The Sunshine Cruise Company (16 page)

‘Ech. All got a bit celebratory, I’m afraid. I’ll tidy up in a sec.’ But Susan was already advancing into the room, picking up glasses and straightening chairs.

‘I’ll do it,’ Susan said. ‘Why don’t you go and have a shower? We’re nearly there.’ She was humming a little song to herself while she tidied, all brisk, businesslike and cheerful.

Julie looked at her, narrowing her eyes. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘What?’ Susan said.

Julie kept looking at her.

‘What?’

‘Something’s up. You’re a bit … cheery for someone on the run.’

‘Can’t someone wake up in a good mood?’

But Susan was colouring a little, plumping up cushions, keeping herself busy, not meeting Julie’s gaze. There was something almost … girlish about her.

‘NO WAY!’ Julie exclaimed.

‘Shhh! Shhhh! Shurrup!’ Susan came at her, flattening a hand over her mouth, pushing her back into the sofa.

‘Susan Frobisher! You dirty –’

‘SHHHHHH!’

‘Filthy –’

‘
Please
,’ Susan begged.

‘OK, OK. Get off me.’ Susan let her go and they looked at each other for a moment. Then they both burst out laughing, Susan burying her head in her hands. ‘Details,’ Julie said. ‘I want details.’

‘Oh, later. OK?’

‘You and Terry Russell …’

‘Oh God …’ Susan said.

‘I bet it was something after Barry …’

‘Right, enough. You’ll wake the others.

‘Wait till Ethel hears about this. Oh, this is huge.’

‘Oh, do shut up,’ Susan said, sitting down next to her and blowing some hair out of her face. They continued talking in whispers, even though Ethel’s snoring would have drowned out a shouting match between two drunken town criers. ‘I just thought, what the hell. You know? And you know something else, Jules? I woke up this morning thinking, what the hell. Not just about Terry, but about all of it. It’s done. No one died. We’re not in jail. Yet. So, let’s just take it as it comes.’

‘Bloody hell. New Susan, new danger?’

‘Something like that. Come on, you,’ Susan said, standing up. ‘Shower. Blow the cobwebs away.’

‘What about this pair?’ Julie gestured to their sleeping colleagues.

‘Oh, let’s give them another fifteen minutes. Ethel needs it and Jill’s probably going to start crying again the minute she wakes up.’

‘So what are we doing? I mean, where are we going?’

‘I’ve got it all figured out.’

‘Oh, really? How so?’

‘I’ll tell you over breakfast in Le Havre.’

‘You and Terry Russell. Bloody hell.’

Twenty minutes later the four women were standing on a small wooden dock in the chill dawn wearing fleeces, jeans and trainers (except for Ethel who had a tartan shawl over her lap) they’d purloined from Densmore Cottage. The money was now in two smaller holdalls – again both courtesy of Densmore Cottage – which were hanging from Ethel’s wheelchair. (It had surprised Susan how much money you could fit in a fairly small space. You could easily carry a million pounds in fifty-pound notes as part of your baggage allowance on most airlines.) Ahead of them the jetty led to a shallow beach, which gave onto a forest, where a path led up through the trees. Terry made sure the stern line was tied tight and walked towards them, wiping seawater off his hands on the backs of his thighs. Susan had crouched down and was rooting through her bag for something or other so Julie put her hand out and he took it.

‘Sorry for, you know …’ she said, amazed to feel she was fighting to keep the smile off her face. What was she – fifteen again?

‘Yes, been an odd … reunion,’ Terry said.

‘Thanks, Terry,’ Julie said, thinking,
I bet it has
.

‘Christ,’ Ethel said from somewhere behind them, ‘was I drinking petrol last night?’

‘Yes, thank you very much, Terry,’ Susan said, oddly formal suddenly as she stood up.

‘Are you heading straight back?’ Julie asked him.

‘Nah. You have to file a route plan with the harbour master. I thought, for your sakes, just in case anyone comes asking, that it might be best if I didn’t answer that completely truthfully. I said I was taking her down to Cowes for a few days, so I’d better show up there at some point … shit.’

Susan was holding out a housebrick of fifties.

Terry looked at the money and smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You keep it.’

‘Please, Terry,’ Susan said. ‘It’s the least we –’

‘Honestly, no.’

‘Why ever not?’ Julie asked.

