Falling (18 page)
The dining room has a sideboard
and one of the drawers reveals some papers. I sweep them into my holdall. I
check the conservatory is clear, exit the dining room and enter the main room
at the front of the house.
A giant plasma TV dominates the
room and the rest of the furniture is arranged to pay homage to the telly.
There is a book shelf filled with Waterstone’s finest top ten and I brush them
all off but there is nothing hidden behind them. I can hear Jim upstairs going
through the place. There is no subtlety in burglary. You trash without
prejudice. You don’t look under a bed; you simply turn it over. You don’t rake
through drawers; you pull them out and tip them upside down. Speed is of the
essence and we needed a hard on full of speed.
The alarm continues to howl.
The front room proves to be a
washout and I leave, cross the hall at the bottom of the stairs and through the
door opposite. It is the toilet. I trash the medicine cabinet and the towel bin
but nothing. There is one door left and when I push it I know I am in jackpot
land.
The study is neat. A desk with a
laptop power plant on a table faces the sole window. I pull the curtain shut
and work my way round the room. I tip any likely papers into the holdall until
I have everything except the contents of a filing cabinet. I sprint back to the
garage and pick up the crowbar and hear Jim’s feet on the stairs.
The alarm is still keeping us company.
I re-enter the study and wrench
the filing cabinet open. There is no way we can carry all the contents so we
need to sift rather than grab it all. I start at the top and pull the files out
and throw them to the floor if they looked useless. The top drawer is the A to
F of household and it ends up in a pile at my feet. The second drawer is the G
to Z and it joins the growing mound. All of the third drawer looks relevant so
some goes in my holdall and I shout for Jim and empty the rest into his bag. The
fourth and bottom drawer is full of porn magazines. Jim’s eyes light up and he
half inches a pile until he realises it is Gay porn and he throws it to the
floor.
We are history. Out through the
internal door to the garage and then up with the garage door. A quick check of
the street, out, close the door and head down the driveway and back towards the
car. Behind us the alarm rings away and in twitchy curtain land not a curtain
moves. Go figure.
I keep my eyes open for any
movement but there is nothing and five minutes later I sling my holdall in the
back seat of the car, as does Jim, and we are away.
I have instructions to meet up
with a Blue Ford Mondeo that will be parked up less than a mile away. I get Jim
to pull the A to Z and we head for the drop off point.
Tina walks back into the
Starbucks with a face like thunder on a mountain ridge. I am still struggling
to keep awake but I know that staying here is not an option. She sits across
from me and unloads about George. I can’t pretend I am surprised at what she
tells me. I was an iPod and twenty DVD’s to the good through George’s supply
network. Like it or lump it we were in this together.
Tina then drops a bomb shell.
Like someone looking in on a fish tank she sees the whole picture. The
gorillas. Retip, Robin raiding Leonard’s computer - see the connection. Like a
flashbulb in my head I’m there. Blindingly obvious is not the word. I see it in
an instant - Leonard has turned over on Retip and Retip has turned over on
Leonard. This is a step well removed from where I thought we were. My flight,
Leonard’s death - all down to Retip. Retip were dodgy but I didn’t think that
they endorsed killing.
I try to figure what Tina will do
next. Will she run? Will she grass me up? She keeps up a monologue and it dawns
on me that Tina had no more intention of dumping George, and hence me, than she
does of stripping naked and going for a run in the car park.
I tell her I want to go home and
she vehemently disagrees. She tells me what I already know - that the gorillas
will hardly overlook my house. I shrug, or at least I move my left shoulder
about a quarter of an inch. I need rest and I want to go home.
She is after me like a dog with a
bone and gives me a dozen good reasons why going home is a crap idea. I agree
with them all and still say I want to go home. A couple of hours shut eye, pick
up some clean clothes and figure what we need to do.
Tina is not for letting go.
George comes in from the mall and she tells George what I want to do and he
says it is a bad idea. Tell me something I don’t know.
Tina comes up with a compromise.
They will check me in to a hotel and go back to my house, pick up my stuff and
then we can go figure. I’m too weak to argue any longer so hotel it is.
The walk back to the car is a
long one and the check-in at the hotel an awkward one.
We choose a shiny Holiday Inn
Express in the centre of town. I don’t look like the sort of guest that they
are building their clientele around but some sweet talking from Tina and I’m in
a room with the most inviting bed in history. I kick off my shoes, crawl under
the covers and it’s good night Vienna.
I dream. Some weird mix of me as
patient and me as doctor. I decide to operate on myself without the benefit of
anaesthetic. I need a brain transplant. It seems the current one isn’t working
too well. I (the doctor) tell me (the patient) that this won’t hurt and as the
first incision is made I wake up in the hotel room screaming. The clock next to
the bed tells me that I have been asleep for a couple of hours.
I’m thirsty and need a pee and
not in that order. I roll out of bed and am delighted to find that I now feel
only part rubbish and not the full on variety of rubbish that had been hanging
around me earlier on. I hit the toilet, let rip on the porcelain and cringe at
the too dark yellow fluid filling the bowl. De-hydration.
I pick up a glass from the sink
and unwrap the plastic cover that is supposed to re-assure me that the glass is
sterile. Who’s to say that they don’t just rinse the cup they find in the room
and wrap it in plastic to fool us? I let the water run but even though it is
cool the water has a metallic taste to it. That takes some doing. Glasgow water
is usually great. Soft, clean water from the hills to the north. I force myself
to drink more than I want and go back and lie down and wait for the liquid to
worm its way through my system.
I am dozing when I hear a noise
at the door. I sit up but if it is the gorillas there is little I can do. I
pick up the plastic glass and get ready to throw it. If the gorillas are coming
for me at least they might die laughing.
