Daring Dooz (The Implosion Trilogy (Book 2)) (17 page)

Chapter 37

When Mrs Hathaway returned from her
telephone call, the four men had recovered consciousness to varying degrees and
were doing what men do best, sitting around a table drinking lager and moaning
about how bad things were.

By the time she joined them, the lager
seemed to have cured Aubrey’s seasickness, and he had filled everyone in with
his version of the Daring Dooz venture and how dangerous and uncomfortable it
had been. He’d also apologised to Mick and Jim for the ‘Vlad and Vic in 10
minutes’ episode, and, as he had kick-started the adventure that resulted in
them being £400,000 better off, the apology had been accepted.

Mrs Hathaway sat down and continued the
story, without the hiccups, burps, general inaccuracies and wild exaggeration
that typified Aubrey’s new conversational style. But she was very careful to
stop the tale at their arrival on St Bernard. Future plans were for the future.

Jim said how delighted he was to see Mrs
Hathaway. This was mainly because, first, he was brought up properly, and second,
because the fact that she and Aubrey had turned out to be real, confirmed he
hadn’t descended to a new and frightening level of the DTs.

Despite the noise in his head - a random
combination of amplified steam hammers, drop forges and badly adjusted pile
drivers - Mick had a go at being effusive.

‘My dear lady, what an unexpected
delight. Here we are in the tropical version of Hernando’s Hideaway, when in
you glide, smooth as silk to brighten our day, our week, who knows, our month
or even...’

Aubrey joined in the conversation. ‘I
was sick as a pig, all the way over.’

‘... our year,’ continued Mick. ‘And of
course, we’re more than in a position to reimburse you the £500 we owed you in
back cleaning fees.’

Aubrey and the police chief looked up.

Mick corrected the sentence, in a
second. This was particularly impressive as he was in the flattery-autopilot
mode he used back in Soho when policemen were asking why he was sitting in the
middle of the street at 3am.

‘By “back cleaning fees”, I am, of
course, gentlemen, referring to the money owed to Mrs Hathaway for office
sprucing,
not
for the nefarious
soaping, massaging and scrubbing of my bodily parts.’

Mick decided it was time for him to stop
talking, and everyone agreed.

Jim had somehow dragged himself back
from the precipice, and was prepared to give a resum
é
of their story. How Charlie had lured them to Las
Vegas with the express purpose of bumping them off. How they’d escaped certain
death by promising to have regular weekly satellite calls to discuss Charlie’s
obsession with Ealing Comedies. How the pop video they’d made for Vlad and Vic
back in Southsea had resulted in the V-Twins signing a lucrative contract in
Charlie’s Las Vegas hotel. He also hinted that Vlad and Vic had handed over a
very generous ‘thank you’ pay-off, which they were using to support their
gratuitous, dangerously decadent lifestyle on St Bernards.

The amazing stories had all been told,
and most of the group had understood something about what had been said. It was
now the turn of
Roberto
Velazquez, the island’s Chief of Police. How did he get to be at the beach bar
that morning?

Roberto
stared directly into the eyes of each person sitting at the table, then, after
a dramatic pause, revealed all.

‘I fell off
my bike.’

So that was it.
Everyone knew how everyone had arrived. And Mrs Hathaway liked that - it was
extremely
neat and tidy.

But, despite
the fact she’d just nailed the
Daring
Dooz
initial
challenge, had outrode hurricanes, fought off sharks, put up with Aubrey’s
eating habits and navigated the last 1500 miles using a ripped bit of a comic,
even Mrs Hathaway had no idea what was going to happen next - or how tidy, or
untidy, it would turn out to be.

Chapter 38

Roberto ordered the island’s only cab
and, a few minutes later, Mrs Hathaway and Aubrey had checked into the island’s
only hotel. In fact, the reservations had been made by Giles’ organisation in
advance. They’d arranged separate rooms with full board, so everything
continued to be very tidy.

