Milkshake (5 page)

He felt he had lost control of his own destiny, or at least of
the immediate future, and with it came the overwhelming realisation
that this included losing his ability to protect Katherine. Someone
else was assuming this responsibility for him.

At least now he partly understood what was happening to him.
Katherine, on the other hand, was entirely oblivious to the deceit,
seeing instead only the kindness and humanity of her deceivers. As
soon as they were out of that room, he was going to tell
her.

David had been given no choice but to be manipulated into an
increasingly serious and potentially dangerous situation. It was
time he had an ally. More mundanely, he could think of no plausible
excuse why he should suddenly want to spend hundreds of dollars in
the duty-free shop, something he was now looking forward to doing.
Some retail therapy would take his mind off what was happening and
would help distract Katherine after the speech he was about to give
her.

“Right then, Mr and Mrs Turner, we had better let you
continue your holiday. Enjoy your trip to New Zealand.”

Liar
, David thought.
He knows we are emigrating. That was purely for
Katherine’s benefit.

As she turned to lead them both away, Burton looked straight
at him. “Take care.”

He nodded and winked, patting his own jacket
pocket;

“Remember, enjoy yourself, David.” He offered his hand and
David found himself being drawn closer as Katherine wandered away,
oblivious. Burton spoke in a lowered tone. “We’ll be in touch, and
don’t worry, we won’t let you out of our sight.”

The door clicked shut once more and Burton was gone. David
hurried after his wife. “I need to talk to you about something you
were told back there.” He tried shifting the blame. “They haven’t
been entirely honest with you.”

She stopped, allowing him to catch up. “In what way exactly
not honest with me?”

“Well, this whole thing is a bit more complicated than just
my credit card being stolen. In fact, I don’t really know the whole
story myself. Lets just clear security and I’ll tell you what I
know so far.”

So far? David had implied, not least to himself, it was not
over. Not only had Burton successfully manipulated their entire
journey so far, he had also controlled the meeting that had just
taken place to the extent David was actually really none the wiser.
Any opportunity for questioning on his part had vanished as soon as
Katherine had re-appeared and in the urgency to get them onto their
flight. They had cleared security with David’s mind elsewhere and
now were walking towards the departure gate, with any opportunity
to use the card gone.

“You may not believe me, but this is the real story so far.
Remember when we were waiting to get on the plane at Heathrow and I
went off to the loo?”

“Yes.” She raised her eyebrows, not expecting any explanation
to begin at that particular point.

“Well, whilst I was standing there, someone came up behind
me. They must have drugged me. The last thing I remember is a hand
over my mouth.”

“So you were mugged for your credit card. Why didn’t you say
so?”

‘No, that’s not what happened. They lied to you just now.
They wanted to leave it to me to decide whether to get you involved
in all this, whatever it is.” Katherine had turned to face her
husband. He was staring back, looking into her eyes, seeing the
word ‘lie’ in one and ‘truth’ in the other. “I was unconscious on
the top floor of the car park and when I woke up a man was being
murdered.” Finally saying it out loud sounded overly sensational
and implausible. It also sent an unexpected wave of emotion through
David.

“Murdered? What man? How? When?” The
questions came too fast for him to answer. He wanted to be able to
relate the story at his own pace, on his own terms.

“This is difficult. I’m confused enough myself as it is.
There’s this gang of international money smugglers. They’ve planted
this credit card on me. It carries a huge balance - hundreds of
millions of pounds. The police are on to it. That was actually them
back there. I have to keep the card on me until we get to New
Zealand and then .... ”

“What?”

“Shit! I’m not really sure.” What would
happen next?

Katherine just looked at him with confused concern. She wanted
to believe him but the story was just too unbelievable. “Let’s just
get on the plane David. You need a few hours' rest.”

He stared back at her. This either meant that she had accepted
everything he had just said or she had just totally ignored every
word.

For the next ten minutes they behaved as if the previous two
had not happened. Katherine quickly made herself comfortable and
began absently flicking through the same in-flight magazine she had
read cover–to–cover on the flight from London to Singapore.
Burton’s voice repeated the same phrase over and over in David’s
head, “If it appears that you are in any kind of physical danger,
my team will be watching.” He leaned across. “You don’t believe me
do you?’

She shifted in her seat, her gaze unnaturally intent on an
advertisement for a perfume she was never likely to
wear.

He felt for the wallet, opened it and pulled out the only card
remaining in it. “Look at this.” Disregarding its hidden value, he
tossed the card at the magazine where it hit the spine and slid
down the crease and into her lap.

“When did we apply for this?”

He had read her correctly. She picked up the credit card and
examined it.

“We didn’t. I told you, it’s been planted on me so I can
carry it into New Zealand along with the bloody huge credit balance
on it.” She looked down at the card again. “You know every other
credit or store card we had? I always put my middle initial on the
application and it always appeared on the card. Look, it’s not
there. I never applied for this card, so the initial doesn’t appear
like it did on every single one of my other cards.”

She handed him back the card. “How much?”

“What?”

“How much money is on that card?”

“I can’t remember exactly. It’s something like two hundred
and fifty million and something.”

“Pounds?”

“Well, two hundred and fifty million in any currency is a lot
but, yes, it must be pounds. That’s what the printout said, so it
must be pounds.”

