One

Harvey Jordan always chose an aisle seat, disinterested in looking out at ploughed clouds at 35,000 feet, so it wasn’t until the plane banked over the sea for its customary descent into Nice that he got his first sight of the boat-sailed-and-propeller-spumed Mediterranean and, coming rapidly closer, the regimented squads of private jets parked at ease on their parade ground. As always on his arrival in such a familiar, welcoming environment, in which he could, unusually, be Harvey Jordan, there was the immediate and professional recognition of the easy and openly available opportunities spread out before him even before getting off the aircraft. Just as quickly came the objective refusal. As Harvey Jordan, the genuine name by which he had been christened and officially registered in St Michael and All Angels in Paddington forty years ago, this was forbidden ground, a positively prohibited working zone. He was legally – and therefore necessarily above suspicion – Harvey Jordan. And this was a vacation, even though he considered what he now did for a living more a permanent holiday than work.

But it was work and the living had been good, very good indeed. So far this year Jordan had operated twice in New York, once in Los Angeles and three times in London. Currently the profit was nudging £600,000 – with no irritating pre or after tax qualifications – and he’d already planned three new hits when he got back from France, which should comfortably take his income beyond the million. The only uncertainty was whether to try to fit in something else after that, which couldn’t be decided until he got to the end of his carefully calculated schedule.

Jordan ignored the scrambling-to-stand bustle behind the business class separation the moment the plane stopped, smiling his thanks at the flight attendant’s approach with his carry-on luggage, and instinctively allowed three of the other passengers in the section to disembark ahead of him. Just as instinctively he isolated the CCTV cameras inside the terminal, again immersing himself among the concealment of preceding arrival passengers. With no checked-in luggage to collect Jordan passed unchallenged through the customs hall, smiling expectantly at the time-consuming melee around the car rental desks. The Nice city bus left within minutes of his boarding and it cost a ten Euro tip for the driver to make an unscheduled stop directly outside the Negresco hotel.

The concierge smiled in recognition at Jordan’s entry, took his luggage and assured him the pre-booked hire car was waiting in its parking space. The primed duty manager was already at the reception desk by the time Jordan reached it, the registration only needing Jordan’s unaccustomed but genuine signature.

‘Only staying two nights this time, Mr Jordan?’ said the duty manager.

‘Moving around, as always. I might ask to come back while I’m in the area,’ said Jordan, who rarely made any long term commitment.

‘There’s always accommodation available for regular guests,’ smiled the man in reply.

‘I know,’ Jordan said and smiled back. It was refreshing, and the purpose of his vacations, to be able to relax and be recognized for who he really was and not to have to constantly remember and react to the identity he had assumed.

Two

That afternoon, as he always did upon relocating to different towns or cities no matter how well he already knew them, Jordan set out to re-orientate himself. Jordan operated to a number of self-invented and imposed rules, one of which was never to take anything for granted, no matter how familiar or predictable the situation or surroundings. Before quitting the hotel he put the intrusion traps in place in his sea-fronting suite, hanging his clothes with pocket flaps and trouser lengths arranged in such a way, and shirts in such an order in partially withdrawn or fully closed drawers, that he would have known instantly if they had been disturbed during his absence. Downstairs at the caisse he rented a safe deposit facility for the bulk of his money, genuine passport, standby Letter of Credit and emergencies-only – again genuine – credit cards: like most successful professional thieves, Harvey Jordan took the greatest care protecting his own finances and possessions. He’d lost everything, including a wife, once and was determined never to do so again.

The most necessary and basic essentials put into force, Jordan strolled into the town as far as the railway station, reestablishing its layout in his mind and isolating new constructions and shops since his last visit. He walked in a gradual familiarizing loop via the park to a corner cafe he’d enjoyed during a previous visit for coffee and pastries. Gazing out over the sun-starred water he calculated that it would only take three months – four at the most – for his last victim, a flamboyant, frequently gossip-columned London investment banker, to restore his credit rating. Harvey Jordan prided himself upon his Robin Hood integrity, always establishing the financial resources of those whose identity he stole and used. Another working rule was that, with only ever one exception, he never stripped them to the monetary bone, as he had been stripped with pirhrana-like efficiency. It had taken Harvey Jordan two years, after crawling almost literally out of the vomit-ridden gutter, to discover the identity of the man who had first stolen his identity and along with it his legitimate computer programming business. Then it took a further year, using the man’s genuine identity, to recover financially everything, and more, of what had been taken from him. He hadn’t, of course, been able to recover Rebecca. Or the bankrupt business. It was a matter of integrity, he reassured himself, that, having personally learned it the hardest way imaginable, he provided a very necessary lesson to those from whom he stole to never again be so careless with their personal details and information. It wouldn’t, Jordan knew, be a defence if he were ever caught – which he was equally determined never to be – but he considered the money he took not so much illegally obtained as justifiable and well-earned tuition fees. If he didn’t do it who else was there to teach them?

In the early evening Jordan drove the anonymous rented Renault to Monaco and ate at one of his favourite restaurants in the principality, a specialist fish bistro overlooking the harbour and the pink-painted royal palace, and afterwards climbed the hill for coffee and brandy on the Hotel de Paris terrace, watching the early arrivals at the casino. Jordan himself crossed the square just after ten and bought £5,000 worth of chips; on holiday, just as when he was following his chosen profession, tax exempting casino winning receipts legally proved his income legitimately came from gambling. He started out with chemin de fer, and at the end of an hour he was showing a profit of £1,500, which he much more quickly quadrupled at the roulette table.

Throughout Jordan remained constantly alert to everything and everyone around him, twice moving to a different position at the roulette table to prevent people getting close enough to either pickpocket or steal his chips, even though he was confident he would have instantly detected any attempt at either. The need, as always, was to avoid attracting attention. He was aware, too, of two unaccompanied women who had seen his success at the card table and were now attentively standing on the other side of the roulette wheel; he identified both – professional recognizing professional – as working girls. He decided against either this early on in his vacation. Because of how he lived, Jordan accepted that any permanent relationship – certainly another marriage – was impossible but sex was as essential as the best food and finest hotels during such periods of necessary relaxation. But Jordan preferred equally casual but uninvolving holiday romances to financial practitioners, no matter how adept. There was often an added frisson from amateur enthusiasm.

Jordan concluded his evening just before midnight with a profit of £2,500, the essential casino receipt confirming the gambling winnings for later tax submission proof, and a feeling of total satisfaction at his first, non-working day for three months. He decided it was an omen that aurgured well for the rest of the trip.

Which it proved to be.

As he drove the following day into the mountain hills to St Paul de Vence, he decided to extend his stay in Nice, to allow more time to re-explore the surrounding countryside, momentarily doubting his decision when he reached the village which was full of too many milling, jostling tourists in very narrow streets. The uncertainty seeped away when he reached the Colombe d’Or to savour both the luncheon menu and the display of original Impressionist art. Jordan considered the small Chagall, protectively stored in one of his well hidden bank vaults, probably the best investment he’d ever made. Twice, once in London and again during his most recent New York expedition, he’d felt sufficiently confident of his specific Impressionist knowledge to have successfully passed himself off as an expert on the subject under two separately assumed identities.

Jordan telephoned the hotel from the Colombe d’Or to lengthen his stay in Nice and to alter the already confirmed reservation in Cannes – because Jordan never did anything even as mundane as moving from one place to another without guaranteeing the most appropriate accommodation – sure there would be no difficulty in his arranging either, which there wasn’t. The years – and the period had been years, not months – over which Jordan had worked to protect and preserve his now near perfect existence was finally paying the highest dividends and it was a good feeling he wanted always to preserve.

That night’s gambling was at the Beaulieu casino in which Jordan finished £4,800 ahead, which provided another useful tax receipt. An equally satisfying success was in confirming his previous night’s judgement; there was a mutual facial recognition between both of them. She was the second of the two professionals he’d isolated in Monaco, tonight’s simple black tube dress, the only jewellery a single rope of pearls, better showing off both her figure and blonde attractiveness than the earlier more full skirted red. She smiled at their initial eye contact and he briefly nodded back in acknowledgement. She made her approach – as Jordan had anticipated she would – when he was having his farewell brandy, after he’d cashed up.

‘You gamble well,’ she opened.

‘Luckily,’ Jordan qualified. ‘How did you know I was English?’ Such attention to detail was always important.

‘You talked more in English than French to the croupier.’ Her own minimal accent wasn’t French.

‘And you don’t gamble. You didn’t last night. Or tonight.’ He wanted to establish his own awareness.

‘Not at the tables.’ She slightly moved the chair at which she was standing. ‘May I join you?’

Jordan nodded, politely rising as she sat. ‘You’d like champagne?’

‘That would be very pleasant. My name is Ghilane.’

‘John,’ responded Jordan, gesturing for a waiter. It was the christian name of his most recent victim and that to which he was therefore most accustomed. It would have been unthinkable – amatuerish – to have given her his real name even though this was going to be the most fleeting of encounters.

‘You are here on vacation, John?’

Jordan hesitated, while her wine was served. ‘I enjoy the South of France.’

‘So you know it well?’

‘Well enough.’ He wondered by how much the fulness of her breasts was helped by the uplift of her bra, but decided against paying to find out.