Tina and George come in and close
the door behind them. George sits in the room’s sole armchair and Tina balances
on the edge of the bed. I listen as they tell me what they found in my house.
Tina thinks most of the damage is superficial. George thinks they were after
the documents and tells me about the piles of paper and magazines on the study
floor. At the word magazines I cringe. I say nothing but I can see that George
is looking at me with different eyes. It looks like my house has received a
good trashing but according to George and Tina the house is more of a midden
than a disaster area. I can cope with midden. I do midden well.
It also seems that my alarm has
been as about effective as a chocolate fire guard. Not only did no one seem to
notice but it has also failed to flip to silent and, according to George, it is
still merrily ringing away. No doubt the neighbours will complain about the
noise at some point but it will never occur to them that maybe they should
phone the police to see if my house has been broken into.
I pick up the hotel phone and
dial my home number. As soon as the answer machine kicks in I enter a four
digit code and follow the female voice’s instructions and re set the alarm. I
have no way of knowing whether this has worked or not. It was an added extra
when I got the alarm fitted and I’ve just never got round to testing it.
We sit and chat for an hour
getting nowhere and I send them both out to raid the local MacDonald’s for some
temporary respite for my growing hunger pains. When they are gone I crank up
the TV and watch some nonsense that seems to involve letting the local
fruit-cases in to decorate your house for a tenner. The presenter is a three
B’s - blonde, bimbo and bloody useless. She is sitting in a front room of some
decorative disaster zone talking to Mr and Mrs Intelligent. I can’t figure if
this is the ‘before’ or the ‘after’ part of the programme but 3 B’s is
wittering on about the importance of knowing your customer when trying to
choose the right look and feel.
‘If you don’t know what is going
on in their head - then you can’t do a proper job,’ she says.
Aye right and if they were to
discover that you have two brain cells it would be on the ten o’clock news as
the lead story.
Something clicks in my head. The
drugs have all but worn off and the fug seems to have lifted to be replaced by
a nagging pain across the top of my skull. I’m fairly sure that I need a check
up from a doctor but that will have to wait. I look back at the TV screen and I
have a plan. Or at least the start of a plan.
‘If you don’t know what is
going on in their head…’
When George and Tina return
resplendent with three Big Mac meals and three fries I take them through my
thoughts.
My plan is simple but needs some
steel balls.
First we need to wrestle back
control of the situation and time is not on our side. The two gorillas will no
doubt find us at some point and if they don’t the police will. Neither
situation is a ‘good to go’ at the moment. Secondly our only bargaining chips -
the documents - are all but useless because we only have half the story. If we
can at least understand what it is we are being chased for then we might be
able to turn it to our favour. I ask Tina to dig out the parcel and we go
through the contents.
The list of names and money is
easy. It is a list of backhanders or some form of underhand payment. Other than
that I might as well go fish. The other sheets are simply a mess of numbers.
Big numbers to be fair but this means little. There is some order to the whole
thing but what it is, is beyond me but I think I might know how to figure it.
Leonard’s laptop would crack this
problem in seconds but it will be a goner by now. It’s the first place whoever
is behind the gorillas would look. But what I know that they don’t know is that
Leonard is a data back up freak. He is permanently running scared of losing data
and has a hundred ways to keep his data safe.
When we first met up, me a newly
recruited graduate that knew next to nothing, and him in the same boat,
computers were something of a rarity but even back then Leonard had some steam
driven monster loaded with programmes such as Harvard Graphics, Lotus 123 and
the likes. Word, Excel and Power Point were yet to take over the world.
Over the years Leonard has kept
dancing on the sharp end of technology. Upgrading with purpose at every turn.
His house is a Mecca to all things digital and there was rarely a day when he
didn’t throw a shadow over my desk and talk technobabble until I told him to
use the River Clyde as a landing zone.
His latest trip had been to
subscribe to an on line data backup scheme but I struggled with the idea he
would place the dodgy material on it. It might claim to be secure but a couple
of passwords, the use of his laptop and anyone half bright would be home and
dry.
His current old school back up
was an ageing portable hard drive. A one hundred gig box about six inches by
four by two that he slavishly plugged into each night.
He hid it in the bottom of the
department stationery cupboard - hidden below reams of never used coloured A4
paper. It was hardly a state secret but he didn’t care. He simply wanted to
know that a copy of his life existed in a place that no self respecting thief
would go. If I could get a hold of the hard drive we might be a few miles
further down the road to a solution.
Tina was dead against going back
to the office for the hard drive for a whole host of reasons. Not least that it
would, no doubt, be being watched. George was on a different tack to Tina. He
was more than a little keen to clean out his little warehouse before the police
decided to pay a visit and was all for going back.
I told them that we needed to go
tonight. By the morning the authorities were bound to step it up a gear and I
didn’t want to give the gorillas any more time than I had to. In addition the
office would be empty and that would mean George would be able to clear out his
stash without being disturbed.
Tina gave in and we agreed to
give it until eleven and then hit the road.
I almost miss her. I was seconds
from dozing off. A passing car grinding its gears brought me back to the job in
hand. I rub my eyes. Karen is leaving the close. I am out of the door like a
rocket. I sprint across the road and she sees me coming. She tries to jump into
the car before I can get there. I kick it up a notch. I have the momentum and
slam into the driver door before she gets there. I stand before her. She smiles
at me. I smile back.
‘Simon,’ she says.
‘Karen,’ I reply.
I point at my car. She crosses
over the road. If I expect resistance I get none. Seconds later she slides into
the passenger seat. I sit next to her, holding the steering wheel for comfort.
The silence stretches. She pulls down the sun visor and checks her Polyfilla is
intact.