To Catch A Storm (12 page)

After lunch on the beach. Her phone pinged and she grabbed it to read the mail that had just arrived. Oddly, now that she rarely got emails, they were exciting to receive. It was from her mother.

Hi Janet, thanks for sorting my flight ticket darling. Business class on British Airways... what a treat. Just let me know if I can give you something toward it. I do have money you know! I’ll see you at the airport on Friday. It’ll probably be 2 o’clock by the time I get through the customs. Do you want me to bring you anything out from the UK?
Your dad keeps asking why he can’t come out, but I’ve told him we’re having a girly weekend and he would be bored. Perhaps he can come out in a few months? It would be nice for him to see you if you are not planning on coming back to the UK this year.

See you Friday! Mum xxx

PS. Alex sends his love and he wants a trip too.
PPS. Can we go see flamenco?

She felt a warm glow inside at the thought of seeing her mum soon. If she was really honest with herself, she had been a little lonely. Apart from meeting and spending time with Tess, there was a slightly solemn loneliness. She picked her book up again and the bookmark fell out and blew off a few meters before she had chance to weigh it down. She grabbed it and took it out to have another read. She’d been doing odd bits of research about the Sea of Galilee and had thought she might be onto something. It turns out the Sea of Galilee still exists and there had been several reports of findings including a 6,000 year old burial site that was now underwater. Part of Christ’s cross was apparently found there. There were tons of news reports and articles on Google about this type of stuff. Could it be that they had part of this cross? If so, it would be worth a fortune to the right buyer or collector or museum. What was the film where they were hunting down the Holy Grail? Could have been one of the Indiana Jones films, but that was supposed to be worth a fortune, if it existed.

What did the letter refer to exactly? Once again she took her phone out and typed
Sea of Galilee
into Google. This time however she scrolled lower down through the results that showed up and one in particular jumped out at her:

‘The Storm on the Sea of Galilee’.

She clicked on the link which took her to a Wikipedia page and very quickly she read ‘
...biggest art theft in US history and remains unsolved’
. This looked a whole lot more interesting and it sparked a memory she’d forgotten all about. On the night she met Joseph, he made a joke about a stealing a piece of art. He joked that he’d stolen a painting worth millions of pounds then she’d seen the article about the stolen modern art painting. A Rothko she seemed to remember. Could this person who wrote the letter - MPW - be part of Joseph’s gang? No, he’d said he couldn’t meet him in person. It seemed that MPW had paid Joseph the money for something. Perhaps for stealing the Rothko and now MPW had the whereabouts of another piece of art that he wanted Joseph to steal. It seemed like a piece of a puzzle might have clicked in.

. . .

“She’s in Barcelona.” Charlie said over the phone to Carl.

“Fucking bitch, really? How do you know?” Carl asked sounding anxious. “Do you have an address?”

“No, not yet. I just know she’s there.”

“Come round.” and with that, Carl hung up.

Following Janet’s escape with their hard earned cash, Carl and his cohorts had searched tirelessly for her. Once they tracked down the phone to a semi detached house in Brighton owned by a self employed couple, they knew the trail had gone cold. They decided to spend a night in a low grade hotel in Brighton during which they could look at their options for getting the cash back. There seemed to be fewer and fewer options. Things got very heated. The ‘conversation’ ended with a scuffle which left Jim with a broken nose from Dan. Jim left shortly after followed by Kyle. For them the trail was dead, they accepted that they had been outdone by this woman. Kyle’s advice to the group was ‘know when you’re beaten’. That advice only strengthened Carl’s resolve to get that ‘fucking woman and
their
cash’.

Carl asked Charlie to track her down using his knowledge and experience of the internet. He promised him the whole of Kyle’s share of the money if he managed it. They would then share Jim’s. So Charlie had started the process of tracking Janet down. He had the best knowledge of her, but even with his tech skills, the trail really had gone cold. He didn’t know enough about her to dig sufficiently. His understanding was that she would be interrogated once he’d spiked her, otherwise, he would have asked more questions in the short time he spent drinking with her. As it turned out, she was no use once she came around and then they fucked up and allowed her to escape like a set of idiots.