She grimaced extravagantly, pulling down the corners of her mouth. ‘Which means I can’t offer to show you places you haven’t seen before?’

She was very good and very enticing, acknowledged Jordan. Refusing the heavily intended double entendre, he said, ‘It’s quite late.’

‘Not too late to be too tired,’ she misunderstood.

‘I was thinking of you.’

‘As I was, of you.’

‘An hour from now only sad loss-chasers will still be here, without any money left. I don’t want it to be a lost evening for you.’

Her face tightened imperceptibly but quickly relaxed, opening into a smile. ‘You sure about that?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I don’t usually get a response like this: get so immediately recognized like this. I think we could have had fun together -more interesting fun than normal for both of us.’

‘I’m sure we could,’ said Jordan, meaning it but at the same time discomfited by her reaction to his rejection. He’d never known a hooker anywhere in the world – and he’d known enough in a lot of the world – who wasn’t or didn’t easily become a willing police informant to protect themself. Which, professionally again, he totally understood and accepted.

‘You’re right,’ said Ghilane, looking briefly around her. ‘It is late and there’s a lot of desperately perspiring men around the tables. Maybe tomorrow night will turn out better.’

Jordan knew she hadn’t given up and admired her for it. He touched her champagne flute with his brandy snifter and said, ‘Here’s to a more successful tomorrow.’

‘But not with you?’

‘But not with me,’ echoed Jordan. It had been a passing, even entertaining interlude but it was time it ended.

‘Perhaps I’ll see you again? I’m often here or in Monaco.’

‘I’m moving on tomorrow,’ said Jordan, gesturing for his bill.

She shrugged, philosophically. ‘My loss.’

‘Both our loss,’ said Jordan, gallantly.

Jordan’s excursion the following day took him away from the coast, just beyond Mougins to where Picasso once crafted his ceramics, of which there were still a lot of photographs but with most of which Jordan was unimpressed, as he was with some, although by no means all, of the artist’s various period experimentation, particularly Picasso’s female genitalia obsession. The eating choice had obviously to be the Moulin de Mougins, even though Jordan knew the legend of Picasso settling bills there with sketches instead of cash to be untrue.

Jordan didn’t hurry the short descent to the Carlton at Cannes, timing his arrival perfectly for a late lunch on the terrace, although as far back from the traffic-thronged promenade as possible, his placement perfect for when the heat went out of the day. He wasn’t aware of her when he first sat, but almost at once registered the carefully page-marked but set aside book, as well as the solitaire engagement ring he conservatively estimated to be at least five carats overwhelming the surprisingly slim adjoining wedding band. She was remarkably similar to the blonde-haired, heavily busted girl who had called herself Ghilane, although younger, probably little more than thirty. There was a handbag too small to contain a cell phone, a protective, wide-brimmed hat on the same side chair as the discarded book, no longer necessary because of the table umbrella, the shade of which made it impossible for Jordan to make out her features. Despite the shade, she still wore sunglasses. She was already on her coffee, the single glass of wine only half drunk. Jordan smiled when she turned to look across the intervening four tables in his direction. He could see enough of her face to know that she didn’t smile back but looked immediately away, towards the sea.

Time to move on from Impressionists, Jordan concluded. It really was developing into the sort of vacation he’d hoped it would be, as in previous years it had invariably proved to be.

Three

Over months, eventually stretching into years, Harvey Jordan had learned every trick and manoeuvre to access, uncover and utilize the identity of unwitting victims, none of which had to be employed to discover all he needed to know about the blonde, disdainful woman. This was pleasure, an amusement to pass the afternoon, not work upon which he had to concentrate. Directly after making his deposit box arrangements and setting the intrusion traps in his suite, Jordan quit the Carlton to stroll along the Croisette towards the port to indicate his own disinterest, although frequently pausing to ensure that she was not coincidentally taking the same exercise behind him, wanting the intended encounter to be at his choosing, not by accident.

Using his knowledge of the hotel, he timed his return to the Carlton for the beginning of their afternoon tea service, confident that he entered the lounge without her awareness and gained a seat sufficiently close behind her to easily overhear the waiter address her as ‘Madam Appleton’ and to detect the American accent when she ordered. He was also close enough to see that the book in which she was now engrossed was Pride and Prejudice. Jordan declined tea himself, needing to be in position in the lobby. He didn’t hurry selecting the right place, disappointed there wasn’t an unobtrusive spot from which he had a complete view of the room-key pigeon holes as well as a sufficient warning of her approach into the lounge. He settled for the best available combination and hid himself behind the Herald Tribune, raising it higher at the first sight of her before she actually came into the reception area. He was doubly lucky as she did precisely what he’d hoped by going straight to the desk for her key, which Jordan immediately recognized to be at the suite level upon which he had his own, five rooms further along the same corridor; an unexpected but welcome bonus. Because he was not working and sought recognition, rather than his usual anonymity, Jordan had ensured his immediate acknowledgement by heavily tipping upon his arrival the valet parking supervisor at the top of the hotel’s sweeping entrance into the underground facility, and so was greeted by name as he approached. Knowing from his previous visits that vehicle spaces were allocated by room number he gave that of the woman, not his own, shaking his head when the supervisor frowned as he looked up from his occupation list and said, ‘That’s Mrs Appleton’s suite? She doesn’t have a car here.’

‘Stupid of me: not concentrating,’ apologized Jordan, giving his own number.

Jordan drove contentedly along the Croisette in the direction he’d earlier walked, leaving the Renault in the underground public car park adjoining the port and choosing the restaurant with a first-floor overview of the marina and its yachts, reflecting upon what it had been so easy to learn about the dismissive Mrs Appleton. She was an abstemious American woman about thirty years old who liked classic English literature, with so few friends or acquaintances she didn’t even bother with a cell phone, staying alone and without transport in one of the best hotels in the South of France, sufficiently wealthy to wear a five-carat diamond ring and be able to afford a beach-fronting suite, although unlikely to venture out too long upon it from the umbrella and sun hatted care she took to protect her complexion. And she was hopefully lonely or bored or both.

The ice maiden melted the following day, although initially only very slightly. But still enough. By the time she emerged from the elevator, just before eleven, Jordan had bought a paperback edition of Jane Austin’s Sense and Sensibility from the English language bookshop near the railway terminus and was back, ensconced in the lounge, the book and its title positioned on the table in front of him to be obvious to anyone entering from the lobby; Jordan himself was once more hidden behind his raised newspaper awaiting her arrival. He kept the Herald Tribune uncomfortably high, his arms beginning to ache, until the coffee service began, thankfully lowering it to order and establish that she was deeper within the room, writing at an upright table. Whatever it was appeared to be a long letter, several thick pages, not a holiday postcard. She was wearing a bare shouldered day dress but with a matching patterned bolero, her book, wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses carefully beside her on the other chair. Better able to see her without the glare of yesterday’s sun Jordan decided she was very much younger than the casino professional and her hair a much more natural blonde. The dark-rimmed reading spectacles it seemed necessary for her to wear added rather than detracted from her attractiveness. It was going to be an interesting distraction trying to establish whether she was a genuinely natural blonde. He’d give himself today, maybe going over into tomorrow; if there hadn’t been sufficient progress by then he’d move on. Maybe, even, go back to one of the casinos to find the more approachable Ghilane.

Jordan waited until she finished whatever it was she was writing and was reading through it before rising to make his way out into the lobby, choosing a path to take him directly by her table. He did not look in her direction, nor was aware of her looking in his, and he was past before she said, ‘Excuse me!’

The satisfaction coursed through him. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Your book. You’ve left your book.’

Jordan frowned, turning to where he had been sitting. ‘I have a call to make. I’m coming back.’

‘I’m sorry … I thought …’

The words were stumbled but she didn’t colour with embarrassment. Closer he saw that she was blue-eyed, so maybe she was genuinely blonde. ‘Thank you. Will you stand guard while I’m gone?’

‘I’m embarrassed.’ She still didn’t blush.

An East coast accent, the vowels hard, judged Jordan, expertly. ‘You’ve no reason to be.’

Jordan continued on before she could reply, building in the time for his absence by going up to his suite and remaining at the window for a few minutes, watching the beach filling up beneath its parasols. From the attention with which the sunbathers were creaming and oiling themselves Jordan guessed it was hotter out on the beach than it had been the previous day.

She was waiting for his return, smiling up at once, her thick manila envelope sealed. It was automatic for Jordan to try to read the address but it was very positively turned against him, which would have made his interest too obvious if he’d tried harder. ‘My book is untouched, as I left it,’ he said and smiled. The spectacles were back in their case now, along with everything else on the chair beside her.

‘I misunderstood. I’m sorry …’

‘I’m not,’ said Jordan, maintaining the momentum. ‘Now we’re talking instead of being on the opposite sides of the room from each other.’ Standing above her he could see the dark beginning of a deep and enticing cleavage.

‘I didn’t intend to intrude, but …’ she began again.

‘I didn’t think that you did,’ Jordan stopped her. ‘I think it was a fortunate misunderstanding.’

She shifted uncertainly, looking down at the only available chair full of her belongings.

Gesturing to where he had been sitting earlier, Jordan said, ‘There’s more room where I am. Let’s have an apéritif there.’

‘My things?’ she said, making her own gesture.

‘They can stay where they are. Or be brought to us if you want them.’

