Above and Beyond

Chapter 17

  The Shamrock Bar was a very small, very expensive and extremely discrete ‘Gay Bar’, and as I walked in two days later, with David and Charlie now back at their ‘day jobs’, well not Charlie – he was still a ghost, the place fell deathly quiet, obviously my fame had precedeth me, or at least my image on the telly.

  ‘Good evening’ I said, to know-one in particular, and walked over to Shaun and Franklin, they were back to using their Christian names but not their surnames, and politely asked them if I may join them, and the look of confusion on their faces was complete.

  Shaun had not only recognised me but also his new ‘friend to be’ AKA David behind me, and now guessed correctly his profession, ‘Err, yes of course’ he said, and I sat down opposite them as David and Charlie ‘assumed their positions’, and not a customer in the establishment had yet to speak a word, or even take a breath for that matter, since I had entered.

  Placing my forearms on the table in front of me, I intertwined my fingers and looking squarely at Shaun I said – ‘Let’s get straight to the point shall we, can I marry your wife?’, and if I had given them a million guesses each, I doubt if either of them would have come up with that opener, and it totally ruined his ‘street cred’ in the bar.

  I took the absence of a reply as good news, they were both probably in shock, so I suggested that it might be more prudent to retire to a quieter place, ‘perhaps your offices?’, and continue our conversation away from prying eyes and ears: they both nodded benignly, and they almost had to be led by the hand (your job David, Charlie would have thought) as we made our way to them. Using the literature that Shaun had most helpfully provided I now knew that they had captured a ‘niche’ market which combined both of their skill sets. After an ‘initial investment’ which Itza easily tracked down to a ‘Certified Cheque’ they had combined their talents and not only created, but then kept the market, giving them a ‘very impressive capital turnover’ Itza said. Despite what David and Charlie’s opinions were, they had set up business in a newly opened, superbly situated, award winning architecturally designed building – which they rented for an eye wateringly annual sum, easily the highest ‘per square meter’ rental on the whole Island, and they had the whole floor. Finally, after we had all seated ourselves comfortably around their huge glass table in the conference room, the sight of familiar surrounding started to sink in and they both slowly ‘engaged brain’ again.

  ‘Are we going to prison’ Franklin asked.

  ‘Does Suzanna know I’m alive’ Shaun asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet’ I said in answer to the first question, not only to Franklin, but to Shaun as well, ‘it depends on many things, and it won’t help your case if you try and lie your way out of your situation, we know too much. Come clean with everything, and I mean everything, and we might just all end up happy’, and to Shaun in particular I said ‘no, but she now has her doubts, but nothing more than that at the moment, both your wives have asked to be kept in the dark until something concrete comes up.

  ‘So you going to tell them now?’ they both said in unison.

  ‘That really depends on what transpires here, and now’, and we all settled in for a long night, although I for one was not bothered by that prospect, my body clock was still on UK +1 time.

  ‘How did you find us, we thought we had covered our tracks pretty good?’ Shaun asked us.

  ‘Not good enough’ I said, and started with the thing that started the ball rolling, the groceries, ‘if you hadn’t been spotted in the supermarket buying them, then the police would have signed off on the investigation and Sue and Charlotte could have gone to the Coroner and asked him to perform an inquest, (who would have then had to ask the Secretary of State for permission to ‘carry out an inquest without a body’, and once they had his report they could then make an application to the courts for a ‘court order’ compelling the registrar to issue a death certificate ‘in the absence of a body and a doctor’s medical death certificate’) - it would have been a long winded and complicated procedure, but at least there would have been ‘a light at the end of the tunnel’ and they could have got on with their lives acordingly.

  They were both mortified that a little thing like going into a supermarket could result in ‘you being here today’. ‘We only went in for a couple of things, we already had loads of tins and dried stuff in the van, but when we saw all the things that we would miss on the trip we sort of ‘got carried away’ and had a silly half hour, we were so ‘up tight’ with everything that was going on, that we just needed to unwind a little, and to cap it all, on the way back to the Halcyon we thought we might get spotted taking the bags on board and had a ‘reality check’ and dumped them beside a wheelie bin, perhaps some needy person would find them’.

  Then we explained about the unexplained items on the re-fit that started to cast doubt on their disappearance, then the outboard mounting, the sail cover, Old Tom fiddling their invoice and the mast transport company.

  ‘But what pointed you to here? Shaun asked.

  ‘Two things, when you answered a quiz question on TV about the Maldives currency, if you hadn’t insulted Whiskies intelligence then it might have slipped by Sue, and you made a note on the notepad beside your phone, she was getting paranoid and ‘rubbed’ it and came up with +960’.

  ‘How on earth did she remember that number for all that time, it could have been in connection with anything’?

  ‘One, you were secretive, and two her first cars registration number was SUE 960’.

  ‘I remember that one’ he said ‘it was pink I think, and ……’ but nobody was listening.

