The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller Read Online Free Page A

on the pavement” the night before.
     
         “I wasn’t spark out!” he protested. “I’d been attacked and …”
     
         Lowther was chuckling away.  “Yeah, yeah, I can see it all here, they said you were hallucinating too! Must be the DTs bonny lad! I’ve heard of imaginary friends before but imaginary enemies?” There is nothing a police officer likes more than to rip the Mickey out of a lawyer. The case was odd, though.  It wasn’t just the usual fish quay conspiracy of silence, which had a long history from the days of the Napoleonic Wars when they had sent the press gangs packing. The modern victims were DSS snoopers. Since the MAFF started to de-commission fishing boats, the official payroll had reduced considerably. But the over-enthusiastic questioning of the part-employed fishermen, whom the DSS suspected of moonlighting, meant the snoopers could often be seen sliding down the gut on the bones of their arse. Added to that dislike of anyone who was not from the Tyne riverbank the case had spawned a virulent stream of racism because the main suspect was Russian. The locals had him convicted before he was tried.
     
         An interpreter was present at Jack’s meeting with the client because the police had assumed he couldn‘t understand English when he had failed to answer their questions. Yet when Jack had a few moments alone with him he discovered this was a device. The Russian not only understood the language, he was well-educated, as many Russians had been under the Soviet system. He was very pleased to find that Jack had visited his country. “Where did you go?” he asked.
     
         “I went to Moscow on business just after the Soviet Union started splitting up. It was scary. The wild east they called it. Petersburg, was okay.”
     
         “Ah, I was born in the east. Never been to Petersburg,” Peter replied. “They say it is a very western city and it has no soul.”
     
         “No? Well, I had this long-standing wish to go to the Hermitage and see the chess sets of some of the Tsars. Peter the Great and Catherine the Second. They have the Faberge one of the last Tsar, Nicholas the Second, too.”
     
         “You are a chess player?”
     
         “Yes. Why? You play chess, too?”
     
         “Well of course, I am Russian!”
     
         “Oh yes, part of the education. I wonder if you will continue to be so great when the State system is no longer behind you?”
     
         The Russian smiled. “I suspect Kasparov is the last of the line,” he replied.
     
         Peter reckoned he played a pretty mean game of chess and when you are a player and a Russian tells you that, you listen, and not just because of Kasparov and Karpov and a few others, but because of a long history of chess hegemony going back to between the world wars. “Did you know,” Jack asked, “that Ivan the Terrible died over a chess board, playing with his successor, Boris Godunov?”
     
         “No I didn’t!” Peter laughed. “Foul play was it?”
     
         “Officially it was a heart attack but maybe he was getting a good beating, although the eye witness account from the English ambassador suggests it happened before the game began in earnest.”
     
         “So there was an Englishman there then, too?” Peter’s eyes twinkled. He had totally relaxed in Jack’s company and they had scarcely discussed the case.
     
         Peter’s history was equally interesting. Before being press-ganged into the family business, he had entertained notions of an academic post at a Russian university. That had been knocked on the head, though, by the Afghan War, into which he had been conscripted.
     
         “The Russian-Afghan War?” Jack asked.
     
         “Is there another? You and the Americans were on the other side, arming the Taliban.” He didn’t say it like an accusation but the irony wasn‘t lost. “They killed a lot of my