Authors: Warren Slingsby
He sat unblinking. Examining particularly the sides of the house for the stranger to come back out. The stranger would surely figure out he was on the wrong street or at the wrong house. There was no movement for half an hour. The next movement was the garage door started to lift. Charlie found he was holding his breath and had to consciously tell himself to breathe. This was not the guy, it was Janet and her mum. They were on the move again. He sat low in the seat as if sleeping. His baseball cap pulled low so there was no gap between it and his sunglasses. He watched in his driver’s side door mirror for them to pass. This was a silly life for an IT bloke he thought, but it beat tapping keys and it hopefully would mean that he’d get his hands back on the cash that was rightfully his. Janet’s car backed out with the roof down. Her mum in the passenger seat with a scarf around her hair. She reversed down the drive and slightly up the hill. He watched as she set off toward him, but kept his eye on the house. The garage door started to come back down. Ten seconds later, Janet’s Porsche drove past slowly with its now familiar burbling exhaust note. He watched the house for a moment longer. When the garage door was almost fully shut, the stranger sneaked back around and rolled under the door. WTF? What did he do now? What if the money was in the house? He was supposed to be watching her, but there was a stranger in her house.
He had to make a call. She would most likely not be taking the money with her. If she’d stashed it somewhere, it would be done by now. If it was just in the house, then he had to stick around to see if this guy was trying to steal it. He got out the car and walked slowly up the road, trying as hard as he could to look like he fitted in. At least he had a tan and wore shorts. He went down the side of the house and jumped over the wall onto the terrace. He stuck his head around and covered the glare with his hand so he could see in. No sign of him. He craned his neck around further to get a wider view but there was no movement. He panicked and wondered if he was sneaking out the garage door. Either way, that would probably be the way he would come back out. Charlie quickly tracked back down the side of the house to the garage side. He tiptoed past. It would probably look odd to neighbours, but he was beyond worrying about that now. The garage door was closed down still. He wandered back down to his car and got back in. He would have to wait it out in the car.
With this new development, Charlie began to think a little more about what was actually going to happen when Carl and Dan came. Strangely, he’d grown to be quite fond of Janet in this odd and detached way as he followed her around. He’d noticed he looked forward to seeing her face each day. It wasn’t surprising as they had seemed to have a spark when he ‘met’ her in Edinburgh.
It was going to be tough to hand this whole thing over to Carl. One hour passed and Charlie had to get out of the car, it was just too hot to keep sitting there without the air con on. He figured that the stranger would have made his exit by now if he was going to. Perhaps he was either waiting there for her to arrive back or he was just stuck. He took a walk down the street and found a grass verge under a palm tree where there was some mottled shade. Bliss. His phone pinged with a text. It was from Dan.
We are going to be delayed cos Carls
houseGot fuckin rubbed and someone
killed his dogs. hes distraut.
“Rubbed? Oh robbed. Fucking idiot.” Charlie wondered if Dan saw the irony in this occurrence but doubted that would be the case.
OK, keep me posted. Tell him sorry
from me. To hear about the dogs
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere my big, bald friend.” he said pulling out a long, stray piece of grass to chew on. He was sufficiently back from the street and out of the way to be able to watch cars heading up the street but they wouldn’t catch sight of him. He could also see the house, but there was still no movement around it.
He put his head back and shut his eyes for a moment to relax. He let out a long, heavy breath. He’d been holding it in again. It was coming up to midday and the locals didn’t do much around this time as it was just too hot. Charlie drifted off in the relative quiet. Aware of some insect noises; crickets or was it cicadas? They were loud but strangely restful, almost hypnotic. He blinked a few times and saw the palm leaves moving gently above him in the almost there breeze. He knew he was drifting off, but he was just too tired. He just needed a nap for twenty minutes.
He was back in Edinburgh and in a bar with Janet drinking and chatting. Having a fun time and they were enjoying each other’s company. They were quite drunk, both of them drinking refreshing white wine. Then they were in Janet’s hotel room on the bed and Charlie was kissing her mouth and she tasted amazing, like strawberries. She undid his fly and pushed her hand into the gap at the front of his boxer shorts. He wanted to have sex with her so much. She was just so beautiful. Everything about her, the way she tasted, smelled. He was undressing her and her body was beautifully curvy. He kissed her nipples and her stomach and then she pushed him further down. He was so hungry for her. There was a knock at the door and she got up and answered the door with a sheet around her. Her face all flustered, red and hot. She blew hair out of her eyes as a stranger came in and placed a tray of drinks on the table. Charlie was on the bed, aroused and embarrassed as the stranger walked back out; smirking. He shouldn’t be able to see Charlie naked like that. It was wrong. And then Janet was sipping the drink but it was an odd colour; like it had been tampered with. He wanted to tell her not to drink that drink as it was going to make her ill, but he couldn’t speak loud enough or she was too far away across the other side of the room. It was like he was being restrained. Held down and still by some invisible force.
