Sun of the Sleepless (8 page)

Rey turned the screen so that they could both view the image and Frans craned in.

'Look, here is the coffee-shop the dealer mentioned, it seems to be on a quiet back street. Not much else around. My guess is that even with the late opening hours the whole street will be practically empty.' He jabbed a blunt finger at the screen, 'Up here, there is a small canal at the end of the road. If we need to arrange a drunken fall into the water we should easily be able to entice him up there.'

Frans pursed his lips and hummed in assent. He sat back and looked at Rey. 'You really need to take a break from the front-line my friend, you consider the worst much too quickly. How many accidents have you mentally prepared today? I really think that you should have some rest and relaxation after you get back, maybe delegate a few things.'

Rey's grin acknowledged the sentiment that his boss had expressed, 'I though that this outing was supposed to be a rest? A quick in and out wasn't it? Didn't you say that it would do me good to get away from it all?'

Frans rasped at the irony, 'We're almost done now, Rey. We could have the ring back by close of play today and we may be in possession of the book by Monday - as you would say, job done!'

They both observed a stagnant silence, punctuated only by Frans occasionally sipping from his coffee and Rey thumbing the touch-screen on his phone to shunt the image back and forth, idly scanning the whole area.

'So how do you want to play this one?' Frans asked, breaking the calm.

Rey looked up from the screen as he absent-mindedly switched it off and gazed out of the window across the road to the street-lit façade of the book store. Beneath the bunched up frown of his heavy forehead, the dark brown eyes were unfocussed but none-the-less penetrating.

'I know what you're thinking Frans, but don't worry, I'm not about to release my frustrations on this guy. I just want to get this over and done with. This whole thing has been a distraction, however important it may be, but I've no desire to take it out on this guy even if he is a thieving little shit!'

'Fair enough,' Frans chuckled, 'so if he is at the coffee-shop we keep it simple? A quick pass to make sure he is wearing the ring and then a quick take-down to retrieve it. I suppose we should subdue him, take any other valuables and let him wake up to think that he was mugged.'

'That seems the easiest way,' agreed Rey, 'he's unlikely to admit to being robbed by two old fuckers like us so he'll most likely make up some story for his mates about some big fight. He won't make any connection with the old dealer and even if Janssens hears about it, it is unlikely that he would give a shit about this grunt getting done over. If anything it'll probably make his day, he's unlikely to go to the police about it.'

'So, we get the ring back, the thief gets some bruises which he can brag to his friends about and the dealer gets some social justice. Everybody is happy!'

'That is one way of looking at it. First of all though we need some transport, I don't want to be standing about on a street corner freezing my arse off all evening. Besides which, we may need to follow this guy, especially if he doesn't have the ring on him.'

Frans reached into his jacket hanging on the back of his chair and withdrew his mobile phone. 'I can sort that out; we can have a vehicle delivered within half an hour. Do you have a preference?'

'How about that Aston Martin?'

Frans winked as he tapped in the number of their local field office, 'I was saving that for the next job!'

He placed the phone to his ear and Rey could hear the faint ringing tone emanating from the handset.

'Make it something like a Volkswagen Golf,' Rey suggested in a hushed tone, 'something small but nippy. We need to park up and remain unobtrusive but we may need some punch if it comes to following him.'

Frans nodded and started speaking in Dutch. Rey recognised the sequence of identification statements that Frans was making and during the ensuing conversation caught mention of the name of the café they were sitting in. Frans glanced at his watch and nodded again, unseen, to the contact at the end of the phone. He ended the call, switched the power off and dropped the phone back into the folds of his hanging jacket.

'So we're all set? What can they do for us?'

'Your wish has been granted,' Frans beamed, 'they have a brand new Golf GTI for us and they can deliver it in fifteen to twenty minutes. Perhaps one of us should go and survey the coffee-shop while the other waits here for the car?'

'Is that a hint?' Rey quizzed as he raised his eyebrows.

The impish grin widened under Frans' sparkling eyes, 'You are younger than me, and you can take the cold better. Besides, you paid the bill last time so I'm really doing you a favour.'

'That kind of favour I can do without!' Rey laughed as he stood. He swung up his coat from the back of his chair and in one fluid movement had threaded his arms into the sleeves and adjusted the collar lapels in anticipation of the cold wind that was still gusting. He made to leave the café and then turned back, 'If he doesn't turn up this evening we'll set up a shift with Akosua for the next couple of days, don't forget to bring my books with you and don't be too late, it's damned cold out there!'

Over a cup of steaming coffee, Gertrude had settled down to prepare a list of all the books that she intended to sell via the internet, prioritising them according to suitability and the likelihood of making a good profit. It was something that she had planned to do the following week but she needed to occupy herself to get her mind off the events of the morning and she considered that she might as well get on with sorting her stock.

She had booted up her cherry red laptop and was busily engaged in scanning through her database of descriptions and digital images, also checking the internet for any interesting information that might improve the provenance of a book or clarify its rarity so that the price could be pushed up - anything that might be useful in catching a buyer's eye.

She had decided to take some photographs of the stock that she had not fully catalogued yet and had set-up her display lectern in readiness, although she would have to wait for her digital camera to recharge before she could get on with that task.

Gertrude resolved to haul at least one container up from
Willem
- the box in which she had deposited the job lot of stock she had invested in earlier in the week. Although she had made a cursory run through the assorted books and priced them according to her initial reactions, she knew that it would be both silly and lazy not to research each book properly before placing it for sale. First, though, she needed some more coffee.

