Authors: Kate Kray
When they finally arrived, Johnny was waiting at table No 12, seated in the inmate’s chair, the brown one. He looked fit and well, Eddie thought, dressed in the usual prison uniform of sweatshirt, jeans, and trainers.
Hate-’em-all smiled, noticing the excitement shared by the brothers. The business that they had come to discuss – ‘the Panama deal’, as they called it – had taken months of meticulous planning.
‘I’m all ears,’ Johnny said, leaning forward, with a thin smile on his face.
Eddie, especially, was almost beside himself. Conscious of the cameras and the lip-reading skills of the prison guards, he leaned over so he was within an inch of his brother. ‘The doors for the extension have arrived!’ he said, in a hoarse whisper.
Johnny’s eyes widened. ‘That was quick… those boys don’t muck about.’
‘This is the start of something big,’ Hate-’em-all said, as the brothers took sips of stewed tea from their Styrofoam cups.
‘Yeah. Very big,’ said Johnny, greedily unwrapping a Genoa cake and taking a large bite.
Over the course of a few visits, months before, Eddie and Johnny had come up with a sophisticated plan – ‘the plan of plans’ – involving their contacts in South America.
Eddie had taken a ‘holiday’ to Panama, posing as a tourist, taking his new secretary, Sharon, with him. He would have preferred, in fact, to have taken one of his boyfriends but, for a trip that sensitive, he didn’t want to risk attracting any attention. Besides, Sharon has been really keen to come with him – it seemed like she had a real soft spot for hard men like him.
So Eddie and Sharon found themselves at Panama’s Tocumen International – which Sharon later described as ‘the smallest, most unassuming airport outside of an Indiana Jones movie’.
A solitary baggage handler pointed them in the direction of the taxi. Eddie slipped on his Ray-Bans and marched over to the exit, his ox-blood loafers slapping against the tile floor. Sharon clicked along behind him in her red, five-inch heels. With her low-cut top and white mini skirt she drew some glances from the line of waiting drivers, sitting in the sun sharing cigarettes and stories.
Climbing into the first taxi in the line, Eddie shouted ‘Hotel Panama’ to the driver, and they were off. They made their way towards Panama City, and saw the looming multitude of residential and corporate high-rises. Eddie was no stranger to these shores, which became self-evident when he was greeted enthusiastically by the hotel porters. They were there, as Eddie constantly reminded Sharon, for business, so after a quite bite to eat, they went straight upstairs to bed. Eddie had been a surprised at Sharon’s insistence that they have separate rooms… but then women were always a bit of a mystery to him.
‘I don’t care where you sleep,’ he had told her. ‘Suit yourself.’
They were up at the crack of dawn. After a hurried breakfast, Eddie led Sharon through the narrow streets of Panama City. Sharon, who had said that she never been out of Europe before, was especially taken by the Kuna Indian women, and their traditional, brightly-coloured ‘socks’, worn from the ankles up to their calves, with strands of tiny red and orange beads forming traditional geometric designs. Every time they passed, in their dark blue and yellow skirts and peasant style blouses, decorated across the front and back with fabric paintings, she would pull out her camera… which Eddie was finding increasingly annoying.
More as a means of control, rather than affection, Eddie eventually took Sharon’s hand and led her deeper into the back streets. He was, she noticed, taking an unusual interest in the Indian woodcarvings.
‘Come on, Ed,’ she moaned, ‘this is so
boring
. Let’s get on with your deal, then we can relax.’
But this was one meeting that Eddie would not be accompanied to. No matter how many times Sharon said that she’d be scared to be on her own, he insisted that he was going on alone. Eventually, she gave in. Eddie pulled out a thick wad of dollar bills from his pocket, peeled off ten fifties, and told her to go and buy some souvenirs for her friends back home. He watched her leave.
Thank Christ for that, some peace and quiet
. She might have been a friendly face around the office, someone he enjoyed flirting with, but he was finding that being with her 24/7 was getting on his nerves.
Navigating the winding back streets in a low-income neighbourhood, Eddie made his way to a small local bar that smelt of stale cigarettes and cheap Seco. His contact, a stern-faced native, was there already, waiting to escort him to the warehouse. They shook hands, and the contact immediately led Eddie to an ancient, battered hatchback parked haphazardly nearby.
