Chapter 34 JAMESON
he hunt for Jameson intensified after witnesses, a retired couple whose
apartment overlooked the marina, told police they had seen Jameson arrive
late on the Sunday evening at the Hendaye Marina, accompanied by a tall
individual, later they said he left hurriedly and alone. Other witnesses reported
seeing Jameson in Biarritz, driving his Mercedes away from the Hôtel du Palais
early on the Sunday evening.
The partnership built-up between Jameson and Halfon had turned sour. The
collapse of Martínez Construcciones delivered the first body blow to their business.
Then property investments in the UK and Spain stalled as finance provided by
Hiltermann’s end of the Irish Netherlands Banking Group dried up. The
flamboyant lifestyle that had become the partners’ trademark: extravagant parties,
private jets, helicopters, luxury cars and yachts, slowly faded.
Jameson could have charmed the birds from the trees. Instead he found it more
profitably to charm money from the pockets of complacent bankers and investors.
Halfon on the other hand had not fared so well, time and again losing money with
his often ill-chosen get-rich-quick projects.
Cramer’s investigations did nothing more than confirm the two men were used to
living in grand style, often arriving Biarritz with an entourage of foreign friends,
no expenses spared, even more extravagant than the Russian nouveaux riche they
kept company with. As for their link to Hiltermann, enquiries to Amsterdam and
T
London confirmed the Dutchman had indeed been the head of the Nederlandsche
Nassau Bank and its Nassau Investment Fund. More interestingly questions had
been raised by the Dutch banking authorities concerning complaints from certain
investors on Hiltermann’s relations with the failed Spanish property tycoon
Fernando Martínez, and the information from London concerning the
disappearance from the bank’s Amsterdam branch of an important quantity of
negotiable bonds.
All across Spain the crisis was taking its toll. Almost three-quarters of British
expatriates in the country were weighing up the idea of returning home; a tough
choice for many. Those who depended on their British pensions were hit by the
falling value of the pound, others were trapped by the precipitous decline in
property prices, then came those who earned their living in Spain and who feared
for their businesses and jobs.
About one million Britons lived in the country where they had dreamt of a new
life in the sun. After years of prosperity, the dream had withered; few of them had
imagined they would be caught up in the worst economic crisis in decades, away
from home and in a country where unemployment was pushing twenty percent.
All across Europe the weak pound hit British expatriates hard as the crisis left no
country untouched, but it was those who owned properties on the Costas that were
hardest hit of all as prices dropped by as much as sixty five percent. For those
forced to sell up, the loss would be painful. Others would wake-up to find
themselves homeless and broke, forced to return home; their dreams shattered.
Many expatriates had left the UK in search of a better life, to escape the effects of
the greatest transformation in society since WWI, neglected infrastructure and poor
transport, with education and health services in a piteous shape. To many, who had
quit the UK, the country they had known had changed beyond all recognition.
Amongst them were those who had grown tired of seeing the rewards going to the
bonus culture establishment and their cohorts…and there were those hit by endless
influx of penniless immigrants and foreigners who had contributed nothing to
building Britain.
Hundreds of thousands of well-heeled UK citizens headed for France and Spain,
buying second or permanent homes. Savvy wheeler-dealers like Jameson had made
a good living from selling property and services to expatriate Brits, but times had
become harder for them as the crisis started to bite.
Owners of expatriate homes concentrated near the channel ports of Normandy
and Brittany had never been of interest to Jameson who catered for those who were
perhaps more sophisticated. Those who opted for integration into local
communities rather than live in narrow expat world; those who chosen Aquitaine in
the south-west, and more precisely in the Basque Country with the chic resorts of
Biarritz and Saint Jean de Luz.
The good times were forgotten and when the Spanish police started poking their
noses into the different developments promoted by Malaga Palms, Jameson had
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retreated to his home in Urrugne and his original business base in Biarritz, where
together with his partner Patrick Halfon they set about trying to save what they
could in the growing exodus.
They had never catered for the fish-and-chip or curry crowd, most of their clients
were better-off upper middle class, others were wealthy, and a few spoke good
French. For some the move was permanent, others kept homes in the UK, but in
general newcomers sought apartments or houses in and around Biarritz and
occasionally larger properties a little further inland.
During the boom years Jameson had met a great variety of home seekers,
including those who had made good in business, well-off retirees, artists, writers,
English teachers, skilled artisans, swindlers and criminals, and even those who
hoped to make a living from their compatriots. Amongst their predilected prey
were those who had taken out SIPPs, personal pension plans, which allowed
Britons to cash in their pension to invest in schemes such as property abroad.
