by Gordon Brown
I hate this job.
Chapter 43
Tuesday April 1st 2008
Ha, bloody, ha. The little shit that I fought with pulled an April Fool on me today. He got the head of maintenance to call me in. Technically the head of maintenance is my boss although I never really see him — mostly I’m on nights and he does days.
His name is Tam Kettering and he has been in the hotel business since birth. We’ve been having major problems with the plumbing on the top floor — six rooms are out of operation and the GM has been on Tam’s neck to get it fixed.
What I didn’t know was that they had just solved the problem and Tam was now the GM’s best friend. As such he was in an unusually good mood when I rolled up.
‘Ah there you are. Look, the plumbing on the top floor is still a bit dodgy and we’re short of some spares. Terry (his number 2) is up to his armpits in work. Can you give the suppliers a call and order up this list? Start at the top and make it clear we need the stuff ASAP.’
He handed me a bit of paper and I was dismissed. I went into the back office and put the list on the table. They had the gig well planned and as I finished dialling Tam re-appeared. He told me to be double quick and I missed the greeting from the person on the other end.
‘Hello this is the Excelsior Hotel here.’ I started. ‘I’ve been told I need to place an order for fourteen seals. It’s urgent.’
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line and then the girl asked me to repeat what I had said.
‘Seals. Fourteen. It says here you’ll know what type but we need them quickly.’
Too late I heard laugher from the corridor — a lot of laughter.
‘Sorry sir but I’m not sure I can help. You do realise you are through to Edinburgh Zoo.’
I slammed down the phone and outside the door sounded like the audience at the funniest show on earth. I stormed out. There were at least eight in the corridor including the little shit.
Seals. Zoo. Ha, bloody, ha.
Chapter 44
Tuesday April 29th 2008
I’ve been off sick for two days and thought I’d try dictating my thoughts for the first time in a while. I still hate the job but I got a bit of a promotion and no longer clean vomit and piss.
Me and the kitchen lad are still at war but he is well wary after I caught him outside a week ago and introduced his nuts to my right foot.
If I keep going at this rate I’ll have enough cash to get to Mallorca by late July. The new job helps. I sometimes get front of desk and that means tips.
My guts are killing me right now. I tend to eat in the kitchen if I can and I swiped some meat from the fridge for a sandwich mid shift. If I have food poisoning I reckon I could send a bill to the hotel for the agony I have just saved them if a guest had eaten the stuff.
Martin is like a ghost at the moment. I do nights he does days. I’m gone before he is in at night and he is away before I’m back. I do weekends. He doesn’t. I’ve seen him twice in the last few weeks and things are getting strained. I’m paying no rent and he knows I’m earning — but I can’t afford to give him a penny. All I do is work, eat, shit, sleep and save.
End of recording for today. I need to go to the toilet. The meat is on its way back again.
Gordon Brown
59 Minutes
Wednesday May 14th 2008
Back in my scratcher. This time I’m down with the flu. Martin is sick of me big time. This is the first day I can sit up. It hit me hard and I’m an invalid. I went on line this morning to check flights but I’m next to useless on the bloody thing. The prices seem to be climbing by the day — the cost of fuel has gone bananas.
Martin mentioned the ‘r’ word this morning and I pretended I needed to throw up. I’m not sure how much longer I can freeload.
Gordon Brown
59 Minutes
Friday May 16th 2008
I invited the computer geek over on pain of death and he came. I asked him to do the internet thing and he came up with a package on a car, a hotel and a flight that I might just be able to afford.
He sealed the deal and I used my newly acquired debit card to pay ten percent now and the balance is due six weeks before I fly. I’ll need to pull out my finger and get in the overtime if I’m to meet the bill. There is an opportunity to move to the day shift and also pull some stints behind the bar at night.
Once I’m out of this bed I’m going 24/7 to put money in the coffers and then I can get on with my real life.
Gordon Brown
59 Minutes
Friday June the 20 ^th 2008
I paid the balance of the trip today and I’m dead on my feet. I’ve never worked so hard. I haven’t had a day off in over a month and I’ve been pulling double shifts six days out of seven. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve fallen asleep in the bar cellar or in the storage room behind the kitchen.
I’ve had endless stand up rows with Martin. He seems intent in making my life a misery. It all came to a head two days ago when he finally kicked me out.
I’ve blagged some space on Ronnie the concierge’s floor for a week, but his missus is far from happy. I can think of a hundred people that either owe me a favour or I could strong arm but, if Dupree’s goons are out there, they might get the wrong impression and think I was going back into business.
I’ll have to work out alternative accommodation soon.
Chapter 45
Friday June the 27 th 2008
Sometimes you just need to wait and a good thing comes along. Ronnie’s missus threw me out — I was two days past our agreed time and she caught me raiding the fridge for a can of lager. I had just put in an eighteen hour shift and felt entitled. She didn’t see my end of the argument and my bag and coat left the third floor window of the flat. I had to sprint down the stairs before my stuff became road kill.