Driving further away from the tourist area, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the government housing and squatter slums, they finally pulled up outside a grimy warehouse. Once inside, Eddie was totally mesmerised by the dangerous-looking men, immersed in their work… impregnating sheets of plywood with liquid cocaine.
The plywood would then be incorporated into elaborate doors, decorated with carvings of green parrots – and sent overseas. It was an ingenious system, and Eddie was keen to try it out.
Eddie ordered and paid for the UK delivery of 12 of these cocaine-laced doors, for the equivalent of just over £3,000 each.
Bargain
, Eddie thought, as they closed the deal with a handshake.
‘You wouldn’t Adam and Eve it!’ Eddie laughed, almost choking on a mouthful of cherry cake. ‘When the doors were delivered by TNT, Sylvia was clobbered for eight hundred quid importation tax! She only paid it with her Visa card. She had the right hump, and told the delivery driver to load them in the garage. She hadn’t got a Scooby! I told her that we were refurbishing a gaff in Bayswater, the dozy twonk!’
Eddie told Johnny how, once the doors had arrived, he had them picked up from his home in St John’s Wood by a hired white Transit van, and taken to the arches under London Bridge. Plastic sheeting was used to create a quarantine area, and four South American associates, wearing white decorator’s suits and face masks to protect against the toxic fumes, started to extract the cocaine.
In Central America this was all done in the open air, but in the middle of London, that just wasn’t an option. The doors were split into three-foot lengths for easy handling, then the surface rasped and grated into a pile of shavings. The fine shavings were then placed into 45-gallon drums containing industrial solvent, and heated to separate the wood from the cocaine. Once dry, they would be left with approximately 17.2 kilos of pure cocaine, in powder form. And once this was cut with other substances, and tripled in weight to around 52 kilos, it would be worth more that £1.5 million on the street.
Johnny, Eddie and Hate-’em-all-Harry simultaneously leaned back on their chairs, their chests puffed with pride, knowing smiles plastered across their faces.
A burly prison guard stood up, and called, ‘End your visits please.’
As Hate-’em-all and Eddie got up to leave, Eddie winked at Johnny.
‘You never know, Johnny,’ said Eddie, pulling down his cuffs. ‘As Del Boy says, “a year from now, we could be millionaires”.’
S
tella Evans was a director with a vision. Although Rosie might not have had the experience of most of the other actors who had been cast in
My Fair Lady
, one thing she did know was that it was unusual to film entirely on location. That said, the magnificent Edwardian house on Berkley Square, where the cast and crew had all met for lunch, was so enormous that it almost looked as if it had been designed as a film set. Rosie had already seen pictures of it, and read about it in the publicity hand-outs, but the scale and splendour of the place was so thrilling that it made her swell with pride to see it. The set designers and dressers had evidently been hard at work, as many of the rooms were completed, ready for filming to commence. Elsie, the publicist, was dashing around directing everyone to the kitchen where caterers had an impressive array of refreshments waiting.
As everyone milled around, sipping tea and munching triangle sandwiches, Rosie wandered thought the maze of rooms with Thomas R Williams, who, it emerged, was also seeing the location for the first time. Rosie was becoming rather fond of Tom, as he had insisted she called him. Despite being one of England’s most established actors, he was completely approachable and, as anyone who had seen him on television or at the cinema would expect, immensely charming.
‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’ she murmured, as they strolled around the drawing room, lined with panelled walls and tall bookcases, crammed with gold-bound first editions.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Tom replied, genuinely awe-struck, adding, ‘how are you feeling about tomorrow?’ as they sat down on a buttoned Chesterfield sofa.
After some consideration, Rosie replied, ‘I think I’m ready to get started. How about you?’
‘Same,’ he smiled. With his thin pale face and fine black hair, he really was incredibly handsome. ‘If there’s time later, I’m happy to quickly run through our lines.’
‘I’d love to, thank you,’ said Rosie, touched by his offer.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Elsie, clapping her hands together as she flew into the room. ‘Here you are.’
