The Sunshine Cruise Company (31 page)

‘Ah did. Aye,’ McKenzie spat gruffly. Ethel had decided that gruffness would be part of her character. She was a bit worried about the beard though, given the sweat pouring off her.

A hand landed on the shoulder of Dr Thomas McKenzie. ‘Can you come this way please?’

‘Eh? How come?’ The security guard looked down at her oddly. Behind the guy, two queues along, Ethel could see Susan and Julie. They were almost through.

‘We must X-ray your wheelchair.’

‘Oh, right enough, son,’ Ethel grunted. ‘I’ll just get up …’

‘No need, we can do it with you sitting in it.’

‘Naw, son – I’m no having aw they X-rays fired intae me.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Fucks yer baws up, like.’

‘Please, just remain seated and we can—’

‘Yer no pumping aw that shite intae me.’ Ethel didn’t exactly do panic, but if they X-rayed her …

‘Just step over here.’

Ethel was out of the wheelchair now and leaning against the walk-through scanner, panting heavily. ‘Just, just give us a minute here …’

Another security person, a girl, was stepping towards her with one of the electric wand things that they ran over you. ‘Sir, if I can just …’

‘Ah’m sorry,’ Ethel said, ‘ah’m needing tae empty ma bag.’

‘Your bag? It is on the belt, yes?’

‘Naw. Ma bag. Ma colostomy bag.’ Ethel made some gestures. The two security guards looked at each other.

‘I shouldnae have hud that steak and eggs fur breakfast …’ Ethel said.

The girl seemed to understand something and a hurried exchange took place in French. ‘Please,’ the man said. ‘Just step through the scanner.’ He wheeled her chair off to be X-rayed separately.

Four minutes later Dr McKenzie sat in his wheelchair in a remote aisle of the duty-free shop quietly conferring with Anna and Heather Saunders. ‘Jesus,’ Ethel said, ‘I thought I’d had it then.’

‘OK, it’s OK. It’s fine,’ Susan said. ‘Everything’s OK.’ She was pretending to leaf through a Fodor travel guide and they were speaking to each other out of the corners of their mouths.

‘OK, phase two,’ Julie said. ‘How will we do this?’

‘Toilets are over there.’ Ethel nodded. ‘I’ll go in, I’ll take two of the cases, you give it a minute and then follow me in with the other two.’

Julie nodded.

‘Right, be careful,’ Susan said. ‘I’m just going to go down there and grab a coffee.’ She looked up at the departures board: BA 117, Nice–Rio, gate 43.

Boarding was due to commence in thirty minutes.

SOUP AND BLOODY
mushed eggs – this was it. This was his diet for the next few weeks. Boscombe stared hatefully at his plate. Even the eggs hurt to swallow. He glanced at the two newspapers on the table – a local one and a copy of the
Sun
. They had made the cover of the local paper: a photograph of the wrecked Mercedes showroom and an accompanying article. Page 4 of the
Sun
had the same picture plus a smaller one of him inserted in the corner (a still taken from his Sky News interview a week ago) and the caption ‘
SACRE LES BOYS IN BLEU! BRIT BLUNDER COPS
!’ Fucking … journalists.

‘All right, Sarge?’ He looked up, Wesley looked sated after his huge feast of croissants and coffee. ‘I’m just going to run over to duty-free and grab a few presents for the kids. You’ll be all right here for a minute, eh? Here, let me just …’ He pushed Boscombe’s wheelchair a little closer into the table for him.

Boscombe nodded. ‘Mmmmf. Uhhnnn.’

‘And I, ah …’ Wesley hesitated. ‘I spoke to Chief Inspector Wilson there. It’s … not great. Anyway. Back in a minute.’

Wesley strolled off and Boscombe went back to reading the papers. Yes, there really was no other way to put it: what a total, absolute bloody shambles.

As Boscombe turned to the football results, five hundred yards away Ethel and Julie emerged from the toilets. To the casual passer-by it looked like a fat, bearded, wheelchair-bound man in a linen suit being helped by a lady in her sixties whose dress was a little too big for her. The eagle-eyed observer would have noticed that Dr McKenzie and Mrs Heather Saunders had both lost quite a bit of weight in the last few minutes. They each had two wheelie suitcases of cabin baggage proportions – perfectly admissible for first-class passengers. Each bag was packed with just under a million pounds, the money that had just been taped to the bodies of Julie and Ethel.

They found Susan in the little coffee shop near the gate.

‘How did we do?’

‘All sorted,’ Julie said, patting the nearest case.

