The Sunshine Cruise Company (27 page)

‘
Merde
, Julie,’ Vanessa whispered, looking at the apparition beside her.

‘Hang on, hang on …’ Susan said as she fumbled for the dimmer switch on the wall beside her. She dialled it down reducing the level of light in the room until it was closer to what you’d expect to find in a nightclub. The two of them looked like sisters. Definitely older and younger sister, but still.

‘What do we think?’ Julie said, cocking a hip, throwing an arm around Vanessa’s shoulder.

‘Well,’ Susan sighed, taking in the amount of leg and cleavage on display, wondering for the first time if she’d slightly overdone it, ‘if we don’t get the money back we could make a fortune on the game.’

BY GOD THE
Englishman’s snoring was intolerable, Dumas thought as Boscombe’s bandsaw whine cut through the unmarked police car. He looked at his wristwatch again – just after midnight. He clicked on his radio and said softly, ‘Rear unit, anything to report?’

‘No,’ came back the tired response.

Wesley yawned and shifted over in his seat, trying to distance himself from his boss. ‘How long are we going to wait?’ he asked in a stage whisper.

Dumas shrugged. ‘This shithole is open until 4 a.m.,’ he said. ‘So as long as it takes, I am afraid.’ He too was whispering and Wesley realised that they were both trying not to wake Boscombe, his snoring being preferable to his sarky comments and underhand farting.

Great
, Wesley thought.
Another four hours of this
. He’d always imagined that being on a stakeout with Interpol would be a lot more exciting than this. Still, it could be worse, he reflected, gazing across the street at the queue shuffling closer to the velvet ropes outside Le Punisher. He could still be young enough to be putting himself through all
that
in the name of a good time.

Had Wesley looked closer, had he, say, walked across the street and up and down the queue, looking intently into the eyes of the hopefuls trying to gain entry to the club, he might have recognised at least one of the faces on display …

Julie’s heart was thumping as she and Vanessa approached the rope. She’d just seen two couples in a row turned away. Granted one of them had contained a very drunk girl and the other a boy whose outfit said building site more than anything else, but still, they’d all been considerably younger than her. She felt Vanessa give her hand an encouraging squeeze as the group in front of them walked through into the hallowed portal of Le Punisher and the velvet rope fell back down and now it was their turn to step forward.

She heard Vanessa saying something casual in French as she went to crest the rope, acting as though it was her God-given right to be inside. It seemed to be working too, the rope was lifting and Julie, trying not to make eye contact, was simply following in straight behind her. But then, no, the rope was coming back down, in front of Julie, cutting her off from Vanessa, and the girl with the clipboard was looking her up and down.
Oh shit
, Julie thought. The girl was saying something to her in French. Julie reached for the words, trying to frame a response, but Vanessa was already in there, saying the words
‘Stella McCartney, Stella McCartney’
, and suddenly, magically, the girl was nodding, smiling, and the rope was floating back up and Julie too was on the inside.

‘What was she saying?’ Julie asked as they floated down the hallway, towards the booth at the end where you paid the entrance fee.

‘She wanted to know where your dress was from!’ Vanessa said, laughing.

‘Christ,’ Julie said, ‘my heart’s going like a fucking rabbit. Here …’ She slipped Vanessa a hundred-euro note – one of the last hundred-euro notes they had – to pay their admission while she started thumbing a text with her free hand.

‘FRIGGING IN THE
RIGGIN,
THERE WAS FUCK ALL ELSE TO DO!’

Ethel’s idea of passing the time on stakeout involved rugby songs. Lots of rugby songs. Or rather, a handful of the same rugby songs endlessly and lustily repeated. She had just finished a charming ditty about a banker’s daughter who opened her drawers for cash and was now on her second (possibly third, Susan reflected) rendition of something about a vessel called the
Good Ship Venus
. They had only been there half an hour. Jill, in the back, had long since put her headphones on, trying to drown out the onslaught with some Debussy.

Susan’s phone beeped and she looked at Julie’s text:
We’re in
. She showed it to Ethel who nodded, drew breath, and went straight back into singing
‘THE FIGUREHEAD WAS A WHORE IN BED AND THE MAST WAS A BIG BENT PENIS! FRIGGIN IN RIGG—’

‘OK, Ethel! Please! I can’t think straight,’ Susan snapped.

