The smiles came back and they all nodded.
“So that’s agreed then,” Bob said.
33
They decided to go to a hotel and head back home the next morning. One that was somewhat posher than the B&B they'd stayed in last night.
"Why not, it’s not that we can’t afford it now," Lucy smiled.
Harry looked one up on his phone, “Found one,” he exclaimed, “Kensington House Aparthotel, just down the road. Shall I book it?”
They looked at each other, Lucy clapped excitedly as they all nodded.
“Don’t make the call from your phone, though, Harry. They could trace the call. Find a payphone,” Bob said.
The taxi ride was short but very enjoyable, they were all on a bit of a high when they got to the hotel. They booked into their rooms, which turned out to be small apartments, and decided that they'd meet an hour later for dinner, after freshening up.
Sitting in the hotel’s rather elegant restaurant, the four of them chatted.
Bob asked to look at the wine list, and to Lucy’s delight, Champagne. “Two bottles of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs two thousand and two, please.”
"Very good choice, sir.” As the waiter turned to walk off, Bob called him back, “Make that two!” The waiter smiled and left.
Bob looked at the others and explained, “The taste of this particular Champagne is a blend of poached pears, red apples, white blooms, citrus fruit, spices, mild cream, oranges and tangerines.”
They sat and stared at him. Harry looked at Lucy, and said, “Okay, what have you done with Bob? Who the hell is this sitting here?”
Bob countered with, “While you lot were out getting drunk every night, I was getting educated.”
“Pissed more like,” Harry said, with a smile. “And it sounds like you paid a lot more for the pleasure than we did.”
The waitress came over to take their orders, they all looked at Bob, wondering what he’d say next.
“Sausage and mash, please, love.” He looked at Harry and Dave, "Just the stuff to wash the Champagne down with.”
Lucy ordered the side of beef and mixed seasonal vegetables, Harry and Dave liked the look of the fish and chips.
The waiter came back with the Champagne, the bellboy followed carrying the ice bucket. He popped the cork and they all smiled, letting out a little cheer as he poured.
They were sitting back, savouring the Champagne and talking about what they were going to do first with the money when two men entered the restaurant and came over to their table. They pulled some extra chairs over and sat down.
The older of the two was about a hundred and eighty centimetres tall with a big build, as if he worked out, and had some silvering in his hair. The nice watch on his wrist was worth a cool eight thousand pounds, a Cartier Calibre. The other man had a buzz cut and was shorter, not by much. He was skinnier than the other man and had a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp, his watch of choice was a G-Shock. Both were dressed in black suits, not your MIB made to measure ones, but smart and off-the-rack. They sat down as if they were part of the table.
Harry and Bob went to stand, but the younger one of the men, the ugly one, said, “Sit down please, gentlemen!” It was more of an order than a request.
Bob, Harry and Dave looked at each other and stood.
The older of the two men said, “Now gentlemen, under the circumstances that would be rather silly.” He looked at the three of them, one at a time, then with a little flick of his hand, motioned to the windows at the back of the restaurant.
Outside the window, silhouetted by the streetlight across the road, stood a man. He had a rifle pointing at them!
The three of them looked back at the man.
“If I give the signal, or, he feels we’re in any danger, you’ll be dead before you can say "cheque please". Understand?”
Dave looked at Lucy, she’d started to well up, but kept it under control.
“Now you’ve been lucky so far,” he started with, “we could have killed you on a number of occasions.” He stopped talking and looked at them, “but you’re all still alive. That alone says something about this situation.”
“Who are you?” Bob interrupted.
The man looked long and hard at Bob, “Don’t ever interrupt me again, Robert!”
Bob sat back, he looked shocked at the way he’d just been spoken to. The man carried on, “Let’s just say we’ve been your guardian angels up to now, but no more!”
Bob waited for the pause, “What do you mean, guardian angels?”
The younger man sat quietly throughout the conversation, letting the older man talk.
