Paint. The art of scam. (43 page)

She had dragged
Johnny's body for some fifty metres and dumped it in a ditch. She had covered
him with leaves then remembered her panties in his pocket. She had slid down
into the ditch, retrieved them and then stamped on his face hard with her foot.
It hurt. Must have been his teeth. Getting out from the ditch, she had slipped
back in, her foot landing on his chest. He had groaned as the air was forced
out of his lungs. She had cleaned up the best she could, cleaned the gun and
thrown it into the bushes. She had done all of this without feeling anything.
No fear, no disgust, no revulsion at the sight of his disfigured, tortured face,
or his brain oozing out of the two, two inch holes in the back of his head. She
had completed the whole task as if she were dealing with some menial domestic
chore.

Her dress was
splattered with blood and smeared with mud, her hair matted with congealing
blood, combed in by her frantic hands.

Polly pulled over
into a siding, stopped the engine and turned off the lights. She had to think.
The adrenaline was subsiding now. Things were starting to feel real again. She
looked in the rear vision mirror and shuffled her body up to get closer to it
in the dim light.

Clack! The
Dagenham Dagger jumped in the seat belt on the passenger's side and sliced a
clean slash into the plastic upholstery. She reached across and touched it. It
was stuck firmly in place. With some jiggling she managed to pull it out: the
four inch blade sparkled, even in the darkness.

Polly looked dead
ahead at the windscreen. ‘I have get home.’ she whispered. ‘Seymour will
understand. This is it. It's all over. Nobody can touch me now. I just have to
get home. Then everything will be OK. I have to get rid of these clothes. I
could go to the shop, that’s it... I can change there... God I need a shower.
Oh shit, shit, shit.’

Polly wound down
the window, took a deep breath of the cold night air and closed her eyes. The
silence calmed her and she replayed her thoughts. ‘Yes, that was it. I just
have to get home. That's all I have to do. Then everything will be OK. Seymour
will understand. We can start all over again now. I just have to dump the car
somewhere. Somewhere close to home. Nobody must see me. I will tell him
everything. Then it’s all done. We can move on and I can put all this behind
me. Seymour will understand. He always does.’

Polly started the
engine, turned on the lights and slowly pulled away onto the road.

Cyril woke up
with the sun. He'd got to bed at two in the morning, very drunk. It was unusual
for Cyril to get drunk. He always did drink a lot of wine, at least a bottle a
night, which Cyril considered normal for his body weight. But last night he got
completely and utterly drunk, as did everybody else, even Nastasia, laying next
to him, still in her slightly bedraggled black silk and lace dress.

He reached across
and kissed her on the forehead. Nastasia opened her eyes and smiled.

‘Good morning.’ whispered
Nastasia softly.

‘Good morning
missus.’ said Cyril. ‘usual tea and toast madam?’

Nastasia
stretched and sighed with ecstasy. ‘My God you'd make somebody a wonderful
husband.’

‘Forget it.’ said
Cyril. ‘I'd be shit husband and you know it. Just like you're a shit wife.’

‘Sounds like a
perfect match.’ said Nastasia.

Cyril busied
himself with making breakfast as Nastasia watched.

‘Oh Natty, have
you got that cash? I have to get ready for the MOT test soon.’

‘What for? Are
you still going away?’

‘Yeh, might as
well. Reckon I'll go away for a few weeks, until things settle down here. It's
all arranged anyway.’

Nastasia went
silent and Cyril felt it.

‘It’s not a
problem is it Nat?’

‘No, no. Except.
Um.’

‘That sounds
ominous.’ Cyril looked over at Nastasia, waiting.

Nastasia let out
a large breath and held her hand out to Cyril.

‘Come here.’ said
Nastasia.

Cyril went over
to the bed, sat down and held her hand.

‘Well, what is
it?’

Nastasia looked
up to Cyril and held his hand tighter.

‘Cyril. It’s
about the money.’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s gone.’

‘What?’ said
Cyril, pulling away from her and standing up.

‘Please Cyril sit
down. I will explain.’

Nastasia waited
as Cyril, agitated, went over to the cooker, lit the gas, turned it off again
and sat back down with her.