‘Well, for one, I don’t know that it’s a great idea for me to have a hundred grand in stolen banknotes on me –’

‘They’re used. Unsequenced,’ Ethel piped up. ‘Totally untraceable.’

‘And two,’ Terry continued, ‘I think you girls are going to need every single penny you’ve got, whatever happens.’

‘Are you sure?’ Susan said.

He nodded. ‘Just follow that path there.’ He pointed to the treeline. ‘Takes you up to the main road, then you’re a mile or so to the outskirts of Le Havre.’

Julie got a little peck on the cheek before she turned round and started pushing Ethel off up the dock, towards Jill. Susan smiled at Terry, the sun rising behind her, making her hair glow golden. He handed her a piece of paper. There was a name, ‘TAMALOV’, in block capitals and a Marseilles phone number underneath it. ‘Like I said, watch yourself. These are pretty serious guys.’

Susan nodded. ‘Thank you, Terry. Look, if there’s any comeback on this, if anything happens, just tell them we stuck a bloody shotgun in your face and made you do it.’

‘Never,’ Terry said. ‘They’ll never break me.’ They shared a laugh. ‘See you round,’ Terry said.

‘Sure,’ Susan said as she embraced him.

‘YEAH, LEMME SEE.
Yeah, here …’ The man pointed a pudgy, bacon-fat-smeared finger at an entry in the ledger on his desk. ‘Just one.
The Geraldine.
Owned by a Mr Terry Russell. She went out at 1.15 this morning.’ With a title like ‘Harbour Master’ Boscombe had been expecting something a little more grand: a sea-captain type, in his sixties, in uniform. Not this fat boy of about thirty in a sweatshirt and jeans, a half-eaten bacon roll in his fist and a can of Monster energy drink at his elbow. They were in an office on the top floor of the marina, with a grand view of the rows of boats tied up at the wooden dock, their masts bobbing and swaying gently in the soft breeze. Boscombe could see Wesley through the window, walking along the dock, nosing around.

‘And who was on board?’

‘Come on, mate. What do you think this is? Captains don’t have to file passenger lists with us, just routes.’

‘So where was it going?’

The guy consulted the ledger again. ‘Ah … Cowes.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Isle of Wight.’

‘Right. And what do you know about this Terry Russell guy?’

‘Eh? How do you mean?’

‘I mean, where’s he from? What kind of man is he?’

‘God, I don’t know. No idea where he’s from. I’ve seen him around. Silver-fox type. Rich enough I should think. Lives in Sands.’

‘Can you get on to your oppo at Cowes and see if the boat arrived there?’

The guy sighed through a mouthful of bacon and bread. Christ, Boscombe was starving. It was after nine now. They’d been on the go since six and not had a bit of breakfast. Not even the offer of a cup of tea from this shiftless, greedy bugger in front of him. The same shiftless, greedy bugger who was now saying, ‘I
could
do that. Are you telling me I have to?’

Right, Boscombe thought. That was about enough. ‘Listen,
mate
,’ he said, leaning down closer to the guy. ‘The people I’m after are wanted in connection with a very serious armed robbery. If I have to I’ll get a court order and have five officers down here up your chuff all day while they tear this place apart. I might also pass your details on to the audit section of the HMRC for a laugh. I’m hoping I won’t have to do any of that because I’ll be so pleased with how you went out of your way to help us.’

‘OK,’ the harbour master said, suddenly quiet and offended. ‘There’s no need to threaten me. I’ll call them.’

‘Thank you very much.’

He started dialling and Boscombe walked over to the other side of the room and looked back down at the harbour. He could see Wesley, talking to an old boy who was loading fishing gear into one of the smaller boats. The guy was pointing up along the dock. Wesley had the notebook out. Boscombe looked out to the green swell of the sea. Beautiful day it was shaping up to be – as hot as yesterday probably.
They were here
, Boscombe thought. He knew it. He had a hunch … fuck Wilson – sometimes you just
knew.
Something caught his eye and he looked back down to see Wesley was waving to him to come down to the dock, making a thumbs-up gesture and pointing to the old guy. In the background fat boy was saying, ‘OK. I see. Ta, Chris …’ Boscombe made a ‘gimme two minutes’ gesture through the glass to Wesley and turned round as the phone clacked back down into the cradle. ‘No,’ the harbour master said. ‘Not arrived yet.’

‘How long would a trip like that normally take?’

‘Well, depends how keen you were to get there. A boat like
The Geraldine
, two big engines … if you wanted to you could do it in five or six hours.’

