On the Friday evening, one week after Doug’s arranged crash Rolf complained to his wife about a loss of full control of his right arm. Knowing that at his age this could mark the start of a sequence of events culminating in stroke, she urged him to ring the NHS number for advice. He refused, saying that she was being over the top. But his wife was clued up on the prodromal symptoms of stroke having recently watched a TV programme in which a doctor spelled out the signs and symptoms and even gave a mnemonic to remember them. She went through the mnemonic, mentally ticking off each step, and didn’t like the outcome. Forceful when she needed to be, Rolf found himself being driven at eleven o’clock at night to the nearest A & E by his wife. She stopped outside the entrance to casualty and helped him out, pointing to the casualty reception desk inside where he should register with his details. She didn’t see him collapse just short of the reception desk as she had gone off to park their car in the multi-storey.
For the hospital it was a fairly quiet night on the front line. The middle-aged man who collapsed to the ground between the reception desk and the front row of seats in the waiting area, some of which were occupied by patients waiting their turn to be seen, represented the first real challenge of the night. The male triage nurse was by Rolf’s side almost instantaneously and the well-rehearsed drill for such occasions was put into effect immediately so that by the time his wife returned from the multi-storey there was no sign of Rolf in the waiting area. It was only when she enquired at the desk about her husband that she learned what had happened. After giving his name, age and address she was whisked through to a cubicle where her husband lay seemingly lifeless on the trolley that had been used to wheel him down the corridor. A nurse was about to attach a drip and the doctor in attendance was assessing Rolf’s vital signs. It has all the classic signs of a stroke, the doctor told her, although we won’t know definitely until we get some readings.
Sometime later, tearful and exhausted, she was urged by the hospital staff to return home, leaving Rolf to receive the best possible care, they assured her. Too upset to manage the journey home, two of Rolf’s daughters drove down to the hospital to collect their mother and drive her car back. The next few days were hell for Rolf’s wife and daughters, their emotions rising and falling like a yo-yo on its string. They were always looking to clutch at the smallest positive sign but realised slowly that their hitherto settled world was gone for good. He remained stable without any real sign of improvement and after several days, in order to give the girls and their mother a break from the stress, Andreé and Tommy kept vigil. The distress at seeing Rolf just lying there was genuine for both. He was attached to wires and catheters and drips and goodness knows what else. Because of her sight Andreé was unable to appreciate the full extent of the picture but she sensed from Tommy’s lack of normal chatter that things were grim. They exchanged a few desultory remarks but in the main they just sat there keeping vigil. A nurse popped in to record some readings and when she left she guided Andreé to the ladies’ toilets. Tommy got up out of his chair and stretched. It was at that moment he heard a faint noise come from Rolf’s lips.
‘Rolf, can you hear me? I’m Tommy,’ he said softly from very close by. ‘Are you trying to tell me something? Try telling me again.’
Rolf made another little noise but it was incomprehensible. Seconds passed and then Rolf whispered “tube”, “safe deposit”, “give Daniel”, “promise”, “tell no one”.
Kneeling at Rolf’s bedside, Tommy was straining to hear and decipher every utterance. But the moment passed and as he sat down again Andreé returned and asked if there had been any change.
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘no change.’
Rolf’s uttered words, if he had understood correctly, had been puzzling Tommy all evening. That and the distress of seeing his best friend in such a miserable state had shocked him to the core as they were both the same age. He mulled over the words as he sped south along the motorway on his way home. Sleep didn’t come easily that night but eventually he fell into a deep stupor. When he awoke he sat on his bed waiting for some inspiration to come to him as if his brain had been processing overnight the events of the previous day.
‘Shit,’ he cried out loud suddenly, ‘a thousand fucking shits. Shit. Shit. Shit. I wasn’t concentrating on what Rolf had asked me to do, I was thinking of Jane instead. I didn’t have my mind on the job, I was thinking of being with her.’ Normally a sentence or two liberally spread with expletives would calm Tommy down when he was angry but not today. He had messed up and he knew it. He remembered now, when they were standing in the foyer of the bank in Basle, Rolf had told him to put the cash and the tube in the safe deposit in Liechtenstein, not just the cash. He was to give the pouch to the blackmailer’s agent, not the pouch and the tube. God, he’d got it wrong! I suppose it was that tube he was referring to. Could be another one, he said to himself without actual conviction. What am I going to do now?
While the jury was still out on Rolf’s prognosis, Andreé took temporary control of WareWork. The bank man and the other Alan, as he was still known, raised no objections and Marian pledged her unequivocal support in such a testing time. Marian deduced that the takeover was temporary in name but probably permanent in nature. Daniel’s presence on the board had brought a refreshing change of attitudes and WareWork was already showing signs of recovery. But Andreé wasn’t going to be any filler-in, she had her own ideas and together with Daniel they would translate them into plans and implement them before any objections were raised as to the legality of the board doing so when its CEO was out of action. Devastated by the probable loss of the brother she had only just found, Andreé channelled her grief into work. New markets are what we need, she announced. We have seen how our core products can be snatched from us by price undercutting, copies, inferior quality and low wages in Third World countries. I want us to move into the high end of working clothes. Formal suits for corporate bodies: banks, airline staff, hotel chains. WareWork goes smart work. We won’t be selling in such vast quantities but we will have higher margins and ultimately we will be exposed to larger and more varied markets and when we are we will have developed the expertise to handle it.
