The Namedropper

Eight

Since the legal tightening up of the money-laundering legislation demanding proof of cash receipts and profits – most directly targeted against the proceeds from drug trafficking – it had become much more difficult for Harvey Jordan to operate his well established, and so far foolproof, scheme to obtain tax evidence of his supposed income. When he had first embarked upon his career, casinos had been far more casual than they were now monitoring the big chip purchases against money paid out when those same chips were cashed in. In the much mourned early days Jordan had been able to buy?50,000 worth of chips with the stolen identity money, then move from the most crowded tables too frequently for any one croupier or pit boss to remember the minimal stakes he placed against what he won or lost. He would then return to the caisse to get a tax receipt for all but a little of what he’d changed in the first place. Jordan estimated he actually did win on fifty percent of his casino outings – always betting evens – and every time he did it represented a bonus.

Since the legislation Jordan believed he had isolated the casinos that noted the chip-purchasing amounts against the money reclaimed, which had greatly reduced his choice and made getting the necessary paperwork that much harder. And now he was confronted with a demand to at least double – possibly even treble – his receipt collecting to satisfy not just his well organized and regulated return to the English Inland Revenue but an American court and its assembled lawyers if a source were demanded for the cash he was to deposit with Lesley Corbin’s firm for the forthcoming divorce hearing.

Jordan reassurred himself that he could overcome the casino difficulties from horse racing. By visiting some courses without making any effort to evade the still feared surveillance he could also actually prove to the opposing American legal teams that he genuinely was a professional gambler. By buying betting slips from on-course bookmakers in full public – and hopefully photographed – view and milling around them again at the end of a race, he would appear to be collecting his winnings, whether there were any or not and which was immaterial. All he needed was the date, place, race title and name of the winning horse. And to insist, if he were challenged, that he hadn’t been able to retain the slip. He would, though, keep those with which he did coincidentally win.

It was going to involve a lot of late nights and a considerable amount of travelling, even if he restricted himself to race meetings conveniently around London, which he couldn’t do all the time because, as he’d told Lesley, a professional gambler only followed certainties. And until the American ordeal was over his role had to be that of a very visible and successful professional punter, not that of someone whose identity he had stolen. That reflection physically stopped Jordan, half dressed in preparation for another unwelcome and unwanted day.

Realistically nothing was more important than what was happening – or about to happen – in America and his doing everything possible to reduce whatever damage might come from it. But he had no idea how long it was going to be before it was resolved: however, whenever, it might be resolved to his benefit. But until it was, he couldn’t begin to think about any further identity thefts. It could, he supposed, be as long as a year. Which made it the most frightening uncertainty of all and it hadn’t even been on his list of questions to ask Lesley Corbin or Daniel Beckwith.

Again, unsettlingly, Harvey Jordan felt the tightness of the slowly crushing straightjacket he now found himself in.

Dr James Preston was a small, electric-haired man who fussed nervously around his disordered office, his unbuttoned white coat flapping about him like startled wings, head jerking constantly about him in an apparent search for something mislaid or forever lost. Not looking at Jordan he said, ‘You’ve got some notes? Samples?’

‘Neither,’ said Jordan. ‘The appointment was made by my solicitor, Lesley Corbin. It’s for a legal case.’

‘Legal case?’ demanded the venerealogist, frowning directly at Jordan for the first time.

‘In America,’ offered Jordan.

The man flustered through a hamster’s den of papers on his desk, finally coming up with a confirming official letter from Lesley Corbin. Looking up again he said, ‘HIV, negative or positive? Any venereal infection?’

‘To prove I am not suffering from anything.’ Jordan supposed he should be amused by the shambling, mad doctor imagery, but he wasn’t. As Lesley had reminded him the previous day there was nothing amusing in the situation in which he found himself.

Preston stared from beneath his upright shock of pure white hair. ‘You think you have caught something?’

‘It’s to guarantee that I haven’t infected someone. Anyone.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed the man, in final understanding. He went back to the appointment slip. ‘It doesn’t say,’ he said, as if offering an explanation of his own.

That’s what it’s for.’

‘You suffered from anything in the past?’

‘No.’

‘It’s possible for me to find a trace, if you have.’

‘I haven’t,’ insisted Jordan.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘Have you got any discharge? Irritation? Rashes? Need to pass water frequently?’

‘No. No symptoms, if those are the symptoms.’

‘You sure?’

‘Positive,’ sighed Jordan, again. Why the hell had Lesley Corbin picked this man?

