Chapter One


Few of Jardiniera's clients lived in Monaco, for the simple reason that few residents of the principality possessed a garden. The high-rise apartment blocks jostling for a tax-free footing on its expensive square kilometre of the Cote d'Azur left little room for the landscaped riots of greenery to be found in the grounds of villas to east and west.

An exception to this rule was, however, one of Jardiniera's best clients. Barney Tozer was in fact rather more than a client, having bought himself a slice of the company and with it the implicit right to prompt attention whenever he required it. He had also bought himself, at a price Tim Harding should only have been able to guess at but actually knew to the last eye-watering zero, the penthouse apartment in one of the most prestigious blocks in La Condamine. Thanks to the sheerness of the rock face against which the block had been built, the penthouse came complete with its own garden, perched at the level of the next road above, commanding a fine view of the yacht-crammed Port de Monaco and the sparkling blue vastness of the Mediterranean.

An electronically operated shutter-door set in the high stone rear wall of the garden gave access to a double garage, sparing its owner the need to squeeze his four-wheel-drive giant into the communal garage in the block's basement and allowing Harding to drive his Jardiniera truck in off the road after entering the four-digit code he had been trusted with on the number-panel attached to the entryphone.

Harding was a well-built, broad-shouldered man in his late forties, brown hair bleached blond enough by the sun to camouflage the streaks of grey, skin so deeply tanned that his blue-grey eyes ...