Tom gave an enigmatical raise of one eyebrow.
‘We are about to tour the house, are you coming?’
Tom stood up, offered Rosie his arm, and they gracefully stepped into the hall to join the rest of the actors and key members of the crew.
After the final briefing was over, Rosie was heading towards her chauffeured ride home when the security barriers rose up. A sleek, black Range Rover drove in, and pulled up alongside her. Rosie smiled as the smoked glass window on the driver’s side smoothly rolled down; she already knew who it was.
‘Can I give you a lift home?’ Andrew Brook-Fields offered.
‘Great timing,’ said Rosie, and tugged open the passenger door.
On the journey home, Andrew listened with amused interest as Rosie rattled on about the Berkley Square location. It wasn’t until they pulled into Hewitt Way that she realised that she had talked so much that she had hardly paused for breath. Feeling her cheeks start to burn, she turned and looked at Andrew. As he pulled up the handbrake, his eyes focused on Rosie. They were swimming with an intensity that she couldn’t fathom. Her face flushed beet red as her stomach did a violent flip, and as her gaze wandered to his lips, she actually began to feel dizzy. The tension was finally broken by Andrew, leaning forward and pecking Rosie on the cheek. His lips felt warm and spongy.
‘Good luck for tomorrow,’ he whispered gently.
‘Thank you,’ mumbled Rosie.
‘You’ll be fantastic!’ he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.
Rosie smiled, slightly awkwardly, opened the door, and got out.
‘Let’s speak again in the week,’ said Andrew, as he started up the car. That night, too excited and nervous to sleep, Rosie lay in her room, reading and re-reading her lines. She eventually managed to close her eyes for a few hours, and awoke with the confidence that she had, at least, the lines for her first day completely down.
The following morning, at precisely seven o’clock, Rosie stepped onto the set. Evidently, the crew had all risen much earlier to make a six o’clock start, as the house and grounds were a hive of activity. Rosie followed an enthusiastic runner – a girl called Nicky in her mid-twenties who had frizzy hair and trendy glasses – through a double swing door, into a courtyard, where a brand-new Winnebago was parked behind the main house. This was the first job in which she had a designated trailer, and she was quite taken aback to find that it was so plush. It was equipped with a corner sofa, angled around a square, glass coffee-table, a small fridge, and a make-up table with a large mirror, surrounded by lights, underneath which were several large bouquets of flowers. A large plasma screen covered almost the entirety of one of the walls, and a hanging rail was fixed on the wall opposite, crammed with various costumes in protective, plastic jackets.
‘There’s coffee and tea in there,’ Nicky said, pointing to a pair of small flasks on a sideboard. ‘If you want a full breakfast, you can get that in the kitchens in the main house. That’s where the caterers are set up.’
‘And the loo?’ Rosie asked, faintly.
‘Oh, yeah. There’s one right through here,’ she informed her, pushing open a door that was partly obscured by the loaded clothes rail. ‘Shower, wash basin and WC, okay? Your personal dresser, and hair and makeup will be with you in a jiffy. I’ll leave you now to get ready, but I’ll be back to collect you for first call. Give me a shout if you need anything, okay?’
After Nicky had left, Rosie looked around her flashy trailer.
Wow!
. This is what she’d been waiting for, for years – it was her first step to becoming herself again. Her first step to becoming someone respectable. She carefully lay down her script on the coffee table. Thank goodness, she thought, that the first scene they were filming was just her and Tom. She already knew that she’d enjoy working with him, and so that really took the pressure off.
Rosie turned her attention to the huge bouquets of flowers by the mirror. She bent over them and her nostrils were at once filled with their heavy fragrance.
She examined the first bunch – a hand-tied, delicately scented freesia and nine, large-headed roses. Each stem had been expertly positioned, and the bunch had been tied with a pink ribbon. She opened the card – ‘Good luck, Mummy! Love you – Ruby, Aunt Madge and Dibble.’ Holding the flowers close, she inhaled a deep breath and smiled. The next bouquet was a fragrant and feminine arrangement of elegant Oriental lilies. The card read, ‘Go, girl. Lol, Stevie.’