Read Online Shroud of Concealment (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) by Andrew Towning - Free Book Online Page A

definitely not capable of looking after himself in any physical way, and wondered if he should update him with what he’d just discovered.
    Issy looked up and closed the file she’d been reading just as Dillon walked into the room. She immediately saw that he had something on his mind.
    “Anything wrong?”
    “I think that Hart has managed to get hold of Havelock’s car registration number. And what’s worse, he may connect him with my visit to Dorset. Should I tell him, do you think?”
    “With my lawyer’s head on I have to say that for an innocent man, Hart has certainly made some strange moves, and appears to have taken this whole affair badly. Furthermore, I’ve seen men like him many times before and he’s showing all the classic signs of someone who has something to hide. If he thinks that Dunstan has been the one who initiated an investigation into his private collection of paintings, well, there might be a development. But that is only my opinion. Dunstan has never been in the firing line before, has he?”
    Issy stood up, went across the room to Dillon and placed her arms around him, stroking the back of his neck with the tips of her manicured fingers.
    “If Hart has Dunstan’s number then he’ll have mine.”
    “Well, if he does I wouldn’t worry about it. He’ll treat our relationship for what it is. Why should you be involved with any of this? But Dunstan is completely different and has connections that might worry Hart.”
    “I thought you said you weren’t going any further with this when Dunstan asked you to fly to Delhi. You’re starting to make it sound like it may turn into some kind of war or something.”
    “That depends on whether Hart is protecting his privacy or something else. And to be honest, Issy, I really didn’t want to get involved. Or that was the general idea, anyway. But it might not be something I can let go of now, because Hart won’t believe I’ve let it go. I think I’d better phone Dunstan and warn him.”
    He walked back to the study and dialled Dunstan Havelock’s private number.

    * * *

    Dillon woke early the next morning. Issy was still asleep. He went to the kitchen, ground a handful of Columbian coffee beans and placed them into the cafetiere. Whilst the kettle was coming to the boil, he went down in the lift to the lobby to collect the mail from his private post box. By the time he had returned, Issy was in the kitchen pouring the coffee into brightly-coloured mugs. He sifted through the familiar bank statements and bills; tossing the volumes of junk mail unopened into the waste bin and everything else onto the table top. Amongst the pile of envelopes was a small white Jiffy bag, the address handwritten in thick black marker pen and one end sealed with brown packing tape.
    Dillon’s golden rule of survival: treat unexpected packages with extreme caution if they arrive through the post. He had to curb his impatience and hide his anxiety for Issy’s sake, and was relieved when she’d left for her office. The first thing was to carefully and very slowly peel back the tape that was holding the seal down with a pair of tweezers. Suddenly, he noticed the thin bare wire that had been woven across the seal beneath the brown tape. He gingerly turned the package around and peeled back the bottom flap instead.
    Part of Dillon’s army intelligence training had involved the basic understanding that many letter bombs are activated by the top flap being ripped open, or by the contents being removed. Both of these methods can be assessed by opening the bottom of the package.
    The contents of the Jiffy bag were safely pulled free and consisted of nothing more than a brand new deck of playing cards that were still in their cellophane wrapper. Once he’d taken the wrapper off, he discovered to his amazement that all fifty-two cards were the same: the Joker! Dillon slowly cut away at one side, which exposed the workings of the device and allowed him to see how it had