‘Where else could you go from here in that time?’

‘A bunch of places. Up the coast to Scotland. Across to France …’

France.

‘OK. Thank you for your help. I’ll be back in a minute. Could you dig out this Terry Russell’s contact details for me? Thanks.’

Without waiting for an answer Boscombe turned and went out of the door into the fresh air, into the cries of gulls, and started down the wooden staircase that led to the dock. He took his mobile out and rang the station, getting old Sandra. ‘Sandra? Find out whatever you can about a Mr Terry Russell from Sands. Yeah, Terry like Chocolate Orange, Russell like Harty. Great. Ta.’

‘This is Mr Amerhill,’ Wesley said, indicating the kindly old man smiling beside him as Boscombe marched over, hanging up. ‘He slept on his boat last night.’

‘Did you now?’ Boscombe said.

‘Yeah. Woke me up they did. Around midnight. One of them was in a wheelchair.’

Boscombe smiled and looked out to sea.

HAD DETECTIVE SERGEANT
Hugh Boscombe been able to see far enough, if he could have gazed right across the English Channel and over the small private beach, through the trees and down the road to an outside table at a cafe on the outskirts of Le Havre, he would have seen the following …

Jill Worth: stirring her tea, ignoring her fruit cocktail and looking around twitchily, nervously, as if she fully expected a mob of policemen to descend upon her at any second. Ethel Merriman: hung-over, taking a break from greedily attacking a huge plate of steak and eggs to slather butter onto yet another piece of toast. (Indeed she seemed to be challenging the very physical laws regarding the amount of butter a piece of toast could hold.) And Susan Frobisher: working on her second (delicious)
café au lait
while she studied the map of France spread out on the table in front of her. After Susan had laid out the basic plan – to get to Marseilles and obtain new identities from Terry’s guy, dropping the unwanted and unsuspected Jill off at an airport somewhere en route – Julie had grabbed a croissant and headed off to take care of their transport needs. They’d seen a big second-hand car dealership back along the road, near the little bureau de change where they’d changed a couple of thousand pounds into euros.

‘Something inconspicuous,’ Susan had stressed.

She stared down at the map. There seemed to be two possibilities to get to Marseilles from here …

They could either head south-east towards Paris and then straight down to Provence, through the interior of the country, or go directly south from here, past Le Mans, until they picked up the coast road around Rochefort, then down towards Bordeaux before heading east past Toulouse and Montpellier. The Paris route was faster, but would take them closer to big cities and major roads. The coastal route was more indirect – about thirteen or fourteen hundred kilometres as opposed to one thousand – but more discreet. Lovely scenery too, Susan imagined. It’d probably be Nantes airport for Jill if they went down the coast and Lyon if they went through the interior. Either way it was at least a two-day drive. Then, when they got to Marseilles, even if they hooked up with this Tamalov right away, it’d take, what? – probably a couple of days to arrange new identities for her, Julie and Ethel. She couldn’t see them getting out of France for at least four or five days. Possibly longer if … but no. She was getting ahead of herself. Just deal with getting south for now and the rest of it would all unfold. She was surprised at how calm she felt. It was like she’d told Jules – right now they had the money and they weren’t in jail. They’d take it from there.

Susan put the route dilemma to the group. The response was predictably diverse.

‘Ooh, let’s take the coast!’ Ethel said. ‘So beautiful. I haven’t been down that way in years.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Jill snapped. ‘Can’t we just go the fastest way? I feel sick to the pit of my stomach every single minute.’

‘You should eat something, love,’ Ethel said, punting another huge forkful of near-raw meat glistening with egg yolk into her mouth.

Jill turned away and said, ‘Yes, and some of us might want to be a bit more careful about what we put
into
our bodies …’

‘You know what I’d like put into my body?’ Ethel said.

‘Ethel …’ Susan said warningly.

‘Don’t,’ Jill said. ‘Just don’t.’

‘A great, big …’

‘No!’ Jill squeaked, stuffing her fists in her ears.

‘… massive, hard …’

‘Ethel …’ Susan on autopilot, not even looking up from the map.

‘CO—

TOOT TOOT! Two short blasts on a car horn caused the three of them to turn round.

‘Goodness,’ Jill said.

‘Ding-dong,’ Ethel purred in Terry-Thomas fashion.

‘What the fuck?’ Susan said.

‘Language!’ Jill said.

There was Julie, sitting grinning at the wheel.