by John Niven
‘See what?’
‘This letter. I am afraid your English police credentials do not mean anything here, Detective …’ he squinted at the ID again, ‘Balls comb.’
The vein in Boscombe’s temple started pulsing as he rooted through his jacket. ‘Look, what’s your name, mate?’
The concierge pointed to his brass lapel badge, where the word ‘Charles’ was writ in elegant black script.
‘Charles, right. I’m making a note of that.’
‘As you wish. I am afraid we must protect the privacy of our guests. May I?’ He held up Boscombe’s ID and letter.
Boscombe: ‘Oh for fu— yes! Go on then.’
‘Wait here please.’
‘But chop-chop. I’m in a hurry.’
‘Of course,’ Charles smiled weakly.
The arrogant bugger, Boscombe thought as he watched the guy go clicking off across the quarter-acre of marble. He sat down heavily in a deeply cushioned wicker chair, again feeling the heft of what felt like a seal pup wedged in his rectum. Might have to get some Ex-Lax or something. And, God, despite this, he was hungry too.
Maybe Wesley was right – they should have eaten.
He picked up a newspaper – Le Monde. Fuck it. Just look at the pictures.
Instead of taking a left towards the manager’s office Charles the concierge took a right towards a door marked ‘EXIT’. He went down a short corridor and opened a fire door out onto a back loading dock. He tucked Boscombe’s ID and letter into his pocket and lit up a Camel.
Arrogant English asshole. Let him wait.
Wesley burped happily. My God, that was good. The flakiness of the croissant, the perfect sun yellow of his scrambled eggs. And the coffee. He was, even now, signalling to the waiter for another cup. He checked his watch. Yeah, running a bit late for sure. Fuck it – he’d just tell Boscombe it had all taken longer than he thought. He was going to enjoy the one decent meal he’d had on this trip.
‘Merde!’ Vanessa said once again, her eyes wide. Julie hadn’t stopped talking for nearly five minutes: all the time it had taken them to find their swimming costumes and get the lift down to the lobby. Julie had pretty much taken her from Barry’s death up to this morning, with a full account of the robbery thrown in. ‘And where will you go now?’ Vanessa asked.
‘Well,’ Julie said, watching the numbers on the lift blip down – 6, 5, 4 … ‘I think it looks like South America for me, Ethel and Susan. We’ve got to get Jill home.’
‘It … it’s incredible!’
‘You got that right,’ Julie said. 2 and 1.
Bing.
They came out into the lobby and commenced the short walk from the lift to the changing rooms.
Boscombe yawned, looked up from Le Monde, some bollocks about the ex-French President Sarkozy, some fit bird he was –
His yawn stiffened and froze.
Fuck me.
There she was – the one who had tricked him into doing that bloody tango. She was strolling across the lobby about fifty yards away.
Boscombe looked like he was finally having the stroke so devoutly wished by his superior officer.
Julie and Vanessa went into the ladies’ changing room. ‘Merde!’ Vanessa said. ‘So this is why you must go to Marseilles? To get new identities?’ She sat down on the wooden bench and took her top off, stripping quickly down to her vest and knickers. The air was thick with expensive lotions and perfumes.
‘Yep,’ Julie said. ‘A friend of Susan’s hooked us up with this gu—’
The door burst open.
Vanessa and Julie – the only people in there – turned to see Boscombe advancing into the room, grinning savagely, his eyes locked on Julie’s.
‘Well, well, well … the dance instructor,’ Boscombe said.
Julie started backing away from him as Vanessa instinctively stood and placed herself between them. ‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘You can’t come in here!’
‘Detective Sergeant Hugh Boscombe, British CID, love,’ Boscombe said, not looking at Vanessa, not taking his eyes off Julie as he added, ‘Game over, sweetheart.’
Now Vanessa spoke to Julie without taking her eyes off Boscombe. ‘Run!’
‘No, love,’ Julie said quietly. ‘Don’t get inv—’
‘RUN, JULIE!’ Vanessa said, shoving her hard as she took a deep breath and unleashed an eardrum-shredding scream. Out in the reception area several guests jumped as the scream’s treble cut through the doors and walls. Claude the guest clerk jumped too. Recovering his composure he immediately signalled for two security guards while, inside, Julie took off running for the back exit to the pool. Boscombe went to follow but his path was blocked by Vanessa throwing herself at him. Boscombe was trying to remove the tiny French girl from his chest in the manner you might use to get a feral cat off you, while, all the time, Vanessa’s screaming increased in pitch and intensity.
