The Sunshine Cruise Company (17 page)

The wheel of a bright red Porsche Cayenne 4×4.

‘What the fucking fuck?’ Susan repeated, coming towards her and sticking her head in the open passenger-side window, the car reeking softly of expensive leather. A top-of-the-range satnav screen glowed in the middle of the dashboard. Julie, in her sunglasses, one arm resting on the sill of the open driver’s window, looked like Susan hadn’t seen her looking in years, since the glory days of her late forties, when she was bombing around town in her SLK.

‘It was a steal, honestly!’ Julie said. ‘Two years old. Only 20,000 miles on the clock.’

‘Not the money, Julie – I said
“inconspicuous”.
’

‘It’s got tinted windows,’ Julie offered helpfully. ‘And we needed something with enough boot space for the wheelchair. And look!’ She pulled on the handbrake and pressed a button. The satnav image switched to a local TV channel. ‘It’s got a telly and everything!’

‘A telly!’ Ethel shouted in the background.

‘Great,’ Susan muttered, walking around the gleaming car, taking it in. ‘We can watch some French TV while the arresting officers go about their business …’

‘Oh, don’t be such a killjoy,’ Julie said.

‘Can we please just get going?’ Jill said. A few other diners were staring. For once Ethel found herself in complete agreement with her.

‘Yeah,’ Ethel said, folding her last piece of steak up inside a slice of bread and stuffing it first into a napkin and then into her handbag. ‘Let’s fucking rock. Oi!
Garçon! Le addition see vous play!
’

TWO HOURS FORTY-FIVE
minutes.

That’s how long it had taken. Just two hours and forty-five minutes from first contact with the police to full confession.

Terry had been surprised to see the police car already waiting at the end of the jetty as he tied the boat up in Cowes that afternoon, just after breakfast time, at 10.04 a.m. He’d sailed north-west from Le Havre, running the twin diesel engines pretty near full, making the crossing to the Isle of Wight in just over four hours. The local officers had immediately placed him under arrest (suspicion of aiding and abetting fugitives) and taken him to the main police station along the road in Ryde, there to await the arrival of the CID detectives from the mainland, the detectives who were now sitting across from him in the interview room. Boscombe and Wesley had arrived at 12.11 p.m. After Terry tried to stonewall them for a while the older, fatter one revealed that they knew he came from Wroxham, that he’d gone to school with two of the women and that an eyewitness had seen them boarding his yacht the previous evening. Then he mentioned (among other things) the possibility of involving the HMRC if he didn’t tell them everything he knew right now.

That did it. Those four letters were far more terrifying to Terry Russell than any threat of prison. His personal tax arrangements were a byzantine labyrinth of illegality that would have made Bernie Madoff himself crap his pants. At 1.49 p.m., just after lunchtime, his belly rumbling, he fell forward onto the interview table and started sobbing.

‘They stuck a bloody shotgun in my face …’ Terry wailed.

‘
LUNCH LUNCH LUNCH
lunch, lovely lunch, wonderful lunch … lunch lunch lunch lunch, lovely lunch, WONDERFUL LUNCH! Lunch lunch lu—
’

‘For God’s sake, Ethel – will you PLEASE SHUT UP?!’ Susan screamed in the front passenger seat. Jill had her fists in her ears. Only Julie, smiling quietly to herself at the wheel as miles of French motorway slid by, seemed impervious to Ethel’s constant demands for lunch, expressed here by simply singing the word ‘lunch’ over and over again in the manner of ‘spam’ from the Monty Python song. (A reference that only Julie understood. Susan and Jill both just thought she’d gone mad.) They were heading south on the E402, towards the forest d’Ecouves. They still hadn’t resolved the east-then-due-south or the due-south-then-east dilemma.

‘Oh, come on!’ Ethel said. ‘It’s gone two! It’s time for
lunch.
’

‘I suppose we could stop at a services …’ Julie said, looking sideways at Susan for approval.

‘Fuck that,’ Ethel said.

‘Ohhh …’ Jill moaned in the manner of someone who has been burned with a hot needle.

‘I want a proper lunch,’ Ethel said. ‘With
wine
. I want a cassoulet, a soufflé, coq au vin, pommes doff-in-fucking-vase. In a restaurant or pub. I mean, look at the gorgeous bloody day. We’re in
France
and you buggers want to go and sit in some sordid
petrol station
. Are you all mental?’

‘We’re on the bloody run, Ethel,’ Susan said.