“Come now, Bob, you’re not that dumb, are you? We’ve been watching you since the day we led you to your little fortune. Four of you set off to find the safe, afterwards, three of you met back in Bob’s room. You talked about sending the diamonds and the keys back to your sister, Lucy," he said, nodding at her.
“Steve died," Dave said.
“Yes, Steve got killed, unfortunately. He was a good man, but we’ve managed a blackout on the news. Pretty reckless you losing his body like that. It caused us no end of trouble, still can’t find the damn thing.” He stopped talking and looked at Lucy, and said, “Hello, Lucy, nice to meet you.”
Lucy looked at him, unable to control the tears that were running down her face.
“I’m sorry for not introducing myself properly and interrupting your meal, but you don’t need to know my name.” He looked at all of them, and said, “You just need to know I exist.”
When he said this Dave coughed, Harry sniggered.
The man ignored them and looked back at Lucy. “I hope you’re enjoying the Champagne, Bob made an excellent choice, but I’m not too sure about your choice of meals though. Oysters with asparagus would have better complemented the Champagne.”
He looked back at Bob and continued, “You then finished your contracts and met at your little house in Norfolk.”
“You’ve been bugging us?”
The man looked at Bob. Dave couldn’t tell whether he was surprised at what Bob said or just pissed off for being interrupted again.
“We made sure the parcels made it through customs, unchecked, and personally hand-delivered them to your sister. We then watched her put the parcels in your office. Would you like me to carry on?”
“The burglar alarms,” Bob growled.
The man looked at him, tilted his head slightly, and nodded.
“But I rang round the village to ask if anyone else got a call," Lucy explained. "I even rang my best friend!”
The man looked at her, “Yes, we know. We installed five-alarm systems in the village, a very cheap and legal way to get into your little cottage.”
“You’ve been watching Lucy all this time? That’s illegal.”
“Mr Phillips, feel free to report it to the police. I’m sure they’ll be more than interested as to where your sudden wealth came from!”
“The money isn’t even in the country, and you’ll have to prove it," Harry growled.
“Ahhhh, Harry,” he said, looking at him. "Ex-RAF Regiment. Explosives expert. I was in the regiment, Harry. I dug around a bit. You have a very interesting past. I wonder if your little friends here know about it!"
Harry stared at him, his fists flexing.
"All I’ll say is, remember the Gulf?” He left it at that.
Harry’s face drained and went white.
"Harry. The money is in a little Swiss bank account Bob opened, just before you left Ramadi," he explained. "It's waiting for your little group to go and use it. I can give you the bank account number if you want, or better still, I can give you the manager’s name and address, you can ask him yourself!”
Bob went to get up and punch the man, but he pre-empted him. He raised his right forefinger and wiggled it from side to side as if he was scolding a little child. “Ah-ah-ah! Remember who I have outside the window?”
Lucy put her hand
on Bob’s arm and smiled. Bob sat down slowly but locked eyes with the man who had been talking.
They stared at each other for a few moments before the man turned away, his tone changing to a firmer, harder one. “I don’t have the time or the interest in playing your little Alpha dog games, Bob! Now shut up and listen. Otherwise, when you leave this hotel, you and your little group, including Lucy, won’t even make it across the street. Got it?”
Bob smiled, staring at him.
“Please, Bobby," Lucy begged.
Bob looked away, then at Lucy, “I’m sorry I got you into this Lucy.”
"Of course you’ll be okay, Lucy, as long as your little group take the deal, or this will be the last Champagne you ever taste.”
“Touch her and it’ll be the last time you ever pick that ugly nose on your head!" Harry threatened.
"Now, Dave," he said, ignoring Harry’s little show. "You’re a bit of a bad luck case really: blown up, lost your job, your girlfriend, Jane. Shame about Poppy, but you never were really in her league were you?”
Dave clenched his fists and looked away. He knew he was right.
“So, this is the deal. We want you to find out who wants those keys.”