‘GET OFF ME!’ Boscombe yelled. During the struggle Vanessa very deftly reached down and found Boscombe’s zip. She tugged hard and had a quick scramble around.
‘What the fuck!’ Boscombe yelled.
‘AHHHGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!’ Vanessa screamed. ‘HELP ME!’
Boscombe started flattening a hand over her mouth. ‘Shhh, shut up! Shut up! I’m a policeman!’
‘MMMMPHH! UHHUNNNNN!’ Vanessa said.
The door burst open for a second time as Claude charged in flanked by the two guards. They took it all in: the red-faced, sweating, tramp-like Boscombe with his hand clamped over the mouth of a very young, very half-naked girl. Vanessa fell to the floor sobbing and the following exchange took place very quickly and, apart from Boscombe, entirely in French.
Claude: ‘What the hell is all this?’
Vanessa: ‘He … he …’ (More sobbing.)
Boscombe, reaching for his ID: ‘Easy, lads. Easy. I’m a policeman.’
Vanessa: ‘He tried to make, make me …’
Security Guard One: ‘Step back from the girl.’
Boscombe, finding pocket empty, realising: ‘Fuck.’
Vanessa: ‘HE TRIED TO MAKE ME TOUCH HIS THING!’
Then all three of the men looked down, to see Boscombe’s flaccid, terrible penis dangling from his open flies.
Later it would be hard for Boscombe to recall who threw the first punch. Either way, a couple of minutes later, guests arriving at the Carlton were stunned to hear sirens ripping through the summer air as two police cars pulled up at the hotel just in time to meet the departing Detective Sergeant Hugh Boscombe, British CID. He was being carried – struggling and screaming – by four security guards now. He had a black eye and a cut, bruised face. Security had got a bit carried away. ‘LET ME GO! LET ME GO, YOU FUCKING BASTARD CUNTS!’
Two policemen joined the hotel bouncers in trying to bundle the berserk, flailing Boscombe into the first patrol car.
‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’ a bellboy asked Claude who was overseeing the operation.
‘Le pédophile,’ Claude replied quietly.
‘Mon Dieu!’
‘YOU FUCKING CUNNNTTTSSSSS!’ Boscombe screamed.
This scream marked Boscombe’s last real contribution to the fight as the lead policeman shrugged, stood back, drew his taser, and fired a full charge into the good sergeant’s arse.
‘Urrrnnnnn,’ Boscombe said as he went limp.
Almost immediately the air was filled with a terrible stench as 400-odd volts of electricity achieved what superhuman doses of Ex-Lax hadn’t been able to touch the sides of.
‘Jesus,’ one of the policemen said, turning his face away.
Five hundred yards along the Croisette, Wesley was contentedly savouring the last of his third cup of delicious café au lait when he heard the police car go screaming past, sirens blaring, blissfully unaware that his unconscious boss was sprawled flat across the back seat with two or three pounds of mayhem caked in his pants.
‘Go on, lads,’ Wesley said, raising his coffee cup in salute. ‘Give ’em hell.’
‘BUT DON’T … DON’T you have security? To make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen?’ Susan spluttered. She was finding it surprisingly easy to muster a good level of faux indignation.
‘Madame, I … I can assure you …’ Claude spluttered in return. He was standing in the doorway to their suite, flanked by the two guards who had just thrown a fairly decent beating into Boscombe. Behind Susan, in the background, Vanessa was still sobbing in Julie’s arms on one of the enormous, overstuffed sofas, flanked by Ethel and Jill.
‘I mean, we come to stay here, paying goodness knows how much money and –’
‘I do not know how ziz man came to be in our hotel but I can assure you …’ Claude went on, detailing how thorough their search was going to be, how no stone would be left unturned, how they would be prosecuting the disgraceful pervert to the full extent of the law. Claude’s investigation would have had a great deal more clarity, would have been far more simple, had he known that at that very moment, seven floors below, having enjoyed two Camels on the trot and a lengthy phone conversation with his mistress arranging an assignation for later that evening, Charles the concierge had wandered back into the lobby having completely missed the whole altercation. Unable to find the rude, badly dressed English detective he had simply assumed he had wandered off for a moment. Charles patted his inside pocket, checking Boscombe’s identification and letter were still there, and joined a couple of members of junior staff near the main entrance where they were discussing all the excitement Charles had just missed. Something about a sex offender wandering into the ladies’ changing rooms.