“Estás bien?” An old lady in a heavy dark blue dress with a bag of shopping in each hand was talking to Charlie. He sat up. She momentarily put the bags down and was talking again and gesticulating up the road and down the road, but too fast for him to get what she was saying. Then he realised he’d been sleeping in a state of arousal and he really wished that she would go away, but she continued to talk to him. She kept pointing up to the sun and then down at him but he wasn’t getting any of it. He just held his hands out to his sides.
“Inglés, pardon.” he said to her looking confused to express how little he understood of what she was saying.
She shook her head and started to walk away but carried on talking as she had been, still gesturing toward the sky and back down but just to herself now.
Charlie laid back down and shut his eyes. Then checked his watch. 2:15. She would probably be another few hours if she was at the beach. He decided to have a wander back up to the house to see if he could see anything of the stranger. He gingerly peered around the kitchen window from the terrace. He was there looking through drawers. Shit, the balls of this guy. He felt violated on her behalf. Well he knew the guy was in the house still, all he could really do was keep an eye on things and be ready for when Janet and her mum got back.
He took himself back down the street to his spot under the palm tree. How could it be that he could feel protective toward her on the one hand and yet he was going to lead Carl to her who would probably torture her into giving up the cash? He was confused. This feeling was only going to get more and more intense as Carl and Dan’s arrival got closer. At that moment, he heard the familiar exhaust note of Janet’s Porsche coming up the street. He scooted slightly to the left so he was a little more hidden. She drove past with the top down and her mum in the passenger seat. Her mum was asleep with her head back against the headrest and her mouth slightly open. Up ahead, the garage door started to open. The brake lights came on and then they went off and then the door closed back down behind them. So, she, they were stuck in there with this stranger now. God, he hoped she would be okay. He sat tight in his spot and watched the house for any signs of movement. He waited until dusk. Windows started to glow faintly as lights were switched on. When the darkness offered sufficient cover, Charlie went around the side of the house to the spot where he could listen to them on the terrace. They were out there chatting. There was no sign of the stranger. He must have slipped out at some point unbeknown to Janet and her mum. And to Charlie.
Two hundred and twenty one days after
Janet needed to drop her mum off at the airport for 10am. After that, she had a little trip to take. She’d packed an overnight bag and thrown it in the back of the Porsche so she could take straight off. She’d considered flying, but then just thought how nice it would be to drive that length of the Cote d’Azur in an open top car and that seemed like the better option. She could take a stop off somewhere pretty along the way or maybe two. It was about a six hour drive. Normally, the thought of a six hour drive would fill her with dread, but she was looking forward this.
As they got in the car, Yana asked “Are you going off to Nice today then?” motioning to the bag in the back seat.
“Yes, I’m going to go after I drop you off.”
“Very nice. Who’s your friend there?” her mum asked raising her eyebrows subtly as if to suggest it may be a boy.
“No mum, it’s just an old friend from university.” she shook her head. “Honestly, stop it with the boys will you. You’re relentless.”
The goodbye at the airport was not sad as she’d thought it might be. She’d told her mum to come back and visit again in a few months. Her mum just seemed very happy to have had so much time with her daughter and to be honest, she was happy to have had four days with her mum. They’d reconnected on a more adult level, it was more of a friendship and less of a mum and daughter thing now. At passport control, she waved her mum off and her mum blew her a kiss which was very touching. She called out ‘See you soon!’ once more. Janet watched for a little longer as her mother headed to security taking out her tickets and passport from her wallet.
She stuck her phone on the passenger seat and pulled up directions. She’d got the phone connected to her bluetooth radio, so the directions came through her speakers.
“Keep right at the fork and follow signs for Barcelona/Ronda de Dalt/Tarragona/Lleida/Girona and merge onto Ronda de Dalt/B-20” It sounded a little funny when the well spoken Americanised lady’s voice spoke the Spanish road names. She seemed to almost trip over her words, but she’d just get them out. Janet forked right and immediately saw the signs to follow.
She was relishing this. She’d been a little bored over the last few weeks if she was honest with herself. She needed excitement and spontaneity in her life. She needed the high stakes and the uncertainty. The stuff that had been sucked out of her previous job until she became nothing more than a safe pair of hands moving money around for customers. But this little mission she’d set herself gave her a little of that high stakes thrill back. She didn’t quite know what this trip might bring, but she had a gut feeling that there was something in that message. And she felt she’d figured exactly what it was. She wasn’t telling herself that she was going to waltz onto that ship and walk away with a stolen masterpiece, but she could go and do a little digging around and see what she could see.
