And it worked every time.
Sometimes my boots weren’t even checked, and when they were, the guard paid them very little attention. After walking through the metal detector, I’d collect my phone, boots and belt from the other side and be on my way.
Lifting diamonds was the biggest line I’d ever blurred in my life, but the shot of adrenalin that hit me every time I walked out the front gate left me walking on air.
It was hard to walk without a skip in my step, but my jubilation always dropped a few notches once I got into Glen’s car. He was much better at the poker face than I, and it was always business as usual until we pulled up outside the fat cat camp and made the exchange. That’s usually when excitement took over.
Today I was especially gleeful. “I got three,” I bragged, pulling off my boot.
Glen grabbed a pair of tweezers out of the centre console and plucked the tiny rocks from the rubber sole. “You’re amazing,” he praised, holding each stone up to the light.
“Amazing but poor,” I replied. “When am I going to start seeing some money?”
As exciting as the week had been, it could only go on for so long. I needed to ascertain when the diamonds were leaving town, where they were going, and who he was using as a fence. I continually pushed the issue of money in a bid to find out, but in typical Glen style, he was cagey when it came to answering questions.
“Soon,” he replied vaguely. “Very soon.”
I slumped back, thumping my head against the headrest. “That’s not good enough any more,” I complained. “I’m not doing this for free.”
I wasn’t the only person frustrated by the lack of progress. However shady he might’ve been, Iron Mike was the only contact I had when it came to relaying intel back to my employer. I’d been keeping him in the loop via text messages sent from the secret phone under the shack.
For the first few days he seemed pleased with the headway I’d made. He’d reply within seconds, using words like “excellent” or “outstanding”, but as progress slowed he reverted to his usual round of threats and malice. The last communication I received was less than heart-warming.
- Get the job done. Don’t become expendable.
The only hope I had of avoiding that was to keep pushing Tweedledee for payment.
“I want my money, Glen.”
“All in good time.” He pulled a yellow tobacco tin from his shirt pocket, carefully placed the three small diamonds inside and snapped the lid closed. “There’s a charter plane leaving next week,” he told me, slipping the tin back into his pocket. “The haul will be delivered to a jeweller in Belgium. Once they’re cut and sold, we’ll both be paid.”
The massive revelation was proof positive that he trusted me implicitly. It also meant that I was closer than ever to wrapping things up and going home.
“Can I see them?” I asked hopefully.
“The rocks?”
“Yeah.” I nodded eagerly. “It’d be cool to see them all together before they’re gone.”
Disclosing the location of a fortune’s worth of stolen diamonds wasn’t smart, but Glen was no scholar. He was an egomaniac who was keen to impress, which probably explained why he took me to his house to check out the wares.
I was no longer scared of Glen Harris. Over time I had come to realise his foul, crotchety attitude was brought on by stress – an occupational hazard for those who spend most of their time in bed with the devil. In my opinion, he was a lonely, desperate crook who was having a hard time holding it together.
The state of his house did nothing to change my mind. The place was a pigsty. The stench of stale cigarette smoke hit me the second he opened the door, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Overflowing ashtrays and empty rum bottles littered every surface. But it wasn’t the worst I’d ever seen, and I tried hard not to appear grossed out by it.
“Wait here,” he instructed, disappearing into the bedroom.
I stood by the door and waited, my eyes darting across the messy scene. “You know the company provides cleaners, right?” I called.
“I don’t want anyone snooping around in here,” he replied, returning to the room.
My focus shifted to the yellow tin in his hand. When he gave it a shake, my eyes lit up.
After transferring the gems from the tin in his pocket to the one in his hand, he set it on the bench. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” he asked with reverence.
I couldn’t decide one way or the other. There was nothing overly pretty about the two hundred or so gems in the tin. They were tiny – some no bigger than the head of a match – but there was no denying their worth. There was hundreds of thousands of dollars in that small tin, and I’d all but sold my soul to help fill it.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
Glen snapped the tin shut. “Be patient and wait for your money,” he replied. “A few weeks from now you’ll be on easy street.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” I grinned at him. “More than you’ll ever know.”
Fool
MITCHELL
Absolutely nothing gets by Mimi. As far as I knew, the only two people who knew about our plans for skipping town were Shiloh and I, but somehow, Mimi was on to us.
Understandably, she was worried about losing her job if I closed the Crown and Pav – so worried that she turned up at the door to discuss it.
“Nothing has been decided yet, Mimi,” I told her. “But I’ll make sure you’re looked after.” I just wasn’t sure how.
She pressed her hands against my cheeks. “You are a good, dumb boy,” she told me through gritted teeth. “Your mother will be proud to have her son home.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
She dropped her hold and wandered through to the kitchen. “I will make you food,” she offered. “Where is the girl?”
I put my fingers to my lips. “Sleeping. She just finished working nightshift.”
Ignoring me, she grabbed the only saucepan I owned and slammed it on the stove. “She still needs to eat to keep her mind sharp,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “She does very important work.”