***
Ruth bent down to pick up the familiar brick-coloured newspaper that had just plopped through her letter-box and was lying on the door mat. She noticed immediately the white flyer that was folded into its main crease. Sitting at her breakfast bar, she read the flyer first.
“Lost or stolen” it proclaimed at the top in large black type, probably Aerial Bold font, 48 pt Ruth conjectured. Below, it stated, “thirty glass marbles in a black velvet pouch”. And underneath, “glass faulty and liable to shatter into dangerous shards”. Finally, at the foot of the page “Post in jiffy bag to Freepost Box No.3238 – no questions asked”. It took a few moments to sink in. The flyer didn’t refer to any old marbles, it referred to the marbles!
With great perspicacity Ruth flung on a three-quarter-length cagoule over her dressing gown and dashed out into the cul-de-sac looking for the newspaper boy. She caught up with him as he’d just started deliveries on the other side of the quiet road.
‘Did you put this through my letter-box?’ she demanded of the teenager, brandishing the flyer close to his face.
‘Could have, Miss,’ he replied reluctantly.
‘Well did you or didn’t you?’ she pressed.
‘What number are you?’
‘I’m at No.12 on the other side of the road, near the top.’
‘Yes I did,’ he said.
‘Was it only to No.12 that you delivered the flyer?’
‘Yes,’ he said sheepishly.
‘Where did you get it from?’ she demanded.
‘A man stopped me just before I was about to start my deliveries in this road. He said he’d give me a fiver if I put it through the letter-box of No.12. So I did.’
‘What was
he like, I mean was he tall, fat, bald?’
‘He was a bit fat, sort of like a former boxer but not tall. He had brown hair and wore a grey T-shirt.’
‘OK, thanks,’ said Ruth, knowing that there was little more to obtain from the lad. ‘Enjoy spending your fiver.’
When she was back indoors she left a message on Doug’s voicemail to ring her back as soon as he could.
‘Hallo Ruth. What’s up?’ he said, returning her call as soon as he was seated at his office desk. He had a long list of email messages and a pile of various documents on his desk to work through but he knew that for Ruth to use the words “as soon as possible” meant she was, in some measure, distressed. She related the saga of the flyer and they agreed to meet again at the Italian restaurant that evening for a brainstorming session. After pizzas and lagers were served Ruth took the flyer out of her handbag and showed it to Doug.
‘Your so-called accident, and now this!’ she said. ‘We’ve got to make up our minds about what to do.’
‘We keep coming to this same point. We don’t make up our minds because we don’t know what to do,’ he stated.
‘Well this time we simply have to. As a matter of fact I’m getting pretty damned fed up with all this ridiculous nonsense. I don’t like being told what to do and for two pennies I’d buy some coloured marbles, stuff them in a jiffy bag, post them off and see how they like it,’ said a bolshie-sounding Ruth.
This mini tirade brought a round of applause from Doug who raised his pint glass in a toast to her defiance.
Doug deliberated and then sniggered.
‘We could put in a brief note to say that the glass in these glass marbles is not faulty.’
‘I’d love to see the crimson face of the person reading that,’ said Ruth, rocking with laughter.
‘If I got the gist correct of what he was saying Paul advised us to go to the police but I think that it’s too late now. We could find ourselves being charged with aiding and abetting. We still don’t know the beneficial owners of the gems. Highly unlikely it is the people who nicked the tube from you and caused my crash. If we dumped the gems or sent them to that box number, the real owners, if we ever find out who they are, could charge us with not returning their goods to them. As a solicitor I obviously learned about criminal law but I’ve specialised in corporate building conveyance for so long that I’m rusty on other branches of law but for what it’s worth,’ Doug continued, ‘I don’t like being pushed around either and I feel like digging my toes in on this. I don’t think we have any real option other than to tough it out.’
