Shroud of Concealment (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) by Andrew Towning Page B

rasping gasp, Dillon immediately followed through with a knife-hand chop across the back of his neck. He went down onto his knees and a moment later, was collapsing on the hard concrete footpath.
    Dillon knew he had to work quickly; the building comprised of several apartments and he knew that someone might appear at any time. He dragged the unconscious man back into the doorway, propped him against the wall and went through his pockets with a professional thoroughness. He found a small amount of cash along with a London underground ticket stub and a private investigator’s identity card. He immediately felt some sympathy for the man who was, after all, only doing his job. He slapped him across the face gently until he slowly came round and Dillon kept repeating the same question over and over again. “Who sent you?”
    When the confused man had come around enough to finally answer the question, Dillon wasn’t surprised by what he told him. He had merely been assigned to watch Dillon’s building by his employers, and to report on any callers. Dillon removed a mobile phone, small reporter’s notebook and a digital camera, and slipped them all into his jacket pocket. He gazed down at the man who was still not steady enough to stand up, and reckoned that if he was only half a detective he would easily remember Havelock’s private number plate.
    As he walked back down the street towards his own building, he caught a glimpse of Issy’s car going down the ramp in to the underground car park. By the time he’d got back to the penthouse, she was pouring him a large single malt whisky.
    “Did you see that man slumped in the doorway up the road? He looked positively ill, or most likely drunk,” she said, and then added, “And was that Dunstan’s car I passed?”
    “He came over to hear what, if anything, I’d found out in Dorset, and I’m afraid he got more than he bargained for. I told him in no uncertain terms that I felt the time that I’d spent on his wild goose chase had flagrantly wasted tax payer’s money. I then presented him with the firm’s invoice. Dillon casually ignored her comments regarding the alleged drunk in the doorway and was thankful when she suggested they go and eat out, then changed the subject to how her day had been. Dillon glanced down at the Omega strapped to his wrist and said that it would have to be later. He made an excuse about having to send a number of emails back to LJ, and went off to his study.
    He was dying to look at the notebook and find out what information, if any, was stored on the phone’s memory. But first, he looked at the images on the digital camera. There were a few long shots of Dunstan getting out of his car and going into the apartment building, and then some of Dunstan and Dillon coming out of the same door an hour later. He scrolled through the menu, found the ‘delete all images’ icon, and pushed the button. That done, he went through the mobile phone with a fine-tooth comb, found absolutely nothing of interest, and put that to one side, too.
    The private detective was Phil McVey and he was employed by the Samuels Detective Agency. ‘Sammy’ Samuels was a former drug squad Detective Sergeant in the Metropolitan Police and ran a high profile agency in the West End. It was the kind of agency whose books were always full and Hart must have paid a substantially large sum of money over and above their usual fee to get taken on so quickly.
    As Dillon had expected, the notebook contained the time McVey had taken up his position, the time of Havelock’s arrival and, of course, his car registration number. There was also a great deal of what looked to Dillon, like mobile text notes taking on the other assignments that he was working on. He tore out the relevant pages and put the notebook, along with the camera and phone, into a jiffy bag and sealed it. He addressed it to the Samuels Detective Agency and then called Vince Sharp and asked him to locate an ex-directory