‘When’s the last time you had a full medical examination?’

‘I’ve never had a full medical examination.’

‘Who’s your regular doctor, from whom I can obtain your records and case notes. I’ll need you to sign the authority for me to ask for them, of course.’

‘I don’t have a regular doctor.’

The white-haired head came up again. ‘What do you do if you are ill?’

‘I’m never ill. If I were I’d go to a hospital.’ To have a regular doctor meant records being created and invisible men didn’t have records.

‘This is for court purposes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll need to give you a full medical, as well as giving you the specific examination that’s been asked for. I can’t do one without the other.’

‘Why don’t you do that and get it over with?’ demanded Jordan, impatiently.

Jordan later decided he wouldn’t have agreed so readily if he’d known it was going to take almost three hours. He had to supply five phials for all the necessary blood tests and two for urine examination, as well as a faeces sample. There were two sets of chest and lower body X-rays and his blood pressure and rate was tested not just by an arm cuff but on a treadmill meter. His lung capacity was measured by his blowing into an asthma tube and his vision to the very bottom line of the alphabet chart. Although a prostrate assessment was ticked on one of the blood test cards the doctor also insisted upon a rubber gloved anal examination, which was a great deal more uncomfortable than with the later, narrower colostomy probe. The final forty-five minutes was a verbal exchange to discover any illnesses or complaints Jordan could have conceivably suffered during his remembered childhood up to that day, whether or not it had required doctor or hospital consultation, followed by a determined effort by Preston to complete a medical history of Jordan’s parents.

At the end the doctor said, ‘I think you’re the only person I’ve ever examined who never suffered a single childhood illness, nor has needed any medical advice since.’

‘I guess I’ve been lucky.’

‘And you’re sure you can’t remember a single illness from which your parents suffered?’

‘Seems I’ve inherited their healthy genes.’

‘What were the causes of their deaths?’

‘They died together in a car crash,’ said Jordan, which was a lie. His father had died first, of cancer, and his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother of pneumonia but Jordan was bored and impatient to end the pointless encounter.

‘You’re responsible for payment, I assume?’

‘Wrongly,’ said Jordan, who’d anticipated the approach. ‘Your secretary will have the name and address of the lawyer who booked this if it’s not on the note you’ve got there. Send your account to her, along with the results.’

Preston was on the internal phone before Jordan finished speaking, his face clouding at the confirmation of what Jordan had told him. The doctor said, ‘Solicitors are very dilatory in settling their accounts. Will you please tell Ms Corbin that I expect payment within the period stipulated upon my invoice?’

‘Of course,’ said Jordan, without any intention of doing so. ‘You didn’t tell me how my examination went?’

‘I have obviously to wait for all the tests results but there’s every indication of your being remarkably fit: nothing obviously wrong at all.’

Apart from you knowing – and a record now existing – of every physical detail about me, thought Jordan.

The irritating medical examination, for which he’d allowed only an hour, completely disrupted Jordan’s schedule, leaving him with only thirty minutes to keep the afternoon appointment with the photographer. In the taxi taking him there Jordan decided to abandon until the following morning the intended visit to Hans Crescent to check for any further correspondence in his Paul Maculloch name; he was anxious to begin at once his money-manipulating casino tour.

Jordan had booked for passport photographs, waiting until he got to the studio to add three larger prints and agreed at once to the obviously increase fee, interested only in getting the picture session over as quickly as possible. He was back in the Marylebone apartment by six and out, showered, changed and with?20,000 from the bedroom closet safe to begin the chips-for-cash receipt switch by eight. For an hour he played poker at the high stakes table of one of his favourite gambling clubs in Brook Street, Mayfair, before quitting ?2,300 ahead to move to the roulette room. There he moved between three tables, increasing his winnings by another?7,000 before dropping?6,000 in an unstoppable consistent slide. By the time it did stop he was down to his poker profit. It took him another hour playing blackjack to take his winnings up a further?1,500. He cashed in and got his tax receipt for winnings of?24,500. Throughout Jordan remained constantly alert but failed to isolate anyone paying any particular attention or interest in him.

Jordan hesitated for a moment as he left the club, turning to the doorman for a taxi, but abruptly deciding, without any reason, to walk into Park Lane. When he reached Park Street the darkened interior of the last car in the parking line at the corner was briefly illuminated in the headlight beam of an approaching taxi, perfectly enabling Jordan to see a man he remembered at every table at which he’d played that night.