Conman

by Richard Asplin

  A few moments later, Andrew, Laura and myself were sat in the warm pub around a dark sticky table finishing our drinks. Andrew seemed a little worse for wear.

  “Bloody hell,” he said, taking a throaty pull on his fresh lager and wiping his mouth. “That was, without doubt, the longest bloody ninety minutes of my life. I’m shaking, look look,” and he held out a tremulous hand. “And I thought handling O’Shea’s money was a nervy business. Look at that. Bloody hell. Did you get it all? Could you hear? Where were you?”

  “Had you the whole time. Loud and clear,” Laura said. “You did good, soldier.” Andrew unclipped the pen from his pocket and Laura tucked it away. She also tucked away her reassuring eyes and replaced them with some face-the-front-and-listen-to-me ones.

  “Now look,” she said, sliding the newspaper package into her bag carefully. “I’ve got to be back at Christopher’s by three o’clock otherwise he’ll be asking questions so pay attention. The team can’t have any idea they’re walking into a double-cross. Up until the very last second, they have to still believe we’re all screwing Andrew here out of his heirloom. They get even the faintest whiff that the play isn’t going like clockwork, they’ll drop everything and walk away.”

  Laura was talking quickly, nervously. Making sure we understood.

  “I’ve been planning this for a while and I’ve come up with how to do it, but I’ll be straight with you. It’s tricky. “It’ll need precise timing and a faultless performance from the pair of you. Especially you Andrew. You did good today,” and Andrew took an embarrassed swig of lager and tugged out his red notebook. “But Friday will be the real –”

  “Wait,” I said, voice oddly high, stomach oddly low. “Sorry. Wait, what are you … the pair of us?”

  “It needs three,” Laura said flatly.

  “Three? But … I can’t … I mean, they know me. Christopher, Grayson, everyone. They know me.”

  “My plan keeps you out of sight for the play. You’re just behind the scenes. Plus they’ll be focused on Andrew here. Put on a baseball cap, let your beard go for the next few –”

  “Wait. Wait, hold on a second.” I swallowed hard, eyes flicking between the pale, apprehensive come-down of my oldest friend and the hard edges of … whoever the hell Laura really was. “I’m all for this. And Andrew?” I fixed him with a solemn look. “God bless you for helping out. But if any of them catch even a glimpse of me –”

  “Look pal, it’s all or nothing, understand?” Laura was facing me, thunder rumbling across her brow. “The plan won’t fly with just us. Andrew and I need to work the inside, keep it all bubbling along. I told you, if Christopher or the others get any idea we’re fixing to turn this –”

  “But isn’t there … God, isn’t there another way?”

  “Another way? Yes. Yes of course there is,” Laura said fishing out a cigarette and getting to her feet. “We forget the whole thing. You lose your wife, your daughter, your home and your business, I go to prison forever and your best friend here can get on a plane back to New York knowing he’s leaving his oldest mucker truly in the shit.” She looked at me. “We can do that.”

  “Christ,” I writhed, thoughts scurrying around my head like lab rats in a maze, U-turning at every wall.

  “Neil, Neil,” Andrew said, shushing me, soothing me, calming me down. “The whassit, the Sparrow Plop thing …”

  “The Pigeon Drop,” Laura said.

  “Right. Christopher said the whole thing takes two hours.” He put a large hand on my shoulder. “By midday Friday you’ll have your money back and be back in your shop having lunch like nothing ever happened. Right? Laura?”

  “Right.”

  I breathed deep, the world slowing down a little.

  “Hell, I’ve gotta see O’Shea around noon to complete contracts and my plane’s at eight,” Andrew smiled, slapping my upper arm. “Christopher assured me it’d be long over with by then. We’re both doing the most important deals of our lives and we won’t let anything stop us.”

  “Whole thing, done and dusted by twelve,” Laura said, hoisting her bag to her shoulder. “Latest.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. So what’s this plan? How do we turn this thing on it’s head.”

