‘Hello tasty boys – especially you in the Irish jersey,’ it began. ‘Are you looking for fun on this trip? XXX.’
Wasting no time, she nabbed a less fierce air hostess and asked her to pass the note to the boys, who were making general fools of themselves. Within seconds there was a big cheer, with one of the lads screaming, ‘Absa-fuckin’lutely!’ in a thick Corkonian accent, followed by the other three moaning, ‘Shut the fuck up, Bugsie.’
After much rummaging in jackets, the boys located a pen and our note was returned with, ‘The fella with the Irish jersey has a small mickie. But the rest of us are hung like donkeys. Are ya up for makin’ the high mile?’
At this stage I had necked back the first mini bottle of bubbles, and had moved on to my second, so feeling a little finicky I sent a note back: ‘Sorry lads, but did you mean the Mile High Club?’
Although the plane hadn’t even left the runway yet, several groups looked as if they were about to complain about the sound pollution. Noticing this, the air hostess refused to accept the note from the boys to give to us and told them to keep it down.
Ten long, laborious minutes later our Airbus was finally in the skies, and Maddie was hot out of the traps and over to get acquainted with the guys. Of course I was too embarrassed to go with her, so I giggled and waved from my seat while Parker tutted with mature disgust.
‘You’re behaving like fishwives,’ he barked, pulling a snooty face.
‘What’s a fishwife anyway?’ Knowing well that he wouldn’t have an answer.
‘I don’t know.’ His tone was almost a growl. ‘But you two are acting like common little tarts, I’m embarrassed for you. I’m putting on my iPod now, and if anyone asks, I’ll disown you.’
‘Well you can act like a grumpy old bear for the rest of the flight if you like, but I’m going to enjoy myself. You’ve approximately two hours and twenty-five minutes to lose yourself in the Scissor Sisters, so I hope you have enough battery power. Good luck!’
With that I jumped out of my seat and sauntered up the aisle like it was a catwalk. Not that any of the guys noticed; their eyes were transfixed by Maddie and her tight white T.
She always had great pert boobs, but since she’d got pregnant, they had almost doubled in size, even though the rest of her hadn’t.
I had just snuggled up beside Maddie and pretended to be interested in some story she was telling about Sinatra’s Bar in Puerto Banus, when the angry hostess got on the intercom again and told everyone to take their seats as we would be experiencing some turbulence.
Maddie didn’t look as if she was prepared to give up on her games, as she told the boys, ‘Hold all those thoughts, as I’ll be bringing sexy back!’ She gave me a poke in the ribs and pushed me towards our seats before I even got a chance to open my mouth.
‘Eh, thanks for that,’ I snapped, as I fixed my belt buckle in a hasty fashion.
‘They’re dickheads,’ she whispered, still waving in their direction.
‘Excuse me?’
‘And we’ll have to make a sharpish exit off the plane as well. Because I jokingly said that we were here for your hen night and you were looking for a final fling before the big day.’
‘So what’s wrong with that? The blondie fella looked kinda cute. I’ve done worse – you’ve done worse!’
‘Agreed, but I think they’re bad eggs.’
‘Since when have you been so picky? I’m going to give the blond one my number.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because …’
‘Fuck sake, Maddie, just tell me why not.’
‘Just leave it.’
‘Why? ’
‘Cause they’ve got Class As on them and I don’t want to be exposed in the papers as the model who’s been smuggling a baby, and now drugs!’
‘Fuck off … How do you know?’
‘The loud one in the jersey said he had coke on him and did I fancy a line?’
‘Get outta town. Jaysus, they’re mad bastards. So, why were you still flirting with them? Telling them you’d bring sexy back. I presumed you were talking about me.’
‘Get you. Actually I was, kinda, but I was just trying to get away from them subtly.’
‘Subtly? You’re one of those bitches who give women a bad name: “I said Yes, Your Honour, but really I meant No”.’
As the plane started to swoop and dip in the wind pockets Parker opened his eyes and pulled off his earphones. The colour had drained from his face and he gripped the armrests of his seat in panic mode.
