The Sunshine Cruise Company

by John Niven

  ‘Yes. I really am rather busy at the moment, Sergeant.’

  ‘It won’t take a moment.’

  ‘It’s really not convenient. I was just going out.’

  Suddenly music became audible from inside the house. Boscombe looked at her. ‘Entertaining, are we?’

  Susan swallowed. ‘Yes, I am actually. I was just out of … sugar. Was going to pop to the shops.’

  ‘Well, as I say. It’ll only take a mo—’

  ‘Have you got a … a warrant?’

  ‘A warrant?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you need a warrant to come in here?’

  Boscombe looked at Wesley confused, then back to Susan. ‘Ah, not if you invite us in we don’t.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I invite you in?’ Susan said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Boscombe said. ‘So can we?’

  ‘Can you what?’

  ‘Can we come in?’ Boscombe was beginning to wonder if this woman wasn’t touched in the bloody head.

  ‘Everything OK, Susan dear?’ Julie shouted cheerfully from the living room. ‘We could use your help in here.’

  ‘Oh, very well, Sergeant. Do come in,’ Susan said, opening the door for them.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Wesley said.

  She led them down the hallway and, taking a deep breath, opened the door to the living room. The music, a tango, was immediately louder and Susan and the two policemen were greeted by a strange tableau: Julie was tangoing Nails around the centre of the room, watched by Ethel and Jill. Jill had a fixed grin on her face. Ethel was happily clapping along to the music. Boscombe nodded politely to the old lady in the wheelchair covered with stickers. There was no sign of the weapons and the flip chart had been turned over. On the fresh page, Susan saw, Julie had hastily written some dance steps: a diagram of feet with various arrows indicating movements. The song finished and Ethel led the applause, with Boscombe and Wesley joining in. ‘That was much better, Bert!’ Julie said to Nails. ‘You led wonderfully!’ She pretended to suddenly notice the two detectives. ‘Oh! Goodness! Company!’

  ‘Having a little dance class, are we?’ Boscombe said.

  ‘Indeed. Bert here is one of my most promising pupils.’ Julie indicated Nails. Nails looked as though he were on the verge of a major coronary. Bullets of sweat were trickling down his face and his jaw was locked in a demented smile as he extended his hand for Boscombe to shake. ‘Pleased to meet you, Bert. Detective Sergeant Boscombe, CID.’

  ‘Fuunnghhrrr,’ Nails said.

  ‘He had a little stroke a couple of years back,’ Julie whispered, stepping closer to the officers and very subtly twirling her index finger in the air near her right temple. Boscombe smiled and nodded kindly to Nails.

  From behind them Susan made a strange, high-pitched squeak. Boscombe turned to look at her. Ethel noticed what Susan had been looking at – the barrel of the sawn-off shotgun was protruding from underneath her. ‘Sorry,’ Susan said as Ethel deftly covered the gun with her shawl, ‘just a frog in my throat.’

  ‘We were just returning some things to Mrs Frobisher here,’ Boscombe said. ‘Sorry to interrupt you.’

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ Julie said. ‘We were just working on our tango.’

  ‘Lovely, eh, Wesley? To see people of, well, advancing years keeping active. Keeping interested in things.’

  ‘Yes, Sarge,’ Wesley said.

  ‘Well, thank you, Sergeant,’ Julie said. ‘You know, we can always do with a few more able-bodied young men like yourself at our classes!’

  ‘Is that so?’ Boscombe said. ‘You know what? I’ve always fancied learning that there tango as a matter of fact. I love a bit of Strictly!’

  A quarter of an hour later Wesley sat dunking a custard cream into his second cup of tea while he watched his boss dip Julie down into a reasonable, if strained, facsimile of the finishing position of the tango. The music stopped and everyone burst into applause.

  ‘Excellent, Sergeant!’ Julie said.

  ‘Oh, he’s quite the mover!’ Ethel added.

  ‘Don’t half put a strain on the old back that last bit!’ Boscombe said, not quite as sensitive as he could have been here to his partner’s feelings.

  ‘Well, Sergeant,’ Susan said, ‘if you have those forms …’

  ‘Oh yeah, of course. Sorry.’

  A few moments later Boscombe was putting the keys in the ignition of their car while Wesley buckled up his seat belt. ‘Does you good, doesn’t it, Wesley? To see them enjoying themselves like that.’