‘Right, I’m
waiting.’

Nastasia waited a
few moments longer, choosing her words; waiting for Cyril to calm down.

‘Ok. I used the
money to solve your problem.’

Cyril screwed up
his face. ‘What? What on Earth does that mean?’

‘Please Cyril,
don’t get angry. Please.’

‘Are you serious?’
said Cyril getting angry. ‘how?’

‘I can’t tell you
Cyril, not yet. Please trust me. There is some money left.’

‘How much?’

‘About five
hundred, plus the fifteen hundred I brought today for your MOT and the bits for
the van.’

‘Fucking two
grand! Natty, there was about forty grand there!’

‘Forty five thousand,
five hundred and eighty actually.’ said Nastasia coolly.

‘So what did you
do with it then?’

‘I solved your
problem.’

‘How the fuck!’

Nastasia suddenly
sat up and grabbed Cyril by the shoulders.

‘Listen to me
Cyril.’ said Nastasia firmly, staring her firing eyes into his. ‘You were about
to lose everything. I couldn’t sit back and watch that happen. Never!’

Cyril was
transfixed on Nastasia’s face. One thing he knew about Nastasia was that she
always told him the truth. As he looked at her then, the intensity of her
expression, he knew not to ask her to lie. That was the option. There was a
reason for her secrecy and he had to trust it.

Cyril drew a
breath and looked away.

‘Well that
changes everything.’ said Cyril.

Nastasia held her
stare. She watched as Cyril went through a sequence of thoughts that ended with
a smile.

‘Yes, Cyril
Barker. That changes everything.’

Cyril returned
his eyes to hers.

‘My God Natty.’

Nastasia pulled
him close and held him tight.

Stella burst into
the conference room at Stella Solutions like a hurricane, as usual, a haze of
perfume and hectic energy in her wake. Everyone was there, the whole team, all
ten of them, all handpicked. Stella had called an urgent meeting.

‘Right everyone.’
bellowed Stella across the room. ‘We’ve got to pull together an emergency call
centre, right now! We’ve got two days. We need nurses, medical people, even
fucking struck off doctors and vets. It’s a big client. Smitt Kleinen
Phizerberg. Ok?’ Stella scanned the room of nodding heads.

‘Looks like
they’ve been sabotaged. An inside job apparently. Probably some religious nut
like a fucking catholic insurgent or something. There are fifty batches of the
contraceptive pill out there, that contain 50mg of testosterone in each one.
That’s 10,000 hits. I don’t know if you can imagine the consequences, but I can,
and you will when you get to my age. We think we know all the batch numbers,
dates and stuff. We need a team of people that can speak medical lingo to man
the phones and make those people understand what has happened and that there is
nothing to worry about. Even though there is. Probably. So people, hit the
fucking phones hard and pull it all together. There’ll be a pot a cash in it
for you all. This is drugs people, they got more money than the fuckin’ Pope. Debby,
you’re the captain. Report to me every day at five.’

Stella pointed
directly at Debby with her unusually long index finger. Debby nodded
confidently and looked around at her team.

‘Any questions?’
continued Stella. Looked at the shaking heads. ‘Right. Debby you come with me
and I’ll fill you in. Good luck everyone.’

Stella turned on
her heals and left for her office with Debby in tow: attempting to keep up with
her.

‘Thanks Stella.’ said
Debby as she stood in front of Stella’s desk, almost to attention, while Stella
quickly shuffled through a bundle of envelopes held together with an elastic
band.

‘You don’t have
to fuckin’ thank me Debby. I chose you ‘cause I know you can do it. Now at 11
o’clock you’re having a meeting with some prick called Gordon Blairberg. He’s
the P.R. manager from the company and I’ll tell you for nothing, he’s got his
fucking work cut out for him. He’s coming here and I want you to have the
meeting in the conference room, OK? Turn all the ears on, I want every word
recorded, whenever you talk to him or anybody in the company. Even on the
phone. Is that clear Debby? Every word.’

Debby nodded
knowingly. She had been working for Stella for two years now. She knew that
everything Stella said, had a reason.