  “Drink up,” she said, zipping her coat. “And I’ll show you.”

  twenty-four

  Much like the ugly drummer in a teenage rock band who is kept in only because he’s got access to a van, the district known as Earl’s Court is a dull, functional piece of London acting as the glue holding the more groovy Fulham, Chelsea and Kensington together. Full of grotty bed & breakfasts, warehouses, industrial estates and of course the Exhibition Centre, its residents – mostly backpacking homosexual Australians – pour from the doorways at night and hurry off somewhere else more appealing, cabbing it back only once the hours are small and the streets are too dark to see clearly. Meanwhile the real residents – batty old dears with wigs like small dogs and vice versa – avoid the place by staying in, mostly to count up the rent they’re earning from all the homosexual Australians in their back bedrooms.

  All of which goes some way to explain why, as we made our way through the wide, quiet avenues that Tuesday afternoon, we were pretty much the only souls about.

  Andrew hung back a little, jabbering anxious business into his mobile phone. I only caught every fifth word or so, busy as I was jabbering telephone business of my own.

  “No, I’m not at the shop. I-I’m finishing prep. You know, for the fair?”

  “But you remembered to pick Dad up at lunchtime?”

  “You haven’t … ? I-I mean, you haven’t spoken to him? He hasn’t called you? He’s not there now?”

  “Dad? No. No, why? Did you meet him all right?”

  “Uhmm … hello? Hello? Jane? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here, I can hear you fine. Did you pick him up?”

  “Hello? I’m losing you I think? It must be the conference centre. I don’t think the signal’s very –”

  I thumbed the line closed.

  Shit.

  “Everything okay at home?” Laura smirked, fishing out a fresh cigarette, November leaves crackling underfoot. She jinked left and we followed, down Lillie Road, another wide, leafy avenue. Around us, traffic hissed along wet streets.

  “Just promise me this is going to work.”

  “As long as your friend keeps his nerve, it’ll be fine.”

  I looked back at Andrew, flagging a few metres behind. He had his hand knotted in his thick hair, fear etched in his eyebrows and phone to his ear.

  “Yes yes I understand that sir, but I did, I made that clear to him,” he bluffed, shuffling and dodging in the splashy kerb. “Standard business practice for periods under five working days, but he insisted … No, quite the opposite sir, it was Keatings’ reputation I was endeavouring to … No no, it’s done … and he’s happy sir yes … Noon on Friday … I understand the penalties sir, yes, but noon is firmly … will do. Th-thank you sir. Thank you so much …”

  He snapped the phone closed angrily and stuffed it, muttering, into his jacket.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “How much further is this?” he spat, not looking at me.

  We trudged along in guilty silence for a couple of streets, stumbling about the bases of trees, each ringed with aging Pekinese turds.

  I was asking a lot of him. I was asking too much. He’d been back in my life after a decade and this was what I had him doing? Wasn’t what I’d asked of him at University enough? What was wrong with just a game of darts and a curry?

  “Sorry old man,” he said finally, shrugging off his mood. “Just the office. O’Shea and what have you. Chin up. Soon be over,” and he cuffed me on the shoulder with a small smile.

  Where did Andrew fit in Christopher’s twisted Circle of Life speech? Where was his type’s mirror in nature? Nowhere, that’s where. There was no species of antelope offering to put their necks into lions’ mouths for old time�
�s sake. No genus of fly, diving kamikaze-style, into webs to signal spider-danger to other flies because they all went back a few days. And yet here was Andrew Benjamin, in a bad mood, a grotty part of town and an ill-fitting shirt, doing just that.

  “Not much further,” Laura said, swinging us around a tree, turning right into Herne Road, another quiet side street lined with orange-bricked mansion flats, criss-crossed with scaffolding, skips and flapping polythene.