”Those bloody keys again!” Dave thought.
"I know what you’re thinking, 'why are those keys so important?' Good question. They’re the code keys to a suitcase bomb!”
Bob, Harry and Dave looked at the man in disbelief.
Lucy said, “What’s a suitcase bomb?”
The man ignored her as if she wasn’t there. “That’s right, gentlemen, you have the keys to a Mini-Nuke.” He looked at Lucy, and said, “Don’t look so alarmed, Lucy, it can’t go off, unless the person trying to set it off has those keys!”
Lucy opened her bag, took the keys out and pushed them across the table towards the two men, “They’re yours, now go away and leave us alone.”
The ugly man chuckled. The one in charge said, “It’s not that simple, Lucy. You see, we have you over what you would term as, the proverbial barrel." He looked at them all and followed up with, “between you, you’ve killed four police officers, albeit they’d gone bad I’ll give you that, but the fact of the matter is, you still killed them.”
“But they were trying to kill us.”
“Details, Lucy, details,” he said. "Now this can go one of two ways: my way, which is the good way, or your way,” as he said this he looked out the window, to where the marksman was standing, then back at them, as if to prove a point. “Your choice? Oh yes, and something to do with the ten million pounds, of course. You see, those diamonds belong to the British government. They were payment for the suitcase back in nineteen ninety-five, but someone got greedy, that someone is now dead!”
“So why didn’t you just get the diamonds back? Surely you could have dealt with someone else!”
“Because, Bob, the dead person turned out to be rogue as well. He’d set up quite a good operation really.” He looked up in the air as if he was thinking, “I’d have liked to have him on my team, but hey-ho, we can’t have everything our own way, can we?”
Bob, Dave and Harry looked at each other. Harry looked at the man, and said, “When this is done, we keep the money and you go away, yes?”
“Probably not, Harry. You see, ten million pounds is a lot of money, and this isn’t a Bruce Willis film. The British government doesn’t make a habit of paying their private operatives obscene amounts of money, especially when we could use our own people. So you see, you’ll do this job for us, the British government, or you’ll,” he paused for a moment, “disappear!”
“Why don’t you just throw the keys away? Then it can never be used!”
“Quite right, Lucy, but we need to know who has it, so we can stop them in the future. This is where your little group comes in. The British government was very embarrassed when it all went wrong the last time. We were condemned for our actions by a number of countries. We’ve healed that gap now, but we don’t want to be seen messing up again. This way, if it all goes wrong, your little group will cease to exist and no blame can be brought back to us,” he said, with a faint smile.
“Now there’s a plane leaving tomorrow evening from Heathrow, going to Abu Dhabi. You’ll be on that plane, or…” he left the sentence there and looked at all four of them, then out the window.
“Any questions?”
“Yes, how are we going to travel without our passports, it’ll take too long to go home and fetch them!”
“You’ll have temporary papers waiting for you when you get to the airport. Anything else?”
Dave looked at Bob, “Abu-bloody-Dhabi, again!"
The other man who’d sat quietly through most of it, said, “You have four seats booked, economy only!” he smiled. “When you get there you’ll have a vehicle waiting, booked through a local hire company. Try not to break it, we’re paying for that one!"
“How do we get in touch with you?”
“You don’t, Dave. We’ll be watching you. We’ll get in touch if we need to. Any more questions? No? Good. Have a nice flight.”
The men got up and nodded at Lucy, who then made the others all smile by saying. “Fuck off, you complete bastards!”
The man looked at her, “I always knew you’d come through in the end, Lucy. You just needed a push!” They then turned and left.
Lucy picked up her glass of Champagne, she was going to throw it, but then downed it in one. She called the waiter over and ordered another bottle.
Bob said to the waiter, “Make it four.”
“Now what?” Harry asked. “Now, Harry, we have a plane to catch!”
****
The next morning at breakfast, Bob insisted that Lucy remained in the U.K.
