by Stan Arnold
Daring Dooz.
Stan Arnold
Copyright © Stan Arnold 2013
ISBN: 9781301125739
Stan Arnold has asserted his right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental.
Thanks
With thanks to my wife, Dee, for her patience. Particularly for reading bits and laughing and making constructive suggestions and coming up with funny lines. Then giving up many hours to make the final checks and amendments.
Also, to my daughters - Bea, Dulcie and Florrie.
Bea, for constant encouragement, and approving the ending, before I’d even started. Dulcie, for insisting we keep the cat that strolled into the villa. His constant purring has been calming, throughout. And Florrie, for going 'Whoohooo!' every time the word count went up, just as she did with the first novel.
Novels by Stan Arnold
They Win. You Lose.
Daring Dooz
Sea View Babylon
For more details, my website is: http://www.stanarnoldbooks.com
My facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stan-Arnold-Books/114708918620865
About Stan Arnold
Hello
I've been a copy, speech and scriptwriter for a long time!
Before that, I wrote songs and stories for the BBC, then became a stand-up comedian for eight years, writing my own stories (no jokes!). I also wrote and sang all the songs for my rock band - the Stan Arnold Combo.
I now live in and work from Lanzarote, with my wife Dee and cat, Bonzo.
In my three and a half years here, I have written three funny novels - The Implosion Trilogy, no less!
The stories are about two incompetent Soho-based video producers who drink too much, don't earn enough and get too many death threats.
I suppose the next thing to do is promote these little offerings so I can achieve my life's ambition - to own a garden shed on Mustique.
(All very well, I hear you say, but have you seen the price of creosote on the island?)
Cheers
Stan
Chapter 1
James Redfern Chartwell was asleep in paradise. For someone who had been chased half-way round the world by an international crime syndicate, and managed to persuade the top man to cancel the contract on his life using his meager knowledge of Ealing comedies, you might well think he deserved a kip.
But this was no ordinary snooze. Jim’s chin was resting on the top of a post at the end of a simple wooden pier which jutted out into the shallow, turquoise lagoon.
The early morning sun was bright, and reflections were dancing like diamonds. The spectacular white beach was lined with lush, green palm trees, interrupted only by a small beach bar with a palm frond roof. The breezes were balmy, like gentle kisses that had travelled a thousand miles just to make things seem better.
A seagull, floating lazily on the warm air, landed gently on Jim’s immobile form and, without so much as a pause, emptied the contents of its bowels over his head. He didn’t stir. The uric acid dribbled out from his hair and ran down the side of his unshaven face.
Suitably refreshed, and five or six ounces lighter, the seagull flew off again in pursuit of a rather nice female seagull it had seen on the roof of the beach bar.
A couple of yards away, the chin of Jim’s lifelong friend, video cameraman and would-be bon viveur, Michael Selwyn Barton, was resting on a nearby post. The squawk made by the seagull, as it unloaded itself onto the hapless Jim, woke Mick up.
Through bloodshot eyes, he managed to see what had happened, and thought how embarrassing it would be for Jim when he eventually woke up. And with that unkind rumination over, he gently smirked himself back into a state of unconsciousness.
If Mick had been able to look down at his reflection in the water below the pier, he’d have seen he had nothing to laugh at. His head, chest, shoulders and back were covered in seagull crap, so that, with his yellow baggies, sunburnt body and green Crocs, he looked like a 16-stone knickerbocker glory.
The previous night at the beach hut, they’d had more than a few Dom Perignons too many, and ended up tombstoning off the end of the pier, at midnight. The beach bar staff took pride in their ability to out-drink anyone, but realised they’d entered a different league. The girls from the local lap-dancing club, who thought they’d seen and done everything, learned a few more tricks. And by three in the morning, they’d all given up, and, rather than drag Mick and Jim’s lifeless bodies back up the pier for the umpteenth time that month, they’d decided on an innovative, if rather mean-spirited, solution.
They’d simply sat Jim down on the pier decking with his arms and legs on either side of a supporting post. Then it was just a matter of tying his hands together, tying his feet together and placing his chin on the top of the post and, there he was - safe and sound for the night. Providing the same sleeping arrangements for Mick was a no-brainer.
And so, morning came. Neither Jim nor Mick had moved an inch during the night. They sat with closed eyes, staring impassively out to sea. If you can image a couple of Easter Island heads carved by ancient stonemasons after a night out on the piss, you would be getting close to the mark.
They were still unconscious, when, at around mid-morning, the yacht arrived.
It slid with silky, ocean-going assurance through the lagoon - with a woman of about sixty at the helm. She was deeply tanned and wearing a yellow polka dot bikini - and yes, it was itsy-bitsy and yes, it was teeny-weeny. She was lean and toned with long, silver hair and clear, penetrating, light blue eyes.
The yacht drew alongside the pier. She stepped off confidently and surveyed the scene, which essentially consisted of the dead-drunk, fully harnessed, former directors of Soho corporate video company, Implosion Productions. She looked at them with a strange degree of inevitability. Several empty champagne bottles littered the pier decking. The bikini-clad lady picked up the bottles, went back on board her immaculate vessel and placed them in a Brabantia bin.