Later that evening, things became less
tidy when Mrs Hathaway and Aubrey arranged to meet Mick and Jim for drinks in
the cocktail suite. In fact, as far as Mrs Hathaway was concerned, things
became disgustingly un-tidy - even filth-infused, pig-penningly squalid.

Before Mrs Hathaway arrived, there was
small talk. Aubrey asked Mick if his bow tie was a clip on. And Mick asked
Aubrey if the power for his flashing trainers came from batteries shoved up his
bum.

Then Mrs Hathaway arrived, and
immediately popped the question.

‘You know all about these Daring Dooz challenges?
Well, I have a considerable budget available for two experienced professionals
to accompany me, taking videos, sound and photographs. And I’d like to offer
you the job. The idea is that they will be dangerous for
me
, but I can assure you -
your
safety will always come first.’

Mick and Jim glanced at each other, and
Mick drew the telepathic short straw.

‘My dear Mrs Hathaway, that’s such a
thoughtful offer, and, of course, we’re
very
flattered, but I’m afraid I have to tell you we must pass on this one. You see,
without putting too finer point on it, we are committed for the foreseeable
future, here on St Bernards.’

‘But I thought you were just pissing it
up against the wall,’ said Aubrey.

Mrs Hathaway couldn't have put it better
herself. This was a terrible blow to her plans. She was sure they’d jump at the
chance. Whatever cash they got from Vlad and Vic couldn't last for ever.

‘You see,’ said Mick. ‘We have just
invested a considerable amount of our V-Twins pay-off into a commercial venture
right here on the north side of the island.’

‘Investments can be risky.’

‘Not this one. My Uncle Jocelyn is
developing a marina right here on St Bernards. He’s always handled family
financial things. I had to speak to him about the final details of my divorce
settlement. I told him where we were, and that we’d had a cash windfall, so he
needn’t worry about us on the financial front. He’s such a nice old buffer, and
I knew he’d be concerned about our welfare.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jim ‘And the big
coincidence was that he was actually involved in a project to build a marina
right here in little old St Bernards - easy reach of the Florida Quays, nothing
like it for 100 miles, just the right base for the millionaire cruising
classes.’

‘Anyway,’ continued Mick, ‘it just
happened he had a visit planned for last week. So we met up and he showed us
the plans. They looked very impressive, very professional - even showed the water
depths and channels. It was so perfect, my old ticker nearly stopped with excitement.
He even had spreadsheets showing some spectacular financial returns. And that
was when he mentioned he was looking for investors, and did we know anyone?’

‘Well of course we did,’ said Jim. ‘Us!
He’s been a trusted friend of Mick’s family for years - and we had £400,000
cash just hanging around. There’s only so much champagne you can whack down in
a week, and, of course, we had to think about our future incomes.’

‘Old Uncle Jossers told us once we’d
invested, we’d be directors with a 50 per cent stake, including voting rights,
a steady income stream and annual bonuses,’ said Mick.

‘All we’d have to do is manage the early
development stages - liaising with the architects and local planning
authorities - that sort of thing. Now, as you’ve seen for yourself, we’ve been
hitting the Bolly a bit strong, so we thought it would be good to have another
interest.’

‘In short, we’ve invested in the scheme
and, consequently, we couldn't possibly take up your offer - we’ll be up to our
eyes right here, managing the St Bernards International Marina. Maybe you’d
like to book a berth for your lovely yacht, we could do you a discount, if you
get in quick.’

Mrs Hathaway was devastated. Daring Dooz
Challenge Two was about to loom large, and she was now faced with making
frantic phone calls around Florida to get a cameraman and photographer who she
didn't know, and who probably chewed gum and talked with American accents.

Her bright blue eyes sparkled. A little
tear ran down her suntanned cheek. She looked directly at Mick and Jim.

‘Can't I do
anything
to persuade you?’

She gently brushed the tear away with
the back of her hand.

