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Back The Jump Save as PDF
Chapters (52)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. BOOK ONE
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. Chapter Eighteen
  24. Chapter Nineteen
  25. Chapter Twenty
  26. Chapter Twenty-One
  27. Chapter Twenty-Two
  28. Chapter Twenty-Three
  29. Chapter Twenty-Four
  30. Chapter Twenty-Five
  31. BOOK TWO
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-One
  38. Chapter Thirty-Two
  39. Chapter Thirty-Three
  40. Chapter Thirty-Four
  41. Chapter Thirty-Five
  42. Chapter Thirty-Six
  43. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  44. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  45. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  46. BOOK THREE
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-One
  49. Chapter Forty-Two
  50. Chapter Forty-Three
  51. Chapter Forty-Four
  52. Epilogue

On his dignity now, like Lally before him, he stood up and, as casually as possible, walked up the stairs to his office. In his small bathroom he looked at himself in the mirror. The jibe about the handmade suit and being a somebody had hit home. Basically an honest person, he knew that was why he was so angry. Why he had wanted to slap her.

He was fuming.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Anthony Calder was a big man. He weight-trained every day of his life, shutting himself in his personal gym and working out all his stresses with the pumping of iron. His head was bullet-shaped, his hair grey and cut into a very short crewcut. His teeth were expensively capped, his complexion ruddy. His nose would have given W.C. Fields a run for his money.

Anthony was fifty-eight years old, with the body of a much younger man, the brain of an ancient, and a wife of twenty-two. He admitted to his ugliness every time he glanced in a mirror, his thick bull neck adding to his overall brutishness. Yet he knew he was attractive to women, always had been, and hopefully always would be. It was the sheer force of his strength and personality that drew them. He looked dangerous and, he admitted to himself occasionally, he was dangerous.

Anthony Calder was a fixer; he could fix anything. If a man needed a lighter prison sentence then Anthony Calder was his man. He knew every policeman worth knowing, from the Met to the Merseyside. He knew their prices, knew whom to approach and whom not to approach. He knew whether they wanted cash or holidays, whether they were gamblers or if their tastes ran to women or nice cars. It was his job, his career, and he gave it his all.

Calder was now a millionaire and he didn’t have to raise a finger in anger to anyone any more. Gone were the days when he was a paid heavy who would break an arm or a leg for a certain sum of money. His big chance had come when he made the acquaintance of Detective Inspector Billings from the Serious Crime Squad. Billings used Anthony as a go-between in a deal he was setting up with two notorious brothers who wanted suspended sentences instead of life terms. It was at this time he found he had a natural flair for negotiation.