He knew Joseph had been found the week after Janet had fled Edinburgh. There had been an investigation into his death and possible murder led by Lothian and Borders Police. Charlie had been hopeful that some clue would come out that would help him to track Janet down. There was CCTV footage of Joseph and Janet arriving at the hotel, entering the restaurant and getting into the lift. It was possible to see her face, but it was just not clear enough. The footage was not up close enough and consequently when they zoomed in, it became too grainy. If it had made national news, then perhaps someone in London might have recognised Janet and come forward. For those who knew her well, they might have put together that she had been in Scotland at that time and that it looked sort of like Janet. Even then, her friends would have called her first rather than call the police. However, it barely made an impact south of the Scottish border. An autopsy was carried out on Joseph’s body which found that he died of acute opiate intoxication resulting in sudden cardiac death. When their leads to his
date
for the night also dried up, they concluded he probably died during sex and his girlfriend or date had panicked and fled the scene. The police appealed to her to come forward for help and therapy to get over her ordeal.

Carl’s house was huge (but ugly Charlie thought). When he arrived, Carl showed him into what he referred to as his den, it was downstairs and was the size of a large lounge. It had an extremely large corner sofa and an even more extreme TV on the wall. Dan was there, slumped on the sofa. He was living with Carl at the moment, so Charlie was expecting this. He could hear dogs barking somewhere in the house and Carl shouted ‘ZIP IT YOU STUPID MUTS!’ And they promptly zipped it. Impressive Charlie thought to himself.

“Ok, so I’m ninety nine percent sure she’s in Barcelona, but I want to do some more checking before I fully confirm it.”
“Ok, that’s cool. So how did you track her down?” Dan asked.

“Well we only had a few key bits of information, her first name, age, profession and where she lived. But we also knew she had been on some type of conference in Edinburgh and that’s what took her there. I tried to get her full name from the conference organisers, but ‘cos I was not a delegate, they wouldn’t give me the information. But I found her anyway on the delegate list on the website along with the bank she worked for.
Turns out her surname is this odd Ukrainian name that’s pretty rare. Karpenko. Janet Karpenko.
”

“Can you get to the point Charlie?” Dan said, an edge in his voice, “How did you find her?”

“Ok, stay with me. Keep calm. So I remember on the night in the bar she showed me a funny video on her phone that was on her facebook page. Her cover photo, the bit at the top, was of Barcelona. I didn’t realise it at the time but I saw a picture recently of all this crazy wavy architecture and it’s only in Barcelona. Some old dude called Gaudi, from like the sixties or seventies or maybe earlier. So then I started looking for a British woman called Janet in Barcelona, but I still couldn’t find anything. I think she basically deleted her Facebook profile and all her other social networks. Twitter and what have you.” Charlie continued, giving them far too much detail. “So then I started looking for a woman called Janet Karpenko who worked in consumer banking and eventually, I found her on her company website along with a photo. So then I find her mum in London. There’s not many, even in a city of ten million. There were fifteen. Took me a few days, but I managed to find the contact details for all of them. Then I called them all. I rang each and asked to speak to Janet. And Bingo! the last one I got through to told me her daughter Janet was currently living in Barcelona. So, then I managed to hack her. Turns out her mother is called Yana Karpenko. Came here in the sixties. Janet has been emailing her letting her know how lovely it is in Barcelona. Apparently, she’s house sitting out there. No doubt spending all our cash.”

“Brilliant Charlie! But did you get her address?” Dan asked with an ironic edge.

“No not yet... But”

“Well can’t you email as her mother and ask for the address?” Dan interjected once again.

“Let me finish man... Her mother is going out to see her in a few days. I’m planning to follow her out there. I’ve even got her flight time and number.”

Carl went behind a large, dark wood desk and unlocked a low drawer and counted out some cash, then held out a wad toward Charlie. “Here’s some cash for a flight and hotel. Get out there and get her located?” Carl asked. “Then let us know and we’ll come out. It’ll probably get messy. I don’t just want the cash back. I want to make her pay. She thinks she’s so fucking clever but she won’t when I’m cutting her thieving fingers off. She’s messed with the wrong guy with me.”

Charlie just nodded. Feeling a little shocked and queasy at the thought. He really wasn’t into all the violence and needed to get out of this world sooner rather than later. Bloody thugs.