On the deck of the yacht was a small tarpaulin sheet. As she walked by, she lifted the sheet and kissed something.
She came back onto the pier with a large Sabatier kitchen knife and cut Jim loose, looking with some distaste at the rapidly forming guano on his head. Then, with remarkable ease, she turned him upside down and, holding his ankles, dunked him several times, headfirst, into the lagoon.
Throughout the cleansing operation, Jim showed no signs of regaining consciousness.
She pulled him out of the water, laid him on the pier, then went back on board, stopping to kiss under the tarpaulin again. When she returned, she was carrying a blue plastic bucket and a roll of duct tape.
After placing the bucket on Jim’s head, she secured it by running the duct tape, three or four times round the top of the bucket and under his armpits, then, taking a firm grip on his ankles, began dragging his body, including his well-protected head, along the pier and into the shade of the beach hut.
She returned to deal with Mick, and wisely decided to abandon the idea of dunking him in the lagoon and dragging his bulky form back along the pier. She simply cut him free and pushed him into the water. As Mick began to drown, she dived elegantly into the lagoon, grabbed his body in exactly the way they illustrate in lifeguard training manuals, and began to swim powerfully to the shore. She dragged Mick up the beach and propped his semi-guano-free body next to Jim.
Tutting slightly, she returned to the yacht and removed the tarpaulin to reveal
a small man curled up in the foetal position. He had a very thin, green face, sunken eyes and a Hawaiian shirt that was too big. He wore extra large, cerise baggies, and his scrawny arms and legs were deathly white. He looked as though he’d been under the tarpaulin, eating wallpaper paste, for at least a year. There was a small flicker of recognition before he closed his eyes again and abandoned himself to his fate.
She picked him up gently under one arm, holding him round the waist, so his arms and legs hung vertically downwards. She carried him along the pier to the beach bar, where she gave him another little kiss and sat his limp body down on the ground, next to Jim and Mick.
She stared at the three of them, deep in silent thought. The only sound came from two seagulls which were shagging unnecessarily noisily on the roof of the beach hut.
The silence was broken further by the ‘ting ting’ of a bicycle bell. A man wearing a khaki shirt and shorts, and whose great-grandparents had obviously made the long journey from Africa two hundred years ago, was having difficulty making the short journey from his office in the police station to the beach hut. This particular trip was made more difficult than usual, thanks to a serious night on the rum with some of the inhabitants of the cells.
He was a big man and came cycling round the corner much too fast. His eyes popped out of his head, twice. First they popped as he caught a glimpse of the svelte, sun-tanned vision in the bikini. Then they popped again, a split second later, as, distracted by the yellow polka dots, he braked too hard and went straight over the handlebars and head-butted the solid support post of the beach hut.
The captain of the yacht picked him up, humped his unconscious body over her shoulder, carried him behind the bar, poured some beach bar whisky on his head wound and dragged him over to sit next to Jim, Mick and the green-faced man.
She could see from the name tag on his shirt, that the trick cyclist was Roberto Velazquez, the island’s Chief of Police. Hm! thought Mrs Hathaway, he might be useful - though obviously not in his current condition.
The sun was arching higher, the palm trees were getting ready for another roasting, the water in the lagoon was already becoming too hot to swim in and there was not a single cloud in the sky.
She looked around. These were potentially tough conditions, if you didn’t know how to handle them.
But for what she had planned, the conditions would be far more dangerous, far more unpredictable and far more deadly. She would be testing human endurance and resourcefulness to the absolute limits, and beyond. There would be no room for even the slightest error, and any failure would, at best, result in an unpleasant and agonising death.
She stood, hands on bronzed hips, and gazed down at the four unconscious men propped up against the rattan bar. She looked with growing apprehension from face to face - one with alcohol poisoning and wearing a blue bucket on his head, one overweight and still covered in seagull crap, one green with extreme sea-sickness and one blood-stained, concussed and unable to ride a bicycle properly.
Were these men of the right calibre? she mused. Did they have the inherent toughness to cope with extreme physical challenges and excruciating mental pressures? In short, were they the dynamic, self-assured, hyper-energised, Alpha males she needed for her mission.
She walked behind the bar, poured herself half a tumbler of whisky, knocked it back in one go, and began to have some serious thoughts.
Chapter 2
Serious thoughts could not have been further from Aubrey’s mind as, some four months earlier, he pressed himself to the wall, out of sight of the lift, and out of sight of the entrance to Implosion Productions.
He had a great degree of satisfaction as he heard the screams of panic and foul language emanating from Mick and Jim’s office. This was panic and foul language he had caused - and it felt good. As the dogs-body for Charlie Sumkins, his lunatic international crime syndicate boss, he was used to being impaled on the smelly end of the stick - and this was a refreshing, one might even say fragrant, change.
Aubrey smiled what he fondly imagined was a languid, rather sophisticated, lounge-lizardy type of smile. In fact, it looked a little like the expression people have when they are coming round from a not-very-well administered general anaesthetic - but this was his moment and, after years of abuse at the hands, knuckles, feet and boots of his employer - he thought he’d earned it.