She hesitated. ‘They can stay here.’

It was going to work, as it invariably did, Jordan decided.

Harvey Jordan, whose vocation was seduction in every sense and definition of the word, didn’t hurry. He never did once the first barrier was breached. The initial isolation and pursuit of a victim was as much an orgasmic pleasure as its culmination, either sexual or financial, and he had a lot of mental foreplay to savour here. Remembering her half glass abstinence the previous lunchtime he chose a single glass – not even a half bottle – of champagne for their apéritif and distanced himself from her at the furthest end of the couch. He gave her his real name – Christian as well as family – and learned that hers was Alyce (‘with a y, just to be different’) and that it was her first visit to France. She hadn’t yet felt confident enough to try the French in which she’d graduated, as well as in Spanish, both with A plus, from Smith college; she admired the ease with which he spoke French to their waiter, ordering the drinks and asking for the luncheon menu and for a table, not outside on the open terrace, but directly inside the better shaded floor-to-ceiling veranda doors which, still imposing his own pace, Jordan did without inviting her in advance. She accepted at once when he belatedly apologized for his feigned presumption. Jordan felt a fleeting jump of unease at her mention of the park-view appartment, because his last identity sting had been in Manhattan, quickly dismissed by the self-assurance that small though the island was, the likelihood of her knowing anyone with whom he’d had a chance encounter was remote, particularly after her reference to a weekend house in the Hampton’s, which she preferred to the city. And he hadn’t been using his own name then anyway. There was no reference to a job, or a profession, or to the husband who had presumably provided the diamond and the wedding band, and Jordan held back from any curiosity: it was a not infrequent reflection of his that so easily did he find it to encourage people to unprompted disclose their life histories that had he chosen a legitimate profession he could have lived well – although not as well as he did now – by setting himself up as a psychologist. Or an end-of-the-pier fortune teller, complete with crystal ball.

Jordan’s restricted offering was well rehearsed and faultlessly delivered in the hope of encouraging further disclosures from her: he’d been fortunate with a family inheritance, which he’d used to develop a so far sufficiently successful career as a venture capitalist. It enabled him to travel extensively, although that freedom brought with it personal restrictions, chief among them a difficulty in establishing permanent relationships; there had been someone, a few years earlier, with whom he believed himself to have been in love – although now he was no longer sure – but against whom he felt no resentment or disappointment for refusing to put up with his too frequent absences, and abandoning him for someone else to whom he believed, and certainly hoped, she was now very happily married. They still exchanged Christmas cards: last year’s had featured a family photograph that included a baby girl. In reality it had been the drunken self-pity that Rebecca had refused to put up with. He’d seen the announcement of her second marriage in the Daily Telegraph. And the birth announcement. He certainly didn’t feel any resentment against her walking out on him as she had; he’d have done the same in her circumstances.

‘That’s sad,’ responded Alyce, although not offering an explanation for the wedding band now covered by her other hand.

‘Not for Rebecca – that was her name,’ further tempted Jordan. ‘She’s got a husband and a baby and a proper life, not someone whose existence is regulated by airline schedules.’ Or, after the bankruptcy, the availability of a gin bottle, he remembered.

‘Sad for you,’ she insisted, still without volunteering more.

‘But not today!’ declared Jordan, briskly. ‘Today I am on vacation and we’re having lunch together and I am no longer lonely.’

Alyce hesitated and for the briefest moment Jordan thought she was going to change her mind and decline the belated invitation. Instead she said, ‘No. Now neither of us are lonely.’

Jordan did order a whole bottle of wine, a grand cru Chablis, and took time consulting the menu with Alyce, who followed his recommendations. He’d seen a film version of Pride and Prejudice and speed-skimmed enough of Sense and Sensibility to maintain a conversation about Jane Austen and her books -his familiar, never-yet-failed technique now fully on track – and went easily into his well practised repertoire of fictitious venture capitalist and investment anecdotes. She laughed on cue but once more brought him up short after the third story by saying, ‘Your experiences seem much more amusing than my husband’s.’

‘He’s in the business?’ queried Jordan, his stomach lurching.

‘Wall Street. He’s the Appleton of Appleton and Drake, the commodity traders.’

‘Different sort of finance altogether,’ insisted Jordan, the alarm receding. ‘All far too clever for me.’

‘And me,’ she said as she smiled. ‘I don’t understand any of it.’

Thank God he hadn’t gone on to his two New York inventions, Jordan thought. ‘I’ve visited New York, of course. Great city. But I haven’t done any business there.’

‘I prefer the Hampton’s,’ she repeated.

She’d opened the subject at last! Jordan said, ‘Is your husband joining you here?’

‘No!’ Alyce said, sharply.

‘I’m sorry,’ hurried Jordan, feigning the embarrassment to match hers earlier. ‘I didn’t … forgive me …’

‘Let’s talk about something else.’

‘Let’s,’ agreed Jordan, anxious to maintain his self-imposed schedule. ‘Have you read Dumas?’

Alyce frowned, confused by such an abrupt switch. ‘I tried him in the original French but ended up with the translation.’

‘Which book?’

‘The Man in the Iron Mask. What else?’

It was like winding a clockwork toy, knowing how it would respond when the catch was released. ‘Have you any plans for tomorrow?’

The frown returned at the further apparent switch. ‘No?’

‘Will you trust me to take you on a mystery journey?’

‘Should I?’

The first hint of flirtation, Jordan recognized. ‘That’s for you to decide.’

She made as if to consider it. ‘I’ll take the risk.’

‘You’ll need sun protection: something to cover your arms as well as oil or cream. Not the sort of hat you’ve got over there. A bill cap. A swimming costume, if you decide to swim. Bring one anyway.’

‘Are those all the clues I get?’

‘It’s too many already.’

‘I like mystery.’

‘So do I.’ She really was quite beautiful, Jordan decided.

Should he cool things down before things even got started? Jordan asked himself, observing the familiar precaution. He would certainly stage the promised, now inescapable excursion, but then move on further along the coast, which had always been the intention. But not with Alyce Appleton as a companion, which, objectively, she might not be persuaded or want to be anyway. Jordan had worked often and successfully in New York but knew there was no way his path could have crossed or intertwined with that of Alyce’s husband. If they had, he would have immediately recognized her name, even before she identified her husband. And she was hardly going to mention him or his name when she got back to America. There couldn’t be the slightest risk of any professional difficulty arising from her husband being in commodity trading, which really was a quantum leap from any company identity theft with which he might involve himself in the future, doubly so now by his knowing the name of her husband’s firm. The more Jordan rationalized it, the more he accepted his concern at learning what her husband did had been exaggerated. Too early to abandon his pursuit of Alyce, he determined. Just something to keep in mind.

Jordan excused himself immediately after lunch, talking of prior arrangements that were going to keep him busy for the rest of the day and into the evening, sure he detected her disappointment at their not spending more of the day and perhaps dinner together.

‘Don’t forget what you’ll need tomorrow.’

‘It’s a boat, right?’

‘Maybe. You don’t like the sea?’

‘I told you I’ve lived in the Hamptons, remember?’

Lived, in the past tense, isolated Jordan. ‘Much rougher there than here.’

‘So I’m right!’ she demanded.

‘Wait and see.’

‘What time?’

‘Ten. I’ll call you if there’s any change.’

Not wanting to use those of previous expeditions, Jordan got the names of three new yacht charterers from the concierge on his way upstairs and fixed meetings with the two most convenient, both with boats available in the port. A man of instinctive attention to detail Jordan checked the following day’s predicted wind strength and chose the twin-hulled catamaran instead of the older, mahogany-fitted single hull he would have preferred in calmer conditions. It took longer to decide the food and wine he wanted, even for a one-day charter than it did to choose between the two yachts. The departure was confirmed for ten o’clock, which meant he didn’t have to alter their already agreed schedule. Jordan could easily have got back to the Carlton for dinner but guessed she would be eating there, so he ate again in the restaurant dominating the marina. From his balcony table he could easily see the catamaran he’d hired being prepared for the following day.

Jordan’s 9 a.m. call was a test, to assess her tone.

‘Is there a problem?’ she asked at once

‘None at all. I’m just checking it’s still all right with you?’ She’d been worried, prepared for disappointment.

‘I’m looking forward to it.’

You got everything?’

‘Everything.’

‘I’ll see you in the lobby at nine forty-five.’

She carried a small duffel bag and wore jeans, a white shirt with a thin anorak looped around her shoulders, her blonde hair in a ponytail under the bill cap, confident without any make-up, and Jordan thought she looked good enough to eat and hoped he would be doing just that very shortly. He definitely wouldn’t be moving on soon. He’d ordered a hotel car rather than bother with the hired Renault, pleased to see that the previously tipped crew of two men and one woman were already waiting for their arrival, the catamaran open and ready to sail.

As they cleared the marina on engine Alyce said, ‘It’s time I knew where we’re going.’

‘To see the cell in which the man in the iron mask was actually held,’ announced Jordan. Her reaction was exactly the same as that of the two other women – one English, the other Australian ’ he’d taken on the same trip, hopefully this time with the same uncomplicated result of the previous two.

‘What!’

‘Alexander Dumas’s story is based on fact. One of the fictions was that the mask was iron. It wasn’t. It was black velvet.’