“Lucy, it’s going to be too dangerous. You could get killed.”
“I’m in this now, don’t leave me out.”
“Sorry, Luce. I’m not risking your life for these arseholes. If they don’t like it, tough, they can go and do one.”
She protested all the way to the train station, but Bob kept saying, “Look I’ve already lost one mate. I’m not going to lose you as well. So you’re getting on that bloody train back to Norfolk.”
She relented in the end and gave her brother a hug.
On the way to the station, Bob spotted his tail almost as soon as he’d left the hotel. He didn’t worry about it, not anymore, he knew they’d be watched very closely from now on.
Once he’d sat Lucy on the train, he got off, saying, “One minute, Luce, I just need to speak to someone.”
Lucy watched him walk over to two guys, they were standing at the counter of a fast food outlet on the platform ordering coffee.
“Keep an eye on her for me, lads, she acts tough but it’s really only an act," he said.
They reacted as if he was a drunk, moving away. They gave him a pound coin, “Get yourself a coffee, mate.”
They looked at the other people around them in the queue and smiled.
“We always attract them!”
“Friends of yours?” she asked, as Bob got back to her.
“No, I thought I knew them, mistaken identity. I think I may need glasses. First Class all the way, Luce, I bet you could get used to this?”
“Oh yes, It’s the only way for me from now on,” she said excitedly.
Bob looked at the two men talking, and thought, “They’re smarmy gits, and I know they’re following us.” But he did wonder if he’d made a mistake. He shook his head, “Lucy’s making me bloody paranoid.”
He kissed her on the cheek, “I’ll be back in no time at all. We’ll get this sorted and then we can enjoy the rest of our lives.
As the train pulled out, Bob noticed one of the two men who’d given him the coin was now on the train, staring hard at him. They locked eyes, and to Bob’s surprise, the man winked at him. It was one of those winks that said “I’ve got your back, mate” then he looked forward again. Bob nodded, turned and smiled to himself. He set of
f back to the hotel, all the time thinking, “We’ve got a plane to catch.”
34
When Bob got back they threw the belongings they had in a bag and caught a train to the airport. As they left the hotel, they spotted their tails again, they even had the audacity to wink.
"Shall we play the running game?” Dave said, nudging the other two.
“Really!” Harry said. "I'm not as fast as I used to be," tapping his leg.
“Yeah, it could be fun.”
“Okay. You two go that way, I’ll see you back here in five minutes," Bob smiled.
Harry looked at his watch, “The train leaves in thirty-five minutes. If we miss this one we'll catch up at Heathrow.”
They use to play the running game when they were down the local, back at camp. They would all go separate ways, basically just to give someone the runaround. They'd end up back in the bar, chuckling as they walked in out of breath. It was mainly local lads who just wanted a fight, it was their way of saying, “Not today thanks.”
When they arrived at the station, they looked around for their chaperones, the arseholes were sitting enjoying a cup of tea. They smiled at the three of them, shaking their heads, tutting.
Dave looked at Bob, who'd broken out in a sweat, “Must be ex-army, they must have known we’d head here.”
“I need a coffee,” Bob said, boarding the train and heading off to the dining car. When he got back he looked over at their new travelling companions, “I would have offered to get you something, lads!”
“No thanks," they smiled. "We’re on duty.”
The rest of the journey was quiet. Their new friends disembarked when they did and followed them to the next train, waving goodbye from the platform. Dave blew them a kiss, as Bob said, “Three seats back, young couple.”
Harry and Dave looked over, they were looking straight back at them, “Shit!"
****
They were the first to board the plane and were shown to their seats by the young attendant. She gave Dave and Harry a long look as they sat down. Bob smiled and shook his head like a dad.
The seats were a little cramped but the stewardesses made up for any comfort shortfalls.
Dave looked at Harry and winked, “I wouldn’t mind joining the mile high club with that one.”
Scavenger Hunt Page 12