Brian Freemantle: The Namedropper

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!