  See what Christopher and his smug, rationalised, Nietzschean, right-wing, psycho-babble, lion-antelope cobblers theory failed to take into account is what people like that always fail to take into account. Goodness. Kindness. Call it what you like-ness. Thankfully in this grim old world, some people, for whatever reason, genuinely do put others first. Take time out of their day. Lend a helping hand. Let you play the white pieces in chess for a whole term while you learn the rules. Listen to you unload your family worries as your father’s birthday passes. Help you plot the seduction of a close friend even though it will ruin the dynamic and cause months of awkwardness and difficult moods. Even when it means –

  “O’Shea’s insisted the profit he cleared be removed from Keatings’ holding account,” Andrew muttered, interrupting my thoughts. “Why should we be the ones making the interest? So I’ve got to go back this afternoon and set up bloody passwords and bloody clearance codes for a new, non-interest, high-security, barbed-wire, keep-out, achtung account he can keep his precious cash in for three bloody days. Had to get Keating himself on the phone to calm O’Shea down. Three days. What a waste of bloody time.”

  Laura stopped walking. Andrew and I came to a slow halt around her.

  “We’re here,” she said, stopping beneath a resident’s parking sign.

  “Here?”

  Here was Redcliffe Gardens. Another in a long line of wide, terraced streets. No different to the half dozen she’d already led us through. The BMWs parked in this one might have been a touch more obnoxious, the 4×4s a smidge more smug, but apart from that, identical.

  “Where it’s all going to happen. Now listen.”

  Andrew flipped out his red book and we huddled up a little.

  “Whatever happens, keep one thing in mind,” Laura said. She tugged out a fresh cigarette. “Christopher is trying a double-cross of his own. He spent the train journey telling you how you’re lending him your comic book on Friday? To help him play the drop on this Grayson? The supposed mark?”

  “He did,” Andrew nodded.

  “Well that’s what he wants you to think. And that’s how it’s going to look. Everything he said about the plan? The car park, the pub, the split? Taking Grayson’s money, giving him the comic book to look after?”

  “And Julio turning up, stealing it all back, guns blazing? Grayson running for the hills?” Andrew nodded, flipping back a few pages and sucking the end of his pen.

  “Right. In three days’ time, in the doorway of The Atlas public house, all that’s going to happen. Just as he told you.”

  “Just as he told me.”

  “Right. Up until Grayson, whoops, pulls out a ‘surprise’ gun of his own,” and Laura popped her cigarette in her mouth to waggle some inverted-comma fingers. “It all, ahem, goes wrong,” – waggle waggle – “everyone flees and you Andrew, are left with nothing.”

  “Grayson … surprise gun …” Andrew jotted.

  “Now Neil, to you.” Laura snapped a match from a buckled book and the flame sparked and hissed. She lit her cigarette and flicked the match away. “What do you drive?”

  “Drive?”

  “What car do you have? Something big? Because come Friday morning, at eight minutes past ten, you’ll be blocking this street.”

  “With a Nissan Micra?”

  Laura stepped off the kerb into the quiet centre of Redcliffe Gardens, hands on hips, eyes prowling the logistics.

  “Hmn. I don’t think a Micra’s going to do it. Can you get hold of something bigger by then? You can’t leave room for a car to pass on either side.”

  “Bigger? I … Wait. Wait, Friday? I’ll have a van. I’ve hired one for the trade fair. Back when I had enough stock for a trade fair. And to fill a van. A Transit. I’m still scheduled to pick it up tomorrow afternoon. I was going to cancel, but …”

  “Perfect. Get the longest wheelbase you can. Nothing can get down this street. Oh, and make sure it comes with a Haynes manual too. You’re going to need some under-the-bonnet –”

  “Hold it,” Andrew said suddenly. We both looked up at him. He was standing on the kerb, flicking back through his notebook. The November wind played with his hair a little. He looked up at me, expressionlessly. Then he looked over at Laura.

  “It’s all right,” she soothed. “I’ll go over it all again. I know it’s a lot to take in. Oh and before I forget, one of you will need a passport.”

  “Passport?” I said. “Where the hell are we going?”

  “We’re not going anywhere. I’ll need to exchange it for a –”

  “HOLD IT!” Andrew hissed, eyes blazing. “Just … just hold everything. Aren’t you forgetting something my dear?” he said flatly.

  The mood had shifted. The silent street somehow went even more quiet, as if the tarmac and trees were holding their breath.

  “The police? Your precious bloody Fraud Squad?” and he waved the red book like a football referee. “Immunity?”

  Christ he was right. It had completely slipped my mind. Where were they? Shouldn’t they have a part in all this? I looked across the street to where Laura was standing. She hadn’t moved.