Rey had yet another cigarillo on the go when he saw a black Volkswagen turn slowly into the street on which he had stationed himself. He stood just over half way down, around twenty-five metres past the coffee-shop and leaning in the alcove of the entrance to a derelict shop which, like so many other shops in this particular area, had clearly been a victim of the recent economic recession.

Even the promise of Christmas trade had not saved this aspiring business and curling posters of a closing down sale from the previous month adorned the glass frontage, giving him some cover behind which he could survey the area through the two perpendicular panes of corner glass.

He followed the progress of the car as it slowly motored by the leafy designs sprouting across the softly lit window of the coffee-shop, easing to a stop as it reached his position. He ducked down and could see Frans at the wheel who raised his hand in acknowledgement and then swivelled round to look up and down the street before moving away again. Frans drove for a few metres and then executed a three-point turn to face back along the way he had just come, driving up to Rey before pulling into a convenient parking space on the same side of the road.

Rey flicked his still smouldering cigarillo butt into the gutter and darted over to the VW, scurrying to the kerbside passenger door and jerking it open before quickly hopping into the pleasantly heated interior, the temperature accentuating the 'new-car' aroma.

'It is bloody freezing out there!'

Sliding sideways, Frans reached down behind Rey's backrest, pulling out a cardboard tray holding two take-out drinks cups from the foot-well of the rear passenger seat.

'Just as well that I brought you a tea, eh? Three sugars and your beloved milk, just the way you like it. That will soon warm you up.'

He handed over one cup and took the remaining coffee for himself, tossing the cardboard tray over his shoulder.

'So what has been happening?'

Rey clasped his hands about the tall cardboard cup, warming them up.

'Not much, I'm pretty sure our boy is in there, I did a walk by and a kid matching his description was at a table at the front sitting with a couple of other guys but he moved into the back a few minutes ago. We just have to sit and wait for him to come out.'

He glanced across at the dashboard clock.

'He probably won't be much longer than a couple of hours.'

Having browsed through a number of the titles that she had purchased as a 'job lot', Gertrude picked up the book entitled
Dirigo Lux
from the plastic container, grunting to herself as she lifted it at arms length and feeling her elbow take the strain. She placed the book onto the sofa next to her, her laptop balanced across her knees as she started to examine it and type up the notable details that would act as her sales description.

It was a heavy and large tome; the front cover measured just less than forty centimetres by twenty-five centimetres which roughly correlated with the British measurement system as fifteen inches by ten inches, classifying it as a crown folio size. The binding appeared immaculate and in book condition terminology, it could be categorised as 'very fine'.

Luxurious suede leather the colour of creamed coffee covered the boards, the pile of which had flattened to give the tactile feel of shorn velvet to a gentle touch. The spine had six raised bands, each decorated with an intricate oak leaf motif and ensconced between the top two bands was a gilded circle encapsulating a smaller filled-in circle at its centre.

The front and back boards had the oak leaf motif scarred into the leather, a gauffered pattern creating a frame about the boards, but about one third from the top in the centre of the front board, was a magnificent gilded inlaid depiction of the sun, rays emanating from the brilliant centre disc that was possessed of a expressionless but cherubic face.

The insides of the boards were psychedelically marbled, purple blots interspersed with white, black, red and even pink tones, the morass looking more like a modern multi-coloured illustration of jiggling amoeba in a biology textbook. It was definitely a book that begged to be handled, to be touched, regardless of the content.

Gertrude carefully laid the front cover open and flicked to the frontispiece, an engraving of a garden apparently showing low box hedge laid out in a circular maze with a single tree at the centre. A robed man with a wooden staff walked across the maze, not following the meandering route but stepping directly toward the tree, directed by a length of rope trailed by an angelic looking figure sitting in the clouds and surmounted by a radiant triangle with a benign looking eye in the centre.

She flicked through the pages examining further engravings and the illustrations reminded her of Masonic symbols. This was a bonus as she knew that such material always attracted a good price. She turned back to the title page, her admittedly inadequate grasp of Latin translating the heading as 'to direct the light', but she had a suspicion that although her transliteration of the verb and the noun was technically accurate, the title itself was not necessarily grammatically correct, but she could have been wrong. A small motif of a monkey with a curling tale was printed above the author's name, Rutilus Faber and the print date was indicated as 1735 - almost three hundred years old.

Gertrude loved old books, but with a phone bill to pay along with some sizeable utility bills and not forgetting the minor repairs needed to her little van
Willem
, she was most interested in the profit that she could make from a quick sale. She started typing, copying keywords from the text and trying to transcribe the first couple of paragraphs, however, the antiquated style of grammar and spelling was difficult to comprehend even though she could speak, read and write modern English extremely well.

Swearing to herself a couple of times as she reread what she had typed, she was eventually satisfied with her amended efforts and took a few of photographs of some of the engravings with her newly charged digital camera, editing the images slightly to bring out the best qualities and then loading all the text and picture files to her eBay shop.

After she had submitted the sale, she pondered the price – six hundred Euros - she was having second thoughts that it seemed a bit high, but she also knew that buyers interested in Freemasonry would often pay large sums for apparently obscure works. She decided that it was a good starting price and if she had to reduce it later, so be it.

Gertrude turned back to the container and selected another book, she wanted to get as much stock loaded up onto the internet as possible. As she fumbled about, leaning over her laptop, she suddenly heard the familiar two-tone ding-dong that indicated that she had email.

She sat up and double-clicked the most recent entry, a sale notification from eBay. After little more than a minute,
Dirigo Lux
had already been purchased and it had even been paid for. Somebody was obviously very keen and she cursed herself for not putting a higher price on it.