‘I’m fucking hating this turbulence,’ he moaned, terrified. ‘I’m hating it more than Jodie Marsh’s wardrobe, I’m hating it more than that smelly Pete Doherty … actually, I hate it just as much as Colin Farrell’s dirty fingernails. Fuck! I’m hating it—’
‘OK, calm down. Don’t get your G-string in a twist, it’ll pass soon.’ I tried to sound composed, but Parker was normally the sensible one in these situations while I was always uneasy with the rocking.
‘Listen, I’ve a good story for ya, to take your mind off falling out of the sky.’
‘Thanks, pet,’ he said in a sarcastic whisper.
‘Maddie, tell Parker about your DR-uggie mates.’ The captain surfed the wind as I spoke.
‘Sh-ushh,’ Maddie glared, looking around her as if she was being followed. ‘Keep it quiet.’
Intrigued, Parker leaned over my lap towards Maddie on the outside seat and demanded she filled him in on her news.
‘They asked me – if I wanted – a line of coke,’ she mumbled through her hand.
‘No way?’
‘Yes way …’
‘And then what?’ Parker’s attention span already seemed exhausted.
‘That’s it. Turbulence hit, we were told to come back to our seats, and now here we are.’
‘Ri-VET-ing.’ Parker resumed his white-knuckle pose, while the lads up front whooped and cheered as the plane swooped three times downwards.
We spent the following two hours avoiding Pablo Escobar and his mates thanks to continued bad weather and the trolley-dolly service of tea and coffee, ham sandwiches, giant Toblerones and Burberry perfume. By the time we landed, our stress levels were at an all-time high, what with Parker’s new fear of flying and Maddie’s anxiety of being linked with reckless coke-heads.
Thankfully everyone scrambled for their bags before the seat-belt sign had been switched off, so the guys couldn’t make their way back to our seats. Instead Maddie waved them on and told them she’d see them at the luggage reclaim, before turning to me and saying, ‘They’ll have to catch me first.’
As we waited in our seats for the queue to ease, Parker busied himself with his phone, and his mood instantly lifted. ‘Look I’m a Moviestar,’ he said proudly, showing us the network coverage on his mobile before a message from Jeff beeped through.
‘Ah look, he says, “Missing you already … I luuve U xox.” Ah, isn’t he the best?’
‘The best ever,’ Maddie and I gushed in unison, knowing Parker was far easier to manage when happy. With that all our tensions eased and we were three happy campers on tour again.
With Maddie’s wild men out of sight, we made our way to Passport Control thrilled by the sight of the warm Spanish sun.
‘I’m going to be sitting beside the pool with a strawberry daiquiri in my hand in about ninety minutes,’ beamed Parker, stretching his arms out as if he was catching some rays.
‘And I’ll be lying right beside ya trying to hold my belly in,’ smiled Maddie, with a deep intake of breath. ‘You never know, I could catch the eye of my first future husband!’
‘I hope he likes children,’ I teased.
‘Well Heidi Klum bagged Seal with someone else’s baby,’ she answered back with an air of optimism. ‘And then she had more with him.’ With that she skipped off to wave her passport, content in the knowledge that happily-ever-afters can happen.
‘What do you mean there’s
a problem?’ I was surrounded by several Spanish Policia who were trying to escort me to a nearby door marked PRIVADO.
‘No, give me my passport back – I’ve done nothing wrong. Parker – Maddie!’ I was pushed inside a small concrete room with a desk and a few chairs and told, ‘Wait here’ by an angry policeman wearing a bulletproof vest.
As the door closed behind me, I dropped on one of the chairs in shock, my heart pounding with fear. What did they think I had done? Was this a case of mistaken identity? Was it some elaborate practical joke?
Moments later the heavy door swung open and Maddie and Parker were pushed through it. Thank God, I thought. At least I wasn’t alone in my abduction.
‘I demand an explanation,’ Parker insisted in his best butch voice. Maddie hung on to him for dear life. ‘You can’t do this to us,’ she added weakly. ‘We’ve done nothing wrong.’
But once they were inside, the door was slammed shut again, leaving us dazed and confused.
