CHAPTER 3
Mark Dobson had returned from Taiwan and Malaysia and Colin Asher and he were having their routine post trip debrief in the Asher & Asher office on Edgware Road.
“Which brings me onto the good news,” Colin Asher said after twenty minutes. “The need to bring in some fresh blood.”
“I’m too young to retire,” Dobson responded.
“But much too stretched. I’ve got Ching and Else to help me in the office. You need someone. Anything could happen. You could die in a plane crash. How would I find time to attend the funeral?”
“I wouldn’t notice. If you felt any guilt, post mortem, then buy a headstone.”
In recent weeks, the two partners had mostly talked on the phone or by video link and only met for brief case reviews, progress reports and decision-making.
When Mark Dobson was away and engrossed in a new assignment, he found he quickly forget what Colin looked like. Now, he looked at the familiar round face of the man he’d known for fifteen years and at the way he slumped in his chair. He was putting on weight. While he himself travelled and ate badly, irregularly and sometimes not at all, Colin sat in the office playing with the computers and sending out for Pret a Manger snacks every hour.
“Someone fresh coming on board would mean you might even finish a few outstanding jobs like the one for Kenny Tan in Taiwan who, don’t forget, has already paid us a decent fee up front,” Colin said.
“Sounds to me like you’ve got some news to announce.”
“I found someone, that’s what.”
“Without telling me?”
“You were away.”
“Anyway, you’re putting on weight. You could die long before me.”
“No chance.”
“So, who is it?”
They had been considering doubling the field staff for months. Ex police were easy enough to recruit for an international commercial crime investigation company like Asher & Asher but the problem with ex police was they never stopped looking and sounding like police. They couldn’t seem to shake off their attitude, their mannerisms, the way they walked and talked. Dobson kept telling Asher they needed a complete fresher, a raw character they could train up. He was about to find out how fresh and raw the recruit would be.
“Richie Nolan,” Colin Asher said. “Keith’s boy.”
“Keith?”
“Ah. That Keith.”
Keith Nolan was a friend of theirs, now doing something in the SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, that no-one talked about.
“Keith reckons Ritchie’s wasting his talent so I interviewed him at Costa Coffee outside the drama school where he’s a student.”
“He’s a drama student?”
“I thought we’d agreed we needed someone who could blend in and fall easily into character when necessary. Someone adaptable and young.”
“That’s it, isn’t it? You decided that at forty-five I’m too old and no longer blend in but stick out like a sore thumb amongst the latest generation with their tattoos, haircuts and ear-rings. How old is he?”
“Twenty-five or six,” Asher said vaguely. “Right colour as well. In this day and age, we need to be seen to meet our commitments to ethnic diversity.”
“But you’ve already got a Chinese and a Pole helping you on your computers and fetching your take-aways.”
“Despite their wide geographical origins, Ching and Else are regarded by the system as white, Mark. Ritchie’s a nutty brown guy with Jamaican blood or some other ancient African genes. He’s got an Afro cut, tight jeans and proper trainers. He’s just what we need. I’ve told him we offer practical, hands-on experience, excitement, training, salary and expenses all thrown in.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked what he’d be doing as if he feared he might be making coffee or fetching sandwiches on minimum wage. I told him he’d be working for Asher & Asher.”
Richie Nolan’s face had sagged at the thought of working for Asher & Asher because Colin’ Asher’s pale face bore all the downtrodden looks of a struggling family solicitor, an accountant or estate agent who rarely saw the sun and who’s only source of nourishment was cappuccino coffee with leaf patterns on the froth and pre-packed sandwiches. Asher quickly squashed those superficial impressions.
“It’s highly specialised detection work - international fraud, corruption, money laundering. That sort of thing. We often work with the SIS, MI6, the FBI and the CIA. Interested?”
Ritchie’s face had brightened. “My father works for one of those. But he never talks about it.”
“Quite right, too,” Asher had said wiping the froth from his nose. “You can’t bring work home every night to discuss around the dinner table with the wife and kids. Good friend of ours is Keith. He recommended you. Said the chances of you finding any meaningful employment on TV or in Hollywood were limited to the point of unachievable. But he thought we might be able to use some of what you learned during your first week of drama classes.”
Richie’s black eyes set in his brown, part Jamaican face surrounded by long and tightly knitted black curls tied with brightly coloured strings, had shone briefly but clouded over again when Asher warned him that if he bragged, exaggerated or even dreamed of telling anyone what he was doing, his father would quickly find a way of dealing with him. And if his father didn’t, then one or more of Asher & Asher’s foreign clients certainly would. So, was he still interested?
“Might be. Well, yes. I suppose. Big company, is it?”
“Just me and my partner Mark Dobson with two part-time ladies nicked from the old fraud squad. We cover all corners of the globe, north, south, east and west of Edgware Road though nothing extra-terrestrial yet. Still interested?”
“Mmm. You travel a lot?” Ritchie asked checking his Converse trainers, then wetting his finger to remove a speck of north London street dirt from the toe of one of them.
“Me? No, not if I can help it. Mark does that with a few different names and passports. I just guard the office in Edgware Road. It’s a miniature version of GCHQ in Cheltenham and the CIA in Langley, Virginia. You any good on IT?”
Ritchie livened up again. “Oh sure. I’ve got an iPhone.”
“Good man. Computer software? AshHack317, 318 and 319, for example?”
“Um, I’m not too familiar with those.”
“Not surprising really, I suppose,” Asher had told him. “I wrote them myself.”
“So, when will he start?” Mark Dobson asked.
“As soon as you’re ready. Meanwhile, you need to call Professor Huggy Higgins.”