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

been put together. It was a classically built and yet simple low-yield bomb that at the very least would have blown his hand off and almost certainly have left him permanently blind. The trigger had been made by using a tiny electronic switch, the same type that musical birthday or Christmas cards have inside them. The music mechanism had been replaced with a detonator and a small amount of C4 explosive. Dillon cut the wire connecting all of these, and immediately let out a huge sigh of relief.
    Hart had moved fast and Dillon was quickly learning the rules of his game. In a very short space of time he’d hired a private detective agency and posted a small, but still lethal, letter bomb to his private address as a graphic warning.
    Dillon put what was left of the Jiffy bag, along with the explosive and the playing cards, into a courier bag and phoned the motorcycle dispatch company that Ferran & Cardini used regularly. Whilst he waited for them to turn up, he pondered what had happened so far. He was worried, puzzled and angry. All this because of a stolen painting? At best, it was overkill.
    He sat in his study and wondered what to do. He picked up the phone and called the office, spoke to Vince Sharp for a number of minutes and went over the chain of events that had taken place since his trip to Dorset. He told him that he was sending him the defused letter bomb and asked if he could determine where the contents had been purchased. Vince wasn’t overly optimistic, but said he’d try his best. Dillon hung up. He had deliberately provoked Hart and couldn’t really gripe about what was happening. It was the extent to which Hart had gone that concerned him most. There was something crude about it and yet, at the same time, ruthless. It just didn’t add up. A hardened criminal would have been more specific if believing himself in real danger. The warnings would have been much more barbarous, like a direct threat to Issy or an attack late one night, and he definitely would not have used a detective agency in favour of his own men. It was because none of these things had happened that made him think Issy wasn’t in any kind of danger. But now he was not so sure.
    Dillon pulled up in the street outside of the firm’s side entrance. Except for those personnel working in the Special Projects Department, nobody else ever used the solitary doorway at the base of the high-rise building; one of many that rose up high into the sky from the dock area like a bizarre film set.
    He placed his right hand onto the black panel in the wall, a moment later, the system had confirmed his biometric profile and the metal door slid back. Dillon went down to the department in the lift, stepped out into the busy artificial environment and headed straight for Vince Sharp and his verdict on the letter bomb. Vince was an overweight Australian with an enviable happy disposition that never faltered. He’d been saved by LJ from a lengthy prison sentence for hacking into HM Revenue & Customs’ computer database, which he did for no other reason than to prove that it could be done. It took him just two hours to crack the passwords. But the contents of the Jiffy bag were proving to be far more difficult.
    “I’m afraid I’ve had no luck with that package, Jake. The explosive could have been obtained from any number of criminal sources. The clever little device they used for the switch is obtainable from virtually any retailer who sells musical birthday cards and the like. And as for the Jiffy bag, well the same applies, available virtually anywhere.”
    “I thought that might be the case, Vince. But thanks anyway for trying. Mind if I borrow one or two items from the prop’s room?”
    “No, you help yourself chum. But don’t forget to sign for everything you take out.”
    Dillon walked through to an area where an array of uniforms was hanging neatly on rails. He walked round them and selected the uniform of a Colonel in the Queens Royal Hussars