Shroud of Concealment (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

for a moment, listening to the sound of the city in the background and staring down at the river, six floors below him. Sitting on a lounger, he opened the file that Havelock had handed him after dinner and started to read the first page of a typed document. Since he’d got to know, and like, Dunstan Havelock, he had dropped a lot of the hard-man façade, and had over the years even started to trust him. More importantly, he trusted the man’s integrity.
    After ten minutes of reading, he closed the file, finished his drink, stood up and went back inside, pulling the glass panel closed behind him. As he walked past a large oak-framed mirror, he stopped and took a good look at himself. His dark hair, once shoulder length, was now shorter but still as unruly as it had ever been. There was little he could do with the laughter lines that had started to appear in the corner of his eyes and around the mouth.
    And the scaring over his body would always be there as a reminder of his rough past and, to some extent, his present lifestyle.
    Dillon used his exceptional intelligence gathering talents; freelancing for Ferran & Cardini International, and the British Government, when it suited them. He charged a flat fee of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds per assignment, which fuelled an expensive lifestyle. Anything left over was shrewdly invested for a rainy day. The small, run-down West End theatre that he’d invested a large sum of money into a year ago was an indulgence he could afford. It not only appealed to his theatrical alter ego, but also gave him immense satisfaction to be involved with the renovation, when time allowed, in bringing back the building to its former glory. This was an extravagant project which Dillon immediately found an effective stress buster and a million light years away from the violent world that he moved in on a day to day basis. After looking at himself for a second or two, he rubbed an imaginary itch on his chin and then went off to bed.

    * * *

    It was still quite early the next morning, although Issy had already gone off to her office in Chelsea. He got out of bed to make coffee, took it back to the sofa where he had left Havelock’s folder and went through it again.
    It was obvious that the man who at present had the Vermeer painting was extremely wealthy. Anyone who lived where he did had to be. The Vermeer was apparently part of a magnificent collection. Dillon didn’t need to go and check out the place to accept that it would have a state-of-the art alarm system, and possibly more than one. Breaking in would be a non-starter on his own, but he knew someone who might be persuaded to help him.
    Charlie Hart had started life in New Delhi, India. He was born there in 1951. His father had been promoted and posted there to manage the British Imperial Import & Export Company office, and had subsequently made a comfortable living for the family. By the time Charlie was thinking about coming to live in England, he’d already made a fortune by trading in a variety of things, but it was property development in the UK that had made his wealth grow. So the dossier proclaimed. He still had strong trading links with India and Pakistan, and traded quite a lot in Northern Europe. Dillon pondered, Northern Europe; now that was an interesting area. What would he be trading there that was profitable? Background information had been checked and verified at the time when Hart came to the UK. Immigration had seen no problems with allowing him permanent residency, as he was already a British subject.
    Hart hadn’t wasted any time and had soon established himself as a major player within city property development circles. Before leaving India, Hart’s parents had been kidnapped. He had paid the first ransom with no hesitation, but when the company that his father had loyally served for more than twenty years refused to pay the second ransom, they were both murdered, their bodies dumped outside of the gates of