‘I don’t know,’ Ethel said, trundling forward in her wheelchair, stopping beside Susan as she prepared to play their trump card. ‘I really think I need to have a word with Monsieur Ferrat about all of this.’
The mention of the dread name stopped Claude mid-babble. ‘Mesdames,’ he said with tremendous gravity, ‘firstly let me assure you that you will be receiving no bill in connection with your stay here. Secondly –’
‘IT WAS HARD!’ Vanessa wailed in the background.
‘God knows what the press will make of all this,’ Julie said.
‘Secondly,’ Claude swallowed, ‘I would like to extend these terms to allow you to stay with us here as long as you like.’
Ethel and Susan looked at each other. ‘Thank you,’ Susan said, ‘we’ll think about it. Now, please, if we could just have some peace and quiet for a moment …’
‘But of course. If there is any –’
‘Thank you,’ Susan said, closing the door as Claude retreated, palms spread out before him in a gesture of supplication.
The moment the heavy door closed Vanessa stopped crying, looked up at the others and gave a sheepish grin. There was a moment for the collective sigh of relief before Ethel said, ‘Yeah. Ladies? Let’s get the fuck out of here.’
FIFTY-TWO
APPROXIMATELY ONE HOUR behind all of this, back on good old British Summer Time, Chief Inspector Wilson was having lunch at his desk. It was a basic affair that would surely have offended many Frenchmen: a tuna-salad sandwich and a few grapes accompanied by a bottle of still mineral water. The wife was always on at him – and not without reason – about the cholesterol, the blood pressure. Part of the reason for the blood pressure, and the whole reason why he was having lunch at his desk, rather than down the Joiner’s Arms or at the Fox, towered to his right elbow: a teetering stack of paperwork. As he ate Wilson took the top sheet from the pile, glanced over it, and then either signed and placed it in his ‘OUT’ tray or frowned and placed it in his ‘ACTION’ tray if it was something that merited further discussion. It was an archaic system – most of his peers spent the day peering at screens of emails – but one that Wilson had been using since the late 1970s and that worked well for him. He had tried to go down the electronic route but found that he needed a piece of paper in his hand in order to properly concentrate. Subsequently he had ended up just printing off all the emails he received and adding them to his ‘PENDING’ tray, which, as his eldest daughter said, rather defeated the whole point.
He took a document from the top of the pile and saw that it was a bill for several thousand pounds for the charter of the light aircraft used to take Detectives Boscombe and Wesley to France a couple of days ago. With only a tremor of the eyelid, a slight increase in the heart rate, Wilson scribbled his signature in the box marked ‘Approved’. Just as he did this, at the very moment his eye was still hovering on the dread word ‘Boscombe’, there was a knock at the door. ‘Come!’ Wilson shouted, not even needing to look up to know that it would be Sergeant Tarrant.
‘Ah, sir, do you have a moment?’
‘Out with it, Tarrant,’ Wilson said, not looking up. He hated preambles and throat-clearing.
‘It’s about Sergeant Boscombe …’
The slight tremor of the eyelid, the feeling of blood being pumped a little faster through his heart.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, he, I don’t quite know how to put this, sir.’
‘Oh, do get on with it, Tarrant. What’s he done now? Urinated on the Arc de Triomphe?’
‘Ah, not exactly, sir, no. He’s been arrested in the South of France for sexually assaulting a fifteen-year-old girl.’
Wilson looked up. He was conscious of a light-headedness, of spots dancing in the periphery of his vision. ‘Ah,’ he said simply, setting his pen down and leaning back in his chair. ‘I see.’ He sat there, motionless for a moment. Tarrant shifted uncomfortably in the doorway, still holding the email he’d received from Cannes Gendarmerie. He’d printed it off, as per his boss’s preferred modus operandi. His boss who was now sitting there, quite still, seeming to look through Tarrant, through the outer office, all the way to France itself.