‘Have you any idea how big this country is?’ Ethel said. ‘I mean, I still can’t believe we got out of Britain, but we did. Now? Now they’re looking for a needle in a haystack.’

‘She’s got a point,’ Julie said.

‘I am rather hungry …’ Jill piped up. She’d hardly touched her breakfast.

‘OK, OK, fine,’ Susan said. ‘Let’s take the next turn-off and see what we can find then …’

‘Yes,’ snarled Ethel, smacking a fist into her palm.

‘Okey-dokey,’ said Julie, flipping the indicator on, getting into the right-hand lane as a sign saying ‘Courtomer’ came up ahead. ‘I have to say,’ she added, cornering, taking the bend at a good clip, ‘this baby handles like a
dream.
’

Fifteen minutes later, less than ten kilometres up the road, they saw a big restaurant, with lots of tables outside, families, kids playing, many trucks and cars parked in its dusty gravel car park.

‘This do?’ Julie asked the group.

Shortly after that and a second round of drinks was appearing on the table – red wine for Ethel and Susan, mineral water for Jill, a Coke for Julie – while they all attacked their food. They were at a wooden table outside, the warm sun coming through the fabric of the umbrella above them. Susan took a sip of wine and managed to convince herself for a second that they were all on a lovely holiday. ‘Oh God,’ Ethel said, wiping her mouth, ‘you should all try this rabbit. How often do you see rabbit on a menu back home these days?’

‘Ugh,’ Jill said.

‘The chicken of the fields, love,’ Ethel said. ‘How’s your salad? Your nice, safe, boring –’

‘I don’t think it’s boring to eat healthily actually,’ Jill said, blowing her nose.

‘What’s that you’re having?’ Ethel asked Susan.

‘Chicken?’

‘For Christ’s sake, you two. Boring. You could have had the steak frites rare then I could have got in on it when you didn’t finish it.’

‘You shouldn’t eat all that red meat,’ Jill said, pouring herself a glass of Badoit. Ethel was making good inroads into the house red.

‘Bollocks,’ Ethel said. ‘I’m what – twenty years older than you? I eat what I like and I’m never ill. Look at you. You eat nothing but lentils, kale and blueberries and you’re forever broken in two with some dreary cold or other.’

‘You’re never …’ Jill said. ‘Ethel, you’re in a
wheelchair
because you’re so fat.’

‘Oh, you’re having a go at the disabled now?’ Ethel said. ‘I have luxurious bones.’

‘Bones? Your problem is –’

‘Will you two cut it out?’ Susan said, catching herself on the verge of saying ‘you kids are driving me crazy’. ‘Julie, we need to figure out a route to get Jill to an airport and get her money into that account for Jamie.’ No response. ‘Julie?’ Susan said, turning.

Julie was staring intently across the picnic area to a table quite far away, right by the fence bordering the car park.

There were two people at the table: a man and a girl. The man was in his fifties, unshaven, with greasy hair. Swarthy. Greek or maybe Spanish. He had mirrored shades on and was wearing a black leather waistcoat over a T-shirt that looked stuck to his body. His food lay untouched in front of him as he drank pastis. The girl was very beautiful, very
French
, Julie thought, with her black, bobbed hair. She was wearing denim shorts and a skimpy vest top. She was attacking a plate of frites hungrily. She was also, maybe, seventeen years old. His daughter? The man reached for the bottle of pastis on the table and poured a splash into her glass, adding a little water. There was a rucksack at the girl’s feet too, Julie noticed. She also noticed the wolfish way he looked at her when she bent her head down towards her food. No, probably not his daughter …

‘Julie!’ Susan smacked her on the leg.

‘Ow!
What?
’

‘What are we going to do about getting Jill’s money for Jamie back?’

‘We need to do five transfers of 9,999 each, to avoid the revenue, remember? So we’ll need to find five Western Union type places between here and Marseilles and do it that way.’

‘Oh God, that sounds like a lot of … exposure,’ Susan said.

‘She could always just get on a plane with fifty grand in her handbag,’ Ethel said.

‘You know what?’ Jill said. ‘I don’t care about getting caught. As long as Jamie gets his operation I don’t care what happens to me after that.’

‘All right, Spartacus …’ Ethel said, signalling the waiter, holding up the empty bread basket.