Under this level of persuasion, most men
would have collapsed in a delicious, nervous wreck, but Mick and Jim’s abrasive
lifestyle meant their nerve ends had been completely anaesthetised.

‘Nothing, I’m afraid,’ said Mick.
‘Sorry, but
absolutely
nothing. We are
totally
committed.’

At exactly the same time Mick was
stating his commitment to the marina, Uncle Jocelyn was doing some commitment
of his own. Having just checked that nearly £400,000 had arrived in his secret
Swiss bank account, he stood at the entrance to Miami International Airport,
fully committed to using the first-class, one-way ticket to Buenos Aires which
was tucked safely inside the silk-lined pocket of his new, outrageously
expensive cashmere blazer.

Once inside the airport, he also spent a
small amount of time committing a cheap CD entitled
Plan Your Own Fantasy Marina
to the first available waste bin.

Chapter 39

 
Mick and Jim sat across the table from Mrs
Hathaway, looking as miserable as two men who had finally realised they had
been swindled out of 400,000 smackers by a trusted family bastard. Which, of
course, is exactly what they were.

‘So, first things first, what’s the
pay?’ said Mick.

Mrs Hathaway was bright, cheerful and
business like.

‘I thought something significant - say
£100,000 - for the whole thing, plus expenses, travel, accommodation, food and
all that.’

The £400,000 loss was still shoving
their faces into the grinding machine of life. There were no spark deflectors.
No eye protection. No gum shields. No heat absorbing lubrication spray. Just
pain. Consequently, their response to Mrs Hathaway’s generous offer was
decidedly muted.

‘How long is this “thing” going to
take?’ asked Jim, with a heavy degree of disinterest.

‘About a month.’

‘Any idea where?’ asked Mick, as he
trying to grab a passing fly.

‘No idea where.’

‘Any idea where we’ll be going?’

‘No idea at all.’

‘Any idea how we’ll be getting there?’

‘Not the slightest.’

‘Doesn't sound like much of a deal?’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Mrs Hathaway. ‘Would
you like some tea?’

They both declined. The fly continued to
zoom around Mick’s head.

‘Well then, perhaps you’d like me to do
something else for you?’

‘Such as?’

‘Remind you of the precarious state of
your bank balances.’

‘That’s below the belt!’ cried Jim.

‘Fine,’ said Mrs Hathaway. ‘£200,000 and
that’s my final offer.’

Mick got the fly in one. And a smile
warmed across his features.

‘Well,’ he said, wiping the dead insect
on his jacket, ‘I think that most gracious offer moves the action to well above
the belt.’

He took Jim’s silence as agreement.

The last minute, offer-doubling
technique had worked for Giles back in the Shard. And now it had worked for Mrs
Hathaway in the coffee lounge, cum cocktail suite, cum dining room, cum
ironmongers at the Hotel du Lack.

They attracted the attention of
Pierre
, the owner-concierge, and called for drinks all
round. There was a short delay while he removed his upturned bicycle from the top
of the reception desk and cleared away his puncture repair outfit.

When the drinks arrived, they drank a
toast to
Daring Dooz
and a successful
partnership. Even the fact that their champagne flutes smelt of 3-in-1 oil and
volatile adhesive couldn't dampen the team spirit and close personal friendship
generated by the extra £100,000.

*

Once Giles knew everything was up and
running, he started finalising his ideas for Daring Dooz Challenge Two.

While they were waiting for
instructions, Mrs Hathaway devised a physical training programme for Mick and
Jim to, at least, give them fighting chance when things started to hot up.

Neither Mick nor Jim were suited to
physical exercise. Mick was too overweight and couldn't move fast enough to
burn calories, particularly as he finished each training session with a couple
of pints of lager. As Jim’s ranting against the world developed megawatts of
nervous energy, he was already quite slim, and so felt justified in finishing
each training session with a couple of pints of lager.

