The Sunshine Cruise Company (25 page)

Nodding a hello here and there he strolled on down the narrow hallway, glancing through a doorway into the phone room, where two of his employees – armed only with unlisted phone lines and an unlimited supply of coffee – worked the markets: buying and selling in the cracks of currency between various Eastern European countries. Across the hall from that was his import/export business, selling mostly automobiles and automatic weapons to China and the former Soviet Union. There was his main office with its bank of CCTV cameras covering the whole of the nightclub below, as well as the various other offices in the building (as anyone who ran a largely cash-based business knew, the system was prone to ‘leakage’) and, tucked away at the end, there was a room Tamalov liked to think of as ‘Special Projects’.

This was reserved for the occasional jobs that came his way, that lay outside his daily business, and which required the drafting in of independent contractors. Like Franco, the Italian forger he had installed there to take care of this passport business.

Tamalov was still amazed that the two old women had agreed so quickly to his astronomical price. Still, as his grandfather Sergei used to say back in Minsk, ‘A fool and his money were lucky to ever meet.’ God knows what this pair were running from but it was a nice, quick score. He already had a buyer willing to go to fifty thousand for their Porsche and he was paying Franco ten thousand plus expenses for twenty-four hours of intensive labour: close to a hundred grand net profit for a couple of phone calls. If these hags had known anything about the forging business they could have got the job done for a fraction of the price. Ah, but as in so many of his lines of work, if people knew the business he’d be out of business.

‘Franco?
Entrée?
’ Tamalov shouted through the door as he knocked on it, extending this courtesy in case the forger was at a delicate stage of his work. Franco could be temperamental, but Tamalov had done the English ladies a favour here: the Italian was good. He took great pride in his work. Some fake passports you saw, it was like a child had been given some glue and scissors.

‘
Si,
’ Franco said from inside.

Tamalov stepped into the softly lit room: two desks facing each other, Franco the forger had all his stuff spread out on one. There were the transparent sheets of paper used to cover the photo page on British passports, a pile of bought or stolen passports, scalpels, a top-of-the-range laser printer and the three strips of photos supplied to them that afternoon by Susan and Julie. Benny was sitting at the desk opposite Franco, frowning into the football pages of an English tabloid. Benny was one of the bouncers from downstairs, a slab of Algerian muscle who Tamalov sometimes used on collection jobs.

‘How’s it coming?’ Tamalov asked. They generally conversed in French, though Tamalov’s Italian was coming along.

Franco yawned and ran his hands through his thinning hair. ‘These new bar codes are a bitch …’

‘By tonight though, yes?’

‘You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Alexei.’

Tamalov thought for a moment. Sometimes the carrot was better than the stick with employees. He could add an extra thousand to the fee obviously, but there was one thing the man liked even better than money. He was Italian after all …

‘Come on, Franco,’ Tamalov said, slapping him on the back. ‘Get them done by tonight and come hang out in the VIP lounge downstairs with me. There are a couple of girls I know coming in later. Seventeen years old. Still at school …’

Franco grinned. ‘We’ll be done,’ he said. ‘
Pronto
.’

Tamalov laughed. So did Benny, looking up from his tabloid. ‘Ha. Eh, Benny? These Italians and women. Worse than a Russian even,’ Tamalov said. Then something caught his eye on the front page of Benny’s tabloid. Two faces he recognised.

He reached for the newspaper.

‘Hey,’ Benny said.

BOSCOMBE AND WESLEY
were experiencing what was becoming a very familiar situation: they were sitting waiting in a French police station. This one, in Marseilles, was significantly warmer than any of the previous ones had been. A ceiling fan whirred feebly and uselessly somewhere above their heads as they stared at yet another tableau of French crime posters: rabies, pickpockets, car theft. They had been there nearly an hour and Wesley knew without glancing to his right that the vein in Boscombe’s right temple would be starting to throb. Indeed Boscombe’s entire face was now an iridescent patchwork of bruises and cuts and he was taking shallow, irritated breaths through his flaring nostrils. Wesley tried for some levity. ‘Still, probably pissing down back home, eh, Sarge?’

‘Pissing down? Fucking pissing about more like. What the fuck is taking them so long?’ He nodded towards the door where Lieutenant Halles, the Marseilles detective liaising with them, had disappeared some forty-five minutes ago. ‘I mean, it’s only some armed fucking rob—’

At this the door opened and the slender, linen-suited form of Halles appeared. ‘Gentlemen, please …’

‘About bloody time,’ Boscombe hissed as they were ushered into a conference room.

