Edge of Danger by Jack Higgins Page A

thought.’ Bell smiled. ‘But it’s the last time. Once I start working, I stop drinking.’
    ‘Well, that seems sensible.’
    Kate offered champagne all round. Rashid raised his glass. ‘So, we change the world.’
    Bell laughed out loud. ‘God bless, ould son, but if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.’
    Two days later, Kate Rashid took Bell and Casey down to the pier at Quogue, where they found a Sport Fisherman named Alice Brown and a man named Arthur Grant, who was fiftyish, with greying hair tied behind his neck.
    ‘Mr Grant,’ Kate said, ‘these are the gentlemen I spoke about. They want a run up to Nantucket, to do a little diving. Mr Bell is looking for some interesting wrecks. You already have the Dolphin on board.’
    Grant poured himself a Jack Daniel’s. ‘Well, lady, that’s your story. Me, I think maybe they’re
    up to something more than interesting wrecks, but I don’t give a damn. Twenty thousand bucks, and she’s yours.’
    ‘Agreed.’ She turned to Bell. ‘Keep in touch,’ and she went up the companionway.
    Grant said, ‘She’s got a great ass on her.’
    Bell dropped the bag containing the weaponry and kicked him on the right shin, then swung him around and Casey head-butted him. Grant fell back across onto the deck and Bell leaned over.
    ‘From now on, you belong to me, Grant. Do we understand each other? Watch your mouth, do your job and you’ll get the twenty grand. Otherwise -‘
    He nodded to Casey, who took a knife from his pocket, pressed a button and the blade jumped up.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Grant said.
    ‘Well, remember you’re sorry,’ Bell told him.
    In London, Ferguson sat in his office at the Ministry of Defence working through papers. Detective Superintendent Hannah Bernstein came in.
    ‘Anything for me?’ Ferguson asked.
    ‘Not much, sir. That business with the Rashids?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Our information is they’re all in New York. Some kind of family party.’
    ‘What’s Dillon up to?’
    ‘Believe it or not, sir, he’s gone shooting in West Sussex with Harry Salter. Pheasant.’
    ‘Salter? That damn gangster?’
    ‘Yes, sir, and young Billy.’
    ‘The nephew? Wonderful. He’s almost as bad as Harry.’
    ‘I need hardly remind you, sir, he was a great help last time around on that job in Cornwall.’
    ‘You don’t need to remind me, Superintendent. But he’s still a gangster.’
    ‘He agreed to jump by parachute with no training whatsoever, and killed four of Jack Fox’s men. Dillon would be dead without him.’
    ‘Agreed. And he’s still a damned gangster.’
    At Compton House in West Sussex, it rained remorselessly, none of which bothered the shooting party. It was a syndicate of thirty that Harry Salter had paid into. He emerged from a long wheel-based Shogun wearing a cloth cap, a Barbour, jeans and rubber half-boots. He was sixty-five,
    with a fleshy and genial face until he stopped smiling. One of the most famous gang bosses in London, he’d been to prison only once in a long career.
    These days he had millions in dockside developments and leisure construction, though the rackets being in his blood, he was still involved in smuggling from the Continent. There was a lot of money to be made from the cigarette trade. In Europe, they were incredibly cheap, but in Britain, the most expensive in the world. No need to get involved in drugs or prostitution when you had cigarette smuggling.
    He stood in the rain. ‘Bleeding marvellous. Isn’t it bleeding marvellous, Dillon?’
    ‘Country life, Harry.’
    Dillon was wearing a cap and black bomber jacket. Billy Salter, Harry’s nephew, a man in his late twenties with a pale face and wild eyes, emerged next, wearing cap and anorak. His uncle’s right-hand man, he’d been in prison four times, all relatively short sentences for assault and grievous bodily harm.
    ‘This is all your fault, Dillon. What have you got me into now?’
    ‘Shoot a few pheasant, Billy, breathe the