He glowed inwardly as Mick and Jim came stumbling out of the office, loaded down with gear and arguing violently about going back for a ‘nervous’ to see if they’d forgotten anything in the four minutes it had taken them to rip out all their video and sound equipment.
He was proud he’d caused this mayhem - and with just a few words. Simply by mentioning that Charlie Sumkins’ top enforcers, Vlad and Vic, were coming round in ten minutes to collect the unpaid office rent - or to inflict unspeakable pain and suffering to the equivalent of £6000 + VAT.
Vlad and Vic were a legend with the international criminal classes. From drug pushers scrimping a living in the tundra of the Kamchatka Peninsula to disgraced Peers of the Realm running knocking shops in Tierra del Fuego, they all knew what being Vlad and Vic’d meant. It was something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Although Charlie Sumkins would happily unleash their persuasive talents onto anyone who caused him even the mildest irritation.
The ancient concertina lift doors were slapped shut, and the lift containing Mick and Jim descended into the bowels of the building. Probably trying to get to their clapped-out Morris Traveller, thought Aubrey.
It was during this reflective moment, that things began to change. A damp patch started to appear on the woodchip wallpaper, just at the spot where it came into contact with the back of Aubrey’s head. His languid smile disappeared and his face started to look like something you would expect to see if you pulled a cryogenically preserved head from its liquid nitrogen container, in the middle of a heat wave.
His skin turned grey. His eyes sank into his skull. And the sweaty patch continued to grow at an alarming pace. This was not the honest sweat of the artisans who had so inspired William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement of the 1860s. It was not the sweat of the mid-nineteenth century French peasants that motivated Jean-François Millet to paint his masterpiece, Evening Prayer. No, this was the sweat of someone who had just realised he’d fucked up, big time.
Flushed by the power he had felt surging through his scrawny body, a few minutes earlier, he had inadvertently mentioned to Mick and Jim that Vlad and Vic would be round in ten minutes. If he’d kept his mouth shut, Mick and Jim would have been sitting in their clapped-out office armchairs, sipping Earl Grey tea and discussing the finer points of interior lighting techniques in 60s French New Wave cinema, when Vlad and Vic would have struck.
Aubrey’s mind whirred with the speed and precision of a finely adjusted Swiss watch. What were his options? Stay where he was and be discovered by Vlad and Vic - who would, no doubt, transfer their venom and assorted serrated clamps and beautifully machined screw devices from Mick and Jim to…
He whipped round the corner and pumped the lift button until he bruised his index finger, but Mick and Jim must have left the lift door open in the basement. Shit!
Perhaps, he could run down the stairs, but he might meet Vlad and Vic coming up.
Perhaps, he could raise himself up to the corridor ceiling using his hands on one wall and his feet on the other, like Sean Connery did in one of those James Bond films.
Perhaps he could take the fire extinguisher off the wall, batter himself to death and have done with it.
In the ten seconds it took Aubrey to evaluate these options, his brain function degraded from the speed and precision of a finely adjusted Swiss watch to something you'd see dropping from an electro-magnetic grab in a scrap yard.
He decided to stay where he was. Which was as just as well, because within seconds, the two crew-cutted, Crombie-clad, Wayfarer-wearing V-twins arrived at the top of the stairs. They were breathing heavily, because, the
truth was - they were out of condition. They hadn't beaten the shit out of anybody for a good three weeks now. But professionals to the core, they were looking forward to getting back up to speed with the help of the unsuspecting directors of Implosion Productions.
They placed their darkly stained implement suitcase on the linoleum, then stood outside the office door to get their breath back.
Vic was the first to speak, in a high falsetto.
‘Hello, Implosion Productions, this is the maintenance lady, I need to check your electricity supply.’
No answer.
Again, even higher.
‘Hello, this is the maintenance lady with the big chest. I need to check your electricity supply.’
No answer.
Vic’s larger twin, Vlad, who was obviously not a great admirer of Vic’s acting abilities, suddenly let out a roar and took a flying, double-footed dropkick at the door which ripped off its hinges and landed with a tremendous bang about six feet inside the office. He looked at his brother with contempt.
‘So much for fuckin’ Shakespeare!’
All would-be thespians have a fragile nature when criticised, and you could tell Vic was hurt. But, as if to redeem himself, he whipped a crowbar from inside his Crombie and leapt into the empty office, through the space where the door had been. Vlad followed, having seemingly palmed a lump hammer. There was silence, followed by a brief, muttered discussion. Having reached an amicable agreement, they began trashing the office.
This was Aubrey’s chance. The frantic sounds of smashing glass and splintering wood, accompanied by a not inconsiderable amount of effing and blinding, convinced him that, if he moved fast enough, he could get past the door without being spotted. He could have taken the stairs. But when your brain is full of scrap metal, your judgement can be impaired. So, he ran straight along the corridor, crouched, head down with shoes removed so as not to make a tell-tale click-clack on the lino.
