The Sunshine Cruise Company (30 page)

‘Back in business,’ Julie said.

‘No time for that,’ Susan said. ‘Come on. Let’s get this over with …’

Back up the stepladder, back through the hatch, lugging the holdall between them, and into the strip-lit garage. They’d already found the well-hidden door to the secret passage. They could hear the sirens clearly now, closing in. Ethel and Jill were already saying their goodbyes. Just the five women, here in the garage. Susan grabbed Vanessa and gave her a tight squeeze. ‘You take care of yourself, darling. Just remember what we told you to say and stick to your story.’

Susan stood back and Julie moved in. She embraced Vanessa and whispered something in her ear, something the others couldn’t hear, while pressing something into her palm. Julie stood back, tears in her eyes.

‘OK?’ Julie said.

‘
Oui
,’ Vanessa nodded, fighting tears too, those sirens right on top of the place now.

‘Right, guys, time to choose: the tunnel or the bum-palace.’ This was Ethel, obviously.

‘Goodbye, Julie.’

‘Bye, Vanessa, sorry about this …’ Julie said, peeling a strip of duct tape off.

DUMAS LED THE
way down the long white hallway, revolver out, armed officers crouching behind him, watching his clenched left fist for a signal, Wesley right at the back, fervently wishing he had a gun, having, in fact, to stop himself shaping his hand into a childish pistol.

Dumas stopped, flattening his back against the thick stone wall, just before the wall arrived at an archway that led into another room. He could hear the crunching of the other officers’ boots on the gravel outside as they went round the house, seeking other entry points at the back, on the side. (They’d long had a schematic of the place.) ‘Alexei?’ he shouted. ‘Alexei Tamalov? I have a search warrant for these premises. Any attempts to stop us will be met by force.’

Nothing.

Dumas repeated the statement in Russian and then in English.

Still nothing.

And then, softly, came the sound of something breaking inside, something falling over. Dumas swallowed, cocked his gun and nodded to the officers behind him. He swung out into the archway, assuming a firing stance, both hands on the checkered wooden grip of the weapon.

He saw Tamalov, Benny, Franco and a couple of girls, all tied and gagged on the floor at the far end of the huge lounge. Tamalov was trying to crawl towards a doorway and had knocked a lamp off a table. He appeared to be covered in …

‘Get a medic!’ Dumas shouted behind him, coming into the room, motioning to the uniforms to fan out and check the rest of the place. Tamalov looked up at him, utterly miserable. ‘Are you OK?’ Dumas reached for the gag and slipped it off.

‘IT’S KETCHUP! FUCK YOU!’

‘SIR! THROUGH HERE!’

Dumas looked up. Another plain-clothes officer was standing in a doorway, pointing down a corridor, a corridor that led, Tamalov knew, to his garage. He realised that, from where he was laid out, Benny’s face was tantalisingly close. He lashed out with his tethered feet and managed to kick the bouncer in the chin. ‘That’s enough of that,’ Dumas said, pulling Tamalov a few feet away and signalling for his men to guard him as he headed towards the doorway.

Inside the garage three more men stood around an open hatch in the floor, shining torches down into it. A bound, crying girl – she was very young, very beautiful – was being attended by a female officer. She was saying in French ‘I thought they were going to kill us!’

One of Dumas’s lead officers, Fabio, heaved himself up through the open hatch and said ‘Boss …’ as he handed Dumas a torch. Dumas shone it down into the basement room –
oh my.
‘There’s more,’ Fabio said, wiping sweat from his brow.

‘How much more?’

‘We’ll need to bring the truck round,’ Fabio said.

Dumas smiled as, behind him, Wesley crossed the room to where Vanessa was accepting sips of water from the kind French policewoman. He knelt down.

‘Did you see them?’ Wesley asked.

‘
Pardon?
’ Vanessa said.

‘The old ladies?’ Wesley said. Vanessa and the policewoman both looked at him. ‘You know, the … the
les grandes dames
?’ They both continued to look at him.

‘The old ladies!’ Wesley said. ‘
LES DAMES GRANDES!
’

‘
Pardon?
’ Vanessa said again.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’

Vanessa started crying and buried her face in the bulletproof vest of the policewoman.

‘
Les
–’ Wesley prepared to do some charades.

‘Officer Wesley?’

He turned to see Dumas behind him.