‘Right,’ Ethel said, ‘I’m gonna go and load up on sweets for the flight. Back in a tick.’

‘Careful, Ethel,’ they chorused as she rolled off in search of boiled treats.

A hundred grand a week or whatever that loser’s on and he still can’t put the ball in the bloody net?
Boscombe turned the page.
Oh, here was another one. Bloody Premiership these days
.

Mint humbugs? Or rhubarb and custards? Toffees? Or maybe some of these mental-looking French sweets?
The agony of choice
, Ethel thought.

If they’re getting paid all that money the least they can do is score the odd bastard goal.
Boscombe looked up and across the concourse, towards the shop opposite. There was a fat old guy in a wheelchair, looking at sweets.
Christ, what a loser. Do I look like that
? And how long would he have to be in this bloody thing? Trying to get an answer out of those French doctors …

Why not get the lot?
Ethel smiled. She was, after all, a millionaire now.

Boscombe looked again, closer this time at the actual wheelchair.

His heart stopped beating as his eyes settled on something. A sticker.

‘WHERE’S THE BEEF?’

Jesus. Jesus Christ.

Just at that moment Ethel sensed someone looking at her and she looked up towards the restaurant across the way.

Their eyes locked.

All the pain, all the humiliation and exhaustion of the last week exploded within Boscombe. Ethel grinned wickedly.

Both wheelchairs took off at exactly the same time.

Ethel was wheeling herself very fast in the direction of Susan and Julie.

Boscombe, much more inexperienced at propelling himself in a wheelchair, smashed into the table, then the chairs behind him, before finally getting out of the place. He saw two gendarmes chatting near a water fountain and wheeled up to them.

‘EEENNNN! ARRRGGHHH!’ Boscombe said.

The two policemen looked at him.

‘URRRR! G-FUUUCC!’ Boscombe was gesticulating, pointing in the direction Ethel was headed.

‘
Pardon, monsieur?
’

‘GNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!’ Boscombe was now turning a lurid purple, sweat pouring down his face and a thick broth of saliva bubbling from his lips, desperation flying from him.

The gendarmes looked at each other. ‘Ah!’ one of them said, the penny finally dropping. He took hold of the handles of the wheelchair and started pushing Boscombe across the tiled floor. ‘RRRRNNN!’ Boscombe said, pointing at the fleeing Ethel. ‘FFFRRRR!’

‘
Voilà!
’ The gendarme said, stopping.

Boscombe looked up at the door in front of him.

The disabled toilets.

With a string of unintelligible obscenities flying over his shoulder Boscombe frantically started wheeling himself after Ethel. The gendarme watched him go, puzzled, as his colleague walked up saying, ‘Huh?’

‘
Les handicapés mental
.’

‘Ah.’

Julie and Susan were both watching the monitor that was saying ‘BA 117, NOW BOARDING’; the words ‘Where the hell is Ethel?’ were actually forming on both their lips when Ethel went rocketing past their table, doing a good ten miles an hour on a slight downhill curve. ‘GET ON THE PLANE!’ Ethel shouted as she passed, coffee cups rattling in their saucers in her wake.

‘Eh?’ Susan said.

‘What the fu …?’ Julie said.

They just had time to start gathering their things as another blur of human, chrome and tyres went hurtling by.

‘Was that …?’ Julie said.

‘The plane,’ Susan said. ‘Let’s get to the bloody plane.’

Wesley walked back into the coffee shop, laden with teddy bears and chocolate, to see the table empty and Boscombe gone. Maybe popped to the loo. He checked the monitor. Still not boarding.

He signalled to the waiter for another coffee.

She had maybe a hundred yards on him, Boscombe reckoned. Thank God his arms were the one part of him still working. He was getting the hang of it now too, pushing the metal rims of the wheels hard forward and then letting them roll, then pushing again. He seemed to have reached a slight downhill slope now, speeding up.

Ethel glanced over her shoulder, she could see the demented form of Boscombe – mummified legs, caged head – coming after her, gaining. Evasive action, she decided.

‘Hey!’ someone shouted as people leapt out of her way.

Boscombe watched, astonished, as she made a hard left into some kind of gift shop.