Ethel shut up instantly, the world’s filthiest jukebox unplugged. ‘What’s there to think about?’ Ethel said.

‘Well, what’s going on in there for a start …’ She nodded down the dark side street they were parked on, towards the main road and Le Punisher.

‘That’s not thinking, that’s worrying.’

‘Eh?’

‘You can’t affect anything that happens in there now,’ Ethel said, popping a mint in her mouth. ‘So you’re not really thinking, are you? You’re just worrying. Grant me the serenity to accept stuff and the balls to fuck up that which I’m not having and all that malarkey, Susan darling.’

‘Have you ever thought about doing a self-help book, Ethel? Anyway – what about afterwards? Supposing, and it’s a big suppose, all this comes off tonight and we get our money back. Do you really think this plan to get it all out of the country will work?’

‘It’s got to work better than the alternative, sweetie,’ Ethel said.

‘Which is?’

‘Stay here and get arrested or killed.’

Susan sighed. ‘You really do have a remarkably simple way of looking at everything, don’t you?’

‘Key to a long life, don’t you know,’ Ethel said. ‘Forget all that rubbish about fats and sugars. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Anyway, your old mucker Terry was right about South America, that’ll be a doddle. They don’t give a shit. I mean, they don’t put your hand baggage through a scanner when you land in a country, do they? The real hurdle is going to be getting it out of France …’

Well,
Susan thought,
it’ll be a bloody miracle if we even get that far.

JULIE DIDN’T KNOW
the song – it seemed to be just one huge, thumping bass note while the words
‘around the world, around the world’
were endlessly repeated – but she was surprised at how easily, after two double vodkas, it all came back to her. She was moving her hips in a circular motion, her hands flapping gaily above her head, like many of them on the packed dance floor were doing. Vanessa was something else – a group of men kept an edgy semicircle near her and she was batting off an advance roughly every thirty seconds. Julie had had two rough whispers in her ear herself.

They had worked their way across the floor, close to where a set of steps led up towards a velvet rope guarded by a bouncer and, Christ, yes, now they were close Julie could see through the smoke and sweat and strafing lasers that it was the very bouncer who had pulled a gun on them – the one who had come to the hotel – and, behind him, past the rope, perched on the edge of a plush sofa and talking animatedly to someone, she saw the shock of white hair. Tamalov.

She turned her back, facing Vanessa now, and wiggled her bottom in the direction of the VIP room.

Benny, in his turn, was scanning the crowd, when his eyes moved up off the (admittedly decent) arse of an old woman (certainly well into her thirties) in a short black dress and onto the face of the girl in the red dress she was dancing with.

Holy Christ.

Jackpot.

Benny took a couple of steps down the stairs to the edge of the dance floor and beckoned to the girl through the crowd. Vanessa saw him making the ‘come here’ gesture and danced her way towards him. Julie watched the guy shouting in her ear, Vanessa nodding, then shrugging. She went to turn away but the bouncer took her gently by the wrist and, smiling, shouted something else to her. Vanessa nodded and danced back to Julie.

‘He wants me to go into the VIP area.’

‘OK …’

‘But just me.’

Dancing, smiling, Julie said, ‘Can you handle it?’

‘Of course. Don’t worry, Julie.’

‘I’ll be watching, at the bar. OK?’

Vanessa nodded, pecked her quickly on the cheek, and writhed back through the crowd towards the waiting bouncer, giving Julie a sheepish grin before she tottered up the steps towards the dark, roped-off booth, her long legs wobbling on heels as she ascended.

Suddenly Julie wanted another drink very badly indeed.

Probably the mother
, Benny thought as he lifted the rope for Vanessa and watched Julie disappear away through the heaving dancers. Nothing surprised him any more. He had a tiny twinge of conscience but that evaporated as soon as he pictured the boss’s response to what he was bringing in. If he’d brought an old boiler like that other one in here, he’d be out of a job. Letting your own daughter go off with … Jesus Christ, what some people were capable of. Pimping your own flesh and blood. Still, being charitable, I suppose the woman knew this was a way for her kid to meet rich men, to move in better circles and all that. Still, if Benny ever had a daughter, she wouldn’t be hanging out in places like this. Anyway, he knew he’d done good as he guided his trembling prize into the middle of the lounge and saw Tamalov’s face lighting up as he slapped Franco on the back and reached for the champagne bottle. With luck another thick wad of notes would soon be getting tucked into his pocket.