‘Sir?’ Tarrant said after what felt like a very long time. He noticed that colour seemed to be gradually returning to CI Wilson’s face. Indeed, perhaps a little too much colour …
‘Just give me a moment please, Tarrant,’ Wilson said, sounding distracted, as though he were focusing on a much greater, more pressing problem.
Another moment passed before, far away in the outer office of Wroxham police station, the rest of the staff collectively jumped as they heard Wilson’s voice roaring ‘BAAAASSSTAAAARRRRDDDDD!!!’ at an inhuman pitch, the roar accompanied by a metallic clang followed by a thud that only Tarrant knew was made by Wilson booting a metal wastepaper basket across the room and into the wall of his office.
FIFTY-THREE
MARSEILLES, A LITTLE less than two hours’ drive from the manicured beauty of Cannes and home to one and a half million souls. The seaport was also home to much of the wretched villainy that passed through this part of Europe. The Mos Eisley of France indeed. Since antiquity the underbelly of the world had been flocking here to trade commodities as diverse as silks, spices, drugs, guns and humans.
And now it was – briefly – home to one and a half million and five souls.
At Susan’s insistence they had taken far less grand lodgings here: a three-star hotel on a shadowy backstreet near the Old Port. It was here that they stashed the money and the bag containing Nails’s guns underneath a few sweaters in the bottom of the wardrobe and went over their plan again.
Someone would always remain in the room with the contraband. As Susan and Julie were meeting Terry’s Mr Tamalov at a nightclub he owned (which was, unpromisingly, called ‘Le Punisher’) and Ethel and Vanessa were ‘starving’, Jill was taking first shift guarding the weapons and cash while the oldest and youngest members of the team slurped bouillabaisse near the seafront.
In the morning Jill was going to take a taxi to Nice airport and get the first available flight back to England. In a day or two they would wire the thirty thousand Jill needed for Jamie’s operation to an account she would open back home. Then, using their new identities purchased from Tamalov, Susan, Julie and Ethel would board a flight to a South American destination yet to be agr
eed upon. The only other point yet to be agreed upon was exactly how they were going to get several million in cash out of the country.
It was this subject Susan and Julie were discussing while they sat in the empty nightclub waiting for Tamalov. ‘Could we buy something big and hide it inside it and then have it shipped to wherever we’re going to be?’ Susan asked.
‘Ooh, don’t know about that,’ Julie said. ‘You fancy chancing that?’
‘No. Stupid idea. Sorry.’
Around them cleaners were hoovering and staff were collecting glasses, their feet making a ripping, Velcro sound as they trod across the sticky carpeting. Some of the cleaners were blasting air-fresheners into the darker recesses, trying to overpower the odours of alcohol, tobacco, sweat and desperation. Nightclubs weren’t called nightclubs by accident, Susan thought. They worked in the dark: pounding neon chambers, impossible paradises of music, seduction and sophistication. By day they were revealed for what they were – tawdry sex abattoirs. Not her environment. Julie, on the other hand, felt perfectly at home here. She watched the cleaners with some affection, having done similar jobs many times, in London, Sydney, San Francisco.
‘Or how about –’ Susan began again, but whatever she was about to say was cut off by a loud voice booming ‘LADIES!’ They turned to see a figure coming across the deserted dance floor, looming out of the semi-dark.
Tamalov was, in some respects, exactly what you’d expect of a middle-aged Russian man of dubious business background. (And, let’s face it, that ‘dubious background’ could apply to pretty much all Russian businessmen. A country that went from wheat and dung beetles to the greatest military superpower in the world in thirty years? That later went from full-blown communism to crazed full-bling capitalism in less than twenty? There had to be a certain moral flexibility afoot here.) He had a silvery beard and a drift of (thinning) white hair. A gold chain as thick as clothes-line rope hung around his neck. His watch, Julie thought – as he came into their booth, grinning, urging them not to stand up, extending his hand to shake theirs, getting their names straight, and urging them to call him Alexei – it looked like a dial prised from the control panel of a nuclear submarine and then encrusted with enough jewels to make a supermodel vomit. He wore a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt (stretched taut over a thrusting pot belly), chinos and brown leather loafers without socks – the uniform of the wealthy in hot climes. The only jarring note was that he appeared to be exactly five feet high. Tamalov slid into the banquette across from Susan, next to Julie, who did her best to slink down against the wall in order not to tower over him. ‘So!’ he said. ‘You are the friends of Terry’s?’
