Frank & Dave - Britain's finest

Episode 35 of the Lymp Duhdashian series

Frank took his first jog since getting shot in the legs around Kensington Park. It was not easy so he didn’t push himself too far. He sat on a park bench for a while and then took out his iPhone. He called his secretary in the Central London MI6 offices, gave her a briefing about his recovery and then asked for copies of everything she could find on Dribbly Dick the pornographer. “Photo match possibility…. long shot” he added “Cross reference his image with our KGB archive, would you?”

He slid his iPhone into its shield and returned it to his sweatshirt pocket. He pulled his hood back up and flexed his rigid leg muscles. C’mon man! he gritted his teeth and willed himself forward. He wished he hadn’t weaned himself off the painkillers for a few seconds but then, as always, he remembered how dumb he had felt while taking them. Why are all pharma drugs so damned toxic? He resolved to call in to visit a good cannabis dealer he knew on the other side of the park and that in itself spurred him on to quicken his pace a little.

Diamond had gone out to meet up with Pru for lunch but did not expect to be home much before dinner so Frank had plenty of time to complete his run and work on an outstanding task. He needed to get into the late Mrs Duhdashian’s suite. He was looking for anything that might reveal who Dribbly Dick really was and precisely what business interests he shared with the Duhdashian family.

The housekeeper’s keys were hanging on a hook in the kitchen where she had unhappily left them. Unhooking them, Frank went up the stairs to the two floors that were only accessed via a single locked door on the second floor. He examined the lock, selected a few likely candidate keys and tried them one after another. Eventually the lock turned and he went inside. All the blinds were closed and everything was exactly as Mrs Duhdashian had left it when she departed for her trip to France. All very neat and tidy. Not a piece of paper out of place. Frank began searching the desk and switched on the laptop.

It seemed that Mrs Duhdashian did not use emails often but there was one from Dick, way back in August which caught his eye. It was a draft contract for funding his film. The contract had been prepared by a famous Russian television company. Frank photographed the screen before switching everything off and relocking the door.

A courier arrived just as Frank reached the ground floor. The heavy brown paper parcel from Head Office bore no labels. He signed for it and thanked the motorcyclist.

When Diamond got home he was sprawled out on the couch asleep.

—0—

Riding a storm is a tricky business. It takes constant attention and patience. Attention to all the monitors in the wheelhouse, attention to minor adjustments to the sails and patience within the self, enough to quell any suggestion of fear. Dave was often heard giving sea shanty stories of storms successfully ridden and drawing an analogy with a life well-lived. “Living is a series of challenges which must be faced.” he would say soberly.

Dave did not understand landlubbers. He had tried living in a house on land, under duress when he was a kid, but as soon as school was behind him he went to sea. First as a ferry worker, then a fisherman on a factory ship and finally, as soon as he was old enough, he joined the British Navy. The moment he first donned his uniform was etched into his emotions, let alone his memory. Just the merest glimpse of the memory could bring tears to his eyes, even though he was now over 50 years of age. The pride he felt was too big for his chest. His description of the feeling.

It was a damned shame that he had not remained as innocent as he had been as a teenager. Over 25 years of service Dave knew a thing or two about the British military that they did not even seem to know about themselves. He knew that they were gung ho for war. He knew that all wars were bankers wars. He had read every word written by General Smedley Butler and he knew it was all true. He had seen it with his own two eyes. He had been a typical drunken sailor for a very brief period in his youth, but he had soon matured beyond that to become a responsible officer and a silent critical thinker. He wanted the Navy to be as honourable as his boyhood dreams, but it never was. He knew he was working for the predatorial classes very early on, in his long career. That is why he had always owned his own boat. He worked his way up from a basic rowing boat to the ketch by buying and fixing boats in his spare time. He planned to retire and live, sailing for the rest of his life.

Utilising years of practiced thought projection, Dave saw himself guiding SeaSwan up the Thames to London. He wanted to deliver one of London’s strangest princesses straight to her door. Olympia had paid for everything. She had settled his debts with the boatyard and paid the Miami charter company a bonus to keep them sweet. The way Dave saw it, she was funding a homeless, unemployed old sailor out of the goodness of her own heart. He was in awe of her. Nobody had ever been that kind to him before.

The fact that he was providing Olympia with a clever and cheap way to smuggle her boyfriend (with a Mexican passport) into the UK unobserved, had not escaped him. This was one of those life challenges that Dave loved to face.

He knew the history of passports and held them in contempt of freedom. Anyone who thought otherwise was a sad, irredeemable landlubber, as far as Dave was concerned.