Love You Dead

16 Friday 20 February

Landing at Heathrow at 6.30 a.m. on Friday, Jodie had a slight hangover and was red-eyed from tiredness. She’d been too wired to sleep, so instead had watched a couple of movies, but had been unable to concentrate on them.

Now, after a shower and breakfast in the arrivals lounge, her top priority was to go home, get into her Mercedes and drive to the cattery at Coriecollies Kennels, near Lewes, to collect her beloved cat.

Her second was business.

Graham Parsons had been waiting for her at the rear of Marrocco’s, on Hove seafront, seated beneath a huge painting, almost the width of the wall, of a happy-looking fat man tucking into a lobster.

The front part of the establishment was a colourful ice-cream parlour. The rear, smart and subdued, with comfortable seating and modern art on the walls, was a seafood restaurant. A bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket, and he had a plate of oysters in front of him.

He was a solidly built, hard-looking man, just shy of his sixtieth birthday — so he had told her the first time they met, in the downstairs bar one Saturday night in Bohemia. It was one of the few cool places in Brighton for middle-aged singles, and he was drunk, having gone out after an argument with his wife. He had poured his life story out to her. A career villain, Parsons had spent the first half of his criminal life as a professional armed robber, for which he had clocked a total of eighteen years behind bars before ‘seeing the light’.

Cybercrime.

For the past twenty years — both in prison and out — he’d been an internet criminal mastermind, running a ring that made millions out of mortgage frauds with non-existent properties, and further millions by cloning credit and debit card details from cashpoint machines.

But as with so many criminal masterminds, Proceeds of Crimes legislation had clawed back much of his gain. He was comfortably off but needed an income to maintain his lifestyle — which came in the form of a number of lucrative sidelines. One of these was creating identities to accompany the highly authentic passports he could provide — thanks to five years of sharing a cell with a master forger at the maximum security prison, Parkhurst, on the Isle of Wight. Jodie was a good customer.

Parsons was living testimony to the old saw that British prisons were Universities of Crime. He was smartly dressed as always — today in a pinstriped suit, shirt and tie, sporting a gold wedding band, a rhinestone ring on the opposite hand and a fancy watch. His hair was jet black — from a bottle, she deduced from the grey roots that were showing. Yet he wore a permanent slightly lost expression — as if freedom never really agreed with him and the only place he had been truly comfortable in his life was behind bars, running prison rackets.

‘Jodie, doll! How are you?’ He stood up, embraced her and gave her a smacker on both cheeks.

As she settled into the chair opposite him, he tugged the bottle out of the ice bucket, wiped the drips with the cloth and filled her glass. ‘Have one!’ He indicated the oysters.

She eyed them dubiously. ‘Thanks, I’m good.’

He shook some Tabasco onto an oyster, squeezed some lemon, then spooned some vinaigrette on, lifted the shell and tipped the bivalve into his mouth. ‘They’re in season!’

She smiled. ‘I’m told they make you randy.’

‘Probably why they never served ’em in prison,’ he said and grinned. ‘So, you wanted to see me urgently?’

Even though she knew they were in a safe environment, Graham never chose the same place twice to meet, she looked around discreetly before slipping the envelope across the table to him. ‘Yes.’

In an almost magician-like sleight of hand movement, it disappeared into his inside pocket. ‘So what can you tell me about it?’

‘I was given it by a friend in the States. He thought I might find it interesting. But it’s password protected.’

‘Leave it with me, doll.’ Then he shoved a menu at her. ‘Great seafood here. I like this place. Been here before?’

‘Bought an ice cream once, years ago.’

‘Pistachio — I recommend the pistachio. So you found yourself Mr Right yet?’

She sipped the champagne. ‘I thought I had. But it seems not.’

‘Yeah? When all else fails, bell me, right?’

Jodie smiled. Then she raised her glass. ‘I don’t think your wife would be too impressed, would she?’

‘Charlaine? You know what, doll — she’d get over it!’