I frowned. “Since when have you cared about her work?” I asked. “Or the sharpness of her mind?”
Mimi grabbed the basket of vegetables we kept on the counter. “Protecting the diamonds is important work,” she replied.
I laughed, but her serious expression remained. “Whatever you say, Mimi.”
“Get outside and leave me in peace,” she barked, pointing at the door.
“This is my house,” I reminded her. “You can’t kick me out.”
She leaned across the table, jabbing a carrot at me as if it was a dagger. “Today it is my kitchen,” she growled. “Now scat.”
I knew better than to argue, so I retreated to the front deck, but short of actually stabbing me with the carrot there wasn’t anything Mimi could do to sour my mood that day.
Plenty of good things were going on. Shiloh had just finished a nine-day stint at work, which meant she was free and easy for a while. And assuming that the bus from Cape Town didn’t break down along the way, the sleek Greeks were due back from holiday within the next day or two. I looked at the shack next door and decided that a bit of housekeeping was in order. The beach had almost claimed their front deck, making it look even more abandoned than usual.
Mimi was obviously watching me. Before I even picked up the broom, she appeared. “You should sweep your own floor,” she called. “It’s a mess.”
I couldn’t help smiling. The woman was like an irritating mosquito. “Aren’t you supposed to be cooking?”
“A watched pot never boils, dumb boy.”
A smart retort was impossible but I was prepared to give it a shot, right up until someone else caught my attention. A man staggered around the corner of my shack, flicking up sand in his wake. Clearly he was drunk, but it wasn’t any run-of-the-mill derro. It was Shiloh’s idiot boss, Glen.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Where’s Shiloh?” He grabbed onto the railing of the steps to steady himself. “I want to talk to her.”
“Well, you can’t,” I replied. “She’s sleeping.”
He should’ve been too. As far as I knew, they worked the same shifts. Levering himself off the railing, Glen staggered a few steps to the side. “She’s very good at her job,” he slurred. “Crafty and sly. You should be proud.”
Today must’ve been Shiloh Jenson Appreciation Day. Perhaps I’d missed the memo. I looked across at Mimi and frowned. She shrugged her shoulders. “What do you want, drunken fool?” she snapped, sounding far more menacing that I ever could.
Glen pointed a half-empty bottle of rum at her, managing to slosh a good amount on his shirt in the process. “I want to be rich,” he yelled. “And I want to be free of this place.”
I’d seen enough drunks in my time to know that he was incapable of talking sense, but one thing he was capable of was creating a ruckus. Using the bottle in his hand, he dragged it back and forth along the lattice siding on the shack, singing at the top of his lungs. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend was the tune of choice – but his plastered, dying-cat version was impossible to listen to.
Not surprisingly, the commotion woke Shiloh. She pushed past Mimi and marched onto the deck. “What are you doing?” she growled.
He raised his bottle. “Celebrating!” he yelled. “Join me.”
Shiloh shook her head, looking repulsed. “You’re drunk,” she said, pointing out the obvious. “Go home and sleep it off.”
Glen didn’t. He went back to doing his best Marilyn Monroe impression, which was neither authentic nor comical. It was pathetic.
Mimi broke first. In a move I could never have predicted, she reached into a pocket of her dress and pulled out an onion. With the precision of a pro baseball player, she pegged it at Glen. He folded like a cheap suitcase, dropping him to the sand in an instant.
“Mimi!” yelled Shiloh, looking appalled.
I didn’t yell anything, but if I had it probably would have been words of praise for such a perfect shot.
Mimi marched to the top of the steps, hands on hips. “Get up, fool.”
Glen remained flat out on the sand. For the longest time all I could hear was the sound of breaking waves, and then he finally spoke.
“You spilled my drink, woman,” he muttered, disproving my theory that he was dead.
Perhaps the adage about knocking sense into someone is true. After a long moment he sat up and picked his bottle off the sand. “I have to go,” he slurred, staggering to his feet. “Things to do, people to see.”
None of us tried to stop him as he stumbled away, but Shiloh looked worried.
“We’ll check on him later if you want,” I offered.
“No.” She shook her head. “He’s not our problem.”
Mimi was in agreement. The only thing she was worried about was whether she could salvage the onion. She puffed her way across the sand, picked it up and brushed it off.
Shiloh threw both arms out. “Did you have to hit him, Mimi?”
“He deserved it,” she retorted. “He was making a fool of himself.”
Shiloh held her head as if her brain ached. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered, pacing the veranda. “This place is Loony Tunes.”
Suddenly I was immensely thankful to be out of reach of both of them. I leaned the broom against the shack and leaned over the railing. “Maybe you should go, Mimi,” I suggested.
She held up the onion. “But I’m making you soup.”
Shiloh spun around. “Not with that, you’re not! Take your bloody onion with you!”
***
I swept the sleek Greeks’ deck far more thoroughly than I’d ever cleaned my own. Diligence had nothing to do with it – I was in no hurry to deal with Shiloh. I’d dealt with enough pissed-off women in my time to know that giving her some breathing space would be mutually beneficial.