A little over an hour into her journey and she was approaching the border with France. A thought suddenly occurred to her. She pulled over to the side of the road. She leaned back and pulled her overnight bag onto the passenger seat. She rooted through frantically. Ragging some clothes out which she threw onto the back seat.
“Damn! You idiot!” She stuck the car into first and set off spinning the wheels and throwing sand and pebbles out from the tyres.
. . .
The cellar door pushed gingerly open. Reaper poked his ear to the gap and listened. They’d been gone for half an hour now. He’d heard most of their conversations for the last day and a bit. Nothing in any of those conversations led him to believe that either of these women had anything to do with this amount of money that had been scribbled on Carl’s desk. Was he missing something? From what he understood, she was house sitting for a friend, her mum was from London and was just out for the weekend. Janet was taking her back to the airport just now. There was some mention of a trip to Nice. If she did have anything to do with this two million odd quid, there was no talk of it. There was no talk of any money at all. There was no money in the house. There was very little of anything in the house, it was more like a bachelor pad than the house of a young woman. This was making him really annoyed. He’d come a very long way to find very fucking little.
Perhaps if he went through the house again, he’d find something of more interest. His search had been cut slightly short by them coming back previously. He needed to be more thorough. He went methodically through all the places where there may be information. Starting in the garage and ground floor, he would work upwards. Drawers. Cupboards. Shelves. Everything. Everywhere. Janet had been very, very careful. If she had a bank account, there was no information about it in this house. If she had a credit card, there was no paper work. There was nothing about anything in this house. It was like no one lived here. She was the invisible woman.
In most peoples’ houses, there was a place where bills and letters and statements were kept. Like a drawer or a desk. There were lots of drawers in this house, but mostly they were empty. He didn’t see anything like this. Once he got to the bedroom, he sat on her bed and once again, he looked through her bedside drawer. There were some creams and ointments and a watch. The watch looked expensive to him but it wasn’t a brand he’d ever heard of before. Nothing else. On top of the bedside cabinet was a book. She was reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He’d heard of it. He leafed through briefly fanning the pages in front of his warm face. Her bookmark was a letter. Finally a letter. But this wasn’t a letter from a bank or a rent statement or a utilities bill. This was a proper letter. That someone had hand written. It had been folded twice and was beginning to tear at the creased edges. There were several stains on the letter that had blotted the writing ink. These looked like water and coffee. It was scuffed and dirty and also had what looked like grease marks which had the effect of making the paper slightly opaque. The whole thing had the aroma of coconut as if she had been sunbathing and got oil on it. It was like an old pirate treasure map.
Dearest J,
I do apologise that I couldn’t come to meet you personally recently, but...
Now this was interesting. This was very interesting indeed. A letter from someone called MPW to someone called J (that must be Janet obviously). There were additional notes possibly made by Janet in a red pen around the blue ink and written all in CAPS. He got her iPad which was on the kitchen table and Googled the
Storm on the Sea of Galilee
and found the first result that Janet had found a few days ago. It was in purple rather than blue which suggested that the link had been visited before. He found this extremely interesting. After a little digging around, he summarised that something had happened prior to this letter, some sort of meeting or liaison. Then the letter seemed to suggest, reading between the lines, literally with the additional notes, that there was a stolen painting which was on a boat which was based in Nice. His heart was beating fast. He went back to the Wikipedia page about the painting and looked at the value of the painting. He went to her wardrobe and looked again. A bag that had been there was now gone. Was she on her way to Nice to find this painting? Who was this woman that she would do something like this?
He clicked on the history tab of her browser and viewed her full history. In the last few days, she had been doing a lot of research by the look of it. Looking at Nice in France and particularly the port, a boat called Still Waters and a man called Nicolay Zhestakova. She’d been reading through lots of news articles and Wikipedia pages about these topics. It looked liked Zhestakova owned this boat. She’d also been looking at the route from Barcelona to Nice. It was 662Km or 5 hours and 55 minutes driving. Was she planning to drive that? Surely not. You’d take a plane.
He made himself coffee and toast with honey. Then sat himself down at the kitchen table to think. It was taking a chance in case she came back but he’d hear the garage door going if she did. Though the more he thought about it, the more he knew she wasn’t coming back. At least not until she’d been on her little trip. Once he’d eaten, he took his coffee onto the terrace and sat for a second to feel the sun on his face.
He remembered she had a phone charger at the side of her bed before. He’d used it to charge his phone up. Now it was gone. She wouldn’t have taken that if she was just dropping her mum at the airport. She was taking a trip herself. Her mum was going back to London. Janet was going to Nice. He was going to have to move quickly. He was going to Nice. He’d never been before. He could fly there from Barcelona for about €80. Thankfully, this was on Carl.
. . .
