The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (16 page)

The blue velvet curtains billowed gently into the room and through the open window I could hear the neighbourhood thrush telling me what a glorious evening it was, and how the one thing he really wanted in all the world was a lady thrush and how he’d be prepared to fight and die for her because he was the bravest and strongest bird around. Maybe I was taking a liberty with the lyrics but you couldn’t fault the tune.

       
‘She sounds happy,’ said Sammy as she moved onto her front, red hair falling over her face and spreading across the mascara-marked pillow.

       
‘He,’ I said as I stroked the back of her neck. ‘The males always have the sweetest songs.’

       
She lay by my side, face turned towards mine. With one arm above her pillow and the other underneath it, she looked as if she was embracing it the way she’d held me minutes before. I rolled on top of her, legs either side of hers, and kissed her cheek.

       
‘Don’t they just,’ she laughed, pressing herself against me and then lying still, her breathing quiet and even. I’d been meeting Sammy three or four times a week, usually in the afternoons, usually to check on how she was getting on with Laing and usually ending up in bed under the painting of the storm-tossed sea.

       
‘It’s time you had a holiday,’ I told her.

       
‘By the “you” I take it you mean me and not us,’ she giggled.

       
‘And Laing. Somewhere abroad, somewhere sunny, somewhere French.’

       
‘How about Paris?’ The one eye I could see glinted with mischief.

       
‘How very astute of you. The tickets are in my jacket pocket – you’ll be flying out a week on Friday from Heathrow, and you’re booked into a four-star hotel in the centre of Paris.’

       
‘Who says Father Christmas always wears a red suit and a white beard?’ she asked and then, don’t ask me how she did it, I was flipped three feet across the bed and found myself lying flat on my back. Then she was on top of me and kissing me through a tangle of hair. I lifted her head and smiled.

       
‘Will he go with you?’ I said.

       
‘Do zebras have stripey legs? Of course he will, and he’ll have the time of his life. He’ll have to make the usual excuses to his wife but he’s used to that. And so is she. He’ll get such a kick out of the fact that I’m paying, too. I take it I’m only getting a weekend, Santa?’

       
‘Friday night and Saturday night, flying British Airways at half four and coming back late Sunday evening. What you do while you’re over there is your own business. If you get my drift.’

       
Her eyes flashed fire but her lips smiled as she grabbed my wrists, held them above my head and kissed me full on the mouth, gripping me tightly with her legs. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘Forget Laing and Kyle.’

       
‘Next time. I promise. And then it’ll be pleasure, not business.’ And I meant it.

       
‘Business can be a pleasure,’ she said, then kissed me again, hard enough to bruise my lips. ‘Tell me what to do.’

       
And I told her about carparks, a Rolls-Royce with a personalized number plate and an American Express card, and then I made love to her again. Or she made love to me. Whatever.

Dinah fingered the studs in his ear as we waited for Laing and Sammy to arrive at the short term carpark at Heathrow Airport. It was a bright, sunny afternoon and we were both in shirtsleeves sitting in the front seats of a black Transit van with ‘Kleen Karparts’ stencilled in white on the sides. We were tucked away in the far corner on the ground floor giving us a clear view of all the vehicles entering and leaving carpark 1A. Two spaces along was the Granada and I had the parking ticket for it in my chest shirt pocket.

       
Even with both windows wide open we were sweating, but that was probably nervousness and anxiety because we’d been parked for almost an hour. Twice Dinah had asked to go to the toilet. ‘No can do,’ I’d told him, ‘they could be here any moment,’ and now he was sulking.

       
‘There they are now,’ I said, and nodded towards the entrance where Laing was leaning out of the driver’s side of the Corniche for his ticket. He drove up to the first level and Dinah followed as I stepped over the seat into the back of the van and sat down next to a rattling blue metal toolbox. Dinah pulled up next to the parked Rolls and I peered over his shoulder. I was wearing sunglasses and a floppy white hat with ‘Arsenal’ on the front and Laing had only seen me once but even so there was no point in taking any chances.