There looked to be about a grand to Charlie. It went into his back pocket. Charlie knew Carl gave him cash as a way of staying in control. He wanted to play the big boss. That was fine, he could do that. Charlie actually had plenty of money himself that he could use. Carl didn’t know that he earned upwards of £700 per day as an IT security consultant. But hey if someone wants to give you a grand, you take it. Right?
Once Carl had shown Charlie out, he went back down to the den.

“What do you think? Good news eh?” he asked Dan.

“Who knows, hopefully it’s not a wild goose chase like Brighton. That was a fucking dog’s dinner. I think we underestimated that woman all along and look where it’s got us. Hopefully, this isn’t another false trail. We need that money.” Dan’s voice was raised.

“I know babe, I know.” Carl said placing his huge arms around Dan’s boyish frame. He kissed him gently on the forehead.

“We still gonna ditch him when we get the money right?” Dan asked hopefully.

“Yes, we’re not sharing the cash.” Carl said shaking his head gently. “We’ve done the most work for it. We’re gonna move to somewhere warm and have an amazing life together.” Carl kissed Dan passionately on the lips.

Twelve years earlier Carl had made one simple mistake that led him to meet Dan in prison. Five full weeks after a robbery in Cardiff, he had been picked up by Police in Leeds. He had thought he was home and dry and enjoying the spoils of his riches. He was speeding. Not even going crazy, just 12 miles per hour over the speed limit and got stopped by an unmarked police car on the M62. Driving the five year old Bee Em 750i L (fully loaded) he’d bought a few weeks before. His Sat Nav’ was guiding him back to his new city centre apartment he’d just moved into with his, then girlfriend, Kirsty. The young police officer that came to his window was very good, he clearly clocked his face straight away but gave away nothing. Spoke very calmly to Carl about the speed he was going and asked the usual sort of stuff - was he aware of the speed limit, was he the registered keeper of the car, etc, etc. He even told Carl he wouldn’t keep him long before returning to his unmarked police car.

As he went back to his car to do some ‘checks on the car and get the paperwork’, he was straight onto the radio. As Carl daydreamed about his upcoming holiday to the Maldives with Kirsty and whether or not to buy her a new car (was three months in too soon to buy your girlfriend an open top sports car?) two more unmarked police cars, this time with armed officers were flying up the M62 behind him.

Carl was still thinking he was home and dry, waiting for a ticket and a slapped wrist. Little did he know, even in Leeds he was clearly a big target for them, they blocked him from behind first and by the time he was blocked at the side by another unmarked car in the slow lane, he was in the sights of two semi automatics. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the unmarked police car which was stopped at an angle in the slow lane that caused the fatal pile up, but the people on the other side looking over to see what was happening. One driver turned his head briefly to sneak a quick nosey, unaware the driver in front had slowed for a sly look too. As he turned his attention back and saw the car he was going to hit, the driver behind swerved at the last minute and fish tailed into another two cars then back across the three lanes and into the path of an articulated car transporter. The transporter jack knifed and shed a car from its top deck which wound its way onto the top of a green Ford Fiesta. It stopped it in its tracks and almost flattened it. The young couple inside were crushed to death. Blissfully unaware of what was about to hit them. They died instantly. Another ten were seriously injured.

He didn’t see Kirsty again. She didn’t know about Carl’s chequered past, she thought he was a bit of a wheeler dealer, cars and what have you, but she certainly didn’t know he was an armed robber. He’d take Kirsty back in a blink if he ever got the chance, but he was a realist and knew that was never going to happen. She was a catch, blond with the most sparkling blue, green eyes you’d ever seen. She’d be with someone else now, settled with a family no doubt. She had her own business as a physiotherapist. He could never quite imagine what she would have said, had he been able to get hold of her after the arrest. He couldn’t waste his one call in the police station on her, he had to get his solicitor. There were chances to get in touch with her after that, but it just didn’t happen. Probably best all round to be honest. He’d been punching way above his station with Kirsty as it was. She was pretty, middle class and he was. . . well he wasn’t really sure what class he was from, but he was pretty certain it wasn’t the same as hers.