As his old granny used to say, ‘Jimmy-boy,
you got the metabolism to drive a sewage pumping station.’ Mind you his granny
also used to light a fire with the curtains closed because she thought wood
took longer to catch alight if the sun was shining on it.

Still, at the end of each training
session, the team would meet at the Hotel du Lack to discuss progress, and to
fill in the spreadsheets Mrs Hathaway had drawn up.

The Hotel du Lack could be described as
an interesting example of old French colonial-style architecture, including an
amalgam of wooden, louvred window shutters, balconies with fine metalworked
tracery, delicate pink bougainvillea climbers and strategically placed sheets
of chipboard and corrugated iron.

With six bedrooms, and not very many
paying guests, the hotel had been forced to multi-function. The ironmongery
store was really a wall behind the reception desk, hung with an amazing range
of products - from hand drills to pop rivets to ironing board covers, from fly
spray to electrical connectors to meat cleavers, from paint brushes and paint
to garden gnomes. The stock turned over slowly which meant its dust-laden,
cobwebby outlines added a certain old-world charm to guests’ first impressions.
Or so
Pierre
thought.

The hotel name had been a
disappointment. He’d originally ordered the sign from a company in Florida,
over the telephone. After it arrived on the fortnightly steamer with ‘Lack’
instead of ‘Lac,’ there had been a few heated calls, but in the end, he
realised ‘Lack’ or ‘Lac’ would make no difference to his trade. So he let it
drop.

He also saved money by cancelling his
order for the ‘Anita Brookner Snooker Room’ sign. In fact, in a spurt of
creative business thinking, he also cancelled his order for the snooker table,
balls and cues, and used the space to start
Chez
Pierre
, a boutique selling erotic lingerie.

You could see the display of peephole
bras, thigh-length PVC boots and see-through nylon basques from the hardware
store area, and vice-versa, so he was hoping for some cross selling.

As it turned out, not many people came
in looking for a vacuum cleaner dust bag and a red leather, extra uplift corset
with integral suspenders. However, he did a good trade with the lap and pole
dancers from the island’s only erotic dancing club, who, for some reason, were
always getting their underwear damaged in various ways.

*

After three weeks, during which time Mrs
Hathaway calculated that Mick and Jim’s fitness levels had risen by around five
per cent, an envelope arrived by courier from England. The fact that the
envelope featured a full colour photograph of beach volley girl happily riding
a hippopotamus in a waterhole surrounded by salivating wolves left, even
Aubrey, in no doubt as to its origins.

Inside was a golden envelope featuring ‘Daring
Dooz Challenge Two’ in a dramatic black typeface which looked as thought it
might have, originally, been used to announce the date, time and place of a
public execution.

Mrs Hathaway opened the gold envelope,
and looked absolutely delighted.

‘How lovely,’ she cried, ‘I’ve got to
pilot a 1943
PBY
Catalina
flying boat down to a remote
tributary of the Amazon.’

Aubrey left to get something for his
stomach cramps, which had been brought on by the words ‘remote tributary of the
Amazon’. Mick and Jim, said ‘Excellent. Jolly good,’ then left immediately,
citing similar problems.

Mrs Hathaway thought it a little
strange, as her intestines were, as usual, functioning perfectly. Nevertheless,
she carried on reading through the other information in the package. This had
really captured her imagination. A flying boat! And no ordinary flying boat. A
1943
PBY
Catalina.

The
package contained a recently declassified reproduction
Pilot's Flight Operating
Manual
(more delicious midnight reading) and a file full of information. Catalinas
served with distinction throughout World War II, and this one, hired from a
collector in California, had been equipped with extra fuel tanks to give it the
range to get to the Amazon and back - plus all the latest navigational aids.
There was also an impressive list of ‘challenge’ equipment already loaded.

Mrs
Hathaway had a pilot’s license; so
that
was all neat and tidy, even though the Catalina was considerably bigger than
the Piper Tomahawk, she’d flown during her basic training.