       
Sammy was stunning, hair tied back with a scarlet bow and wearing a beige boiler suit, a brown pullover knotted across her shoulders. Laing took two small suitcases out of the boot of the Rolls, slammed it shut and together they walked to the departure terminal, my stomach going cold as she slipped her arm through his and rested her head on his shoulder, then I mentally kicked myself because she was only playing a part. She was doing it for me. But that didn’t make me feel any better.

       
‘Nice bit of stuff,’ said Dinah. ‘Lucky bastard.’

       
‘Watch yourself, Dinah,’ I said. ‘Keep your mind on the job.’

       
We gave them a full fifteen minutes, then I moved back into the passenger seat to keep watch as Dinah climbed down and stood alongside the driver’s window of the Rolls.

       
I expected subtlety, a skeleton key or a complicated mechanical device that Dinah would wiggle and jiggle until he worked his way past the Corniche’s sophisticated central locking system. Dinah was about as subtle as a brass knuckleduster. He took a sheet of sticky-backed plastic and covered the window with it, smoothing out the air bubbles with the back of his hand. From the back pocket of his black leather trousers he took a metal punch, looked right and left, gave me a curt nod and then banged it against the glass which cracked and shattered into a thousand cubes, most of them sticking to the plastic. He rolled it up and handed it to me through the window of the Transit van.

       
‘Oh, nice one, Dinah. If I’d known it was that simple I’d have done it myself,’ I said, and dropped it into the back of the van.

       
‘That was the easy part,’ he laughed. ‘It’s the next bit you’re paying me for. Keep your eyes peeled.’ He lay across the front seat of the Rolls, head under the dashboard, and it was a full ten minutes before the engine burst into life.

       
‘Right, that’s us,’ he said, wiping his hands on his blue T-shirt. He opened the back door of the Transit and took out a plastic brush and pan, sweeping up the glass cubes on the floor while I sat in the driving seat of the Rolls and ran my eyes over the controls.

       
‘Follow me back to the garage, and for God’s sake don’t stall it,’ he said. We drove out of the multi-storey carpark and I handed over the Granada’s ticket to get the Rolls through.

       
An hour later we were in the Karparts yard where Dinah fitted a new window – getting spares was obviously not a problem for him. He went to work with a couple of Rolls keys and a file and after two hours handed them to me with a flourish.

       
‘Your car, sir,’ he said, and grinned. ‘When will you be back with it?’

       
‘Sunday morning, early afternoon at the latest. Will you be here?’

       
‘Ready and waiting,’ he said. ‘Ready for the car and waiting for my money. Take care with those keys, by the way. They’re good but they’re not perfect so don’t force them. Be gentle.’

       
He paused, then added: ‘What are you up to?’

       
‘Best you don’t know, Dinah.’ I slid into the plush blue leather seat and put the makeshift key in and turned it. The Rolls started first time and I winked at him. ‘See you Sunday,’ I said.

       
He walked over to the double gates, and while he was opening them I reached under the passenger seat and groped around until I found a small white envelope. Inside was Laing’s American Express card and a note from Sammy, short and to the point. ‘Be careful. See you soon. S.’

       
I drove through the gates waving to Dinah as I passed him, and collected my case from Earl’s Court and McKinley from his hotel. Laing had bought the car only six months previously so McKinley hadn’t seen it before.

       
‘This yours, boss?’ he asked.

       
‘It’s borrowed, Get-Up. And if you’re very good I’ll let you share the driving. Settle back, we’ve a long way to go.’

The Rolls was a dream to drive and it swallowed up the miles to Glasgow like a ravenous schoolboy. I let McKinley take over the wheel after we passed Birmingham and told him I’d sit in the back and try to get some sleep. I’d left a clipboard and a sheaf of notepaper on the seat, and I placed Laing’s American Express card under the bulldog clip and studied it while McKinley sat in the outside lane of the M6, foot down to the floor.

