by Oscar Turner
‘Polly? Is that you?’
‘Police, can you open the door please sir?’
‘What? What's happened?’
‘Open the door please sir.’
Seymour slowly unlatched the door and opened it.
‘Detective Sergeant Bradshaw, Scotland Yard. Mind if we come in sir?’ said the huge, stern looking man offering his I.D. There were two other uniformed officers with him, carrying what looked like machine guns.
‘What? What’s happened?’
‘Is Mrs. Polly Capital here sir?’
‘No, she's gone to see someone about some chairs. She said she'd be back by now. Look what's going on?’
Bradshaw looked around the apartment and nudged his head to the other policemen to go in.
‘Mind if we take a look around sir?’ said Bradshaw.
‘Oh no, not again.’ said Seymour indignantly.
‘Again sir?’
‘Yes again. Why can't you people just leave us alone?’ said Seymour as he went over to the carefully laid out table, opened his stash box, pulled out a lump of hash and offered it to Bradshaw. ‘There. Happy?’
Bradshaw looked down at the hashish in Seymour's hand and smiled politely.
‘We’re investigating a shooting at The New Carva Gallery this afternoon. I believe you have a connection with the gallery sir. Is that correct?’
‘Shooting?’ whispered Seymour, in shock, holding on to the door to steady himself. ‘Who, what?’
‘We need to speak to your wife as a matter of urgency sir. Now, do you know where she is?’
Seymour shook his head. ‘No. She, she won't be long. She knows I'm doing a stir fry.’
Polly drove slowly along the lane, trying to retrace her tracks: her face expressionless, her body cold. She had no feelings left after what she had done back there.
She had dragged Johnny's body for some fifty metres and dumped it in a ditch. She had covered him with leaves then remembered her panties in his pocket. She had slid down into the ditch, retrieved them and then stamped on his face hard with her foot. It hurt. Must have been his teeth. Getting out from the ditch, she had slipped back in, her foot landing on his chest. He had groaned as the air was forced out of his lungs. She had cleaned up the best she could, cleaned the gun and thrown it into the bushes. She had done all of this without feeling anything. No fear, no disgust, no revulsion at the sight of his disfigured, tortured face, or his brain oozing out of the two, two inch holes in the back of his head. She had completed the whole task as if she were dealing with some menial domestic chore.
Her dress was splattered with blood and smeared with mud, her hair matted with congealing blood, combed in by her frantic hands.
Polly pulled over into a siding, stopped the engine and turned off the lights. She had to think. The adrenaline was subsiding now. Things were starting to feel real again. She looked in the rear vision mirror and shuffled her body up to get closer to it in the dim light.
Clack! The Dagenham Dagger jumped in the seat belt on the passenger's side and sliced a clean slash into the plastic upholstery. She reached across and touched it. It was stuck firmly in place. With some jiggling she managed to pull it out: the four inch blade sparkled, even in the darkness.
Polly looked dead ahead at the windscreen. ‘I have get home.’ she whispered. ‘Seymour will understand. This is it. It's all over. Nobody can touch me now. I just have to get home. Then everything will be OK. I have to get rid of these clothes. I could go to the shop, that’s it... I can change there... God I need a shower. Oh shit, shit, shit.’
Polly wound down the window, took a deep breath of the cold night air and closed her eyes. The silence calmed her and she replayed her thoughts. ‘Yes, that was it. I just have to get home. That's all I have to do. Then everything will be OK. Seymour will understand. We can start all over again now. I just have to dump the car somewhere. Somewhere close to home. Nobody must see me. I will tell him everything. Then it’s all done. We can move on and I can put all this behind me. Seymour will understand. He always does.’
Polly started the engine, turned on the lights and slowly pulled away onto the road.
Cyril woke up with the sun. He'd got to bed at two in the morning, very drunk. It was unusual for Cyril to get drunk. He always did drink a lot of wine, at least a bottle a night, which Cyril considered normal for his body weight. But last night he got completely and utterly drunk, as did everybody else, even Nastasia, laying next to him, still in her slightly bedraggled black silk and lace dress.