There, already seated at the table, was an older man, in his fifties. He had a thick moustache, glasses and a sad, hangdog expression, the expression of someone who routinely saw the very worst that humanity had to offer. In front of him were a glass of water, a fountain pen, a notepad and a manila file about the thickness of the average telephone book. (Or, more appropriately given its contents, the thickness of a Russian novel.) Wesley sensed the man’s gravitas right away. ‘This is Inspector Dumas from Interpol,’ Halles said as Boscombe and Wesley exchanged handshakes.

‘Oh yeah?’ Boscombe said, taking a seat across from Dumas. ‘Interpol? Are we finally getting some real help on the case then?’

‘Not exactly,’ Dumas said, slipping the rubber band from around his file.

‘Well, what’s going on?’ Boscombe said. ‘We’ve been sat waiting out there for a bloody hour. Our suspects could be out of here by now and on their way to wherever. We need to get cracking, pal.’

Dumas took a sip of water and regarded this strange, angry Englishman. ‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Sergeant …’

He slid a photograph across the table to Boscombe.

JULIE AND SUSAN
sat in the same booth at Le Punisher once again. A burly security guard had shown them in and then disappeared to fetch Tamalov. It was 6 p.m. and it was quiet as a church, as a mausoleum. No cleaners – the place was, well, not sparkling exactly, but you could see how, in a few hours, with the lights and strobes blazing, and the music pounding, it might resemble a drunk’s idea of paradise. Julie thought it odd there was no bar staff around, getting things ready, then again, these days, clubs didn’t really get going until midnight, did they?

‘I checked the flights again,’ said Susan, nervous, distracted. ‘There’s a 9 p.m. to London that Jill can just make and we can get the midnight to São Paulo.’ They had run through their plan for smuggling the money several times now. It was the last big risk and had to go smoothly. It wasn’t ideal, but what did they say? A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow and all that. Susan noticed after a moment that Julie hadn’t said anything. ‘She’ll be OK, Julie, she’s a smart kid.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Julie said. ‘Oh, here we go …’

Susan turned and followed Julie’s gaze to see Tamalov striding across the big dance floor towards them, rubbing his hands together briskly, as was his manner. ‘Ladies! How are we today?’

‘Great, thank you,’ said Julie. Susan smiled at him as she took an envelope from inside her jacket and slid it onto the table. ‘It’s all there,’ she said. ‘You can count it.’

Tamalov looked at the envelope but made no move to pick it up. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I am afraid that the price has gone up a little …’

‘Eh?’ Susan said.

‘What?’ Julie said.

‘How … how much?’ Susan said.

At this Julie and Susan heard a metallic click and snap, the kind of noise both of them had only ever heard before in Hollywood movies. They turned round to see the bouncer who had shown them in and another, even larger, man standing there. They were both holding black snub-nosed machine guns, whose bolts had been the source of the click and snap.

‘Everything,’ Tamalov said, before adding, smiling, ‘Mrs Fear.’

‘No …’ Julie said.

‘Benny?’ Tamalov said. ‘We’ll use the service entrance. Ladies – follow us to the basement please.’

BOSCOMBE AND WESLEY
were looking at a grainy black-and-white photo. It was taken at a distance, with a zoom lens, but it very clearly showed Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham walking along wearing sunglasses. ‘These are your bank robbers from England? Yes?’

‘Yes they bloody are!’ Boscombe said, grabbing the picture and staring hatefully at it.

‘This was taken yesterday morning here in Marseilles.’

‘Yesterday?’ Boscombe said. ‘Eh? Why the fu— Why haven’t you arrested them yet?’

‘As I say, it is not that simple.’

‘Not simple? Listen, I –’

Dumas slid another grainy, telephoto lens photograph onto the table. It showed a white-haired man with a silver beard and a heavy gold chain around his neck. He was laughing at something off camera, a mobile phone pressed to his ear. ‘Do you know who this man is?’

Boscombe and Wesley shook their heads.

‘This,’ Dumas said, taking his glasses off and polishing them with his tie, ‘is Alexei Tamalov. Also known as Little Sergei, Dimitri Schenkmann and the Bear of Minsk. We’ve been after him for years. Gunrunning, drugs, credit and identity fraud, people trafficking, money laundering, you name it. But we’ve never been able to pin anything on him.’