‘I can’t believe what you’re telling me!’

The catamaran cleared the immediate harbour and the sails billowed out above them. Jordan said, ‘Why don’t you relax in the webbing between the hulls?’

‘Because I want you to tell me what you’re talking about! It’s not really true, is it?’

‘Totally true. What no one has ever established is his real identity, although he’s buried as “M de Marshiel”. He was a state prisoner, of Louis XIV. For forty years he was held in jails all over France. He died in the Bastille in November, 1703. Whenever he was moved, from jail to jail, he had to wear the velvet mask to prevent anyone ever recognizing who he really was …’ Jordan waved his hand beyond her. ‘And one of those prisons was on the Ile St Marguerite, where we’re going.’

Alyce swivelled to look at the undulating smudge on the horizon. ‘We’re going to see the actual cell?’

‘The actual cell,’ echoed Jordan. It was going to work. It always had.

‘I don’t believe it!’ she said again.

‘You can use your schoolgirl French to read the memorial plaque. There’s a pamphlet, too.’

‘What horrendous crime did he commit, yet escape execution?’

‘No one knows that, either. There’s a lot of legends. One is that he was the Due de Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis, although on the face of it that’s an extreme way to treat your own son. In his book, if you remember, Dumas copied Voltaire in suggesting the man was an illegitimate elder brother of Louis, fathered by Cardinal Mazarin. There’s also a lot of historical insistence that he was a Count Mattiolo, a minister of the Duke of Mantua, who tried to trick Louis during diplomatic negotiations and was punished with a totally unknown and unrecognized living death.’

Alyce shuddered. ‘Kept locked up for forty years!’

‘A non person for forty years, someone whose face was never again seen except by his jailers: there’s even a story that he had to wear the mask before he was given food, so that even the jailers wouldn’t know what he looked like. If he defied them and refused to put it on, he wasn’t fed.’

Jordan thought she was remarkably agile, disembarking at the island, as she had been boarding the catamaran. She slowly read the memorial plaque and collected the pamphlet, and in the bare cell, which was very cold compared to the outside near midday heat, she shuddered again several times.

‘Whatever he did, he didn’t deserve what was done to him,’ she insisted.

‘It had to be bad.’

‘It doesn’t make any difference.’

By the time they returned to the anchored catamaran the crew had erected a sun awning. Alyce didn’t refuse the champagne but stopped at the second glass of Chablis and didn’t need any urging to eat the lobster with her fingers. They let the strongest heat go out of the day before swimming off the port fin, Jordan delaying his climb back on to the boat because of his momentary and too obvious excitement at seeing her, surprisingly unashamed, in the briefest of bikinis. When they got back to Cannes she said she wanted to walk back rather than call for the hotel car or a taxi, and did so almost immediately taking his hand, moving her fingers over his. She said she wasn’t hungry when he suggested dinner but that the sea air had tired her and that she thought she’d go directly to bed.

‘But not alone,’ she added.

Jordan thought it was far more exciting than Ghilane might have made it discovering that Alyce was indeed a natural blonde. And very eager and proud to prove it.

They checked out of the Carlton together the following morning, Alyce leaving the American Express office in Cannes as her forwarding address for any mail and, despite the inevitable traffic congestion on the meander to St Tropez, once they got off the autoroute they managed to get to the Residence de la Pinade and their comer tower room in perfect time for lunch on the sea-bordering terrace, even after he’d organized the necessary safe deposit box. Held by the excitement of discovery they spent the afternoon in bed in fresh exploration and decided they didn’t want the additional exertion of walking into the town in the evening. Nor to eat anything other than each other. She didn’t enjoy the following day’s bustle of the town or the clutter of polished Harley Davidson motorcycles looped like a necklace around the harbour edge so they escaped by taxi over the hill to Pampalon Plage, and the Tahiti restaurant, the first of several they visited over succeeding days – judging the Tahiti their favourite – except for the day Jordan chartered another yacht, traditionally hulled this time, to sail the coastline to the car-free lies de Porquerolles. That was the day – or rather the night, as they lay side by side, naked, recovering from their lovemaking – that Alyce suggested extending her vacation by another week and Jordan said he thought she should tell him about the status of her marriage.

‘There isn’t one,’ she replied. ‘Status or any longer a marriage. That day we met? The envelope? It was divorce papers I couldn’t wait to sign.’

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t …’

‘It’s not important,’ she said, dismissively. She looked steadily at him across their table. ‘Mad at me?’

Jordan hesitated, searching for the right response. ‘Tit for tat, to balance your betrayal?’

‘Something like that. In fact exactly that.’

‘Why should I be mad?’

‘I used you.’

‘You didn’t make any secret about being married.’

She smiled. ‘I started out feeling a shit, guilty I guess on several levels. I don’t any more. I feel great.’

‘So do I.’

‘No hang-ups, no regrets?’

‘No hang-ups, no regrets.’

‘What about my extending for an extra week?’

‘It sounds good.’

They made their way slowly back along the coast, stopping at Cagnes and Le Saint-Paul and on the night before her flight from Nice stayed at the Hermitage in Monte Carlo and gambled in the high stakes room in the casino, where Alyce won £1,200 to his £2,000.

As they left the caisse, Jordan carefully pocketing the French certificate recording his winnings, Alyce said, ‘What’s the benefit of that?’

‘In England gambling winnings aren’t taxable. This is proof of where the money came from.’

‘It makes you sound very rich.’

‘It’s the law. I always try to obey the law,’ said Jordan.

At the airport the following morning Alyce said, ‘It’s been great. You’ve been great. Everything’s great.’

‘There’s been a lot of times we’ve thought and spoken in echoes, like now.’

‘Best I don’t offer my New York address?’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Nor mine in London to you.’ He hadn’t intended to anyway. ‘Keep safe and stay happy.’

‘And you.’

They didn’t kiss goodbye. He stood watching her go through the departure gates. Alyce didn’t turn as she did so. Jordan stayed that night at the Negresco and the following day brought forward his return flight to London, deciding as the plane climbed out over the sea that it had been his best vacation yet. But that it was time to get back to work and briefly – although profitably – be someone other than Harvey Jordan.

Someone like the targeted Peter Wightman.

Four

Identity stealing, Harvey Jordan’s dedicated profession, is an overcrowded activity, for a variety of reasons, all of them to the thief’s benefit and favour. It is a crime almost childishly – and mostly legally – easy to commit and therefore so prevalent that law enforcement agencies are overwhelmed, reducing the risk of detection and even less of arrest virtually to zero. People – supposedly clever, financially savvy people – appear to ignore every piece of advice and warning given by every financial organization or adviser. And those same financial organizations and advisers, despite that advice and those warnings, keep showering the head-in-the-sand birdbrains with ever more credit facilities and cash-gaining opportunities to be milked like a milch cow by ever ready suckling predators. Of whom Harvey Jordan judged himself the most adept, if not the most financially successful single operator.

Jordan could have doubled, maybe trebled, his income; even gained the ultimate position of being the most financially successful. But that would have required his masterminding and controlling a gang as so many others in the business did, multiplying their ID stealing – and profits – tenfold or more. Which did not attract or tempt Harvey Jordan in the slightest. If he ran a gang, its profit would obviously have to be divided by its number, which, while increasing his personal income by as much as another tax-free £2 million a year, correspondingly increased among one or more of that number the likelihood of error, incompetence or idiotic mistake, resulting in his being caught, despite the odds against that occurring remaining in his and their favour. Harvey Jordan knew he was good. What he didn’t know – and wasn’t interested in finding out – was how consistently good others were. Nor did he imagine others, for their part, would have the patience to operate with the care and attention to detail that he did and upon which he would have insisted in any extended partnership.

It had taken him three months to prepare himself fully to impersonate Peter Thomas Wightman, a 42-year-old newly elevated senior partner in the legal firm of Jackson, Pendlebury, Richardson and Wright in Chancery Lane, in the Holborn district of London. He’d learned the man’s name and that of the firm within which he’d been promoted from the legal notices of the Daily Telegraph and further researched it from the publicly available Bar directory issued by the General Council of the Bar and Waterlow’s Solicitors and Barristers Directory, in which the names of all solicitors and barristers in England are listed. Who’s Who gave Jordan the prep school – Downside – and Balliol College, Oxford, at which Wightman had read law. From the main office of the Company House register at Crown Way, Maindy, Cardiff, he legally obtained details of the after tax profit of Jackson, Pendlebury, Richardson and Wright and the individual income and dividends to all its partners, including Wightman.

Jordan discovered Wightman’s age – but far more importantly for his eventual purposes the maiden name of the man’s mother – by paying a series of ten-pound search fees for details of births, deaths and marriages from the Family Records Centre, ECl, London. The maiden name of Wightman’s mother had been Norma Snook. On the marriage certificate to John Wightman, an accountant, she was described as a solicitor. Peter Wightman had married Jean Maidment eighteen years earlier, at St Thomas’s Church, Maidstone. There were three children, and from the voters’ register records at the British Library he’d found the family lived in Kitchener Road, Richmond, Middlesex, and by memorizing the number plate as he drove past the detached property – and then checking at the national car registration office in Gwent, Wales, purporting to have been involved in a slight traffic accident with someone who had not stopped – confirmed that Wightman’s car was a dark green, two-year-old Jaguar.

