Chapter 51

Colonel Dansford replaced the receiver. He knew he was intoxicated; that was how he’d existed for the last twenty-odd years. He’d begun to drink too much in the army, as a subaltern. Everybody did it: port after dinner, tequila in the officers’ mess, and all-night benders in between weeks of exercises with no sex or booze in sight. It was a slippery slope and a common one.

He knew Leo Brown wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut for ever, even if Philip thought someone could get to him on the inside before trial. He was doomed. His career was over and his reputation would be ruined. He’d been taken for a fool while Philip, he knew, would have a Plan B. Unfortunately he’d had first-hand dealings with the dirty end of the business. That was his role: the doer, the fixer, the recruiter.

It had always suited him. That was what he was good at: getting people to do stuff. And he knew a lot of rogues, usually stationed around army bases. Brown was fairly innocuous in the grand scheme of things. Some of the contacts he’d found were machine-like psychopaths, willing to kill anything that moved for five thousand quid.

That was the other problem: he’d grown sloppy with money. It came and it went, and he hadn’t taken Philip or Christopher’s advice and been tidy. They were always telling him to launder his earnings and take care the dots didn’t join up, but he was an army colonel! He was useless on the outside in the world of business affairs. He was institutionalised, but he couldn’t imagine rotting away in a cell for the rest of his days without a good bottle of red.

He cared not a jot should he sully the reputation of the club. He’d just ordered another bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin to his room, and he could barely sign the chit, his vision was so blurred. It had been a long old descent into full-blown alcoholism, until one day he woke up and reached for a glug of red before he got out of bed. Of course, it didn’t help that he had it readily available wherever he went, on tap, on chit, for a favour. He drank more of it than water or tea.

There was a loud banging on his door and it made him drop the whole bloody bottle onto the floor. Luckily the cork was shoved in the top from his last slurp (habit) and it had bruised his toe but he hadn’t lost a drop. The banging came again. He ignored it.

‘Colonel Dansford.’ He recognised the voice as the porter on duty. ‘Sir, if you’re in there, we’ve been asked to confirm your presence at the club. Somebody is trying to reach you.’