  ‘Yeah, Sarge.’

  ‘I only hope I’m that active when I’m their age.’ He turned the key and pulled away.

  Susan watched them go from behind her net curtain. She turned round and sat down on the floor, exhaling heavily.

  ‘Well!’ Ethel said, removing the sawn-off shotgun from under her bum. ‘That got the old blood flowing!’

  ‘Fack me,’ Nails said, puffing gratefully on his oxygen mask.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  LATER THAT NIGHT, in the same room, Julie and Susan sat sipping their tea in silence. They’d spent the rest of the day going over and over Nails’s plan in detail. Timings, positions, code signals. Finally Susan sighed and put her mug down.

  ‘This is just … nuts. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Completely,’ Julie said, staring into the fireplace.

  ‘We’re going to end up in prison. Or worse.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘I mean, there’s a chance, running around with guns and stuff, there’s a chance someone will get hurt, Julie. Isn’t there?’

  ‘It’s possible. Do you want that last piece?’

  ‘No, you have – Julie! I’m trying to talk us out of this. You sound like you couldn’t care less.’

  Julie picked up the last slice of buttered toast and munched on it. ‘You know something?’ she said. ‘I don’t think I do any more. When the salon went under I was only what, twenty-nine or thirty? You don’t even think about it in terms of failure at that age. You just think, “Oh well, I’ll try something else.” Then, with the bistro, when that went down, I was forty-five. And that was hard. Starting again at that age. But these past few years, with the boutique … I always thought I was an “upwards and onwards” kind of person, Susan. But now, at sixty, I just can’t do it again. I can’t start all over again at this age. So if this is a short cut, and we’re not going to hurt anyone, then fine by me. Because anything – anything – has to be better than what I’ve got at the moment.

  ‘Even the “bum-palace”?’

  ‘Look at you. You played it safe your whole life and where have you ended up? Ending your days in Tom and Clare’s spare room on a state pension? Was that how you saw “retirement” when we were younger?’

  ‘You know what?’ Susan said. ‘When I thought of that word I always imagined somewhere warm and sunny. Tropical. Stretched out by a swimming pool. Going out every day for nice lunches.’

  ‘What happened to that idea?’

  ‘Barry wasn’t keen on the heat.’

  ‘Barry’s dead.’

  The two friends looked each other in the eye. Julie raised her mug and said, ‘To the bum-palace.’

  Susan brought her mug up to meet Julie’s. ‘The bum-palace.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE LANCHESTER BANK, Wroxham.

  2.05 p.m. on the last Tuesday in June.

  It was, fittingly, the hottest day of the year so far.

  The digital thermometer on the counter showed 31 degrees as Sally looked out at the line of five customers. Her blouse was sticking to her and she felt sleepy after lunch. Oh well, less than three hours till closing time. ‘Will there be anything else today, Mrs Trent?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes, I wanted to open an account for my granddaughter. Do you have the forms for –’

  Sally’s eyes widened as she looked past Mrs Trent to the doorway, where three figures in navy boiler suits were walking in, all wearing balaclavas with something written on them. Her first t
hought was – students. That it was some rag week thing. But they didn’t have collecting buckets in their hands. They had … were they …

  ‘RIGHT, EVERYONE GET DOWN! THIS IS A ROBBERY!’ one of them was screaming, the tallest one, nearest the counter, the one with ‘FEAR’ plastered across the forehead. The customers screamed as the last robber came bursting through the door. Well, ‘bursting’ would be pushing it. ‘Trundling’ would be more accurate. Trundling in on a wheelchair, wearing a balaclava with the word ‘FUCK’ written on it and producing a double-barrelled shotgun from beneath their tartan shawl as they came in.

  One of the customers, the last man in the line, laughed and said, ‘What’s this? Red Nose Day or something?’ Ethel smacked him very hard in the balls with the butt of her shotgun. The man went down groaning as Ethel levelled the weapon at the others and yelled: ‘DOWN ON THE FLOOR, YOU FUCKING SLAGS, BEFORE I TURN YOU INTO FUCKING TEA BAGS.’ She pulled the trigger and emptied both barrels with a CRACK – blowing out the CCTV camera above the counter.