‘Thank you, but I think you and your colleague Sergeant Boscombe have “helped” us quite enough for tonight. We can take it from here …’

NICE AIRPORT, GLEAMING
in the afternoon sunshine.

Julie and Susan could see it from the window of the Novotel bedroom, where they stood drinking coffee. Julie was wishing for something stronger, but they had to stay sharp. This was it – the final hurdle, the last roll of the dice, the Alamo, whatever you wanted to call it. If this worked they were free and clear. But it was, they both knew, a fairly big if. They would be looking for them and no mistake.

‘Well, I’m ready,’ a voice said behind them. They turned to see Jill in the bathroom doorway. She had her little wheelie suitcase behind her. She even had her new driving gloves on, bless her heart, and her bottom lip was trembling. Jill was nervous for many reasons.

She was nervous because she was about to drive the unfamiliar rental car parked outside. (Hiring the car on the Hertz lot at the airport had been a testing moment. Julie had been waiting just round the corner in the stolen BMW belonging to Tamalov, the one that had indeed been parked up at the end of the long tunnel beneath his house, keys in the ignition, intended for getaways exactly like the one they had been making. She’d told Jill that if there was anything funny when she tried to hire the car, any ‘just wait here a moment’ or ‘I just need to make a phone call’ stuff, she was to get the hell out of there. But no: her driving licence and credit card had both gone across the counter and come back with a smile. It was proof enough that no one was on to her, that the trail still stopped with Susan, Julie and Ethel.)

She was nervous because she had to drive all the way across France on her own, all the way to the ferry terminal at Le Havre, a ten-hour trip. (They’d thought about Bilbao – which was far closer, just a three-hour drive – but decided against it because it meant crossing the Spanish border and why push your luck?) She was going to break it up and find a nice hotel for the night somewhere around the halfway mark. She was aiming to make a crossing to Portsmouth around lunchtime tomorrow. With a bit of luck she’d be home by bedtime.

She was nervous for her friends – who still had some very testing hurdles in front of them.

But mostly Jill was nervous because she had thirty thousand pounds in cash in her wheelie suitcase. Six house bricks of fifty-pound notes: two hundred notes in each brick.

‘Now remember, love,’ Julie said, ‘just put your case in the boot and drive right on. The chances of someone like you getting pulled over for a full search are zero …’

‘But, if you do,’ Susan said, ‘what do you do?’

‘I tell them a man asked me to take it for him and I act all stupid and senior and ditzy.’

‘Shouldn’t be too hard.’ They turned to see Ethel wheeling in through the connecting door to the next room.

Jill smiled and said, ‘Fuck off, Ethel.’

A collective gasp and then they all fell about laughing before, just as quickly, there were tears in Jill’s eyes as she embraced each of them in turn. ‘Take care of yourselves. I suppose I’ll find out one way or another what happens to you, won’t I?’

‘Well, yes,’ Susan said. ‘I’d keep an eye on the news.’

‘We’ll send you a postcard, once we’re settled,’ Julie said, with a confidence she did not entirely feel.

‘OK then,’ Jill said, taking a deep breath, dabbing her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I’ll be off. I … I’ll miss you all so much.’

‘Bye, love,’ Ethel said. ‘Good luck.’

The door closed behind her and the three of them watched from the window as, a few moments later, Jill crossed the car park below them, got into the plain white Renault and drove off.

‘How long have we got?’ Julie said.

Ethel looked at the clock on the bedside table. ‘Three hours? A little more?’

‘We’d best get down to it then.’ This was Susan. ‘We’re going to need every minute.’ She opened the suitcase full of all the stuff she’d bought in Marseilles and then looked at their passport photos very carefully. Yes, this was going to be a challenge and no mistake. ‘Right, Ethel,’ she said, taking some scissors out. ‘You first …’

THEY WERE GETTING
some looks all right, Wesley thought, checking the expressions of various folk they were passing: concern, horror, sympathy and, predictably, on some of the younger faces, amusement. He was pushing Boscombe along in the wheelchair given to them by Marseilles hospital, as a kind of parting gift from the good people of France. Boscombe’s legs were both straight out in front of him, up on the footrests, both encased in plaster. Only one leg was actually broken, but he’d done something complicated to his pelvis and they didn’t want any movement below the waist, so they’d pretty much immobilised both legs. It was the head that was the real talking point, however. His neck was still bound by the thick surgical brace, making it impossible for him to turn round, meaning they had to stop every few yards in order for Wesley to hear the latest demand for water, toilet or whatever. He also had one of those mad contraptions around his skull, one of those metal cage jobs that seemed to bolt into his actual dome. It turned out – as the surgeon had cheerfully explained in the early hours of this morning – that Boscombe had come very close to killing himself. The vertebrae in his neck were appallingly damaged and had had to be fully immobilised. (And what a palaver it had been getting through security – with all this metal.)

