Free A Tale of Two Cities by John Silvester Page B

Rye, one of the syndicate’s new couriers, a woman called Joyce Allez, codenamed ‘Buckteeth’, was arrested at Sydneyairport bringing in heroin from Singapore. It was a random arrest: an alert customs officer had noticed that the tartan suitcases were unusually thick at the bottom. Allison Dine and her friend Kay Reynolds had been waiting for Allez and panicked when they saw her arrested. They were even more alarmed when police spoke to Allez’s workmates at the Chinatown massage parlour where they had recruited Allez. The courier had not revealed where she got the heroin, insisting it had come from an unknown stranger in Singapore. The police soon caught up with Dine and Reynolds but they, too, said nothing. Dine got in touch with Clark in London and he called on Trimbole to help, proof that the friendly Godfather from Griffith had effectively taken over the Australian end of The Organisation.
    Trimbole shifted the two women to a flat he owned in Sydney’s western suburbs. They moved on swiftly, with investigators tailing them. After seven days of pressure Dine ‘cracked’ and persuaded a friendly doctor to commit her to a psychiatric hospital. It was not a mad idea. When Trimbole contacted her with an escape plan the over-stretched Bureau of Narcotics wasn’t watching. Trimbole told her to slip out of the hospital and get a passport photograph taken, wearing a wig and glasses. He handed her a blank passport application form and told her to fill it out in the name ‘Royda Lee Blackburn’. Two days later, she met him at the gates of Centennial Park in Sydney – a spot from where it would be easy to see if she were being followed. She wasn’t being tailed; the ‘narcs’ were too busy. Dine flew to London to join the entourage, chaperoned by an Argentinian called Roberto Fionna, a punting mate of Trimbole’s and Shepherd’s and the nominal owner of their favourite Sydney restaurant, Tati’s.
    In London, The Organisation was in trouble, but no one realised yet. The crew lived hard – partying like those with much to forget. Which, especially in Clark’s case, was true.
    Within weeks the inveterate gambler Shepherd had persuaded Clark (under the name ‘Sinclair’) to join Ladbroke’s private casino. And Trimbole soon flew in and joined them at the West End gaming tables, setting the scene and making the contacts – although he might not have known it then – for the fugitive life he would be leading within a couple of years. The group lived high and fast, their days revolving around manic spending sprees with the endless supply of cash Clark kept in bundles around the apartment. The others had always been punters – like most criminals – but heavy gambling was a new vice for Clark, who had always seen betting as a mug’s game.
    Now, instead of playing his cards close to his chest, he played them recklessly – dropping tens of thousands of pounds on the gaming tables. He had boasted he had so much money he ‘couldn’t spend the interest’ and his housekeeper would later paint a bizarre picture of a man who had money to throw away – literally.
    She would see him scrunch up new banknotes, put some in his pocket, drop some on the floor and throw others in the waste paper bin. He was also drinking heavily and early in the day and no longer worried about physical fitness the way he had in Sydney.
    Interestingly, given his father’s stern opposition to his early criminal tendencies, his own family seemed to have turned a blind eye to the possible source of his astonishing wealth. Clark led an outing to the countryside outside London for the wedding of his sister, who lived on a farm. The entourage was growing. Some found the lure of the high life hard to resist, and were willing to make compromises.
    But the danger of being close to Clark was that eventually he would turn on you. And they all knew –