Flying
lessons were extremely expensive and well outside her means. But, by chance
she’d met Group Captain Peter Wooldridge,
CVO, DSO, DFC and Bar when she had a cleaning
contract at the
Royal Air Force Club in Piccadilly, and, she had to
admit, he’d taken a shine to her.

After a few afternoon teas at the Ritz, he suggested
he drove her down to Biggin Hill in his green racing Bentley, and gave her
basic flying lessons, at no charge. After more dinners at the Savoy, he paid
for formal lessons and flights to clock up the flying hours she needed to get
her pilot’s certificate.

Yes, there had been a brief, starry-eyed liaison.
But despite the fact that he was rich, fit, extremely well-mannered and absolutely
besotted, his unshakable attachment to his handlebar moustache meant it was
all, eventually, destined for a crash landing. Both survivors walked away from
the wreckage, and, although it was many years ago, he still sent her a postcard
featuring a different aeroplane, every week.

*

Up in the hotel room, Jim was also thinking about
plane wrecks. Although his view was less romantic.

‘So
this
is how we get out of trouble,’ said Jim, his voice cracking with disbelief.
‘Our ex-cleaning lady, who was
great
at removing vomit, slinging cheap sherry bottles into black plastic bags and
giving everything a quick go-round with Pledge, will soon be piloting a huge,
clapped out, seventy-odd year old plane, on a 4,000 mile trip to the Amazon’s
version of shit creek.’

‘It would appear so,’ said Mick in his most irritating
‘They Win. You Lose.’ voice.

It was all the more irritating, because it was
confident and calming. The problem for Jim was that Mick really believed in
‘They Win. You Lose.’ as a life-enhancing, blood-pressure reducing philosophy.
The idea was that nothing in life goes your way, so relax and expect crap to
hit you from every angle, all the time. So when it all starts rocketing towards
you, it’s just what you expect - and you stay calm and in control. Mick had
absolute faith in ‘They Win, You Lose.’ and considered it qualified as one of
the world’s greatest philosophical platforms, except when it didn't work.

When it didn't work, he resorted to mind-boggling
hysterics and uncontrolled panic, just like everyone else. But this was not one
of those times, and he sought to reassure his fretting colleague.

‘Look at this way James, my old barnacle. Thanks to
Uncle Jocelyn’s aquatic
duplicity, we have been fucked over good and
proper and, if we pooled all our cash, we’d be lucky to pay for two minutes ogling
time down the Golden Legover
.’

This brought the seriousness of their situation right into Jim’s
heartland. A typical evening’s entertainment consisted of three hours at the
lap dancing club, followed by a trip with three or four dancers and a crate of champagne
down to Big Dick’s for fun and frolics (if they were lucky) before a late bed
and an even later hangover.

‘Now,’ said Mick calmly, ‘with no cash, that’s all going to stop. We’ll
be camping out on the beach, wrapped in newspaper and worrying about the price
of frozen sausages.’

‘But it’s a big plane and it’s got no wheels,’ said Jim, reverting to
type. ‘And it’s old. And it’s got a long way to go. And we’ve got to find this
creek thing up the jungle, and - and then what?’

‘Just think “frozen sausages”, and I’m sure that will put everything into
perspective,’ said Mick pouring himself a light Amontillado.

‘Anyway, I tapped the old love for £5000 in advance, and she’s
transferring it to our account as I imbibe.’

‘So we could get down to the Golden Legover
tonight?’

‘Absolutely,
mi viejo
debauchee. So let’s whip
downstairs and act like men, eh?’

But when they got to
reception, Mrs Hathaway had gone, leaving her champagne unfinished.

‘No idea what happened,’
said Pierre. ‘She just jumped up, grabbed my bike and shot off down the road.’

Perhaps Jim was not the
only one having worrying thoughts about Daring Dooz Challenge
Two
.