The detail of Jordan’s research was continued in the form of the final precaution he always took just prior to embarking upon a new operation; this was never to work from the address of the flat in Marylebone, which he owned under his own, genuine name, but always from another apartment rented in the name of his intended victim. That, for his assault upon Peter Wightman, was in Sydney Street, in Chelsea, from which he worked countrywide and with his usual untroubled and undetected success for a month, which ended with a somewhat disappointing profit of £154,000.

His final role for Sydney Street was to use it as the base for his next rental in Hans Crescent, Knightsbridge, under the name of Paul Maculloch, a Harley Street cosmetic plastic surgeon whose Al credit rating Jordan intended to use to its full and hopefully increased advantage.

He’d telephoned ahead to warn the Marylebone concierge of his return and when he arrived, the man, John Blake, already had his accumulated mail bundled and waiting for him.

‘A good trip, Mr Jordan?’ enquired the man.

‘I’ve known better,’ admitted Jordan, picking up his letters.

Five

Attorneys-at-law was stridently displayed in red, beneath the identifying letterhead of Brinkmeyer, Hartley and Bernstein recorded in black typescript. The Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022 address of the firm was in black, too. So, running down the right-hand side of the covering letter, were the names of the fifteen lawyer partners, headed by those of the three company founders. The man who had in legibly, rounded letters signed Jordan’s letter – David Bartle – was the fifth in the list, presumably indicating his seniority. The letter, dated three weeks earlier, announced itself to be a summary of the official documents that were enclosed, couched in stiffly formal legalese.

Harvey William Jordan was cited under N.C.G.S Section 1-52(5) as defendant in the forthcoming preliminary hearing, date still to be negotiated and agreed between all involved parties, in the cross-petitioned divorce action between Alfred Jerome Appleton and Alyce Louise Appleton, nee Bellamy. Alfred Jerome Appleton was bringing suit against Harvey William Jordan claiming substantial damages for alienation of affection and criminal conversations, resulting in the initiation of divorce proceedings. Coupled and enjoined in those proceedings were further, but separately itemised, claims brought by Alfred Jerome Appleton for stress, loss of earnings resulting from that stress, public humiliation and derision resulting from that stress, damages and loss of commercial earnings and public confidence in the firm of Appleton and Drake from the forthcoming divorce proceedings, and medical and counselling expenses resulting from each and every aspect and condition arising from each, several or all of those allegations against Harvey William Jordan.

David Bartle sought immediate written acknowledgement of receipt of his letter and its accompanying formal claims, together with the name, street and city address, email and telex contacts with Harvey William Jordan’s attorney with whom all further and future correspondence leading up to the indeterminate hearing date could be conducted.

It was difficult for Jordan to think, as cold as he was, shivering as he was, which had nothing to do with how cold he felt. There was too much to co-ordinate, to put into the order in which he had to deal with it, get out of it. How to get out of it? The wrong question, he corrected himself, the shaking subsiding. How had he got into it? Been found? Discovered? And by whom? A private enquiry agent – a private detective – obviously. Jordan felt a fresh sweep of unreality, snatching out for the discarded papers, shuffling through until he found the itemised statements of claim. It was all there, his suite number at the Carlton hotel in Cannes, registered as a solitary occupancy but pointedly separated by only a short distance along the same corridor from that of Alyce. And then their odyssey. Their room number, as Mr and Mrs Jordan, at the Residence de la Pinade at St Tropez and the hotels at Cagnes and at Le Saint-Paul and the Hermitage in Monaco. As well as all the restaurants in which they’d eaten, the name of the catamaran as well as that of the chartering company, in which they’d sailed to the prison of the man in the iron mask, and to Porqerolles – even, astonishingly, their individual winnings that last night at the Monaco casino. Not a private detective, acknowledged Jordan. An expert himself in the gathering of facts and information, Jordan knew it would have needed a squad to have assembled all this. And it wouldn’t be confined to just specific times against specific dates in individually identified hotels and places. There would be photographs, possibly dozens of photographs, an engulfing mud slide of identifying collages.

The coldness melted under a burn of personal anger. How, to someone supposedly so professional at always being – and remaining – Mr Invisible, could it have happened to him? How could he have remained so blissfully, blindly, stupidly unaware of his every move being tracked and recorded as intimately by not one but perhaps several! Several so obvious they not only kept him and Alyce under constant, twenty-four-hour surveillance but doubtless took albums of supporting, claim-incriminating photographs! Everything – his carefully hidden and absolutely protected offshore fortune, his Mr Invisible anonymity, his very existence – was threatened. He had to find a way out. An escape. He finished the first glass of wine and immediately poured himself a second. But then stared at it, untouched. Not again, not this time, he warned himself. He’d never been a true alcoholic; not able to function without it. He’d just needed the escape from reality that booze provided.

What – where – was his escape now?

Was he subject to the jurisdiction of American divorce and civil courts? He didn’t think he was or could be but he’d need legal advice. The word legal echoed in his mind, like a cracked bell. Harvey Jordan’s absolute and essential necessity, the watchword by which he drew breath to survive, was always to avoid the very thought of contact with any legal authority. Now, today, his name and his address – God only knew how much else from all the legally and publicly accessible sources Jordan himself so assiduously pursued – was now legally, traceably, recorded! Displaying him to everyone and everything. It was right for him to feel so cold. He was, figuratively at least, naked, exposed for all to see and know and to dissect as and how they chose.

Not quite, came the faintly – too faintly – welcoming contradiction. They’d restricted themselves to France, to Alyce Appleton’s carefully noted and recorded departure from Nice airport on the official legal documents before him. American not English private detectives then, hired to follow Alyce from New York and watch her and anyone with whom she came into contact. If they’d continued to keep him under observation – stayed with him all the way back to England – they would have followed him to Sydney Street and after that all over England, not here, to Marylebone, where the papers had been delivered. Jordan snatched out again, not for the documents but for the envelope in which they’d been delivered, the recorded delivery sticker belatedly registering, now as brightly as if it were in multicoloured neon. Attomey-at-law David Bartle, from Brinkmeyer, Hartley and Bernstein, had documentary proof of his having received the accusations made against him. He couldn’t deny the claims had been delivered. How had the law firm got this correct address? His mind momentarily blocked again, then cleared. It had to be the Carlton hotel. Not just an hotel: a grand hotel, in every definition of the accolade, one of whose services was permanently holding in its files the names, personal details and preferences of its regular clients from their first and succeeding visits, a source of information Harvey Jordan had himself utilized in the past. If he’d been followed on the return flight from Nice – instead of being abandoned there – and to Chelsea his assumed name of Peter Wightman would have been discovered, against comparison with the inevitable French photographs, and British police possibly brought in to resolve the mystery of conflicting identities. So he’d been lucky with a partial escape, Jordan decided, trying to rationalize his problems. But partial escape wasn’t enough. It had to be complete.

Jordan was waiting in the apartment lobby for the arrival the following morning of the attentive doorman, John Blake, who at once confirmed his signing for the recorded delivery of the American letter.

‘I guessed it was important: that’s why I put it on the top of your pile, as I told you,’ reminded the doorman. ‘They took a note of my name and home address, too. It was all right my signing for it, wasn’t it?’

The man had told him, remembered Jordan, and he’d tossed the letter, along with everything else, in a jumbled mess on top of the bureau without bothering to look at it. ‘They? There was more than one man?’

The balding man shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Jordan. I meant the Post Office. It was the normal postman but I’d never before seen the receipt form he asked me to sign. He said it was important – that I had to – because it was a legal document.’

Shit, thought Jordan. ‘When was that: when was it delivered?’

‘Five days ago. I did do the right thing, didn’t I?’

‘Of course you did,’ assured Jordan, with difficulty. Where had the package been – to whom had it gone for onward delivery – in the intervening days from the letterhead date? Why hadn’t the French surveillance carried on to England? So much he didn’t know, couldn’t protect himself against!

‘I’m very sorry if—’

‘I told you nothing’s wrong,’ stopped Jordan. Could he risk going on, hinting at the apprehension? He didn’t have any alternative, so much and so quickly did he have to catch up. ‘Has anyone, more than one person maybe, been asking about me?’

John Blake frowned, uncertainly. ‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’d have remembered, Mr Jordan. You know I would.’

‘Yes, I do know you would.’

‘What shall I do – say – if anyone does come asking questions?’

He had to close the conversation, end it. ‘Tell them that you’re not sure about anything: that you need to think. But get some method of contact, like a visiting card. And let me have it.’

‘Of course, Mr Jordan. You know you can trust me.’

‘I know that, John,’ insisted the man who didn’t trust anybody and wasn’t sure he could any longer trust himself. ‘We’re not talking anything world shattering. I just don’t want to miss out on a business deal that’s looking good. I’m caught up in a competition I want to win, just as they do.’

‘I understand,’ said the man, nodding sagely at the imagined confidence.

Back in his apartment Jordan made coffee he didn’t want, merely occupying the time until offices woke up and became occupied, looking down at the bureau and its sleeping, so far unused computer, tempted to access the Appleton and Drake website. Not without more preparation and planning, he cautioned himself. He’d already made too many mistakes, allowed too much carelessness: every step he took, every move he made, from now on had to be the correct one, thought out and evaluated. The thin ice was already creaking underfoot.