When I did eventually go home, mad Mimi was gone. Her pot of soup took pride of place on the stove, adding another ten degrees to the temperature of the room as it boiled. I turned off the heat and courageously walked into the bedroom.
Somewhere in the bundled-up quilt, Shiloh lay hidden. I could barely see her head poking out, which wasn’t one of her brighter moves.
“You’re going to get heatstroke,” I warned, crawling across the bed.
“We have to get out of here, Mitchell,” she mumbled, “or we’re going to succumb to far worse than that.”
I put my hand on her forehead. “We’re leaving,” I assured her. “Just as soon as we get through that cauldron of soup.”
“She used all the vegies,” she pointed out. “We have nothing else to eat until market day.”
“Mimi means well, Shiloh.” I peeled the quilt off her and dropped it on the floor. “She’s just a little heavy-handed.”
“She knocked a bloke out with an onion.”
It was impossible not to laugh. “It sounds bad when you put it like that.”
“It is bad, Mitchell,” she scolded. “She’s a nutter.”
I grabbed her, taking her with me as I rolled onto my back. “What about your dickhead boss?” I asked, tucking a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “He turned up here singing show tunes.”
“He was drunk.”
“He was looking for you.”
Shiloh shook her head. “I can’t imagine why.”
I didn’t care why. I just didn’t want a repeat performance. “Do I need to have a word with him?” I asked. “Is he bothering you?”
“No.” When I tugged at the hem of her shirt, she raised her arms. “I don’t know what today’s bender was in aid of. Most days he won’t even talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk to you either,” I replied, tossing her shirt across the room.
Finally she smiled. “Did you have something else in mind?”
I trailed my fingertips across her stomach. “All sorts of wicked things, lady.”
Shiloh made a grab for the mosquito net that hung from the ceiling, bunching a handful of the sheer fabric against her bare chest.
I put my hands on her hips, holding her right where I wanted her. “You think that will stop me?” I murmured.
“I’m not trying to stop you,” she whispered. “I’m just trying to slow you down.”
Bin Bin Ruse
SHILOH
After a long spell on the sidelines and a few false starts, Mitchell was finally back to his routine of spending the mornings in the surf. He left the shack just after eight, and I was out the door two minutes later, making a beeline for the fat cat camp.
Glen’s drunken antics the day before were unforgivable. If he was having trouble holding it together, I didn’t care. If regret or a guilty conscience was driving him to drink, I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting him to pull himself together and keep his mouth shut. By the time I got to the top of the hill I had my whole speech worked out: shut your mouth, lay off the drink and stay away from me until the heat dies down.
Mindful of disturbing the neighbours I quietly knocked on Glen’s door, but after ten minutes of politely trying to rouse him, patience wore thin. Walking away and letting him sleep it off wasn’t an option. For all I knew, Mimi might’ve caused him some real damage the day before – and death by onion didn’t seem like a good way to go.
Kicking the door down obviously wasn’t an option, but there was no harm in trying the handle. Much to my surprise, it turned freely, but the biggest shock came when the door swung open.
Twenty-four hours earlier I had stood in exactly the same place, looking at a dishevelled, chaotic scene. Now I was looking at nothing. The living room looked exactly like the house next door – pin neat and beige. Checking out the rest of the house added to my confusion. There was no hint that Glen had ever lived there – even the cigarette stench was gone.
I pulled the door closed and stood on the porch, pulling in as much of the ocean air as I could in a bid
to slow my racing thoughts.
It was impossible to think he’d packed up and done a midnight flit, considering the state he was in. It was more plausible that someone else had had a hand in his disappearance, and just thinking about it made my blood run cold. Contacting Mike was all I could think to do. He didn’t give a damn about Glen, but he did care about the tin full of diamonds, that had also gone AWOL. Hopefully, a search for one would lead to the other.
***
When I arrived back the shack, I found I had a bit of breathing room when it came to making contact with Mike. I could see Mitchell a long way off shore, so getting back in after was going to take him a while. I wandered around the side of the shack, lifted the lattice siding and ducked under the house.
A well-worn groove in the sand now marked a path to the phone, highlighting exactly how frequently I made the sandy crawl.
My message to Iron Mike was short and almost to the point.
- We need to meet. Rocks are gone.
His reply was almost instant, which grated on me no end. I had to keep my phone hidden under the house, but he probably kept his in his pocket.
-Say nothing. Will meet tonight.
I punched at the letters, annoyed by his vague response.
-Where??
-I will find you.
I had no choice but to leave it at that. Asking for any more information would’ve been a waste of text.
***
My decision to spend the evening at the Crown and Pav had little to do with hanging out with Mitchell. If Mike was going to come looking for me, I didn’t want him anywhere near our home. All I could do was sit at the bar and wait, which I did with the enthusiasm of someone passing time on death row.
“What’s going on, lady?” Mitchell asked. “You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
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