  That did it. Screaming. People throwing themselves on the floor. Sally, panicking, instinctively palmed a button on the counter, causing the metal shutter to begin slamming down. But Susan and Julie were already there, already wedging Nails’s three-foot iron bars in the sides, stopping the shutter halfway down, levelling their guns at the crying girl. ‘OPEN THE DOOR. NOW!’

  Sally hit another button and they slipped into the back room. Taking Sally at gunpoint, they made their way along a narrow corridor where they met Alan Glass, on the way out of his office to see what that great bang had been. Susan shoved her revolver straight in his face and grabbed his lapel. ‘The strongroom,’ she said, in the closest thing to a man’s voice she could muster.

  Glass burst into tears.

  Two hundred yards up the street Nails sat sweltering behind the wheel of his 1988 Ford Granada. The one with the dummy plates he’d dug out of the attic. He had his balaclava up his head like a woollen cap, ready to be pulled down when he got the signal. He looked at the walkie-talkie on the passenger seat. Three or four minutes they’d been in there now. Ten tops he’d told them. ‘Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ,’ Nails panted, trying to control his breathing. ‘Cool. You’re cool, Nails. Cool as a cucumber. You drink boiling water and piss ice cubes. Fucking ice cream. Fucking …’ He looked across the street and saw that there was indeed an ice-cream van parked there, in front of the supermarket at the top of the high street. Nails licked his lips as a salty bead of sweat coursed down his forehead and into his eye, stinging.

  ‘Ohgodohgodohgod,’ Jill was whispering to herself, her hands shaking as she tried to keep her gun level on the cowering customers. ‘What’s taking them so long?’

  ‘Please,’ one of the women on the floor sobbed. ‘Please don’t hurt us.’

  ‘We’re not going to hu—’ Jill began.

  ‘SHUT IT!’ Ethel hissed at them, ejecting the spent cartridges from her shotgun, thumbing two fresh ones into the side-by-side barrels. ‘If any of you so much as lifts their head up I’m going to unload this thing right in your bloody face.’

  All of the guns except Ethel’s were, of course, already completely unloaded. The shotgun cartridges Ethel was using had been filled with the traditional farmer’s mixture of rock salt. At very close range the cocktail might be enough to kill but Ethel had no intention of firing it at anyone at close range. It was perfect, however, for taking out the CCTV cameras and, at a range of twenty yards or less, would deliver a stinging blast across the arse.

  In the back Glass was punching the code into the lock for the strongroom while chanting his mantra of ‘pleasedon’thurtmepleasedon’thurtmepleasedon’thurtme’.

  For God’s sake, Julie thought. Show a little leadership!

  A beep, a light going from red to green, and the door opened. Julie and Susan herded all four staff into the room. There, in the middle, were half a dozen metal Securicor boxes all waiting to be loaded into the safe. While Julie kept the staff covered Susan opened the first box and started stuffing fistfuls of notes into their large canvas holdall.

  The notes were all fifties. Banded in packs of one hundred notes, each bundle then was worth five thousand pounds.

  There were a lot of them.

  ‘He’s just a blowhard, Wesley,’ Boscombe said, slamming the car door. ‘Seriously, Ted Pritchard? Detective Inspector? My bloody arse in parsley.’

  ‘Wilson likes him,’ Wesley countered.

  ‘Wilson likes anyone who’ll kiss his bloody arse.’

  They came out of the small car park and onto the top of the high street.

  ‘Bloody scorcher today, Sarge, eh?’

  ‘Not half, lad,’ Boscombe squinted into the glare. ‘Here, hold up. Tell you what – you let your old boss treat you to an ice cream, eh?’

  ‘Nice one, Sarge,’ Wesley said.

  They started heading towards the bright yellow van parked outside the supermarket.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Julie growled, looking at her watch. Five minutes since they came in the door.

  ‘Mmmmmmm!’ Susan said, not wanting to speak.

  ‘You’ll never get away with this,’ one of the staff said. Julie leapt over and pointed her gun at him. More screaming. ‘Be quiet!’ Glass shrieked. ‘Just let them do what they want. That’s the policy in these situations.’

  Susan was onto the fourth box.

  There wasn’t much room left in the holdall.

  Nails’s mind had wandered. Again. It kept doing this these days. In his head he was at the seaside as a boy. Down at Margate or Southend.

  Lovely times, with his ma and da.