Jordan stifled his impatience until nine thirty before telephoning the American embassy in Grosvenor Square, ignoring the recorded, single digit invitations to self-select what he wanted until a human voice came on the line. His impatience flared again at the pedantic questioning for his reason to be put through to the legal department, but he curbed it again, eventually getting a connection without disclosing his name, already having a false one ready if he was repeatedly pressed, which he wasn’t. It was a softly spoken, southern-accented woman who picked up the receiver. Frowning at his own realization of the threadbare cover-up, Jordan said he was calling on behalf of an English friend whom it appeared likely was about to become involved in maybe more than one, although definitely linked, court cases in North Carolina. He was seeking the name of a London legal firm with experience of American law to which his friend could approach for guidance.

‘I’m afraid we are not allowed to provide that sort of recommendation, for the obvious reasons,’ said the woman. ‘If the advice of such a recommendation were flawed or in error, the American government could lay itself open to separate legal action for damages.’

‘All I’m seeking is the name of a legal firm which could provide guidance in a divorce situation,’ pressed Jordan.

‘Sir, I’ve already told you we cannot provide recommendations for any legal opinion of any kind. And for that reason we don’t hold the names of any English firms qualified to help you …’ The pause was timed. ‘Or your friend. I’m sorry.’

‘Wait!’ pleaded Jordan, fearing that the woman was about to ring off. ‘Do you know any other agency or organization that could help?’

‘The same caveat applies, I’m afraid. You’ll have to proceed through English legal or government sources.’

‘There must surely be American law firms with English affiliates!’

‘Like you, I’m sure there must be,’ agreed the woman. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have a list of them.’ Before replacing the telephone, she said, ‘Have a nice day.’

Jordan didn’t imagine he would and it was not yet ten in the morning.

Her name was Lesley Corbin. She wore a severe black business suit, black framed glasses, but no wedding ring, which in the circumstances of the meeting didn’t interest Harvey Jordan any more than her suppressed attractiveness. The appointment had been arranged by a secretary who hadn’t indicated a gender: he’d wrongly assumed Lesley Corbin to be a man, not a woman, yet another mistake to add to his increasing, self-criticising list. After further refusals to recommend a suitable law firm, for the same reason as the American embassy, from the Law Society and the Anglo-American Society, Jordan had chosen the woman’s firm from Waterlows’ Solicitor and Barristers Directory from which he’d chosen his most recent identity theft victim.

He would have felt more comfortable if Lesley Corbin had been a man. After the briefest of preliminary introductions it took her a full ten minutes, which he timed from the sonorously ticking clock on the mantle above an unlit fire, to go through the contents of the American letter, frequently referring back and forth between the different statements of claim. It seemed much longer.

‘I expect you to be completely honest, answering all my questions,’ she began, when she finally looked up.

‘Of course I will be,’ lied Jordan.

‘And understand that I am not legally qualified to offer advice on American divorce law.’

‘That was made clear when I made the appointment. What I’m really seeking is a reference to a firm or a lawyer who can help me. In Waterlows this firm is described as being international. When I called, I was told you were their foremost divorce specialist.’

‘It is and I am. But not in divorce matters in the United States with the added complications of linked damages claims; in America divorce legislation varies from state to state, with state by state Bar examinations. I know what alienation of affections is but I’ve no idea what criminal conversation means.’ There was just the slightest of lisps.

‘All I’m seeking is guidance – a reference – to someone who can help me.’

The woman looked down at the papers strewn around her desk. ‘Are you married?’

‘No.’

‘Are you in a relationship that could be construed as a common law marriage?’

‘No.’

‘Did you seduce Alyce Appleton?’

‘No.’

‘Did you sleep with Alyce Appleton?’

‘Yes. We had a brief affair, a holiday romance.’

‘So you seduced her?’

‘No,’ again refused Jordan. ‘That makes it sound as if I pursued her: persuaded her against her will. I didn’t force myself upon her. She was quite willing. Eager, in fact.’

‘As you were?’

‘As I was,’ agreed Jordan. He hadn’t so far had to lie.

‘Did you know she was married?’

Jordan hesitated. ‘Yes. She wore a wedding ring as well as an engagement ring. But she told me she was getting a divorce from her husband.’

‘Did she tell you before or after you slept together?’

Jordan had to think. ‘After. She made it sound as if she initiated proceedings against him, for his adultery—’

‘And was getting her own back,’ interrupted the lawyer.

‘Exactly that.’ He gestured to the papers lying between them on the desk. ‘That claim makes it look as if she’s the guilty party and I’m the cause.’

‘That’s precisely what it looks like: as it’s supposed to appear. The husband’s lawyers are making him out the innocent party.’

‘It’s not true. Before we even got together she spent one morning reading stuff she later told me were divorce papers. Everything had already been started.’

‘Did she show the divorce papers to you? Did you read them?’

‘Of course not.’

‘So she could have been lying?’

The question brought Jordan up short. ‘No …! She wouldn’t …’

‘We’re not talking love here, are we? We’re talking a holiday romance of what … one, two weeks?’

‘Three,’ said Jordan, with difficulty. ‘Just over three.’

‘You plan to keep in touch? Exchange addresses?’

‘No:

‘So she could have been lying?’ the woman repeated. ‘Setting you up?’

He didn’t get set up! thought Jordan. He had been once but never again. He was the person who set other people up. ‘I don’t think she’d do that.’

‘You got to know her – trust her – that well in just over three weeks, at the end of which you didn’t exchange addresses?’

‘I thought so.’ He was sounding like a complete and utter idiot; had been a complete and utter idiot.

‘Whose idea was it not to exchange addresses, hers or yours?’

‘Hers. But it couldn’t have been a set-up, could it?’ demanded Jordan, gesturing again to the papers. ‘We were being watched, every minute of every day. People had to be there already in place, ready and waiting.’

‘Which is exactly what they would have been doing if she and her husband planned the whole thing in advance. All they needed was the willing victim. And you were it.’

No! mentally refused Jordan. He was always the cheater, not the cheated! It couldn’t have happened the other way round. ‘Why! What’s the gain?’

Lesley shrugged. ‘Make your own list. Alyce getting her divorce, if she set it up on her own. Both of them bleeding you dry, as well as Alyce getting her divorce, if they were working together.’

‘She didn’t know if I had any money or not.’

‘When you met you were staying in a suite at one of the best and most expensive hotels in the South of France. And went on staying in them and eating in the best restaurants as Mr and Mrs Jordan, with you paying for everything. It’s a reasonable supposition that you’ve got money.’

‘I can’t believe that’s how it is.’

‘I’m not saying that it is. I’m just putting it forward as one of several possibilities.’

‘You’re a divorce lawyer, an expert?’ challenged Jordan.

‘Yes?’ questioned the woman.

‘How many times have you come across the sort of situation you’ve just suggested?’

‘Three,’ the woman answered, at once. ‘And I’m not saying it’s what’s happened to you. Maybe Alfred Appleton is vindictive to the point of paranoia. I’ve known that, too.’

‘OK!’ said Jordan, forcing himself on. ‘I accept you can’t give me specific advice about American divorce law, from state to state. But what about jurisdiction? What if I ignore that letter and those claims? What could a North Carolina court do to me – against me?’

‘If you ignore it all, you mean?’ queried the woman.

‘That’s exactly what I mean.’ Why did lawyers need the same things said three different ways!

‘You got any assets in America – property, bank accounts, anything upon which a lien could be imposed?’

‘None,’ declared Jordan.

Lesley Corbin began shuffling the documentation back into order. ‘You certainly couldn’t, in my opinion, be forced to respond, as if it was something extradictable. You’ll need an American lawyer – one who’s passed the North Carolina Bar exams qualifying him to practise in a court there – to tell you what happens to the actual divorce application, if you don’t turn up. What worries me is what in this country would be considered contempt of court, which gets judges very angry. By not turning up, the inference is guilt. With the detail contained in all these papers we’ve got to assume that they’ve not only got a lot of photographs of you two together but copies of hotel bills, affidavits from hotel staff and statements from the yacht charterers. Further proof of guilt if you don’t contest the allegation. Sufficient, maybe, for the financial compensation claims to be pursued in your absence, whatever happens or doesn’t happen to the actual divorce. I don’t think any judgement against you could be pursued in an English court. I need to check. But it would certainly be registered in every enforcement authority throughout the entire United States. Which would mean your never again being able to visit America: be on a plane that just touches down on American soil, in transit. There could be countries, Canada is the most obvious, where there might be civil action reciprocity that would mean you couldn’t go to any of those countries, either, whoever and wherever they are …’

‘What about publicity … public identification,’ broke in Jordan, impatient again and anxious to resolve his most pressing concern.

Lesley Corbin smiled, as well as nodding her head. ‘Precisely what I was leading up to. Publicity is their – his, if it’s not a conspiracy and Alfred Appleton is acting alone – hydrogen bomb. You don’t go to enter a defence, a total refutation, they don’t just blow you to smithereens: they evaporate you. Again, we need American law guidance. But I’ve seen – you’ve seen, I’m sure – enough publicity exposures on television and in newspapers here in England to know you could face the equivalent of being hanged, drawn and quartered by publicity.’

