Chapter One

‘The name’s Mekles,’ Jerry Wilton said. ‘Nicholas Mekles. You must have heard of him.’

Should he have suspected something then, should there have been some small jarring shudder, like the moment when the fated ship first noses into the iceberg? Such a premonition would have been irrational, and Hunter liked to think that his life was ruled by reason. He felt nothing.

‘The name is familiar,’ he said. ‘But the fame escapes me.’

Jerry wiped his red face with a grey silk handkerchief. It was a hot day in early June, and the window in his small office was closed.

‘I don’t know what you read, but it isn’t the papers,’ he grumbled. ‘Mekles is always in the news. Big parties on his yacht, the Minerva, in the Med. or the Adriatic. Film actress fell off it during one of them, got herself drowned, she was his mistress, people said she might have been pushed. Owns a shipping fleet, shady goings-on I seem to remember in relation to that, Charlie Cash can dig it out for you. Gambles a lot, Monte Carlo, Nice. Fabulous villa out there on the Riviera, more big parties, socialites rubbing shoulders with crooks. Never married, but women queue up for him, socialites again a lot of them. And more, lots of it, the same sort. Plenty for Charlie to get his teeth into.’

‘I remember him now,’ Hunter said. ‘A sort of blend of playboy and gangster.’

‘More gangster than playboy. There are all sorts of rumours about him. They say he keeps half a dozen thugs as bodyguards. Also that he takes a lot of trouble to get the dirt on anyone he has dealings with.’ Jerry looked at the three pills on his desk, blue, green and white, selected the blue one, popped it in his mouth and swallowed.

Even then Hunter felt no anticipatory tremor. ‘A pretty tough customer.’

Jerry nodded solemnly. His face was glistening again, but this time he did not bother to wipe it. ‘He’s coming to England on Friday week, staying over till Tuesday. We’ve approached him, told him about the programme, and he’s agreed in principle.’

‘Why would a man like that want to go in front of the cameras?’ Hunter wondered. ‘He’s got a lot to hide.’

‘Vain as a peacock. Likes to show off in front of his women. Tickled to death to be asked.’

‘Even on my programme?’

‘Especially on your programme. Nicholas Mekles pitting his wits against those of TV’s special investigator and coming out on top – what a thrill for him. And anyway, it’s fame to be on that little old silver screen, something money can’t buy. Don’t tell me I’ve got to teach you psychology as well as fixing the programmes,’ Jerry cried in a pretended exasperation that only just missed being real. Hunter watched, fascinated, as he picked up the green pill and swallowed it, as he had the blue, without water. ‘Replaces the salt you lose through sweat,’ Jerry explained. ‘Salt makes energy. You take three in half an hour, twice a day. They cost thirty bob a packet. What do you think?’

‘It seems all right.’ He had found in the past that it was never wise to show too much enthusiasm.

‘All right!’ Jerry flung up his hands. ‘I serve up something like this on a plate for you, something that’s really the chance of a lifetime to turn a gangster inside out, and you say it seems all right.’ Again there was an undercurrent of real annoyance beneath the jocularity.

‘When I say all right, I mean I like it.’ And he did mean it, he had no real reservations. ‘It seems to me we’ve got to be a bit cagey, that’s all. The thing’s got slander possibilities sticking out all over it.’

‘Just a matter of the way you handle it.’ With agreement obtained, Jerry was mellow, calmly judicial.

‘Make the questions too soft and we get nowhere. Make them too hard, and we get a slander action up our shirts.’

‘I don’t think Mekles can afford to bring slander actions. Anyway you can handle it, you and Charlie, you’ve handled trickier ones.’ Jerry exuded confidence, went so far as to give a wink from the little blue eye in his boiled red face. ‘After all, it’s the trickiness that makes the programme, isn’t that right? Now, let’s get down to brass tacks.’

Before Hunter left, Jerry had swallowed the white pill.