Champagne Kisses (22 page)

‘The best
ever
,’ Maddie and I gushed in unison, knowing Parker was far easier to manage when happy.
With
that all our tensions eased and we were three happy campers on tour again.

With Maddie’s wild men out of sight, we made our way to Passport Control thrilled by the sight of the warm Spanish sun.

‘I’m going to be sitting beside the pool with a strawberry daiquiri in my hand in about ninety minutes,’ beamed Parker, stretching his arms out as if he was catching some rays.

‘And I’ll be lying right beside ya trying to hold my belly in,’ smiled Maddie, with a deep intake of breath. ‘You never know, I could catch the eye of my first future husband!’

‘I hope he likes children,’ I teased.

‘Well Heidi Klum bagged Seal with someone else’s baby,’ she answered back with an air of optimism. ‘And then she had more with him.’ With that she skipped off to wave her passport, content in the knowledge that happily-ever-afters can happen.

‘What do you mean there’s a problem?’ I was surrounded by several Spanish Policia who were trying to escort me to a nearby door marked
PRIVADO.

‘No, give me my passport back – I’ve done nothing wrong. Parker – Maddie!’ I was pushed inside a small concrete room with a desk and a few chairs and told, ‘Wait here’ by an angry policeman wearing a bulletproof vest.

As the door closed behind me, I dropped on one of the chairs in shock, my heart pounding with fear.
What
did they think I had done? Was this a case of mistaken identity? Was it some elaborate practical joke?

Moments later the heavy door swung open and Maddie and Parker were pushed through it. Thank God, I thought. At least I wasn’t alone in my abduction.

‘I demand an explanation,’ Parker insisted in his best butch voice. Maddie hung on to him for dear life. ‘You can’t do this to us,’ she added weakly. ‘We’ve done nothing wrong.’

But once they were inside, the door was slammed shut again, leaving us dazed and confused.

Maybe it was her hormones, but Maddie burst into tears, and although we were trying to remain strong, Parker and I weren’t far behind her.

In a panic Maddie screamed, ‘What the fuck? What if they want to do one of those anal examinations? I don’t want some bitch sticking her rubber gloves up my ass.’

‘Sounds all right to me,’ chirped Parker.

‘Not funny,’ I said, trying to fight the tears. ‘We’re in some serious shit here. What the fuck do they think we’ve done?’

‘They’ve taken our phones,’ said Parker, as if talking through a plan in his head.

‘I’ve still got mine,’ I said and rooted in my handbag. ‘But who will we ring?’

‘Jeff,’ urged Parker. ‘Hurry up and turn that bloody thing on before they come back. He’ll know what to do.’

But as if the police had been listening to our conversation, the door crashed open again as I was staring at my Nokia doing its lengthy connection light-up ritual.

‘You won’t be needing that just yet,’ said one of the two plainclothes men who walked into the room. He had an Irish accent. ‘I’ll mind that for now.’ He signalled to me to hand over the phone, which I did and then instantly regretted.

‘What did you do that for?’ Maddie was turning from emotional to hysterical.

‘OK, listen up, people, calm down and we can get through this a lot easier.’ The man, who was wearing a blue short-sleeved Ralph Lauren shirt and navy jeans, had a recognizable south Dublin accent, and even though it didn’t seem to sedate Maddie, it went a small way towards calming my nerves. After all, at least these guys were from the same town as us. Surely they’d be less likely to throw us in a foreign jail and throw away the key? My mind began racing, just like my heartbeat.

‘I demand you tell us why you’re holding us here. We’ve just arrived for our holidays. We’re not smuggling people or drugs.’

‘If you take a seat I’ll explain.’ The same man spoke, while the other observed.

Realizing we had no option but to co-operate, after checking out each other’s eyes we hesitantly sat down and faced our kidnappers.

As Maddie continued to weep, the second man – in
a
white short-sleeved Ralph Lauren shirt and navy jeans – handed her a tissue from his pocket while the main man readied himself to speak.

‘You’re wondering why we’ve pulled you in here. Well, let me introduce myself and my colleague. My name is Detective Hugh Ormond and this is Detective Mark Fitzsimons and we’re—’

‘Are you charging us with an offence?’ interrupted Parker.

‘If you would let me finish, sir, I’d like to explain.’

‘Yes, well I’ve a pregnant woman here who doesn’t need this sort of upset,’ explained Parker as he put his arm around Maddie to comfort her. It only seemed to make her worse.