Charlie was following at a safe distance in his Fiat Punto. The car blended into the mountainous background with its
dusty
grey paint work. His eyes trained on Janet’s blue Porsche. So much so, he was giving himself a headache with the concentration. This was similar to the headaches he sometimes got when he was coding websites. Staring at a screen for long periods of time. He started to wonder why he was doing this and why he didn’t just go back to his IT work. He was in demand. It paid well. Well it paid well until you compared it to the potential pay-off here. He didn’t really need this pay-off. He had a pretty big lump of savings banked. He had a nice car and a great flat in London. But it wasn’t enough. He’d always wanted bigger and better. When he was 14 at school and everyone had Adidas Superstar trainers at fifty quid a pop, he had to get Nike Air Max at a hundred. He had begged his dad for them. He’d sold his soul to get them. A full six months worth of cutting the grass (weekly), polishing the car (monthly) and a second paper round (mornings to add to his after school paper round). It was ingrained in him though. He was a natural born show off. The problem was this feeling had just grown as he had. Now his life wasn’t enough. His car wasn’t enough. He needed more in order to show off, in order to be the best. Was it greed or was he just being overly competitive? He didn’t think it was greed as he was a generous person. At the pub, he’d be the first to buy drinks. But was that just part of the desire to show off and be the centre of attention?
He could really do with some water, but he was tied to her now. If he stopped, even for the quickest stop, he would lose her and this would all be in vain. He didn’t know where she was going. He might never see her again should they get separated. Whenever she sped up, he sped up, whenever she touched the brakes, he touched the brakes. But now she wasn’t just touching the brakes, she’d fully slammed on and thrown the car to the side of the road. A cloud of sandy dust plumed around the car. He couldn’t also pull over as that would look too obvious. Had she spotted him perhaps? He took his foot off the brakes and placed it gently back onto the gas and continued, trying hard to look natural and as if he should be right where he was. As he got closer, he could see she was looking down at something on the passenger seat. He went right on by. He drove as slow as he dared to without looking unnatural. He didn’t want to be in front of her. He started to think about where he could pull over all the while keeping his eyes on the rear view mirror. But she was off again. Leaving another dust cloud in her wake. Within half a minute, she flew past him. Her tousled hair blowing in the breeze. Once she was a nose in front, he stole a glance over. She looked straight ahead. She had no interest in a little grey Fiat. She was pulling away from him. That was fine, he wanted some space between them, but he kept her in view. Just.
He wondered where was she going. This was much longer that any of the other trips she took. It was clearly not a beach day today. This was something more purposeful. She had that look in her eyes as she sped past him. A look that said she was on a mission. God knows to do what. For the next three hours, she drove at just below the speed limit. He thought he could see her sipping water occasionally which was making him feel more and more dehydrated. He was tired too as he’d not really slept that well since the stranger had gained access to the house. He lost concentration for a few seconds and when he looked back, he’d lost her. He couldn’t see her car and looked around frantically. He stuck his head up higher like an ostrich trying to see over other cars. He couldn’t lose her now. Then he saw her blue car to his right hand side circling the exit ramp from the A9 and it looked like she was heading to…
Sète
. What was in Sète he wondered. She seemed to be heading for the centre of
Sète
. He followed her as she drove to a hotel. It was around ten minutes from the A9 through the centre of
Sète to
Le Grand Hotel. He pulled up a block back and watched. She leaned over into the back seat and fumbled about and then a porter approached her. He opened her door and she passed her bag to him. Then the roof of the car slowly closed. She got out, gave him something, probably a tip and disappeared inside with him. This was too odd. He was a little stunned and not really sure what he was going to do now. Clearly she was going to stay here for a short while, probably for the night at least as they’d now taken her car to park it up.
This was going to be tricky as he would need to try to keep an eye on her, otherwise, he could lose her in the morning. He couldn’t really stay in the hotel as she would probably recognise him if she saw him, but he didn’t really want to sleep in the car on the street. He took a walk and tried to see where the hotel’s car park was located. He wandered around the back of the hotel and saw a ramp that went down under the hotel.
He would have to check into the hotel as he
was going to need to get access to this or he was going to end up losing her. He went back to the car and awaited dusk. He called the hotel from his mobile phone and reserved a room. A single was all they had. Depressing.
Once dusk fell gently over
Sète
and he felt a little more comfortable with the lack of light, he checked in. He paid half his attention to the receptionist who only spoke in French and half to what was going on behind him. He needed to ensure he wasn’t spotted by her. If she spotted him, it was all over. Well it was if she recognised him. Would she? Well she did in the lock up after she came around from the Rohypnol and that was with her brain all mushy. She would recognise him if she saw him, but there was no sign of her. She was probably taking a nap after her drive. He was a little jealous, he was absolutely shattered. He was also desperately thirsty.