Maybe it was her hormones, but Maddie burst into tears, and although we were trying to remain strong, Parker and I weren’t far behind her.
In a panic Maddie screamed, ‘What the fuck? What if they want to do one of those anal examinations? I don’t want some bitch sticking her rubber gloves up my ass.’
‘Sounds all right to me,’ chirped Parker.
‘Not funny,’ I said, trying to fight the tears. ‘We’re in some serious shit here. What the fuck do they think we’ve done?’
‘They’ve taken our phones,’ said Parker, as if talking through a plan in his head.
‘I’ve still got mine,’ I said and rooted in my handbag. ‘But who will we ring?’
‘Jeff,’ urged Parker. ‘Hurry up and turn that bloody thing on before they come back. He’ll know what to do.’
But as if the police had been listening to our conversation, the door crashed open again as I was staring at my Nokia doing its lengthy connection light-up ritual.
‘You won’t be needing that just yet,’ said one of the two plainclothes men who walked into the room. He had an Irish accent. ‘I’ll mind that for now.’ He signalled to me to hand over the phone, which I did and then instantly regretted.
‘What did you do that for?’ Maddie was turning from emotional to hysterical.
‘OK, listen up, people, calm down and we can get through this a lot easier.’ The man, who was wearing a blue short-sleeved Ralph Lauren shirt and navy jeans, had a recognizable south Dublin accent, and even though it didn’t seem to sedate Maddie, it went a small way towards calming my nerves. After all, at least these guys were from the same town as us. Surely they’d be less likely to throw us in a foreign jail and throw away the key? My mind began racing, just like my heartbeat.
‘I demand you tell us why you’re holding us here. We’ve just arrived for our holidays. We’re not smuggling people or drugs.’
‘If you take a seat I’ll explain.’ The same man spoke, while the other observed.
Realizing we had no option but to co-operate, after checking out each other’s eyes we hesitantly sat down and faced our kidnappers.
As Maddie continued to weep, the second man – in a white short-sleeved Ralph Lauren shirt and navy jeans – handed her a tissue from his pocket while the main man readied himself to speak.
‘You’re wondering why we’ve pulled you in here. Well, let me introduce myself and my colleague. My name is Detective Hugh Ormond and this is Detective Mark Fitzsimons and we’re—’
‘Are you charging us with an offence?’ interrupted Parker.
‘If you would let me finish, sir, I’d like to explain.’
‘Yes, well I’ve a pregnant woman here who doesn’t need this sort of upset,’ explained Parker as he put his arm around Maddie to comfort her. It only seemed to make her worse.
‘What … do … you want with us?’ blubbed Maddie, then erupted into another tearful episode.
‘If you’d let me explain,’ said the man in the blue again. ‘As I said, my name is Detective Ormond and this is Detective Fitzsimons and we’re part of the Garda National Drug Unit.’
‘What?’ Parker was aghast.
‘We’ve pulled you in because we’d like to find out your exact relationship with John Mathews, Cormac Bulger, Jack Gannon and Ray Gannon.’
‘Who?’ the three of us asked together.
‘Oh come on. Do you expect me to believe you don’t know who I’m talking about? We’ve just stepped off the same flight, and we were witness to your contact with these four men.’
‘We don’t know them,’ snapped Parker defensively. ‘This eejit started flirting with them, but then changed her mind.’ He pointed to Maddie as he spoke, which evoked even more cries.
‘Oh, th-is is all my fault now, I suppose,’ whimpered Maddie. ‘How was I to know?’
‘Know what, Miss Lord?’ Detective Ormond asked while scanning her passport.
‘Nothing … I know nothing … Can we just go?’ Maddie was an extremely bad liar. And our trained Gardaí could smell a stinking rat.
‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Miss Lord. All we need is a little co-operation from you and then you can leave.’
‘I’m no snitch,’ blurted Maddie, stupidly signing her death warrant.
‘Jesus Christ, Maddie,’ moaned Parker, fully aware she was digging a deep hole for herself. ‘Just tell them what the men said to you.’ He glared at Maddie and then at me. I remained quiet and frozen on my chair. The less attention I brought to myself the better.
