Framed by Lynda La Plante Read Free Book Online Page A

Charlotte Lampton also, as we want no one contacted." He held up the three passports that were found in the study, spread out like a hand of cards. "These were taken from his villa. His photograph is on all three, so they are forgeries. His residency is illegal."
"If you charge him," Larry said, "he has to go through a court case . . ."
Dominguez nodded.
"But that could take months."
"He is my prisoner," Dominguez said flatly. "If you wish to have Senor Von Joel formally extradited, then we go by the correct procedure, but—"
"But we know he's Edward Myers," Larry cut in. "We've got proof."
Dominguez blinked patiently. "Listen to me. Please. He was arrested in Spain, and legally you cannot just take him back to England. . . ."
Larry threw up his hands and turned away, optimism and patience draining from him.
"It's bloody stupid," he said, walking along the beach ten minutes later with Falcon and Summers. He stopped, determined to impress on the other two just how preposterous the situation was. "They've got us by the short and curlies. Just picture it. How the hell do they think all the villains get to stay put out here? Legal crap can string us out for months, years. If they grant him bail, he'll be out of the country like a shot. Have they impounded his boat? They should sort that."
"Just shut it, Larry," DI Falcon said, sounding weary. "He said Von Joel had asked to see a lawyer. He didn't say he'd permitted it. He's giving us a break."
"Us? Eddie Myers, you mean."
    "No, us, " Falcon said, starting to sound angry. "I sussed out what he's up to. He's got Von Joel—or Myers, if you prefer—locked up in a holding cell. Nobody even knows he's been nabbed, and they can keep him there. Understand? How long do you think he's going to wait in that sweatbox

Larry was shaking his head, still unaware that anything subtle was going on.
"I just don't bloody believe it. How long do we have to wait for them to make their minds up?" He almost wagged a finger at the DI, then thought better of it. "I'm warning you, they're messing us about."
"Oh, yeah?" Falcon stuck his face closer to Larry's. "Let's see how long the bronzed wonder can last in a bug-infested cell with two drunks, a druggie and one bucket to piss in!" He laughed. "Great frigging legal system! See— the Spanish authorities don't want all the aggro of dealing with him, but they can't legally release him over to us unless he—"
"He agrees to come of his own free will?" Larry said, catching on. "Right!"
Light dawned full and bright. All at once Larry felt better about everything.

By ten-thirty the sun had gone down and the only light in the cell was from a dim wire-caged bulb set into the ceiling. Philip Von Joel sat on a filthy blanket on the floor. In one corner behind him an alcoholic pickpocket slept unevenly, belching and coughing and keeping up a seamless monologue that was a shade too quiet to hear. It amused Von Joel—though not enough to make him laugh or even smile—that an alcoholic with a bad tremor and no discernible coordination had tried to make a living in a branch of crime that required, above all, slick timing and steady hands.
In a corner by the door the third occupant of the cell, a drug addict who was even smellier than the drunk, appeared to be asleep, too, although he groaned a lot and every two minutes or so his eyes rolled open and a sharp rigor took hold of his body, straightening his spine sharply and making his head strike the wall. He was incredibly thin, dressed only in cut-off jeans. His back, legs, and arms were covered with crops of circular purplish lesions; some of them were blistered, others bled from contact with the cement floor.
The fourth prisoner lay along the wall to Von Joel's left, swathed in rags. He looked dead.
Von Joel sat erect, distancing himself from this place, separating his senses from the confinement and the squalor. It was not easy. He was a compulsively clean man, acutely fastidious in matters of health and