The face itself was a livid patchwork of bruising, ranging from the iridescence of petrol in water to the yellow of a parrot’s plumage. Boscombe also seemed to be drooling constantly, with Wesley frequently having to stoop and wipe his chin clean. Perhaps this was a consequence of him having bitten about half an inch of his tongue off. Safe to say that all of this was not making the sergeant the ideal travelling companion. In fact here he was again, banging on the side of the wheelchair for Wesley to stop and listen to him. Never mind – they’d be home soon enough.

‘Sarge?’ Wesley said, putting the brake on and coming round to the front, crouching down.

‘Ooooo …’

Wesley smiled and nodded encouragingly, as you would to a small child or a simpleton.

‘Oooood.’ A goodly stream of saliva flecked and bubbled from his lips.

‘Ooood?’ Wesley repeated.

‘OOOOOOD!’ Boscombe was pointing at his mouth.

‘Ah! Food. Righto. Let’s see what we can find. Over here looks OK …’ He wheeled Boscombe into the cafe closest to them and together they gazed at rows of glass-encased sandwiches and tarts, pastries and croissants, fancies and toasties.

‘Mmmm,’ Wesley said, catching the look of crazed hunger in Boscombe’s eyes. ‘I think it’d be safer if we just found you some soup, eh, Sarge?’

‘Uuuuck.’

‘Yeah, maybe some scrambled eggs. Doctor’s orders and all that.’

‘Uuuurrrr.’

‘Come on …’ Wesley looked up and checked the nearest departures board. There it was:

BA 243, Nice–London Gatwick.

The gate wasn’t even up yet – plenty of time.

He wheeled Boscombe off through the busy airport.

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
approaching security, off on the next leg of this once-in-a-lifetime round-the-world trip: Miss and Mrs Saunders.

Miss Anna Saunders was very chic, her slim figure encased in a wrap dress, sunglasses on, a tote bag over her shoulder. Her perfect hair and make-up would, from a certain distance, have led you to believe that she was in her mid-forties.

The years, however, had not been quite so kind to her mother, Mrs Heather Saunders. She was a stout woman in her late sixties, maybe even early seventies, with a lined, aged face. Actually ‘stout’ would be the kindest way of putting it. She in fact looked to be in the region of 120 kilos and was already sweating quite heavily from the effort of getting here from the entrance.

‘Boarding passes and passports please.’

Anna Saunders handed them over, removing her sunglasses and making direct eye contact with the girl examining them, the girl guarding the entrance to the actual security line, where the other passengers were doing their thing: removing shoes and belts, taking out laptops and so on. Anna laid a protective hand on her mother’s shoulder, to let the girl know they were together and that she was in charge.

The only reaction from the girl was the slightly nicer smile afforded to passengers holding first-class tickets, as both these ladies did. (This also gave them a greatly increased cabin baggage allowance. Something both Miss and Mrs Saunders needed to make full use of.) ‘
Merci
. Have a nice flight.’ The girl handed the tickets back.

‘
Merci beaucoup
,’ Susan said. ‘Come along, Mother.’

‘Coming,’ Julie said, waddling after her, cursing inwardly and thinking,
Mother? I’m only six months older than you and don’t you forget it, missy! Last time I toss a bloody coin with you, Susan Frobisher …
Christ, Julie wondered, was this what it was like to be obese? She had to be lugging an extra thirty kilos around the breasts, belly and bum, and her heart was pounding like mad as they joined the queue and Susan swung their bags up onto the conveyor belt.
Remind me to stay thin
, Julie thought.

Further along in the terminal Dr Thomas McKenzie approached security slowly in his wheelchair. McKenzie was overweight too, though stylishly dressed in a baggy linen suit and panama hat. He fanned his bearded face with the back of his boarding pass before handing it over to the assistant, who was saying, ‘And have you packed your bags yourself, Dr McKenzie?’