He reached across and kissed her on the forehead. Nastasia opened her eyes and smiled.
‘Good morning.’ whispered Nastasia softly.
‘Good morning missus.’ said Cyril. ‘usual tea and toast madam?’
Nastasia stretched and sighed with ecstasy. ‘My God you'd make somebody a wonderful husband.’
‘Forget it.’ said Cyril. ‘I'd be shit husband and you know it. Just like you're a shit wife.’
‘Sounds like a perfect match.’ said Nastasia.
Cyril busied himself with making breakfast as Nastasia watched.
‘Oh Natty, have you got that cash? I have to get ready for the MOT test soon.’
‘What for? Are you still going away?’
‘Yeh, might as well. Reckon I'll go away for a few weeks, until things settle down here. It's all arranged anyway.’
Nastasia went silent and Cyril felt it.
‘It’s not a problem is it Nat?’
‘No, no. Except. Um.’
‘That sounds ominous.’ Cyril looked over at Nastasia, waiting.
Nastasia let out a large breath and held her hand out to Cyril.
‘Come here.’ said Nastasia.
Cyril went over to the bed, sat down and held her hand.
‘Well, what is it?’
Nastasia looked up to Cyril and held his hand tighter.
‘Cyril. It’s about the money.’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s gone.’
‘What?’ said Cyril, pulling away from her and standing up.
‘Please Cyril sit down. I will explain.’
Nastasia waited as Cyril, agitated, went over to the cooker, lit the gas, turned it off again and sat back down with her.
‘Right, I’m waiting.’
Nastasia waited a few moments longer, choosing her words; waiting for Cyril to calm down.
‘Ok. I used the money to solve your problem.’
Cyril screwed up his face. ‘What? What on Earth does that mean?’
‘Please Cyril, don’t get angry. Please.’
‘Are you serious?’ said Cyril getting angry. ‘how?’
‘I can’t tell you Cyril, not yet. Please trust me. There is some money left.’
‘How much?’
‘About five hundred, plus the fifteen hundred I brought today for your MOT and the bits for the van.’
‘Fucking two grand! Natty, there was about forty grand there!’
‘Forty five thousand, five hundred and eighty actually.’ said Nastasia coolly.
‘So what did you do with it then?’
‘I solved your problem.’
‘How the fuck!’
Nastasia suddenly sat up and grabbed Cyril by the shoulders.
‘Listen to me Cyril.’ said Nastasia firmly, staring her firing eyes into his. ‘You were about to lose everything. I couldn’t sit back and watch that happen. Never!’
Cyril was transfixed on Nastasia’s face. One thing he knew about Nastasia was that she always told him the truth. As he looked at her then, the intensity of her expression, he knew not to ask her to lie. That was the option. There was a reason for her secrecy and he had to trust it.
Cyril drew a breath and looked away.
‘Well that changes everything.’ said Cyril.
Nastasia held her stare. She watched as Cyril went through a sequence of thoughts that ended with a smile.
‘Yes, Cyril Barker. That changes everything.’
‘My God Natty.’
Nastasia pulled him close and held him tight.
Stella burst into the conference room at Stella Solutions like a hurricane, as usual, a haze of perfume and hectic energy in her wake. Everyone was there, the whole team, all ten of them, all handpicked. Stella had called an urgent meeting.
‘Right everyone.’ bellowed Stella across the room. ‘We’ve got to pull together an emergency call centre, right now! We’ve got two days. We need nurses, medical people, even fucking struck off doctors and vets. It’s a big client. Smitt Kleinen Phizerberg. Ok?’ Stella scanned the room of nodding heads.
‘Looks like they’ve been sabotaged. An inside job apparently. Probably some religious nut like a fucking catholic insurgent or something. There are fifty batches of the contraceptive pill out there, that contain 50mg of testosterone in each one. That’s 10,000 hits. I don’t know if you can imagine the consequences, but I can, and you will when you get to my age. We think we know all the batch numbers, dates and stuff. We need a team of people that can speak medical lingo to man the phones and make those people understand what has happened and that there is nothing to worry about. Even though there is. Probably. So people, hit the fucking phones hard and pull it all together. There’ll be a pot a cash in it for you all. This is drugs people, they got more money than the fuckin’ Pope. Debby, you’re the captain. Report to me every day at five.’