The man was Spanish. She had a little Spanish but he spoke with a thick regional dialect and she couldn’t understand most of it. She was grateful for the food though and kept her head bent down over her frites. The liquor burned in her belly as she caught him saying something about the border, about dropping her off near there. It would do, it would be far enough. She had a little over seventy euros on her. Enough for a night or two somewhere cheap en route and a bite to eat here and there. What … what was he … topping her glass up again? She didn’t refuse. It would help. She smiled back and said,
‘Merci.’
He, oh. She stiffened at his touch but she didn’t pull away. From here to past Toulouse for free? She couldn’t pass that up. Not that it would be exactly ‘free’ of course. What was?

No. Definitely not her dad, Julie thought, cutting into her chicken, stealing sidelong glances, only half listening to the chatter of the others. Touching her leg under the table like that? Definitely
not
a fatherly gesture. Julie felt the hair on the back of her neck prickling. There was something in the way the girl was reacting – about the way she was neither encouraging nor repelling the attentions of this man who was, now she thought about it, surely old enough to be her grandfather – that was gradually enraging her. It was the fact that she seemed to be acquiescing. Reluctantly and with a weariness far beyond her years, she was simply acquiescing. Beside her Susan had the map out again and was trying to pinpoint the names of a few likely towns between here and Marseilles, places big enough to transfer money but not so big that they’d have a major police presence. Oh, what now? He was …

The man was standing up and picking up the bill …

He muttered something about paying the bill and pointed over to the car park, to where a huge sixteen-wheeler truck was parked. She smiled and thanked him. He went off and she glanced around, suddenly feeling very young and vulnerable on her own at the table, out here in the world without an adult. So what? Fuck it. Grow up, Vanessa. She picked up her glass and tossed the last two inches of the liquorice-flavoured spirit down her throat, shuddering, hating the burn but needing it.

That look around – the neediness with which she pounded that drink. Julie recognised it. She saw herself, over forty years ago, 1972, ‘Layla’ on the jukebox and scared in a pub in Brighton. Nowhere to stay. And then later, in that terrible flat. She could hear the sea …

Needing the burn to get through that which lay ahead. To let her …

Enough.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he … A shadow fell over her and she looked up. An old lady, maybe sixty, was standing there.

‘Hello,’ said Julie.

‘Hi,’ the girl said uncertainly.

‘Do you speak English?’

She nodded.

‘I saw your rucksack,’ Julie went on, bright and friendly. ‘My friends and I are sitting over there …’

The girl followed the wave of her hand and looked over to where three more old ladies were sitting under an umbrella at a wooden table. One of them, she was in a wheelchair, waved back cheerily.

‘Anyway, we were wondering where you were headed?’

The girl looked from Julie to the other old ladies and back again. ‘Uh, south …’

‘Really? What a coincidence! Us too! How about we give you a lift?’

‘A
lift
?’

‘Sorry. A ride?’

‘I already have a ride,’ the girl said, nodding vaguely in the direction of the restaurant.

‘Yes,’ Julie said. ‘I really don’t think that’s the kind of ride you want, darling.’

Who was this mad old cow? ‘What do you know about it?’ the girl said, an edge in her voice.

‘Well.’ Julie reached over and picked up her empty glass. She sniffed it. ‘I think I might be in a better position to judge than someone who’s drinking spirits at two o’clock in the afternoon. Do we normally drink at lunch? Or are we trying to get our courage up?’

The girl looked away. She went to say something and hesitated. ‘He … he said he’s a nice guy.’

‘Really?’ Julie said. ‘Because you know by law they’re obliged to tell you they’re rapists and paedophiles before you get in the truck.’

The girl didn’t quite understand the sarcasm here. But she caught the key words in the sentence – ‘Rapists. Paedophiles.’

‘I’m old enough,’ the girl said. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘Really?’ Julie said again as there came a grunt from behind her, another shadow falling over the girl, and then the man was standing there, a fistful of change in his hand. ‘
Que?
’ he said to them.

‘Hello!’ Julie said, extending her hand. He did not take it. ‘I’m an old friend of her mother’s. Thank you so much for your kind offer but she’s going to come with us.’ Julie again jerked her thumb towards their table and the trucker glanced over towards Susan, Ethel and Jill. ‘Go on,’ Julie said to the girl. ‘Scoot over there.’

The trucker stepped in closer to Julie. ‘Hey,’ he said, English now, with a thick Spanish accent. ‘Fuck off, Granny.’ Something about the edge, about the urgency of the menace in his voice, seemed to make the girl’s mind up for her. She grabbed her rucksack. ‘Go on now …’ Julie said to her. ‘Take these.’ She handed the girl the keys to the Porsche, ‘and give them to the lady about my age, with the blonde hair, and tell her to go and start the car …’