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‘And even more important,’ said William, ‘she finally confirmed the reason Faulkner visited Prince Ahmed at the Dorchester in the middle of the night. It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to work out what Faulkner would have expected in return for removing the one witness who could not only bring down Prince Ahmed but also stop him making a vast fortune without lifting a finger.’

‘So it will be greed that gets both of them in the end,’ said Ross with some feeling.

‘The most common vice for explaining most crimes,’ said William, ‘but the first thing I’ll have to do when we get back to the Yard is phone the Foreign Office and warn Trevelyan that Simon Hartley’s life is in danger, so he can brief our man in Riyadh.’

‘Sir Bernard Anscombe,’ said Ross.

‘As you already know the Ambassador, perhaps you should return to Saudi, see Hartley and get him to repeat the wording of the all-important letter that Faulkner has clearly destroyed?’

‘I can’t go back to Riyadh,’ said Ross.

‘Why not?’

‘Khalil would work out within minutes why I’d returned. Don’t forget, he thinks I’m Declan O’Reilly, the Irish Minister of Marine and Natural Resources. However, Faulkner is presumably unaware that there’s another person who knows the wording of that letter of by heart.’

‘Simon’s son, Robert,’ said William, ‘who Lady Hartley said could recite the Declaration and the six letters long before his twelfth birthday.’

‘For which he was well paid,’ said Ross.

‘The Hartley heritage,’ they both repeated in unison.

‘So my next problem,’ said William, ‘is how to get in touch with young Robert Hartley before Faulkner realizes that he’s just as much of a threat as his father.’

‘That’s something you can leave to me.’

‘But how can you possibly have come across Robert Hartley?’ asked William as they joined the motorway and headed back towards London.

‘Don’t ask,’ said Ross.

•••

Prisoner number 147296 stood in front of the Governor at ‘Ulaysha Prison, his arms and legs bound in shackles.

‘I need you to do a job for me,’ said the Governor, as if he was asking him to make him a cup of tea. ‘However, I can assure you, your reward won’t be in heaven.’ He opened the top drawer of his desk and removed ten cellophane packets, each containing a thousand dollars – far more than the usual payment when the Governor needed to call on O’Driscoll’s particular skills. However, this job was likely to end in a judicial inquiry with witness statements, even if they wouldn’t be able to interview the suspect, as he would have been summarily executed long before an inquiry could take place.

The Governor wasn’t the only person who’d worked that out.

‘If you expect me to kill Hartley,’ said the prisoner calmly, ‘I won’t do it for less than a hundred thousand.’

The Governor hadn’t anticipated how much Simon Hartley had taught a willing pupil during the past two months. He was about to tell him to get lost when he remembered that, as his execution was set for Sunday afternoon, O’Driscollwould only be around for a few more days, so he was confident he would be able to retrieve most of the money.

But O’Driscoll hadn’t finished bargaining.

‘And I’m not interested in cash,’ he said. ‘The full amount must be transferred to my wife’s account in Dublin before I’ll lift a finger, and even then, I’ll need to hear her voice on the other end of the line confirming she’s received the money.’

‘You don’t trust me?’ said the Governor, attempting to look surprised.

‘Frankly, Governor, your word isn’t worth a riyal, let alone a hundred thousand dollars, but I’ll leave the choice to you.’

‘You’re not the only available candidate for the job,’ the Governor reminded him.

‘But I’m the only one,’ said O’Driscoll, ‘who won’t be around when they want to interview the suspect.’

The Governor knew when he’d run out of options.

CHAPTER 24

ROSS WAS TORN AS HEwrestled with the moral implications, even before he began to consider the risk factor.