Stella pointed directly at Debby with her unusually long index finger. Debby nodded confidently and looked around at her team.
‘Any questions?’ continued Stella. Looked at the shaking heads. ‘Right. Debby you come with me and I’ll fill you in. Good luck everyone.’
Stella turned on her heals and left for her office with Debby in tow: attempting to keep up with her.
‘Thanks Stella.’ said Debby as she stood in front of Stella’s desk, almost to attention, while Stella quickly shuffled through a bundle of envelopes held together with an elastic band.
‘You don’t have to fuckin’ thank me Debby. I chose you ‘cause I know you can do it. Now at 11 o’clock you’re having a meeting with some prick called Gordon Blairberg. He’s the P.R. manager from the company and I’ll tell you for nothing, he’s got his fucking work cut out for him. He’s coming here and I want you to have the meeting in the conference room, OK? Turn all the ears on, I want every word recorded, whenever you talk to him or anybody in the company. Even on the phone. Is that clear Debby? Every word.’
Debby nodded knowingly. She had been working for Stella for two years now. She knew that everything Stella said, had a reason.
‘Get Barry in to check everything out, been a while since we used all that recording stuff. And if ever you are alone with Blairberg, Debby, use this.’ Stella fumbled around in a desk drawer. ‘Now where the fuck did I put the fuckin’ ting. Ah here you go.’ Stella pulled out an old mini cassette dictaphone from the drawer and slid it across the desk to Sally.
‘It’s OK Stella, I’ve got one of those.’ It was true. Debby had one of those new digital dictaphones and it was recording every word that they were saying.
‘Ok. Now off you go and get started.’
Debby nodded and left.
Stella removed the elastic band from the wad of envelopes and began sifting through them. She quickly looked at each one and either put it on the desk or straight into the shredder next to her.
Singling out a typical greeting card envelope, she put the bundle down and opened it, puzzled. Nobody knew when her birthday was. That way you never get older. She pulled out the flowery thank you card from its envelope and opened it up.
‘Thanks Stella. XXX Natty. ‘
‘For fuck’s sake Natty. Don’t fucking do that.’ mumbled Stella angrily as she put the card and its envelope hastily into the shredder.
Stella sat back in her large leather swivel chair and thoughtfully toyed with her dentures using her tongue. She hadn’t had a reply from her last pager message to Johnny. That was unusual. She picked up the phone and rang the pager service, to try again. You only get two chances. If you don’t answer the second one, you’re out.
‘Tell the truth I had absolutely no idea what was happening here boys.’ said Gerald Barrington as he walked along the track with Chris, John and Cyril. Laurel and Hardy were following behind them a good distance back, but still in earshot. ‘Something got into Edward when his father died. Of course we were all effected. Sir Thomas was one of the finest men to walk this Earth.’
‘He certainly was Mr. Barrington,’ said Cyril. Chris and John mumbled their agreement.
‘Oh please chaps, call me Gerald will you? But I beg of you never, ever call me Gerry OK? My God look at his mess!’
The four of them stopped where a road clearing had been cut through a small ancient forest. The ground chewed up by scratching bull dozer caterpillar tracks, branches strewn around where they had fallen, a monstrous pile of half burnt roots and lower trunks entangled together like a giant spiders. Gerald was so moved, he was unsteady on his feet for a moment and grabbed Cyril’s shoulder for support.
‘Sorry Cyril.’
‘Don’t you worry Gerald, I know how you feel.’
‘Tommy would shoot a man that would do this. The bastards!’ said Gerald, his face glowing with furious blood.
Cyril, Chris and John bowed their heads as if to give Gerald a moment.
‘I’m afraid that’s not all Gerald.’ said Cyril.