There were even a few expats who continued to work in the City, using regular
Ryanair services to commute to and from London. As for our two partners they had
gotten used to travelling to London or Marbella, but not with the unwashed rabble,
preferring to use a private jet and often bringing their friends with them.
Far from Biarritz, in the south of Spain, Liam Clancy had seen his efforts
rewarded as slowly but surely he started to make a living by advising a growing
number of expats on how to protect their incomes and savings, avoiding unpleasant
surprises, avoiding unnecessary transfers of earnings and savings in an unstable
currency market, where banks rather than advise clients acted like sharks,
ensnaring their unsuspecting clients.
When the offer of a job in the City came from INI, he was at first inclined to turn
it down. He had already been thrown to the sharks when Fitzwilliams’ bank found
itself in difficulties, but after reflection it was difficult for him to resist the idea of
working in the City, the mythical heart of banking, where he could heal his
wounded pride.
After talking it over with his partners, Dolores Laborda Carvallo and Hugh
Murray, they agreed if an offer was serious he should accept it, but at the same
time he could continue to help them develop their business in Spain. He had
nothing to lose, if the job in London did not work out he would always have the
business in Spain to fall back on, and if it worked out with the bank it would be a
great reference for their business.
In any case the pull of London was too strong, it was not as if it was Dublin, of
which the Irish novelist Roddy Doyle said: ‘It’s a big con job. We have sold the
myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well; because it’s a dreary little dump
most of the time.’
With the different bits of the puzzle pieced together Cramer learnt that Loiola had
business in plans in Senegal with Halfon. The two men had met with Judge and
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Hiltermann at the Hôtel du Palais, where the Dutch banker was believed to have
handed over a large sum of money. Hiltermann then left with Loiola. What
happened afterwards was unclear, but according to witnesses at the hotel an
argument had followed and a bang was heard. That explained the death of Judge.
Towards mid-night, Halfon was then seen hurriedly leaving the hotel, and
according to Cramer’s theory, he joined Jameson on the Jai Alai, where
Hiltermann, Loiola together with two unidentified individuals.
Perhaps the bone of contention was the ownership of Fernando Martínez’s
luxurious motor yacht, which had come into Jameson possession in confused
circumstances shortly before the Martínez bankruptcy. The deal for whatever it
was worth had caused considerable jealousy between Jameson and his partner, with
Halfon considering he had been dealt out.
The presence of the two unidentified men on yacht that evening, rumoured to be
Basque nationalists, was indicative of a link to Loiola’s crooked property dealings
in Hendaye. In any case Cramer established a link between the two murders
classifying them as ‘un reglement de comptes’, an expression the French liked to
use to describe vengeance killings, the settling of scores, frequently between
criminals and the like. Such crimes were low on their list of priorities, and when
there were scandalous political implications, including corruption, they were
quickly hushed-up.
The economic crisis, which appeared to at the root of that particular drama,
seemed to have calmed. It was as though an abscess had been pierced, the pus
drained, and the patient though looking tired and pale was on the mend, the worse
had seemed to have been avoided. Ahead lay a long period of convalescence. Vast
sums of money had been poured into economy and that money would have to be
paid back weighing heavily on the patients prospects of a full recovery.
At the time of the Lehman collapse it had seemed the world’s financial system
was near to meltdown, it had not happened. The massive printing of money by
central banks had averted Armageddon, but the pervading market volatility was a
sign that all was not entirely well.
The public had tired of the crisis and its related dramas. Halfon was written off,
disappeared, leaving no visible trail. With his affairs in France seriously
compromised, Halfon, feeling the heat, had slipped off for an undetermined period
of time to escape the wolves. His exile, temporary or otherwise, would not
however be one of misery. He could look forward to the comforts of a palatial
home overlooking the sea on a private beach in the Senegalese beach resort of
Saly, where he was developing a tourist project, including second homes
overlooking the ocean and a safari resort in the Niokola Koba National Park on the
Gambia River, to the east of the country, some seven hundred bumpy kilometres
inland.
People were lulled into believing the crisis was over, and like elsewhere, tensions
in the small seaside town of Hendaye had fallen; it was though people had accepted
their fate. There, two subjects of conversation replaced that of the Jai Alai scandal,
as it became to be known. The first concerned the possibility that the San Sebastian
Airport, across the Bidassoa River, would extend its runway by two hundred
metres ― and the effect an increased number of flight rotations would have on real
estate values, the second was the choice of the route of the new Paris-Madrid high
speed rail link, which would affect the value of property situated within a one
kilometre wide band to each side of the future line