  ‘At that time it was all circumstantial but it was still compelling, and our gut instincts told us all that you were not dead, so we all sat down and asked ourselves the same question ‘how would we go about it if we were in your shoes, and we just followed out instincts’, and then I told them the string of events that led David and Charlie here, finishing with, ‘you might still have gotten away with it if you hadn’t changed Halcyons name back, we still didn’t have any solid proof that you were here, and David and Charlie would have only given the Maldives a little while, then they would have been off to the next best place.

  ‘We fell in love on the Halcyon, and both loved the name, this far from home we didn’t think it would matter’: TMI.

  ‘Why do you think so many white collar criminals get caught? I asked, and received a matching pair of blank looks, ‘because they think that they are cleverer than the Police that are chasing them (which they usually are) so they will never get caught, and despite their higher I.Q’s they end up making very stupid and very basic mistakes, that no self-respecting dumb criminal (or police series fan) would ever make’.

  ‘I think you have just insulted us’ Franklin said in a resigned voice, ‘but I think we deserve it’.

  ‘When did you finally realise that we were definitely alive’ Franklin continued (Shaun was obviously the silent ‘partner’)’

  ‘We got the definitive proof because you had decked Wilfred’ David said.

  ‘That raving poofter deserved it’ he almost shouted’.

  ‘Kettle calling the pot black’ David thought, and the rest of us just nodded in agreement.

  Once we had answered their questions, including how their families were coping (I skipped the bits about Arthur, and Sue’s bath towel), I needed to fill in our gaps, after again explaining the consequences of lying or prevaricating. It finally dawned on them that they might not come out of this covered in doggy doo doo, so we ordered in Pizza’s and I started with the biggy ‘where did the money come from’. With Itza’s help we could now make a fairly educated guess, but it would be nice to see if my threats had had the desired effect.

  ‘I might as well tell you the whole story’ Franklin said, and as you might have already guessed we fell in love when we started boating together, Shaun had been caught by Suzanna once before, and that had shaken him up more than being ‘outed’, so h
e was paranoid about anyone seeing us’, I’d had a few experiences at University so I wasn’t too hard to ‘catch’ and we started to just have a nice time, then we started day dreaming about ‘what if’, you know what if we could run away and live together, what if we won the lottery etc., then things just sort of fell into place. First, in my capacity as a mere Bank Manager I caught a con man red headedly trying to get some money out of a dead account, you know the type of account that has had no transactions in it for years, but had loads of cash just sitting there. I had him fair and square, but with not a lot of solid evidence (although he didn’t realize it), so I held off having him prosecuted, but on the clear understanding that this ‘very nice gentleman’ was now mine, and then had a word with Shaun, who quickly found out that the dead accounts were very well protected against illegal withdrawals – at a local level – then I was promoted.

  It was a little while after the financial crash of 2008, and heads were starting to roll left, right and centre, so when I was summoned by ‘the head’ head office, I thought that I was for the push as well, but no - I was being promoted – big time, as several layers of my superiors had disappeared ‘almost overnight’, I think someone on high must have fancied me, he joked (‘most likely’ I thought), but during my ‘induction’ I was given the wrong security portfolio, it was obviously meant for someone way, way higher than me. Remembering my ‘very nice gentleman’, on impulse I copied it. It was photocopier proof, but not proof against my latest gadget, an iPhone 3G smart phone. It was my birthday a few days before and Shaun, the big sweetie, had camped out all night to get me one, when Apple released them the previous week. The 3G had the new built in camera, and after a visit to the toilet I returned the portfolio, and they crapped themselves big time.

  ‘We will all loose our jobs’ they moaned, but I magnanimously agreed not to mention it ‘this time’, and of course they didn’t either.

  With the portfolio’s help Shaun wrote a programme that enabled me to scour every dead file in every bank within the group, and now knowing the ‘trigger’ amounts that would signal an automatic warning, it was easy to arrange for Certified Checks to be issued, and with all the passwords at my disposal ‘we are ‘flame proof’, no one (including Itza) can trace us’ he said, almost proudly.

  Itza had made a tentative connection with the dead accounts and Certified Cheques, but it was nice to fill in those blanks.

  ‘Now that we had unlimited funds at our disposal we started to think seriously about our future, and one night we did a ‘what if’ search for ‘which countries do not have extradition treaties with the UK’ on line (‘the same one as us’ I thought) and spotted the Maldives, we had both loved it, both our wives hated it, and after a lot of research (‘including what currency’ I though) we plumbed for it, it is perfect’.

  ‘After Shaun withdrew the first load of money out we were committed, and started to make serious plans, Shaun created programmes for everything, even Halcyons second re-fit.’

  ‘I know’ I interrupted, ‘I’ve seen the printout’, and he just shook his head, ‘and everything went smoothly, or so we thought’.

  We researched The Maldives immigration policy and realised that it could create a problem if we just arrived by plane (you and us both we all thought) they needed all sorts of things, so we thought ‘let’s arrive by sea’, we both love the Halcyon and we could have a lazy sail here, after all Folkboats are sailing around the world all the time, that’s why we had that bulky engine removed (‘I know that to’ I thought) and we could just keep extending our stay until the authorities realised that we were really nice people that could contribute to their economy, by the way our Company, after the initial set up costs of course, is 100% legal. Initially it was just to get us into the country permanently but we are now really enjoying working together’.