I wandered up to the hostel but they blanked me. I had a job and they knew it. I grabbed a bus to Martin’s and was surprised that he let me in.
I had to pay up front rent but it’s a quarter what I would pay outside. I’ve to leave his booze alone and keep the house pristine. I would also have agreed to blow off his dad if he had asked.
Martin is running hot and cold and I can’t figure him from Adam at the moment.
The countdown to the trip is on but I need to get my head in gear. I need to plan my time in Mallorca. I have one week on the island and then I’m home.
I also need to call Charlie Wiggs.
Gordon Brown
59 Minutes
Wednesday July the 2 ^nd 2008
Charlie has arranged for me to meet his friend in Mallorca. I get the impression that the friend is a bit on the shady side and this is good news. I may need some help and an honest, upright citizen could be a dead weight.
I have the addresses of the two relevant Mallorca Security shops and my hotel is only a few streets from the shop in Inca. I’ve bought a map of the island and street maps for Inca and Palma. I’ve also entered the world of mobile communication with a ‘Pay As you Go’.
My tool kit will need to be split up and put in my hold luggage. Anyone knowing what to look for could put two and two together, but I’m counting on the hold bag getting through with no checks. It’s a risk I need to take. Breaking and entering is definitely on the cards and I’ve no guarantee I could put together a tool kit in the week that I’m in Spain.
I’ll give notice that I am quitting the job next week. Hopefully they will let me work four weeks and then it’s off to Espanya.
Chapter 46
Tuesday July the 15 th 2008
Something strange happened last night.
Earlier in the day I had bought a cheap, but sturdy suitcase from TJ Hughes in town and picked up a few travel essentials along with some additional clothing. I packed the clothes with the tool kit and toiletries into the new case to make sure it all fitted. I needn’t have worried — I could have fitted it in twice over.
I dropped it
on the floor, set up a new code on the lock and pushed it under the bed. I’ll get by on the stuff I have left and I want to make sure that I can move quickly should the goons show up. I have no reason to think they will, but the closer to the flight date I get, the more I fear that something will stop me.
I went to work and came back around eight. I grabbed a glass of milk on the way up to my room and met Martin on the stairs. He looked slightly flushed and embarrassed. I asked what was up but he just shook his head, muttered something about paying your debts and squeezed past me.
I was up to date on the rent but I knew I was still a grand in the hole with him for other stuff and my promise to pay it all back within the month had been well off the mark. I entered my room, put the glass on the bedside table and slumped on the bed.
I lay for five minutes before sitting up and swinging my feet over the other side of the bed and reaching for the milk. My feet clipped the suitcase and I leaned over to push it back in. I froze.
The case had been well and truly pushed under the bed when I left. There was no doubt.
I reached down, pulled it out, placed it on the bed and checked the lock. The tell tale scratches from a knife or something sharp were scattered around the lock mechanism. I was too long in the tooth not to know when someone had been at a lock and the only person it could have been was Martin.
I dialled up the code, popped the lid and looked inside. Things looked much like I had left them. I took everything out and laid it on the bed but nothing seemed amiss. I double checked and then re-packed.
If Martin had been in the case he hadn’t taken anything. But why would he want to see inside? He knew I had nothing. I thought about confronting him but if he denied it, all I could call him was a liar and that would be me back on the street.
Let sleeping dogs lie was the order of the day.
Chapter 47
Thursday July the 24 ^th 2008
I quit the hotel early. Too much like hard work and my mind is firmly on Spain. My boss surprised me by pulling me to one side and asking if I fancied the role as his number two. I was a slightly at a loss for words. He told me he needed someone that had both smarts and was a grafter. His current number two was retiring in three months.
I declined but I think it is the first time I’ve been offered a legitimate job since my days on the factory floor. I was quite touched.
I now have an outline plan of action for Spain, but it is hard to pin down exactly what I’ll be doing. For a start I have three or four ideas as to how to get into the safety deposit box but I’m not even sure that there is a box — or, even if it exists that it contains anything — or if it does exist and does contain something that I will be able to get at it — or — or — or — or — you see the problem.
There is also no sign of the goons. Not even a whiff. That could be good or bad news. The good would be that Dupree considers me such a low level threat that he has reassigned his resources to better usage. The bad news is that I may now mean so little he could decide that getting rid of me might prevent a problem in the future.
I remember a lesson at school where we were discussing the Coliseum in Rome. Our teacher made the mistake of telling us that, although Nero had planned the building he had never given the famous ‘thumbs down’ sign in it because he died before it was completed. This opened the floodgates — ‘thumbs down’ — what did that mean. As soon as we found out it was a signal for the victor to kill the defeated, we were over it like a rash.
Playtime was spent ‘thumbing-down’ everyone in sight. That day I learned a small but valuable lesson. Even at playtime ‘thumbing-down’ a friend or someone you respected was far harder than ‘thumbing-down’ a nonentity. In fact the game showed quite a few people who their real friends were, as ‘thumbing-down’ often resulted in some painful punishment.
