Page 19 - double revenge 3.

THE COTTAGE
KENNINGTON ROAD

LONDON
TH
MONDAY APRIL 13 1998

Brenda Ambler had been my secretary when I worked in Century House and had come across with
me when we opened the Cottage. Officially still my secretary she was, however, a natural detective
but her speciality wasn’t door to door, it was tracing people, their whereabouts, their history, their
predilections anything that could be traced on paper records, observation cameras, cash point

machines and speed cameras. It also appeared, at times, that she knew every personal secretary of
every significant person in every key office in the UK.

She arrived for work bright and early, just as I thought she would. She threw me a mock salute as
she entered. ‘Detective Sergeant Ambler reporting for duty sir.’

‘You’ll probably make inspector with this one Bren.’ I returned her silly salute.

‘What we have is an American from Boston who is now somewhere in the UK presumably London.
The Brief’s on the desk but do not take too much notice of it, some of it just doesn’t ring true.’

I let Brenda have a quick read through the Brief and continued, ‘If he is just an investment advisor
then it is unlikely that he will know how to obtain a false identity in the UK but that is the route we

will follow first.’

‘Do we have a photo?’

‘No. This guy seems to have avoided cameras from a very early age.’

‘Why do we need to find him? I couldn’t see anything in the Brief. What is he to us?’

‘No idea. He certainly has not absconded with Mafia money of that I am certain. We will find him
first and answer our curiosity later. Check with the post office. If he has applied for a British
passport then he will need an address. The passport office will not post a passport to an
accommodation address so he will have taken an address out of the phone book, forged a utility
bill, which is easy on a computer these days and then applied for forwarding mail facilities.

The people at that address will not know a thing about it. See how many forwarding addresses to
mail boxes the post office has, check them against the electoral roll and if any look fishy then check
the names with Passport Office. Use the old man’s authority, it will get a faster response than mine,
but don’t tell him I told you to. Hopefully that shouldn’t take too long; the Post Office can’t forward
to very many mail boxes. Then there is something else I would like you to look at. Check the details
in the brief about his parents’ death and see what you can come up with.’

‘Yes I read that, unfortunate timing, the day after he left home!’