The physical reaction had long gone beyond shivering coldness. Harvey Jordan now felt empty, disembowelled, as if just such medieval justice had been exacted upon him. Without sufficient consideration, he blurted out, and too late realized this was another mistake, ‘I’m trapped – no way out.’

‘There’s always a way out,’ said the more controlled woman. ‘We’re talking now about maximum damage limitation: avoiding, if we can, the sackcloth and ashes exposure that’s going to make you a public, humiliated figure in England and America.’

‘That’s got to be a gross exaggeration!’ Jordan protested.

‘You want to expose yourself to as little as a fifth of it?’

‘Not a tenth of it.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Stop it happening. Stop any of it happening,’ insisted Jordan.

‘God does miracles. I just do the best I can.’

‘Do the very best you can.’ In his worst nightmare Jordan had never imagined – come close to contemplating – that he could be trapped like this again. But he’d recovered before. He’d recover again. And not just recover. Punish again, too.

Six

The following day continued to be unreal, Jordan remaining aware of – watching – everything around him but having no contributory part or involvement in any of it, as if he were part of a ghost movie in which the character can see and hear and participate but can’t be seen or heard by anyone else. Which was, in fact, how he wished his life could revert, to how it was before. But couldn’t any longer. By the day after he was a long way towards recovery: Harvey Jordan reborn, the all thinking, all calculating, ahead-of-the-game operator. But not totally recovered. To have believed that, and tried to convince himself of it, would have been ridiculous: absurd to have even begun to think that. He’d become complacent, careless, not thinking clearly or properly enough just because he’d had it too easy for too long. Not any more. This was his wake-up call, at klaxon-decibel level. He’d get out of it, even if he didn’t at this precise moment know how; he’d minimize it to the point of no longer being dangerously exposed, and he’d never again relax as he had relaxed. Maybe, even, cut himself away from places he knew so well – where too many people knew him so well – to find a new and different vacation spot. Not just one. Several. Move around the Caribbean and the Far East and the Pacific, not bother any more just briefly being known and favoured. And wherever it was, enjoy the readily and always available Ghilanes of the world.

This was all reassuring – necessary thinking – for the future. But there were more immediately pressing and essential practicalities. His antennae tuned to its maximum sensitivity, despite every indication that the surveillance had stopped in France, Jordan set out to once more become – and remain – Mr Invisible. It was instinct to set his intrusion traps but he did not emerge on to the pavement from his apartment block until he could see the yellow flag of an empty taxi to take him to the rail terminal at Waterloo, alert to everyone in the queue behind him to buy a ticket to Basingstoke. He disembarked just two stops down the line at Clapham, remaining on the platform until it cleared of the four others who got off there as well, recognizing no one from the earlier queue. He took a waiting taxi to Sloane Square, a long enough journey upon which to isolate any following cab, which he didn’t, and went underground there but only took one station west, changing from the District to the Piccadilly line at Victoria to loop east as far as Green Park for lunch at The Wolseley at a table specifically reserved for its uninterrupted view of the only public entrance into the restaurant. He did not suspect anyone of showing any specific interest in him throughout the meal. Conscious of how many observers must have been involved in the surveillance of himself and Alyce in France, Jordan didn’t detect any brief signals between people entering or leaving the restaurant during what might be a change of possible observation shifts. He had the bell captain order a taxi that was waiting for him at the kerbside when he left, altering the given destination of Euston as the taxi was travelling north up Regent Street, and reached the newly rented service apartment in Hans Crescent just before 4 p.m.

Waiting there for him were all the credit and store cards – one from Harrods, which he could see from the apartment window – credit reference file replies and pin and ATM withdrawal numbers, everything he’d applied for in the name of plastic surgeon Paul Maculloch. Jordan put it all in his combination-locked briefcase, pausing at the moment of leaving to look around the flat he was never going to use, thinking how comfortable his brief stay there might have been.

John Blake hurried from behind his reception desk the moment Jordan entered the Marylebone apartment block. ‘No one’s enquired after you all day,’ the man reported at once. ‘There haven’t been any telephone calls, either.’

‘I’m hoping to hear something soon,’ said Jordan, caught by how honest he was continuing to be.

All the intrusion traps inside the apartment were undisturbed. Jordan was on the verge of shredding everything in Paul Maculloch’s name when a sudden need to keep the rental overtook him, a warming and satisfying confirmation that he had definitely recovered from the understandable shock of the recent news. It still took the increasingly confident Jordan an hour to minutely shred most of what he’d accumulated to pass himself off as Paul Maculloch and which now had a very important although quite different purpose. At the end of that hour he was left with a copy of the man’s birth certificate, parental marriage certificates, passport, proof of rental occupancy of the Hans Crescent apartment and a single Al credit reference file. With difficulty he managed to get it all into the already over-crammed bedroom concealed safe in the closet, containing, in varying denominations, the £154,000 profit from his countrywide tour as Peter Wightman.

There would be substantial inroads into that, Jordan accepted, his mind now fully concentrated upon the financial cost with which he was confronted. The short let and now very necessary rental of Hans Crescent would amount to £21,000, which objectively he didn’t begrudge as a complete loss. The further £200 he’d spent getting all the Maculloch credit information wasn’t totally wasted, either. The big uncertainty – although objectively again perhaps not the biggest – was how much all the legal advice was going to cost him. This was why he had to bury the tax-free profit from fifteen years of identity stealing as deeply and as untraceably as possible.

Harvey Jordan had left Lesley Corbin with the understanding that she would find an American attorney fully licensed and qualified to protect – and if necessary represent – him at every degree and level of every linked North Carolina claim. And as he insisted on the best he would have to wait for her to come back to him after a careful selection. Jordan hadn’t waited upon the convenience of others for more years than he could remember and had already decided not to allow Lesley Corbin more than one more full day before calling her back, irrespective of any agreement. But, now he needed the time, maybe even more than one day, to keep things in the satisfactorily protective sequence he had to establish.

While he was still at school Jordan had mentally tested himself – and invariably won – against chip-speeded computers to work out complicated arithmetical percentages and currency fluctuations and aggregates, and from his early programming career, concentrating on internet gambling games, he knew to the last penny the amount of his carefully hoarded and, hopefully, totally hidden fortune. The majority of it was beyond investigative reach in the tax-avoiding and secret haven of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, to which he could literally carry cases of cash on the short sea crossing from England without any danger from putting hand baggage through X-ray airport security checks. The current, untraceable amount in safe deposit boxes in the island’s capital, St Helier, was £2,805,000. In addition, in separate boxes, was the Chagall painting, an assortment of seventeen uncut and unset, but officially provenanced, diamonds and three diamond-set antique bracelets which conservatively, building in the fluctuations of jewellery prices, brought the stash up to £3,600,000. Jordan intended this stash, short of physical imprisonment which Lesley Corbin insisted impossible, to remain untouched and officially unplundered, whatever the outcome of his current predicament.

The risk, despite Leslie Corbin’s assurances, was closer to home. In London, at Coutts, Lloyds TSB and NatWest, there were bank accounts, none of which exceeded £5,000, maintained for the access to safe deposit facilities at all three and in which was spread close to £1,800,000, which he’d looked forward to increasing to more than £2,000,000 by distributing among them the £154,000 profit from the most recent sting. But Jordan didn’t think he could do this any longer because all three accounts – and safe deposit facilities – were in his genuine name against his genuine Marylebone address, which was known to the litigious Alfred Jerome Appleton and his bulldozing legal team of Brinkmeyer, Hartley and Bernstein. All this had to be kept from Appleton and his lawyers, despite whatever financial recovery opinion was offered by Lesley Corbin, who had already freely admitted being unqualified in American–English exchange agreement law.

Jordan quit his booby-trapped apartment even earlier the following morning, using the rush-hour congestion to ensure he was not followed; he spent an entire cab-and-tube dodging hour before finally arranging from a public street telephone a meeting, in the name of Paul Maculloch, with Royston and Jones, a private bank in Leadenhall Street in the financial square mile of the City of London. It was the sort of interview with which Jordan was thoroughly familiar, every document supporting his Maculloch identity ready when it was demanded. He opened the Maculloch account with £4,500 – below the amount legally required to be officially reported under drug trafficking legislation – from his most recent expedition and was promised that the safe deposit facilities would be available as early as the following day because of the advantages of it being a private bank, which was precisely why Jordan had chosen it. His personally appointed manager hoped it was the beginning of a long association and Jordan said he hoped so, too.

There was still no waiting message from Lesley Corbin when he returned to Marylebone, for which Jordan was grateful, and from which he left the following morning again before recognized office hours. By ten Jordan was sure once more that he remained unaccompanied and unwatched and by eleven opened the first of his deposit boxes at Royston and Jones with the contents of all but £3,000 each from what had been in safe deposit in Lloyds TSB and NatWest. He left £4,500 in Coutts in the second exchange that afternoon.

He was back in Marylebone in time to return Lesley Corbin’s waiting message, telling her he had an early appointment the following day and couldn’t get to her until the afternoon, which she said would be perfect because she’d set up a conference call exchange with a lawyer in New York, where it would still only be morning.

‘I finally managed to get the names of two lawyers qualified to appear in North Carolina courts: oddly, both now have firms working in New York. The first was Daniel Beckwith. The other is David Bartle, who Dan knows has been engaged to represent Appleton.’