By the time they had thrashed out their strategy the previously busy restaurant was almost deserted. It was approaching eleven o’clock and Doug said he needed to go home and get some beauty sleep. ‘I’m sorry that I’m leaving you with most of the work to put our plan into effect but having been off sick for several days has left me with a mountain of paperwork on my desk and I’ll have to work late to clear the backlog. That’s the price you pay for a well-paid job and I need the money to pay the alimony!’ They had agreed immediately that the first thing to do was to answer the jiffy bag request with a “no way José” response. Secondly, they should make it plain on the note they would put in the jiffy bag that they no longer held the pouch and gems as it was in safekeeping elsewhere. They had debated where this should be. Doug had suggested a bank safe deposit or a lock-up storage unit like the ones popping up all over in out-of-town areas. Ruth didn’t like the former as opening a safe deposit couldn’t be done anonymously and she thought the latter was like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer. They both dismissed hiding them in their own respective homes and Doug didn’t wish to put them in his firm’s safe at work. Ruth said, ‘They came from the allotment so why don’t we put them back there. My friend Rosemary has the allotment two along from mine. I’ve only got a small shed, it doesn’t hold much more than my tools and a tiny work bench for sowing seeds. When I’ve got a seven-litre bag of seed compost in there with me the shed is full. Rosemary has much more room as she has a greenhouse and a larger shed than mine so she lets me store some of my gear in her shed. Just at the moment I’ve got my seed potatoes and onions sets in bags ready for planting in two or three months’ time depending on weather conditions. I could put the pouch in with the seed potatoes at the bottom of the bag and then leave them in Rosemary’s shed as I normally do. No one would ever know including Rosemary.’ Was it fair to involve Rosemary, Doug had asked, she was after all an innocent party. Ruth had countered that she and Doug were innocent parties too and as neither of them could come up with a better solution, Rosemary’s shed was chosen. They had decided there was a need to know what the other marbles contained and Ruth took on the task of finding out. ‘Put each one separately in a folded newspaper, tabloid would be best, don some DIY eye protectors and thick gloves and smash it with a hammer,’ Doug had advised her. ‘Open the newspaper, see if there is a central core, remove that then fold the newspaper again and funnel the glass fragments into two supermarket plastic bags, one inside the other for double thickness. When you’ve finished you can pad a black bin liner with the newspaper and then dump the supermarket bags inside the bin liner. I don’t want you injured by any flying shards’ he had declared. Ruth would make an inventory of the stones. Colour and size at least but she didn’t think she would have anything sufficiently sensitive to measure weight. She still had her dissection kit from her school days when studying biology. Using a pair of broad forceps she would hold each gem against a ruler and measure its length and breadth. They would pass the details on to Paul for him to search a database of stolen gemstones, if one exists that is, Doug had said.
Their third task was to try to ascertain who “they” were. Kevin apart, Doug hadn’t a clue. Ruth knew Lizzie was short and on the plump side but, like Doug, was also in the dark. Somehow they had to force this gang into the open so they could identify them, perhaps with Paul’s help. Several ideas were suggested but discarded until Ruth came up with the ingenious idea of using social media. Under the pseudonym Gary Lembers, an anagram of “grey marbles”, she would post a message on a social media site with a board devoted to marble aficionados asking for information about something or other. The message itself would be of no importance. It would be the link contained in the message that would be important because, should the end user click on it, then a computer trail would be established and with it a chance of pinpointing the email address of the user. Steeped in finance and its concomitant fraud Ruth had a network of acquaintances and personal clients with expertise in IT. If their plan got a nibble then she would ask a favour of one of her younger geek clients to see if the nibbler could be traced. In her initial posting on the marbles devotees’ billboard she would start her comment with “The quality of marbles is constrained” and that, she thought, would definitely tempt a click on the link. And so the note was composed.
IMPORTANT NOTICE
Marbles in safekeeping until proof of ownership supplied.
Any further threats or “accidents” will result in pouch and contents being handed in anonymously to the police.
Watch social media (marbles billboard) in 72 hours for further instructions.
‘I’ll print the note tomorrow and get it off in the post and as soon as I’ve dealt with the gems I’ll ring Paul with the information. He might have some news about the number plate. Thanks Ruth,’ Doug had said as they parted, ‘and have a smashing time,’ he had added with a twinkle in his eye.
***
‘Alan, have you heard about Rolf?’ asked Ella urgently.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘all I want to hear about Rolf is that he is leading WareWork into the wilderness.’
‘Well you need to know about this. He’s had a stroke. Not just a minor one but a full-blown one. He may not recover, or if he does, he will be in rehab for months. He’s in the Royal Leicester.’
‘Ch
rist,’ exclaimed Alan, ‘he might be my worst enemy but I don’t wish that on him.’
Ella wrung her hands and flipped back a lock of hair from her forehead.
‘Should I ring Andreé to commiserate?’ she asked.
‘Oh God! That’s a tricky one,’ moaned Alan. ‘Ring and say how sorry we are to learn of his comeuppance!’
‘We can’t leave it like this, well anyhow I can’t,’ protested Ella. ‘Maybe it’s a girl thing.’
‘If you feel you must then telephone her and say how sorry you are but sorry on your behalf, not on mine.’
‘I don’t know why you men are so uncompromising. It must be in your genes. I will ring her and sympathise. If the tables were reversed I’d appreciate a small act of charity like that.’
‘So be it,’ said an unimpressed Alan.
***
Tommy wracked his brains as to what to do next. Should he tell Daniel about Rolf’s murmurings? Had he actually correctly understood what Rolf was trying to say? Should he wait to see if Rolf recovered before doing anything? Was his starting point speaking to Kevin? But he would have to find him first. All of these questions and the turmoil he felt in the pit of his stomach he put to the back of his mind when he saw Jane in a brief and contrived encounter at a late afternoon meeting at Windsor horse races.
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