  He looked across the street to the ice-cream van once more. Then back down the high street. What was he doing here? Something important, he was sure of that. He just couldn’t quite remember what. And he was so bloody hot. It’d only take a minute, wouldn’t it? Nothing could be that urgent that he couldn’t have a bloody ice cream. Could it? Slowly he got out of the car (and whose car was this?) and tottered across the street. Leaving the walkie-talkie on the passenger seat.

  ‘Mmmm!’ Susan motioned to Julie to come over so she could whisper to her. Julie came across and knelt down, not taking her eyes or her gun off the staff. ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t get any more in!’

  Julie looked at the crammed holdall, at the one box remaining. And then at her watch – six minutes now since they came in. ‘Fuck it,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s go.’ She grabbed a couple of handfuls of banded fifty-pound-note bundles and shoved them into her pockets. Susan picked up the holdall. Or tried to. ‘Jesus,’ she said. They took a handle each and edged their way out of the door and into the corridor. Julie kicked the door shut and it automatically flashed back to red, locking the staff inside.

  Susan took the walkie-talkie out of her pocket and keyed it. ‘Fear to Wheels. Fear to Wheels, come in. We’re ready to roll.’

  On the passenger seat of the old Granada her voice reverberated out of the walkie-talkie and around the hot, empty car.

  Nails was queuing for his ice cream. Two fellas in front of him. One of them turned round. ‘Oh, hello there!’ he said. Nails looked at the man, confused. He’d never seen this geezer before in his life. ‘Look, Sarge, it’s Mr … you know. From the dance group.’

  Boscombe turned now too, his large 99 in his hand. ‘Oh yeah. Bert. How are you?’ Boscombe smiled kindly, the way you do at simpletons. Bert? Who the fuck was Bert? Nails wondered. What the fuck was all this? But something was making alarm bells ring in Nails’s brain. Sarge. Hold on. What the fuck … Nails remembered what he was doing here.

  The girls came out of the front of the bank, Ethel bringing up the rear, holding her shotgun under her blanket, levelled at the still cowering customers. Susan looked around. Nothing. ‘Where is he?’ Julie said. Terror sparking through her, Susan hissed into the walkie-talkie again, forgetting all protocol now, saying, ‘Nails – where are you?’ People were starting to stop and point at them. Susan looked up
the street. A few hundred yards away she could see an ice-cream van.

  In a sharp moment of focus Nails realised that a) he was a criminal, b) he was here on business and c) that the man standing in front of him was a policeman who had somehow rumbled him. ‘Fancy an ice cream, do you?’ the copper was saying. ‘Here, on me.’ He was handing Nails his 99. ‘Give us another one, would you, son?’ the copper was saying to the kid working the van. Nails looked at the ice-cream cone now clenched in his fist. ‘Hot old da—’ the copper began. Fucking toying with him he was. Taking the piss out of old Nails. The fucking liberty of it. Go back to choky? No way. No fucking way.

  Nails smashed the ice cream into Boscombe’s face.

  Then he turned and broke into a run. Well, ‘run’ would be pushing it. Although everyone – judge, prosecution, defence, jury – would later agree that it had been an astonishing effort for someone of his age, testament to what the human body could achieve when in extremis. Nails had once again slipped into being 1972 Nails, who could fight and outrun policemen. He had forgotten that he was pushing ninety and needed a puff on his oxygen tank to pick up the remote for the TV. He had also forgotten that his vision was limited to about twenty feet in front of him.

  Wesley, Boscombe – who had ice cream dripping from his face and the words ‘What the fucking fuck’ forming on his lips – and several other witnesses watched in astonishment as the ancient man turned on his heel and ran twenty feet or so – smashing full force into the plate-glass window of the Morrisons supermarket.

  Julie and Susan turned in the doorway of the bank, hearing the explosion of glass from the other end of the high street. ‘Look!’ Ethel shouted behind them. She was pointing across the road – at the Cancer Care minibus, parked there. Empty. The driver’s door open. The bunch of keys visible in the ignition from here. Susan became aware of a rhythmic panting noise close to her – Jill crying.

  This was a nightmare. What had happened? Where was Nails? What now? Where –

  Susan’s interior monologue was terminated by the piercing note of the alarm going off. Somewhere within the bank, one of the staff had finally hit the button.