Dupree would think nothing of ‘thumbing-down’ me and I knew it and he probably knew that I knew and we probably both had the Kursal Flyers single ‘Little Does She Know’.
Martin seems cool, if not cold but he isn’t showing signs of throwing me out and, as far as I can tell, he’s not been back inside my luggage.
I fly out on the 1 st of August and I’m beginning to feel like a cross between a schoolboy going on his first trip abroad and someone looking at death row.
Chapter 48
Thursday July the 31 ^st 2008
D-day tomorrow. I need to be up with the sparrow fart but I don’t care. This needs to be done. I’m not on a standard holiday package — it seems Inca isn’t a hotspot for the visiting Brits — but I’m on a charter flight. Heaven help me — screaming kids, early morning boozers, cramped seating, delayed flights — the joys.
Martin is dropping me at the airport — not a happy bunny given the hour — but he’ll oblige. He has been very quiet on the whole thing. I’ve been expecting a grilling on my plans but it hasn’t happened. He knows the rough gist of the Charlie Wiggs conversation but not all of it and I’m keeping it that way.
He did ask me what the plan was when I get home and I realised I didn’t have one. I’ve been so focused on the trip to Spain that I haven’t given a second thought to what comes next. I’ve just assumed that whatever happens out there will dictate what happens back here. Martin was more practical. For instance where was I planning to stay? Where was the cash for living coming from? The basic stuff.
I asked if I can have one more month at his and I’ll be out of his hair. As to cash, that is something I’ll worry about on my return.
Early to bed.
Chapter 49
Friday August 1 st 2008
That was hell. I mean hell. Why would anyone put up with that nonsense to go on holiday? Forget the screaming kids, early boozers and delayed flights — let’s talk about the woman next to me with the social graces of an ill bred monkey.
I’ve never hit a woman in my life but twice I had to go to the toilet — an experience in itself — to avoid assaulting her. What didn’t she get about me? All I wanted to do was endure the two and half hour flight and get off the bloody plane. All she wanted to do was — and this is in rank order — chat, sing, ask me to move (three trips to the toilet), chat, borrow a pen, borrow some paper, read my newspaper, read my book, chat, fart, sing and chat — and that was all in the first hour.
She wasn’t even on the pop — although she should have been on something — Valium would have been good.
Palma airport was a surprisingly cool experience — my experience of Spanish airports, albeit more than 15 years ago, revolved around planes parked on the apron and being emptied on to saunas on wheels, then standing in industrial length queues to show my passport followed by a crazy length of wait for my bags.
Instead we were offloaded through an air conditioned air bridge. The passports queue went like snow of a dyke and the bags were as quick as I could have reasonably expected.
I breathed a massive sigh of relief when my bag appeared and I wasn’t stopped at customs — the tool kit had weighed on my mind for the whole flight.
Finding the car hire company was a battle. The office in the airport terminal, logically, had nothing to do with hiring cars. I was directed to a multi storey building two hundred yards away and had to dodge inbound cars and vans to find the service desk. I finally found a Spanish type queue and an hour later I was away.
Inca is not tourist central. It lies in the middle of the island and is by-passed by one of the island’s few motorways. It’s highly industrial and the main tourist attraction seems to be the weekly fair that runs every Wednesday. Other than that there is little to note.
My hotel is small but clean and, importantly, has the benefit of killing the climate through working air conditioning.
I dropped my bags and changed into something a little less heat retaining and went for a walk.
I found the bank quick enough and just down the road was the office of Mallorca Security. The one question still bouncing around my head is the link to the bank. The first note
clearly decoded as the Colonya Caixa de Pollenca in Inca but the second sheet seems to refer to Mallorca Security. I’m working on the theory that the box, if it is a box, is in Mallorca Security and will have some connection to the bank.
I had formed the impression that Mallorca Security was a bit of a tuppence hapenny affair. Certainly Charlie’s description of the web site led me to believe that.
The truth is slightly different. The building is barely two hundred yards from the bank and looks more like a bank than the bank. It has a large frontage, which puts it at odds with the shops around it. To the left there is a shop that seems to specialise in art that is connected to light — lamp shades, chandeliers, lit sculptures — that sort of thing. It was open and a quick visit ruled it out as an entry point to my target.
The entire adjoining wall is floor to ceiling with racking, filled with every knick-knack imaginable. The wall behind looks solid concrete. There is a door at the rear to a small storage room and fortunately it was ajar. A quick glimpse inside and it was obvious the wall runs the length of the shop. If I had a jack hammer and three days to spare I might get through to the next shop.
On the other side of my target is a cafe and it doesn’t look any more promising. This time there is no storage room, just the adjoining wall that acts as the back drop to the serving counter. It is filled with an espresso machine, a rack of various crockery and a painting of a footballer in mid scissor kick. No way through.
I wanted to get out the back and have a look at the target from the rear but it was getting late and I was tired. The last thing I needed was to get caught somewhere I shouldn’t be. Anyway I need to meet Charlie’s friend. For all I know the Palma branch may be a better first bet — but I doubt it.