‘So we don’t have a choice?’

‘No.’

‘How good is Beckwith?’

‘The recommendation said he was very good. That’s all I’ve got to go by. If he wasn’t, I guess he’d still be practising in North Carolina.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ accepted Jordan. ‘Will you run the best check you can on him?’

‘Of course.’

Unsure how much ready cash he might need in the immediate future, the next morning Jordan broke an – until now – unbreakable rule and left £40,000 in his apartment safe, putting the rest, as well as all the Paul Maculloch identity documents and passport, in the Royston and Jones vaults before noon. It left him enough time for lunch at the conveniently close Joe Allens in Covent Garden, where he drank one gin martini and ordered a hamburger, wondering if it would be a diet to which he would become accustomed in the coming weeks. He hoped not.

But it easily could have been if Jordan chose.

Jordan arrived early to be told that Daniel Beckwith, to whom he was going to talk by telephone link-up, was the senior partner in the firm of Beckwith, Pryke and Samuelson, whose offices on Lexington Avenue were two block across and two down from those of David Bartle on Madison Avenue. Lesley Corbin insisted that Beckwith was one of the best attorneys in Manhattan – ‘and therefore one of the most expensive, $500 an hour with additional daily courtroom refreshers I didn’t ask about’ – with a ninety percent success rate for his clients.

‘I’m looking for a 100 percent in my case.’

‘I’ve already emailed him a full account of our discussion,’ said the woman, who was again dressed in black, which Jordan decided had to be her working uniform.

‘I’m grateful for what you’re doing,’ thanked Jordan, sincerely, an unusual emotion for him.

‘It’s what you engaged me to do,’ she reminded.

‘What did he say? Think, I mean?’

‘He knows the other lawyer, which is hardly surprising as they both qualified in Raleigh, North Carolina. When Dan and I spoke he said he and Bartle liked to play hardball.’

‘I’d already worked that out for myself. Did he think that Appleton had a case?’

‘All he’s got is what I told him, which obviously isn’t enough to give an opinion. It won’t be until you hire him – if you hire him – and he gets all the papers from the other side. We haven’t really begun yet.’

Maybe even £40,000 wasn’t going to be enough, Jordan thought. ‘Did he say …’ he started but was stopped by the jar of the telephone.

Lesley Corbin cupped the receiver with a hand and said, ‘It’s the New York call. The switchboard are holding it. The speaker phones are in the boardroom.’

Jordan followed her into the adjoining room and took the seat she indicated. The red light on the speaker in front of him clicked on when she fitted her telephone receiver into its master holder, set up in front of where she sat. She said, ‘Morning, Dan. Harvey’s here with me.’

‘Afternoon, Lesley. Afternoon, Harv,’ came a relaxed American voice.

‘Good morning,’ said Jordan. It was the first time he had ever used such equipment and he felt self-conscious on it. He hated the abbreviation of his name.

‘I’ve read what Lesley mailed me. Might need to expand upon it a little today. This’ll be pro bono. The timer starts if you decide to engage me.’ Beckwith’s voice was very measured, every word carefully enunciated.

Seeing the frown on the face of the man who had always avoided any contact with the law, Lesley Corbin mouthed, ‘No charge.’

Jordan said, ‘That’s very good of you. I’m very anxious to sort it all out. It reads like they’re driving an express train at me.’

‘That’s exactly what it’s meant to read like,’ said the American. ‘Don’t let it frighten you, which is also what it’s meant to do. Let’s go through a few things.’

‘Alienation of affection I understand, although I don’t think I am guilty of it,’ said Jordan. ‘What the hell is criminal conversations!’

‘Potentially the most expensive lay you ever had,’ said Beckwith. ‘It used to be on every statute in every state and made the female spouse a chattel of the husband. Which was why it’s been struck off in most states now. Your bad luck is that it still exists in North Carolina – the state in which Appleton and Alyce were married – and therefore the state in which Appleton is bringing suit.’

‘Because it still exists there?’

‘Obviously,’ said Beckwith.

‘How much is potentially very expensive, thousands or millions?’

‘Millions.’

‘You’re joking!’

‘There’s nothing amusing about being accused of alienation of affections and criminal conversation in North Carolina.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Talk some more,’ said the American. ‘Lesley’s notes told me these divorce proceedings had already been initiated before you began this affair with Alyce?’

‘That’s what Alyce told me.’

‘But you had slept together before she told you?’

Jordan felt hot with embarrassment, aware of the woman studying him from across the table, and wondered if he was actually colouring. ‘Yes. But before it started I’d seen her writing upon – signing, I suppose – a lot of documents she later told me were divorce papers.’

‘But you didn’t actually see them: know for yourself that they were divorce papers?’

‘No.’

‘Lesley told me you thought of it as a vacation romance, that you didn’t even exchange addresses when she flew back here to New York?’

‘That’s what I did – still do – regard it as. And no, we didn’t exchange addresses.’

‘You often have vacation romances, Harv?’

Jordan hesitated. ‘I’ve had them before, yes.’

‘Often?’

Jordan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Lesley Corbin was expressionless on the other side of the table. ‘Two or three times. It’s not a crime, is it?’

‘According to section 1-52(5) of North Carolina law that’s exactly what it is,’ reminded the American lawyer. ‘You never kept in touch with any of the others?’

‘No.’

‘Let’s hope Alfred Appleton’s detective agency hasn’t found any of them,’ remarked Beckwith.

‘Why?’ demanded Jordan. ‘I don’t see how they could have found anyone with whom I had an affair in the past. But I don’t see the point of your saying what you just have!’

‘You’re probably not going to see the point of a hell of a lot you’re going to be asked before all this is over, Harv. You’ve read the claims; you know where they’re coming from. You’re accused of being a home wrecker, a womanizing rich guy. It would help Appleton’s case a whole lot if he could produce another wronged, abandoned woman.’

‘I didn’t abandon Alyce Appleton or anyone else I met in the circumstances we’re discussing! It was a passing thing, for both of us! That’s why we didn’t swop numbers or addresses. It’s not the way it happens.’

‘You’re sounding angry, Harv. Indignant.’

‘I am indignant!’

‘And angry?’

‘OK. And angry. Something that happens all the time, not hurting anyone, is being blown up out of all proportion into my being responsible for the crime of this or any other century.’

‘OK, Harv. I think we’ve taken it far enough. Maybe it was a little unfair.’

‘What the …?’

‘I’ve been testing you out, in case you do engage me. And if you do, we’ve got a whole bunch of work to do getting you ready. It took me about thirty seconds, sixty tops, to make you lose your temper and start trying to justify yourself. You lose your temper in a court in which you’re accused of wrecking another guy’s marriage – try to justify what you did and say it’s no big deal because no one got hurt – you’re a dead man. You understand what I’m telling you?’

‘Yes,’ said Jordan, meek voiced but still angry. ‘I still think it was a shitty trick.’

Beckwith laughed, sounding genuinely amused. ‘Us lawyers got bagfuls of shitty tricks. If we go forwards you’re going to have to learn every one of them, so you don’t get caught out again. And what I’ve just done wasn’t entirely a trick. You sounded just right to convince me that you believe yourself the fall guy. Lesley set out some questions you’d raised, about jurisdiction?’

‘Can you answer them?’ asked Jordan, eagerly.

‘In a nutshell, I hope. Any decision or verdict reached in a North Carolina divorce court couldn’t be exacted against you, personally, in England if you chose to ignore the claims and didn’t turn up. The inference, however, would be that everything alleged against you has a basis of truth. And I know Lesley has warned you how judges feel if they consider they are being treated with contempt?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Lesley’s right, about the possible use of publicity. You duck and run you stand the very real – almost inevitable – chance of having your skin nailed to the barn door, for everyone to see. You fight it and we knock away the foundations of every claim and allegation, one by one, you’re a guy who’s done what thousands of married guys and married gals are doing right now, even as we speak. And Appleton loses, not you. But here’s a very necessary warning. This particular divorce legislation in this particular state is an absolute bastard, everything in favour of the plaintiff.’

‘If I contest it I have to come to New York?’

‘And North Carolina, to face everything down like the wrongly accused man that you are.’

‘I’d like you to represent me and defend me against this action,’ decided Jordan, formally.

‘And I’d like to do it,’ accepted Beckwith. ‘I want all the original correspondence from Bartle couriered to me, today if possible, so that I can issue an official response. I’ll courier my contractual terms and conditions back, to be completed with you by Lesley, who can also take a preliminary personal statement, telling me all about you, and when we’ve got the wheels turning we can meet here, in New York. Everything will obviously be decided in Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina.’

‘I’ll handle everything from this end,’ promised the woman. ‘I think it’s been a good meeting.’

‘So do I,’ said the American.

‘Don’t you, Harvey?’ she encouraged.

‘Very good indeed,’ said Jordan, recognizing his first lie but knowing there were going to be a lot more.

‘I really did think it went well,’ said Lesley Corbin, as she disconnected the telephone link.

‘I wasn’t very comfortable,’ admitted Jordan.

‘Men never are when they’re caught in public with their trousers down; women, neither,’ she said and smiled. ‘You’d better get used to it, Harvey. It’s going to get a hell of a lot more embarrassing. What you’ve got to hope is that it’s contained within the four walls of a closed divorce court.’