  ‘Duly noted’ I thought.

  ‘What were those secret compartments for’ Charlie asked, it had puzzled us all for some time, forged passports and cash didn’t take up that much room, and then we got an answer that we didn’t expect.

  ‘For the machine guns’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘we thought we would have to sail past Somalia, they have pirates you know.’

  ‘Yes I know’ I said ‘it was indirectly through them that I met Sue’.

  ‘You know that she has a photograph of you hidden away in her underwear draw, you dressed in your flak jacket and tin helmet and all’ Shaun interjected.

  ‘Please, it was a very expensive Kevlar one, and what were you doing in her underwear draw anyway’? I thought, and then I thought ‘please God please erase that thought from my thoughts - forever’.

  Franklin blithely continued on, ‘we had a customer at my old branch, he was a thug and made no bones about it, so I searched his address and we sat outside his house until he went to his pub, it took us three evenings of watching but we passed the time quite nicely,’ (EEEW we all thought) and then Shaun, he was so very brave, went in to try and talk to him, and he turned out really nice. He dropped his phone on the floor just as Shaun entered and it fell apart, but Shaun quickly fixed it for him, and before long they were talking about guns and forged passports’ (‘as one does with a total stranger in a pub’ I, and undoubtedly David and Charlie thought). He finally got us two sets of ‘original’ passports, two AK47’s and a long sniper thingy, with loads of magazines and boxes of bullets, more than we could ever get into the compartments, but I think we paid over the odds for them as he threw in a Glock 20 (it was almost new he said, it had only been used once) and two flak jackets for free, but they were only green, not like your nice blue one, and one even had a hole in it’.

  ‘Christ’ I thought ‘they would clash terribly with your Bermuda shorts’.

  ‘Sh*t’ David and Charlie though, ‘they could start a small war’, followed by ‘perhaps a SWAT team or two will be paying your friendly neighbourhood arms dealer a visit sometime soon.’

  ‘But we didn’t need them, when we got to the entrance to the Suez Canal we found a half empty cargo ship that could lift Halcyon on board and take us to Singapore. We told the Captain that if we were attacked we would scare them off for him, but I don’t think he believed us because it took him two days to stop laughing (I wonder why?????). Just before we arrived here we threw them all over the side, although we did have some fun with them first,’ (pity you didn’t shoot yourselves first’ Charlie though, he was starting to have a major ‘sense of humour’ failure).

  Just as the sun started putting in an appearance Shaun finally plucked up enough courage to ask me about Sue and the ‘marriage thing’ and I told him a little of the expurgated version, and he seems genuinely upset at the trouble he had caused, and pleased for her, ‘We thought that we had thought of everything,’ he said, ‘and I thought she would be glad to see the back of me’.

  ‘She was’ I almost snapped. I was now getting tired, my body clock was switching to Maldivian time and I was ready for a McMuffin and then bed, which was waiting for me at the airport, ready to start its engines, but instead I diplomatically said ‘I don’t know about her but I will be, the pair of you have almost destroyed the lives of two lovely ladies, and you did it without giving it a second thought, just so that you can cavort around here in the sun,’ and I stood and indicated to David and Charlie to start collecting up all our bits and pieces, and then started to panic, ‘do they have a Ronald McDonald in the Maldives?’

  They both looked at me in amazement, ‘but what are you going to do with us?’ Franklin asked.

  ‘Nothing, YET’. ‘I want to get some sleep, have a think about it all, talk to some people and then make a decision, and only then, unlike the pair of you, I or someone representing me will be back - just get on with your lives for the time being and await my decision’.

  ‘Will you be telling Suzanna and Charlotte?’ Shaun asked.

  ‘Most likely, but it really depends on if they ‘want’ to know, at the moment they have open minds on whether you died at sea
, perhaps they would like to keep it that way’, and I turned to head for the door, but then I remembered something ‘do you still have your real passports?’

  ‘Yes, they are in a box in the company safe, in the main office, it’s safer than at home’, Franklin said (but not safer than a bank vault you dickheads’, although it would have only put off the inevitable for a few hours – I was now really ready for my bed)

  ‘Show me’ I said, and he led us to the safe. Opening it up he reached in and removed a large heavy box with a combination lock on it. Opening it he went to reach inside but David slammed it closed again, he had memorised the numbers and he picked up the box, ‘anything not relevant we will send back to you’ he said brusquely.

  ‘But it has all our ‘stuff in it’ Franklin pleaded.

  ‘Welcome to the real world’ David snarled.

  ‘You can’t leave us here like this ’Shaun whined ‘you’ve got to tell us what is going to happen to us, are we going to prison?’

  I had finally had enough of their self-centred whinging, and turning to them I said ‘now you know how your wives have felt for the last three years, they have been in a prison of sorts, not knowing where you were, and not able to get on with their lives’. ‘If it was solely up to me I would throw you in one myself, and throw away the key, but I suspect that you may just enjoy it in there’.

  As I disappeared through the door Shaun, true to form burst into tears and David, tired and drained just looked at him with total disgust on his face, and Charlie looked at David’s face and knew that all was well with their little world.

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