  “Your freedom in exchange for the team, you said. Caught red-handed in a last final scam. Well?” and Andrew threw his arms open wide. “Coo-ee? Mr Policeman? Don’t you want to know the plan? Coo-ee? You can come out now?”

  All was still.

  In the middle of the street, Laura sucked on her cigarette, exhaling the warm blue smoke into the afternoon.

  “I thought you were going to turn me in,” she said, shifting her weight to one hip.

  “What?” Andrew scowled. “When?”

  “That night. In the hotel. When Neil appeared from under the bed. I’d taken fifty grand of his daughter’s money. I thought you guys were going to call the cops.”

  “Wait. So you lied?” I said.

  “It’s what I’m good at.”

  “And the cops? Immunity?”

  Laura smiled, shaking her head a little.

  “I figured it was the only way to keep you quiet. Telling you I’d turned myself in already. It meant you wouldn’t bother to.”

  “Oh bloody hell,” Andrew spat. “Bloody buggering hell!” and he walked away a few steps, head thrown back in disbelief. Finally he spun around. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that? So the whole thing? This whole bloody thing? You don’t want out. You don’t want out at all. So what is this? Some kind of double, triple … double … quadruple-cross?”

  “No! No no no! I do want out,” Laura said quickly, taking short, scared tugs on her cigarette. “I do. Okay, the cop thing was a line, fine, I admit it, you got me. But I just thought you’d be more likely to help me if you thought it was all Home Office approved. I do need your help. This plan? All this?” and she gestured at the quiet street. “This is going to work. Neil?” She looked at me, wide eyed. “This is going to get your money back. This is going to repair the damage. Save your wife. Save your marriage. And it’s going to get me out. Free. Once and for all.”

  “And how,” I snapped, “is it going to do that exactly?”

  Laura stopped, breathing deep, like she was trying to slow the world down a little. She looked at me. Then at Andrew. Her arms were crossed about her body, curled tight and scared, pulling her military jacket around her slim frame.

  “Because …”

  Somewhere a dog barked.

  “Go on?” I pushed angrily. “I’m all ears. How exactly is this magical plan of yours going to get you free of Christopher and Grayson and the others?”<
br />
  “Because …” Laura chewed her lip. “Because once they’re loaded, blank bullets and real bullets are almost impossible to tell apart.”

  part three

  twenty-five

  “Are you still on hold there, old man?” Andrew said, appearing in the doorway clapping the dust from his hands and wiping basement grime on his Abercrombie T-shirt.

  “Yep,” I sighed. “But my call is important to them so I should please stay on the line. Oh, and this you’ll like. Am I also aware, as a member of their mailing list, that tomorrow they’re hosting the nineteenth annual London Collectibles Convention and I’m eligible for two discounted tickets?”

  “How generous. What’s next? All these?”

  It was Thursday afternoon. A quiff past a collar by the shop clock. The stereo crackled some MGM greats and two take-out hot chocolates sat on the counter where, long ago, a till once stood. A large tatty London A-Z lay flapped open, red marker pen wobbling across tomorrow’s route. On the narrow cobbles of Brigstock Place, the blue rented Transit that would follow those wobbles was hunched, back doors open, hazards blinking pink in the winter gloom.

  “Those tubes there,” I said. “Plus the box they’re sitting on and that’s it.”

  “That’s it? You’re barely a third full out there.”

  “That’s all I could salvage. So until Wembley Arena holds its first annual Soggy Papier Mâché Convention, I –”

  “Hello, exhibitions?”

  “Sorry, h-hello,” I said. Andrew heaved up an armful of poster tubes and moved out to the chilly street, sliding them into the back of the van. “My name’s Mr Martin. I’ve a stall booked for the convention tomorrow? Heroes Incorporated?”

  “Stand 116?”

  “Th-that’s right. I was just explaining to your colleague, I’m not going to be able to make it. Something’s … something’s come up. I’m sorry. I was wondering about the deposit though?”

  “If you look you’ll see your contract stipulates that exhibitor cancellation notice is ten working –”