‘What … do … you want with us?’ blubbed Maddie, then erupted into another tearful episode.

‘If you’d let me explain,’ said the man in the blue again. ‘As I said, my name is Detective Ormond and this is Detective Fitzsimons and we’re part of the Garda National Drug Unit.’

‘What?’ Parker was aghast.

‘We’ve pulled you in because we’d like to find out your exact relationship with John Mathews, Cormac Bulger, Jack Gannon and Ray Gannon.’

‘Who?’ the three of us asked together.

‘Oh come on. Do you expect me to believe you don’t know who I’m talking about? We’ve just stepped off the same flight, and we were witness to your contact with these four men.’

‘We don’t know them,’ snapped Parker defensively.
‘This
eejit started flirting with them, but then changed her mind.’ He pointed to Maddie as he spoke, which evoked even more cries.

‘Oh, th-is is all my fault now, I suppose,’ whimpered Maddie. ‘How was I to know?’

‘Know what, Miss Lord?’ Detective Ormond asked while scanning her passport.

‘Nothing … I know nothing … Can we just go?’ Maddie was an extremely bad liar. And our trained Gardaí could smell a stinking rat.

‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Miss Lord. All we need is a little co-operation from you and then you can leave.’

‘I’m no snitch,’ blurted Maddie, stupidly signing her death warrant.

‘Jesus Christ, Maddie,’ moaned Parker, fully aware she was digging a deep hole for herself. ‘Just tell them what the men said to you.’ He glared at Maddie and then at me. I remained quiet and frozen on my chair. The less attention I brought to myself the better.

‘OK, Miss Lord, we’re all ears.’ Detective Ormond smirked as he spoke.

‘Shouldn’t I have a lawyer present or something? Am I under arrest or what?’

‘So far this is an informal inquiry, Miss Lord, but if you want to make life difficult for yourself we can arrest you all under the Misuse of Drugs Act, search your bags and we can make it all very formal.’

‘
No
,’ I screamed, without thinking. ‘Sorry, no, we’ll talk, well, Maddie here will explain. Won’t you,
Maddie?’
I squeezed her hand and raised my eyebrows for extra effect.

‘Yes, Maddie,’ agreed Parker, ‘showing loyalty to four men we’ve never met before is hardly worth being banged up in a Spanish jail for, now is it?’

‘Why me?’

‘
Maddie!
’ Parker’s fuse had almost burnt out.

‘OK, OK,’ she muttered, trying to prepare herself for her big revelation. ‘They offered me a line of coke on the plane – that’s it. Are you happy now?’

‘I don’t think this is the time for attitude, Miss Lord. I’d like to point out that we can hold you here over the weekend, and we are more than happy to keep you company until you decide to tell us the truth.’

‘But that is the truth,’ pleaded Maddie, perking up. ‘I’ve never – we’ve never – met them before the flight today, and I had no idea who they were. Honest, I was just having a laugh with them, and as soon as they asked if I wanted a line of coke, I backed off. You’ve got to believe me.’

‘Do you really expect us to believe you’ve no relationship with these men?’

‘Yes – I’ve never seen them before.’

‘But we saw you with them. What was it that you were passing to them on the plane?’

‘Just a note.’

‘Saying what?’

‘Stuff.’

‘Miss Lord, must I remind you that we can hold you and your friends here for the weekend.’

‘Fuck sake …’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Sorry, just stuff,’ she sighed, with agony in her voice. ‘I was just messing, having a laugh.’

‘And?’

‘And I was flirting with them. It was just innocent stuff. Have you never had fun with strangers before?’ The two detectives just looked at each other and then turned their gaze back to Maddie.

‘Your friend here informs us you’re pregnant.’ The detective gestured at Parker. ‘Does the father of your baby approve of you “flirting” with other men?’

‘I’m not with him,’ she mumbled under her breath.

‘Sorry?’ asked the detective again.

‘I’m not with him,’ she repeated, her voice louder. ‘I’m an unmarried mother-to-be. So there, are you happy now?’

‘Not really, Miss Lord. I don’t believe a word out of your mouth. I don’t believe you’re pregnant, and I don’t believe you’ve never met the four men we have under surveillance. I think you’d better make yourself comfortable. Because we’ve a lot more questions to ask.’

The two men stood up from their chairs and left the room, leaving us to stare at each other in bewilderment.