‘Get Barry in to
check everything out, been a while since we used all that recording stuff. And
if ever you are alone with Blairberg, Debby, use this.’ Stella fumbled around
in a desk drawer. ‘Now where the fuck did I put the fuckin’ ting. Ah here you
go.
’
Stella pulled out an old mini cassette
dictaphone from the drawer and slid it across the desk to Sally.

‘It’s OK Stella,
I’ve got one of those.’ It was true. Debby had one of those new digital
dictaphones and it was recording every word that they were saying.

‘Ok. Now off you
go and get started.’

Debby nodded and
left.

Stella removed
the elastic band from the wad of envelopes and began sifting through them. She
quickly looked at each one and either put it on the desk or straight into the
shredder next to her.

Singling out a
typical greeting card envelope, she put the bundle down and opened it, puzzled.
Nobody knew when her birthday was. That way you never get older. She pulled out
the flowery thank you card from its envelope and opened it up.

‘Thanks Stella.
XXX Natty. ‘

‘For fuck’s sake
Natty. Don’t fucking do that.’ mumbled Stella angrily as she put the card and
its envelope hastily into the shredder.

Stella sat back
in her large leather swivel chair and thoughtfully toyed with her dentures
using her tongue. She hadn’t had a reply from her last pager message to
Johnny. That was unusual. She picked up the phone and rang the pager service,
to try again. You only get two chances. If you don’t answer the second one,
you’re out.

‘Tell the truth I
had absolutely no idea what was happening here boys.’ said Gerald Barrington as
he walked along the track with Chris, John and Cyril. Laurel and Hardy were
following behind them a good distance back, but still in earshot. ‘Something
got into Edward when his father died. Of course we were all effected. Sir
Thomas was one of the finest men to walk this Earth.’

‘He certainly was
Mr. Barrington,’ said Cyril. Chris and John mumbled their agreement.

‘Oh please chaps,
call me Gerald will you? But I beg of you never, ever call me Gerry OK? My God
look at his mess!’

The four of them
stopped where a road clearing had been cut through a small ancient forest. The
ground chewed up by scratching bull dozer caterpillar tracks, branches strewn
around where they had fallen, a monstrous pile of half burnt roots and lower
trunks entangled together like a giant spiders. Gerald was so moved, he was
unsteady on his feet for a moment and grabbed Cyril’s shoulder for support.

‘Sorry Cyril.’

‘Don’t you worry
Gerald, I know how you feel.’

‘Tommy would
shoot a man that would do this. The bastards!’ said Gerald, his face glowing
with furious blood.

Cyril, Chris and
John bowed their heads as if to give Gerald a moment.

‘I’m afraid
that’s not all Gerald.’ said Cyril.

‘Yes I know. Suzy
told me. I really can’t fucking believe it! You know, I’ve spent the last five
bloody years trying to stop environmental vandalism and here it is right on my
own family’s land. I fucking give up! Fucking hooligans that what they are.
Short sighted, greedy, bastards, that’s who we’ve got running this country now.
They don’t give a shit about the future.’

‘Starting to look
like nobody does these days.’ said Chris sadly.

‘Yes, yes that’s
the problem Chris, nobody gives a shit. Well we’ve got to do something, at
least try anyway.’

‘How do you
mean?’ said Cyril.

‘Well Sir Thomas
and I always had a dream you see. To turn the estate into an autonomous state.
Not politically or legally or anything radical like that. That wasn’t the
point. Just to be completely independent, in every way, energy, food, water,
the bloody lot. It was all feasible. The irony was of course that, when we
thought about it, that was exactly how the Estate was 100 years ago. That was
Edward’s objection you see. He just couldn’t understand why on Earth one would
want to go back in time. Anyway, he sabotaged the whole idea, by tying up the
cash reserve of the estate in some off shore bank account. Mind, it was our
fault, we did sign the forms. Hate to say it, but he tricked us, good and
proper. He reckoned we wouldn’t have to pay tax on it. We said we wanted to pay
tax. He couldn’t understand that either. Turned out he put the money into one
of his investment companies in Dubai. So we had no cash to invest in the
project, then of course dear old Tommy was killed and here we are.’