‘Yes I know. Suzy told me. I really can’t fucking believe it! You know, I’ve spent the last five bloody years trying to stop environmental vandalism and here it is right on my own family’s land. I fucking give up! Fucking hooligans that what they are. Short sighted, greedy, bastards, that’s who we’ve got running this country now. They don’t give a shit about the future.’
‘Starting to look like nobody does these days.’ said Chris sadly.
‘Yes, yes that’s the problem Chris, nobody gives a shit. Well we’ve got to do something, at least try anyway.’
‘How do you mean?’ said Cyril.
‘Well Sir Thomas and I always had a dream you see. To turn the estate into an autonomous state. Not politically or legally or anything radical like that. That wasn’t the point. Just to be completely independent, in every way, energy, food, water, the bloody lot. It was all feasible. The irony was of course that, when we thought about it, that was exactly how the Estate was 100 years ago. That was Edward’s objection you see. He just couldn’t understand why on Earth one would want to go back in time. Anyway, he sabotaged the whole idea, by tying up the cash reserve of the estate in some off shore bank account. Mind, it was our fault, we did sign the forms. Hate to say it, but he tricked us, good and proper. He reckoned we wouldn’t have to pay tax on it. We said we wanted to pay tax. He couldn’t understand that either. Turned out he put the money into one of his investment companies in Dubai. So we had no cash to invest in the project, then of course dear old Tommy was killed and here we are.’
‘Well if there’s anything we can do to help. ‘ said Cyril, backed up by Chris and John’s mumbling
‘Maybe there is. ‘ said Gerald. ‘Can’t really think what at the moment. Need to put our thinking caps on.’
‘Stupid question Gerald but can’t you get the money back somehow?’ said Chris nervously.
‘Not a stupid question at all Chris. No I’ve tried, believe me. Cost me five grand, just to find out it would cost about fifty grand to hire a lawyer to try, with no guarantees! Bastards have got us snookered you see. No, there must be a way.’
‘So you have inherited the Estate?’ asked Cyril.
‘Oh yes, the whole bloody thing, debts and all.’
‘Well maybe you don’t have to invest much at all, if you still want to do it. I mean, if you’ve got people behind you.’ said Cyril, wondering if he was being too forward. ‘Me and Sir Thomas talked a lot about his dream. I always said it wasn’t a dream at all. He never told
me about Edward and the money though, of course. But I remember something bothering him about three years ago. He stopped talking about it.
‘That’s it. That’s when it happened. I was in jail at the time.’
Chris and John suddenly looked up at Gerald.
‘Is that right? What for?’ said Chris ,excited.
‘Oh just breach of the peace I’m afraid, nothing glamorous . We were trying to stop a wind farm construction over in Wales.’
‘Oh, why’s that? I thought wind farms were a good thing.’ said Chris, suddenly feeling more relaxed to be talking so casually to his new boss.
‘Sadly that’s what most people think. But they couldn’t be more wrong I’m afraid. Truth is, the wind doesn’t always blow and certainly never at a continuous speed when it does. You can never depend on wind as a reliable energy source. That means all other power stations, usually coal, gas or nuclear , have to operate at above their requirement to compensate if the wind stops. I mean imagine if they all said. Ok chaps, sorry, no wind today, afraid there’s no electricity. Imagine. Plus the fact, the carbon it takes to build one of those bloody great machines, means that it would have to run at full capacity for five bloody years, just to replace the energy it took to make it in the first place. After that time the bloody things have to be completely overhauled anyway, which takes even more energy. No the whole thing’s a political con, hijacked by the Germans and the Japanese.’
‘I never realised that.’ said Chris.
‘That’s the trouble you see. We’ve all been conned by a politically backed mafia. My way of thinking is that we have to have a society that uses less power, not try and produce more and more to feed our insatiable appetite. And why the hell should nature come up with the resources for us to have electricity 24 hour a day anyway. A, it’s not scientifically possible and B, totally unnecessary. It’s a bloody disaster waiting to happen. That’s why Tommy and I wanted to show that it could be done.’