‘I’ve told you everything I know.’ I was in a different room on my own being interviewed by the same detective, Hugh Ormond.

‘Have you been drinking, Miss Valentine?’

‘Yes, and I’m not trying to be sarcastic, but what has that got to do with anything? I wasn’t planning on driving anywhere. I had kinda hoped I’d be sitting at my pool drinking more by now, actually.’

‘If it’s all right with you, Miss Valentine, I’ll be the one asking the questions.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s OK, we just have to be clear on everything. These are very dangerous men you’ve come into contact with.’

‘Yes, well it’d be a lot easier to avoid international drug dealers if they wore T-shirts to state who they were.’

‘Believe me, it would help our job considerably too.’

Thankfully, after much aggravated discussion, it looked like the two detectives were coming around to our explanation of events.

The four men Maddie had been flirting with turned out to be small-time drug lords who were travelling to Puerto Banus to meet up with Russian gangs to open new avenues for smuggling Class A drugs. We had foolishly introduced ourselves to these flash Harrys who were under investigation by Europol and being followed by the Drug Squad.

After I’d given him all our contact details, of where we were staying and how long we were planning to stay for, Detective Ormond handed me back my passport and stood up to walk me back to Parker and
Maddie,
who had each been interviewed separately before me.

‘You’re free to go now. Is there anything you’d like to ask me before we release you?’

‘I thought we weren’t under arrest?’

‘You weren’t, but you could have been.’

‘Emmm, by any chance are you related to a good-looking brunette named Lucy?’

‘She’s my younger sister.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘How do you know my skin and blister?’

‘She’s … just a friend of mine. She’s a good girl.’

‘Oh I better look after you, so. Otherwise I’ll never hear the end of it.’

Fifteen minutes later Parker, Maddie and myself were sitting in the back of a scruffy white minivan being driven to Marbella.

It wasn’t exactly Parker’s style, but the detectives insisted they get us to our villa, and since thankfully we had too much luggage to fit in the back of one of their Policia cars, we were ushered into a rattling unmarked tin can instead.

The driver didn’t seem to have a word of English, so the three of us sat in silence during the fifty-minute journey to Parker’s villa. All that could be heard over the noisy Moroccan music in the front was the beeping of texts from our mobiles.

Parker of course was bombarding Jeff with his tale of injustice, while Maddie filled Lisa in on her ordeal of being accused of being a liar, slapper and criminal.
I
plucked up the courage to send Luscious Lucy a message to say, ‘Today I’m very glad I met you. For once you delivered me out of trouble instead of leaving me in it xxx.’ Understandably she was probably a little confused by my text. ‘Are U drunk?’ she replied. Far too exhausted to give her a full explanation, I texted back ‘YES’.

‘It’s definitely a first for me, ha, being arrested,’ chuckled Parker as he sipped his second glass of white Faustino.

We had finally made our way to our favourite restaurant, Fernando’s, and were awaiting our usual order of
lobster au gratin
, crispy pork belly and sweet BBQ ribs. It was the same order every visit and the same randy waiter Amancio who served us, which meant the same harassment every time I visited the Señoritas. Of course we called him Armani the lean mean pestering machine, as he was the image of the ultra-stylish flamenco dancer Joaquín Cortés – long hair, attitude and all.

Although I pretended to tire of his advances, which came in the form of drawings on napkins, red roses and decorated desserts, Amancio – who every year would tell me that his name meant love or loving – always made me feel the sexiest woman alive.

‘You are so beautiful – be my woman – can I make loff to you?’ He was your typical intense Spanish gigolo. I just had to forget that he fed the same passionate bullshit to at least six or seven other women a night.

‘We weren’t arrested,’ I retorted as I watched Amancio’s tight ass glide across the room. ‘Stop saying that. That’s how we get ourselves into trouble.’ I also warned him to stop going on about the fact that we’d been held by the Gardaí.

‘Just like the time we discovered those remote control mini vibrating eggs,’ chuckled Parker.

Maddie and I looked at each other, ‘Ohmigod,’ squealed Maddie, ‘do you remember?’

Raising my glass of wine, I toasted the air and answered, ‘How could we ever forget?’

Several years back we’d been enjoying a posh meal at Shannon’s restaurant in Dublin when a friend of Maddie’s called in with presents for her. He owned a sex shop on South William Street called Miss Naughty, and he had a bag full of goodies for her as a thank-you for a modelling job she’d done wearing some of his kinky lingerie.