, even allowing for a flight delay and queuing at immigration. His meeting in the restaurant was not until eight. He had two days in Bangkok before flying on to Manila for negotiations on acquiring a stake in a power plant – so even if the restaurant meeting did not resolve matters, there would be the opportunity for a further meeting.
The stewardess returned with the scotch and gave him a shy smile.
He took a scuffed black pocketbook from his briefcase and flipped through it until he found an entry for ‘Khemkhaeng’ beside which was a cell number. A shady business acquaintance in the Philippines had supplied him with the contact and a third party had arranged the introduction. That was how things operated in Thailand, and for that matter in most other places in the world where ‘grey’ transactions were involved.
Khemkhaeng worked for the Sangukhon family as a senior lieutenant who – at least allegedly – looked after the operational side of the family’s drugs and prostitution business. He was a man who knew people. People who could get things done. Jim needed to talk to one of those people and he was hoping the Thai would be able to give him a name.
Jim flipped through the dog-eared book. Throughout it were scattered arcane lists, names, phone numbers, email addresses and sundry oblique snippets which would cause any casual reader to conclude the book’s owner was a disorganised hoarder of random data. But Jim Fosse was anything but disorganised. He was a methodical concealer of information which might prove incriminating. Distributed over the pages – could anyone but find the trail of guilty breadcrumbs – was a coded record of signposts, checklists and activities dear to the heart of the illicit businessman.
He paused his page-turning at a scribbled margin entry which read 250k LIFW#2 , and beneath it a date in February 1998. Only the writer would know the note related to the taking out of a life insurance policy on his second wife. The rest of the page was covered in doodles, fictitious flight schedules and phone numbers taken from the pages of telephone directories. Furthermore, Jim Fosse was the only person who would be able to tell this was merely one item of an agenda
And then I found something.
It was a small piece of paper tucked into her purse. On it, in Claire’s handwriting, were the words , 23-25 August, Imperial Hotel, Kensington
The sensible Braddock said this was a discovery of no consequence, that I should be ashamed of myself for my shabby actions. Like Macbeth’s conclusion on life, my imagining about Claire was a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury yet signifying nothing. The other Braddock, however, copied the words and filed them away for future reference.
Then I opened my Conan Doyle and read The Adventure of the Red-Headed League .
8
JAMES
The Thai Airways flight to Bangkok out of Heathrow was almost full and Jim Fosse was one of the last passengers to board.
He took his seat in business class next to a smartly-dressed Japanese man who was engrossed in some World Bank report.
“Can I get you a drink, Mr . Fosse?” asked the purple-clad stewardess. “I am afraid there will be a slight delay before we take off. Heathrow is very busy this evening.”
“A scotch on the rocks, please.”
“And anything else, sir?”
“Only your phone number.”
Jim checked his watch. It was coming up to twenty past nine. The night flight was scheduled to arrive in Bangkok a little before four o’clock in the afternoon. He still had plenty of time, even allowing for a flight delay and queuing at immigration. His meeting in the restaurant was not until eight. He had two days in Bangkok before flying on to Manila for negotiations on acquiring a stake in a power plant – so even if the restaurant meeting did not resolve matters, there would be the opportunity for a further meeting.
The stewardess returned with the scotch and gave him a shy smile.
He took a scuffed black pocketbook from his briefcase and flipped through it until he found an entry for ‘Khemkhaeng’ beside which was a cell number. A shady business acquaintance in the Philippines had supplied him with the contact and a third party had arranged the introduction. That was how things operated in Thailand, and for that matter in most other places in the world where ‘grey’ transactions were involved.
Khemkhaeng worked for the Sangukhon family as a senior lieutenant who – at least allegedly – looked after the operational side of the family’s drugs and prostitution business. He was a man who knew people. People who could get things done. Jim needed to talk to one of those people and he was hoping the Thai would be able to give him a name.
Jim flipped through the dog-eared book. Throughout it were scattered arcane lists, names, phone numbers, email addresses and sundry oblique snippets which would cause any casual reader to conclude the book’s owner was a disorganised hoarder of random data. But Jim Fosse was anything but disorganised. He was a methodical concealer of information which might prove incriminating. Distributed over the pages – could anyone but find the trail of guilty breadcrumbs – was a coded record of signposts, checklists and activities dear to the heart of the illicit businessman.
He paused his page-turning at a scribbled margin entry which read 250k LIFW#2 , and beneath it a date in February 1998. Only the writer would know the note related to the taking out of a life insurance policy on his second wife. The rest of the page was covered in doodles, fictitious flight schedules and phone numbers taken from the pages of telephone directories. Furthermore, Jim Fosse was the only person who would be able to tell this was merely one item of an agenda
Similar Books