Ethel came rattling along a big wide aisle, shouting ‘MOVE IT!’ at dithering shoppers, and glanced over her shoulder again as Boscombe came cornering fast into the shop after her. With amazing dexterity Ethel reached out and grabbed a chunky bottle of Chanel No. 5 off a shelf. She slowed a little, letting Boscombe get within thirty feet of her – he was wheeling like mad, his eyes fixed on the ‘I BRAKE FOR NO ONE’ sign – before she launched the bottle over her shoulder. The scream from behind her told her she’d found her target, the perfume bottle smacking very hard off Boscombe’s forehead. But still he kept coming as Ethel exploded out of the other side of the shop and headed full pelt for an automated walkway.

Deftly, unseen by Boscombe, preoccupied as he was by blood pouring into his eyes from the fresh gash in his forehead, Ethel pegged her passport and boarding card into a bin.

This was a suicide mission now.

Julie and Susan were
running
, heading for the gate, pulling two heavy, cash-stuffed wheelie cases apiece, as the tannoy announced ‘Final call for BA Flight 117 to Rio …’

Ethel hit the walkway hard, its extra few miles an hour adding speed to her churning wheeling as Boscombe came barrelling out of the gift shop behind her, his wheelchair tilting crazily, almost capsizing, as he shouted and swore, realising that his path was blocked by an enormous French family. ‘MMMMMFFFF! URRRR!’ he roared, screeching left, missing them by inches. He saw Ethel rocketing away on the walkway, everything looking hopeless until he spotted the golf buggy veering in front of him – the kind of vehicle airports use to take the very old or the very important to their destinations – and, with an extra thrust of the wrist, he caught it up, grabbing hold of the rear bumper, the vehicle pulling him along even faster, the driver oblivious to his piggybacking passenger.

Ethel pummelled along the moving walkway, shouting ‘
ALLES ALLES! VAMOS! SCHNELL!
’ and ‘GET OUT THE FUCKING WAY!’ People were leaping aside, jumping off.

Julie and Susan reached the gate to find that there was still a queue at economy boarding, but it was all clear in the business and first-class line. The (gorgeous) young steward smiled as he held out his hand for their boarding passes. But then, just as the machine was reading their bar codes, the green light coming on, pronouncing them to be good, the phone at his elbow started ringing. ‘Hello?’ he said. He listened, looking at Susan and Julie, then beyond them to the other queue. ‘Mmmm.
Oui. Oui
.’ He put the phone down. ‘
Mesdames
, please, wait here a moment.’ He walked off towards two colleagues who were conferring over a clipboard nearby.

‘Should we just make a run for it?’ Julie said out of the corner of her mouth.

Ethel came tearing off the automated walkway just as Boscombe let go of the golf buggy and, for a split second, he could almost touch her hair, flying behind her in a mad frizz of grey as Ethel wheeled for her very life, catching another downhill now, both of them really speeding up as, ahead, Ethel saw two escalators, both going down. She thundered towards the right-hand one and, in a display of skill that would surely have put her in the top-five wheelchair drivers worldwide, smashed her brakes on the moment she hit the metal, stopping on a dime, the escalator taking her gradually down. Looking back up as she disappeared Ethel saw two things. Firstly, the scrum of gendarmes and security guards running towards her in the distance, finally alerted to the wheelchair version of the Le Mans rally happening within their airport, and secondly – Boscombe.

It would be fair to say that only being used to driving a wheelchair for a few hours – as opposed to over a decade – Boscombe lacked the skills possessed by Ethel. Roughly twenty seconds after she hit the right-hand down escalator Boscombe hit the left-hand one. But he didn’t brake – he went smashing, barrelling and bouncing down at full speed, his body being thrown up off the chair with each impact on every step. Ethel could hear his muffled screams.
This was a very bad idea
– was what went through Boscombe’s mind.

They stood there, too scared to run, the few remaining economy-class passengers now boarding, the airline crew in a huddle, talking in a low murmur a few yards away.

‘Ethel,’ Julie whispered. ‘What the hell’s happened to Ethel?’

Susan looked back the way they had come, over Julie’s shoulder, and saw two gendarmes approaching with a third man between them, in a suit and tie, an airport official of some sort, with a laminated pass dangling around his neck.
Fucking men
, Susan found herself thinking.

She felt her grip tightening on her two wheelie cases, as she whispered to Julie, ‘Don’t turn round, darling.’

‘What is it?’

‘Whatever happens, the last few days, I’ve had the best time I’ve ever …’

‘Hey, hey, don’t cry …’ Julie said, reaching for her.

‘Oh well,’ Susan said, almost about to offer her wrists up in a ‘throw on the cuffs’ gesture as the officious-looking trio approached … and then walked straight past them and up to the last few economy passengers. ‘Excuse me, madams?’ they said to two ladies.