       
A dab of brake fluid would have removed the biro signature and I could have replaced it with ‘R. Laing’ in my own handwriting, but I had plenty of time to practise so I thought I might as well do it the hard way. Most people don’t examine signatures all that closely anyway, especially overworked receptionists. They just pick on a few obvious features, a tall loop on the ‘l’, the way the ‘a’ was almost circular and the lower part of the ‘g’ curved back under the signature in a flamboyant underlining loop. If they match then the signature is OK.

       
I studied the way Laing signed his name and then I copied it over and over, using up sheet after sheet of paper, and by the time we got to Preston I could do a perfect imitation so long as I had the original in front of me.

       
It took me until we’d reached Carlisle and the M6 turned into the A74 before I could sign myself ‘R. Laing’ without checking.

       
I took over the driving again after we’d stopped for a break at Gretna Green service station, and I’d dropped the sheets of counterfeit signatures into a rubbish bin after ripping them up into a hundred pieces while McKinley was in the toilet.

       
The road was busy and I played chicken with the speeding lorries on their way north, and tapped the wheel in frustration at the numerous roadworks and single file traffic jams. It’s a bitch of a road. Whenever I had to go to London on business I always took the Shuttle, even in a Rolls it’s a tiring journey, playing havoc with blood pressures and brakes.

       
The two of us spent the night at the Central Hotel in Glasgow, courtesy of Laing’s Amex card, and first thing Saturday morning I picked up a BMW from an up-market car hire company in the shadow of the Daily Record building at Anderston Quay.

       
Before the blonde receptionist handed me the keys she rang up the credit card company to check it was valid but that wasn’t a problem, Laing was in Paris (God, my heart ached when I thought of him with Sammy), and he wouldn’t know it was missing. If he should realize it had gone astray then I’d arranged for Sammy to say that she thought she’d seen it on the floor of the Rolls.

       
I drove the BMW back to the city centre, McKinley following in the Rolls, and we took the A82 out of Glasgow and headed for Oban.

McKinley and I were booked into the Caledonian Hotel, an imposing brown stone building with slated turrets and white sash windows peering over Oban Bay towards the Isle of Mull.

       
We had adjoining rooms at the front of the hotel, and from my window I looked down on the battered fishing boats bumping gently into each other in the swell as seagulls glided and cried, every now and again dipping down and diving into the sea for a piece of rotting fish or hunks of bread thrown by tourists.

       
It was about five pm and we’d arranged to meet Read in the bar at seven, so I told McKinley I was going for a walk and headed along the harbour wall to the modern, cream-painted Park Hotel. It too had magnificent sea views and I could taste the salt on my lips as I walked through the reception doors and asked to speak to Simon Fraser. The pretty brunette in tartan jacket and skirt smiled and rang his room and told me to go up to one two three, and Iwanek had the door open to greet me as I stepped out of the lift.

       
He was in a single room at the back of the hotel, the colour TV was flickering in the corner with the sound off and on the small but neat bed was an unopened bottle of whisky and a small black leather suitcase.

       
In his hand was an empty tumbler, and he asked me if I fancied a drink and told me to help myself to a glass from the bathroom. He poured me a decent measure and we clinked glasses.

       
‘To crime,’ he said, and laughed. ‘And to not getting caught.’

       
‘Here’s hoping we have a quiet night,’ I said and drank deeply. He sat on the edge of the bed and waved me over to a comfortable green easy chair in the corner of the room opposite the television.

       
‘Take a seat,’ he said. ‘I take it everything is set?’

       
‘No problems at all,’ I said, taking a large scale map of the area from my inside pocket and spreading it on the floor. I pointed midway down Loch Feochan.

       
‘This is where the dinghy should be coming ashore at about eleven o’clock tonight. That’s where I’ll be with two other men. Our cars will be parked off the road, within sight of the shore. One of them will have a powerful torch to signal the boat and the handover should take place at the water’s edge. It’ll be dark, so as long as you keep away from the torch beam you should be able to get up close without being seen. There are no street lights that far away from civilization so leave your car on the road.’