The way of the world …

JESUS CHRIST, SARGE
,
Wesley thought.

Farting
in
his sleep now. Dumas wound down his window and looked at Halles, rolling his eyes in the driver’s seat. ‘This subhuman animal,’ Halles said in thick French.

‘How’s that?’ Wesley asked.

‘Ah, I was just thinking of getting some coffee. Would you like some?’ Halles said, looking at his watch. It was almost three o’clock in the morning and there was a tolerably short queue at the coffee and burger stand just along the street. In an hour or so, when the club closed, it would be mobbed.

‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance of a tea, is there?’

Halles just looked at Wesley.

‘Coffee would be fine, lovely.’

‘You know what,’ Dumas said, ‘I’ll come with you. Get some air …’ As he stretched and reached for his door handle he turned to Wesley in the back seat. Boscombe was splayed out beside him, dead to the world, snoring lightly. ‘Sorry – he’s had a rough couple of days,’ Wesley said. ‘I don’t think he got much sleep back in Cannes.’

Dumas nodded. ‘Just, ah … sit tight please. We’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Sure.’

Wesley watched the two Frenchmen walk off towards the glowing neon, knowing they were talking about them. He gently flicked the V-sign behind the safety of the driver’s chair and yawned.

JULIE BADLY WANTED
another vodka, but two was definitely the limit if she wanted to keep sharp. So she sipped her mineral water and kept her gaze focused on the long mirror that ran above the bar. In it she could see across the dance floor behind her and just make out the raised entrance to the VIP area. She checked her watch. Nearly an hour she’d been in there.

‘Madame?’ A voice next to her said. Julie turned to see a man was speaking to her. He was tanned, leathery in fact, wearing a fluorescent-green T-shirt, and what very much appeared to be brown leather trousers. He was gesturing towards the bar, asking what she would like to drink. It was as though Julie’s drinking with him was already agreed to, a foregone, piffling detail, and the only real question was
what
she would be drinking rather than if. To be honest it was a bold, forthright tactic that a less distracted Julie might well have had some time for. If, of course, the tactician had not been wearing brown leather trousers.

‘No thank you,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the mirror.

The guy persisted, tapping a sheaf of euros on the bar.

‘
Non
,’ Julie said, shaking her head.

The guy started ordering for her, pastis or something, gesturing to the waitress to bring two glasses to him and the bottle. Christ. And now here was Vanessa coming across the dance floor towards her. Julie turned as she passed a few feet away through the crush, her eyes, her entire face, saying ‘follow me’.

‘
Voilà!
’

Julie turned back to see she was being handed a glass of murky-grey, aniseed-scented goop. She took it, downed it in one, smacked the glass on the bar, said ‘
Au Revoir
’, swivelled on her heel and followed Vanessa towards the toilets. ‘Hey!’ the guy shouted after her.

Once inside they both went down to the far end of the mirror and started fixing up their faces. ‘How are we doing?’ Julie asked in a side whisper.

‘He’s asked me back to his house for a party. Me and a couple of other girls in there.’

‘I bet he has …’

‘But this is good, no?’

‘Yes, love. It’s just … the dirty old bastard.’ Julie sighed and started running her wrists under a cold-water tap.

‘He’s having his car brought round in a minute,’ Vanessa went on.

‘Right.’ Julie started texting. ‘What’s he been talking about?’

‘Oh, you know: his yacht, his cars, his houses, how big his dick is. Typical man stuff.’ Vanessa made a face. She was all right this girl, Julie thought. She was all right.

BOSCOMBE WAS NOW
in the deep REM stage of sleep you entered just before waking: Wesley could see his eyeballs flickering, almost vibrating under the eyelids, as the sergeant floated and glimmered through some Boscombe paradise, some green Arcadia of meat pies and criminals in striped tops, masks and swag bags being collared by good lads. Wesley could feel his own eyelids growing heavy too. He looked up the street: Dumas and Halles were deep in the coffee queue talking to another man, one of the backup team covering the rear of the building. He should probably get out there and join them. Get some air. Wake up a bit.