Gently bouncing at the end of the runway, the pilot struggled
to control the power of the beast eager to struggle from his grasp.
Then, taking a deep breath, the plane tore down the runway, the
roar of four huge engines drowning out the screaming children. The
horizon changed direction against the frame of his window. Rising
into the air, David felt himself at the same time falling as the
front of the aircraft dried to drag its unwilling back end into the
sky.

Chapter 4

“So …. ”

Katherine broke the twenty minute silence as if it had been
twenty seconds, picking up the conversation exactly where she had
left off. She could do this with ease an hour, or a day, later. “
….does this mean we’re rich?”

“Well, not really, I mean the money isn’t actually ours. I’m
just kind of carrying it, locked in this card, although Burton said
I could spend some, just to make it easier for them to track where
I am.”

“How can they do that?”

“I’m not sure. It must be linked to an online bank account,
so whoever actually owns the card can just log on and view the
locations where each transaction takes place.”

Katherine sighed. “That’s just great. We’re supposed to be
making a new life for ourselves and here you are involved in
illegal smuggling. Or is it money laundering?”

David frowned. “Well neither, as far as I’m concerned. What
could I get done for? After all, I’m just carrying a credit card
with my own name on it.”

“Assuming any of this is true, how long do you think you’ll
hold onto that card once we get into New Zealand? Whoever it really
belongs to will want it back and, the more I think about it, the
more it worries me how they intend getting it back.”

David tried to reassure her. “Stop worrying. Burton told me
we’ll be watched closely once we arrive and his people will step in
if anything gets out of hand.” Burton had actually said nothing of
the sort. David wished he could just open the window and throw the
card out. He contemplated flushing it down the aircraft toilet but
had visions of it wedging in the tiny hole as he tried to flush it
away. He had no idea what to do next and turned once more to
Katherine. “Can you think of something to do about this when we
land?”

“Well, we should head to our hotel in the morning. I think
the best thing to do is find a police station, explain the whole
thing and hand the card to them. Just get rid of the damn
thing.”

Female logic had just constructed a completely different
scenario to the wild conspiracy that continued to rage in David’s
mind. He thought about her suggestion, before disagreeing. “So,
within twenty-four hours of arriving in a country to make a new
life for ourselves, you reckon we should walk into a police station
carrying a stolen credit card, which a man has already been
murdered for, and expect them to just file it under lost property?
They’re going to be watching us get off this plane, for God’s sake!
They know which hotel we are staying in, and hopefully they’re also
watching the people intent on trying to get the card back as soon
as they get the chance. In fact, the only reason I wasn’t arrested
in London is I’m being used as bait for God knows what.” He picked
at his meal and gave up trying to work out what time his body
actually thought it was.

* * *

The plane bounced and David woke with a start to see Katherine
staring back at him.

“You jumped,” she said. “We’ll be landing in about thirty
minutes.”

David could see a featureless mound of grey clouds as the
plane descended towards Auckland. It shuddered as it plunged into
them, a different vibration indicating the landing gear was being
lowered.

Still in thick cloud, the engines were throttled back to an
alarmingly slow air speed as rivulets of rain sketched a map of the
Amazon Basin onto the window. Through a break in the clouds David
could make out the sea only a few hundred metres below.

Once more a collective willpower took hold of the plane, every
right foot pushing hard into the carpet, bringing it to a brisk
walking pace.

The engine note diminished, replaced by incongruous background
music. Four hundred people had just fallen out of the sky. It was
probably too late to try and relax them with soothing music.
Perhaps, David mused, it was to calm the engines that had been
rotating, white hot for the past eleven hours. The captain welcomed
them to Auckland where outside it was cool and wet.

“Please remain seated until the aircraft has come to a
complete stop.”

Why? In case he changes his mind, revs up the engines and
decides to go round again?

Even now, safely on the ground, David still had a sense that
perhaps the pilots did not have full control of this beast after
all. They had just guided it across eight thousand miles of
featureless sky, so why did a man have to stand beneath the nose,
and coax it towards the umbilical that would tether it firmly to
the ground for the next few hours?

Finally David had completed his journey from one side of the
world to the other, still completely unconvinced of the means by
which he had travelled.

He watched transfixed as the door was unbolted, expecting to
see at least two large men in dark suits, possibly also wearing
dark glasses, being led by a large slavering dog. Instead, a small
man in a fluorescent jacket put one foot inside, took an envelope
from the stewardess and retreated.

People were standing, stretching and gathering their
belongings before being inexorably sucked towards the exit door,
first in pairs, then in small groups. Everyone was on their feet.
Anticipation and excitement bordered on mild hysteria.

Looking back down the cabin, David watched heads bobbing
towards him before he and Katherine jumped into the stream of
humanity flowing towards the exit.

The stream continued, turning left, then right, following the
arrows, unnecessarily, David thought, since any other direction
would have caused people to simply walk into the walls. Luggage was
greeted with the same joyful relief as if a long-lost friend had
just stepped from the plane.

Walking towards the customs hall, David recalled the leaflet
about New Zealand’s bio security regulations. He was not allowed to
bring so much as an apple from the plane into the country. He
noticed the large yellow bins placed along their path in which to
place anything of vegetable origin. The intention was to stop the
unwitting, or deliberate, import of pests and diseases that could
decimate the indigenous flora and fauna and kill off whole
industries which relied on the production of food for domestic
consumption and, more importantly, export.