Free A Tale of Two Cities by John Silvester Page A

toClark that his own rank in The Organisation was still little-known – he was still one name among many – but that the careless playboy Johnstone was dangerously exposed.
    The first thing Clark’s big-time barrister Peter Williams did to earn his fee (reportedly $56,000) was to get his trial switched to Wellington on the grounds of possible prejudice. When the trial began, Williams used all his court room tactics to sway the jury. Meanwhile, if Clark’s boasting were to be believed, Clark was doing all he could to sway certain witnesses, some of whom were not as positive as they had been during the committal. Whether this is true is hard to say, but Clark often claimed later that the acquittal cost him $250,000. When the jury returned the ‘not guilty’ verdict Karen Soich raised eyebrows by embracing Clark in court, a gesture more courtesan than counsel. French champagne flowed in a hotel room that night; next day Clark bought a new Jaguar to celebrate. He drove it to visit a friend in his old ‘boarding school’, Wi Tako Prison. The message, to warders and prisoners alike, was clear. While they were stuck inside, Terry Clark was conquering the world. It was a long way from the shifty thief and informer he’d been only a few years before.
    Clark was juggling women as well as risks. Allison Dine flew from Australia to ‘celebrate’ with him. They celebrated their brains out in a luxury hotel suite in the daytime before Clark would return to Maria for the night. When Dine returned to Sydney, Clark followed, heavily disguised. He told everyone he was going by ship, and then flew, to buy himself three secret days in Sydney with Dine. For the moment, his budding relationship with the glamorous Soich was on hold. But each had baited a hook. For her, it was Hollywood meets Chicago. She was going to play a part in a real-life drama – a bigger role than she would get in the law.
    Meanwhile, Martin ‘Mr Asia’ Johnstone was sinking into a marijuana-induced haze that pushed him steadily lower inClark’s bleak estimation. ‘Chinese Jack’ reported that Johnstone was too stoned to do business properly, that he was taking shortcuts, doing deals on the side to cut out The Organisation, and short changing people who were owed money. These included the crew of a trawler called
Konpira
and a couple of other boats, which were supposed to be ‘legitimate’ fronts but which Johnstone neglected: the boats deteriorating and the crews idle and unpaid. Clark saw all this as risky.
    By the new year of 1979, Johnstone had joined the Wilsons on Clark’s list of things to do. He had enlisted the aid of the English knockabout Andy Maher, who had worked with Johnstone at an Auckland menswear shop in the early 1970s but had returned to Northern England, where he was a useful member of The Organisation as it spread into the UK. By the time the Wilsons were killed in April 1979, Clark was quietly planning Johnstone’s demise – and Maher was part of the plan. It would be a classic set up: to use someone close to Johnstone to destroy him.
    A week before the Wilsons’ decomposed bodies were found at Rye, Clark flew to London with Maria and their baby son, Jarrod. He booked into a suite at the London Hilton and bought a Mercedes, but left the hotel on 20 May – straight after the Wilsons’ bodies were found – and moved into an expensive Mayfair flat, rented by Jim Shepherd in a false name. They hired a woman called Argentino Colaco as a nurse to look after the baby Jarrod, and a chauffeur, Sylvester Pidgeon, who had in fact lost his driving licence for drunk driving. The man driving a big international drug smuggler around London had no licence – a huge risk if the car were stopped by an inquisitive policeman.
    BACK in Australia, the syndicate was starting to fray. The same week that the police pulled the Wilsons’ bodies out of the sandy soil at