‘OK, Miss Lord, we’re all ears.’ Detective Ormond smirked as he spoke.
‘Shouldn’t I have a lawyer present or something? Am I under arrest or what?’
‘So far this is an informal inquiry, Miss Lord, but if you want to make life difficult for yourself we can arrest you all under the Misuse of Drugs Act, search your bags and we can make it all very formal.’
‘No,’ I screamed, without thinking. ‘Sorry, no, we’ll talk, well, Maddie here will explain. Won’t you, Maddie?’ I squeezed her hand and raised my eyebrows for extra effect.
‘Yes, Maddie,’ agreed Parker, ‘showing loyalty to four men we’ve never met before is hardly worth being banged up in a Spanish jail for, now is it?’
‘Why me?’
‘Maddie!’ Parker’s fuse had almost burnt out.
‘OK, OK,’ she muttered, trying to prepare herself for her big revelation. ‘They offered me a line of coke on the plane – that’s it. Are you happy now?’
‘I don’t think this is the time for attitude, Miss Lord. I’d like to point out that we can hold you here over the weekend, and we are more than happy to keep you company until you decide to tell us the truth.’
‘But that is the truth,’ pleaded Maddie, perking up. ‘I’ve never – we’ve never – met them before the flight today, and I had no idea who they were. Honest, I was just having a laugh with them, and as soon as they asked if I wanted a line of coke, I backed off. You’ve got to believe me.’
‘Do you really expect us to believe you’ve no relationship with these men?’
‘Yes – I’ve never seen them before.’
‘But we saw you with them. What was it that you were passing to them on the plane?’
‘Just a note.’
‘Saying what?’
‘Stuff.’
‘Miss Lord, must I remind you that we can hold you and your friends here for the weekend.’
‘Fuck sake …’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Sorry, just stuff,’ she sighed, with agony in her voice. ‘I was just messing, having a laugh.’
‘And?’
‘And I was flirting with them. It was just innocent stuff. Have you never had fun with strangers before?’ The two detectives just looked at each other and then turned their gaze back to Maddie.
‘Your friend here informs us you’re pregnant.’ The detective gestured at Parker. ‘Does the father of your baby approve of you “flirting” with other men?’
&nb
sp; ‘I’m not with him,’ she mumbled under her breath.
‘Sorry?’ asked the detective again.
‘I’m not with him,’ she repeated, her voice louder. ‘I’m an unmarried mother-to-be. So there, are you happy now?’
‘Not really, Miss Lord. I don’t believe a word out of your mouth. I don’t believe you’re pregnant, and I don’t believe you’ve never met the four men we have under surveillance. I think you’d better make yourself comfortable. Because we’ve a lot more questions to ask.’
The two men stood up from their chairs and left the room, leaving us to stare at each other in bewilderment.
‘I’ve told you everything I know.’ I was in a different room on my own being interviewed by the same detective, Hugh Ormond.
‘Have you been drinking, Miss Valentine?’
‘Yes, and I’m not trying to be sarcastic, but what has that got to do with anything? I wasn’t planning on driving anywhere. I had kinda hoped I’d be sitting at my pool drinking more by now, actually.’
‘If it’s all right with you, Miss Valentine, I’ll be the one asking the questions.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK, we just have to be clear on everything. These are very dangerous men you’ve come into contact with.’
‘Yes, well it’d be a lot easier to avoid international drug dealers if they wore T-shirts to state who they were.’
‘Believe me, it would help our job considerably too.’
Thankfully, after much aggravated discussion, it looked like the two detectives were coming around to our explanation of events.
The four men Maddie had been flirting with turned out to be small-time drug lords who were travelling to Puerto Banus to meet up with Russian gangs to open new avenues for smuggling Class A drugs. We had foolishly introduced ourselves to these flash Harrys who were under investigation by Europol and being followed by the Drug Squad.
After I’d given him all our contact details, of where we were staying and how long we were planning to stay for, Detective Ormond handed me back my passport and stood up to walk me back to Parker and Maddie, who had each been interviewed separately before me.
Champagne Kisses Page 17