‘I don’t see what this –’ Boscombe began.

Dumas held a hand up. ‘We have very good reason to believe your robbers are using this man to obtain false passports in order to leave the country. This might be our best chance to, what’s your expression? Yes, to nail him.’

Dumas reached for his water glass and took another long, cool draught while Boscombe responded. ‘Passport fraud? Bloody passport fraud? I’m talking about armed robbery here and you’re going on about –’

‘Sergeant Boscombe,’ said Inspector Dumas of Interpol, ‘do you know what the penalty for passport fraud is?’

‘Ah …’ Boscombe said. ‘I think … well, you’d get a fine obviously and, depending on the circumstances,’ he was totally free-forming now, ‘maybe a –’

‘Is it ten years?’ Wesley said.

‘Very good, Detective,’ Dumas said.

Boscombe shot Wesley another hateful ‘swot’ look.

‘Ten years in prison
for each offence
,’ Dumas went on. ‘If he’s getting these ladies two or maybe three passports … twenty to thirty years in prison is hardly a parking ticket. It’d take this man off the streets for the rest of his criminal life.’ He closed the file and stood up.

‘So what are we going to do?’ Boscombe said.

‘
We
are going to watch and wait,’ Dumas said, buttoning his suit jacket, ‘until we catch him in the act.
You
may accompany us in an observational capacity but you are not to interfere with us at any point.’

‘Is that right?’ Boscombe bristled. ‘Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to speak to my superiors back home. I don’t think they’ll be at all happy about this.’

‘Oh, I’ve already taken the liberty of informing them,’ Dumas said, his hand on the doorknob now, Halles behind him, following him out. ‘I spoke with a Chief Inspector Wilson? He feels it would be best if you … followed our lead on this.’

Boscombe snorted dismissively. ‘Wilson said that?’

‘Well, those weren’t his exact words.’

‘I bet they weren’t,’ Boscombe said.

‘No, his exact words were “if that useless fat bastard gets in your way lock him up and throw away the key”.’

The door closed behind the two Frenchmen.

There was silence as Boscombe’s eyelid quivered and his vein throbbed.

‘Old Wilson,’ Wesley said. ‘Always playing the joker, eh, Sarge?’

JILL LAY ON
her single bed watching a game show in French. Ethel sat closer to the TV in her wheelchair, eating boiled sweets from a paper bag, mechanically unwrapping one after another and popping them into her mouth. Vanessa sat on the floor between them. After a few minutes Jill said, ‘You don’t worry about eating all that sugar, Ethel?’

Ethel looked at the sweet she was about to munch. ‘No.’

‘I mean, with your weight, type 2 diabetes, all that stuff …’

‘Fuck no,’ Ethel said.

‘Really?’ Jill said. ‘Is there really any need to swear there? Couldn’t you just say “no”?’ Vanessa giggled. ‘I mean,’ Jill went on, ‘look at the example you’re setting for young Vanessa here.’

Ethel and Vanessa were exchanging an eyebrows-raised glance when there were three knocks at the door, a pause, then two more knocks: the code. Vanessa jumped up and went to open it. Just before she did Ethel said, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s us …’ Julie said.

There was something in her voice, something defeated Ethel thought, but she said nothing as Vanessa slid the bolt back.

Julie stepped into the room, followed by Susan.

‘What on earth’s the matter with –’ Ethel said as soon as she saw their faces. But her words stopped as the two huge Algerians stepped into the room behind them, followed, a moment later, by a short man with a silver beard.

‘Who the fuck –’ Ethel began, going to rise from her wheelchair. The lead Algerian whipped something out of his coat and Ethel felt the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed against her forehead.

‘Sit down and shut up, old lady,’ the man said. Jill stifled a scream as the short, bearded man closed the door behind him.

‘Where is it?’ Tamalov said.

Stifling a sob, Susan pointed to the wardrobe.

While the two gunmen trained their weapons on the girls Tamalov moved to the wardrobe and opened it. There, on the floor, covered by a few sweaters, was the grubby holdall. He knelt down, unzipped it, and whistled. ‘How much?’ he asked. No one said anything. Tamalov nodded to Benny. Benny pressed his gun against the crown of Vanessa’s head.