The Sunshine Cruise Company Read online

  ‘Franco? Entrée?’ Tamalov shouted through the door as he knocked on it, extending this courtesy in case the forger was at a delicate stage of his work. Franco could be temperamental, but Tamalov had done the English ladies a favour here: the Italian was good. He took great pride in his work. Some fake passports you saw, it was like a child had been given some glue and scissors.

  ‘Si,’ Franco said from inside.

  Tamalov stepped into the softly lit room: two desks facing each other, Franco the forger had all his stuff spread out on one. There were the transparent sheets of paper used to cover the photo page on British passports, a pile of bought or stolen passports, scalpels, a top-of-the-range laser printer and the three strips of photos supplied to them that afternoon by Susan and Julie. Benny was sitting at the desk opposite Franco, frowning into the football pages of an English tabloid. Benny was one of the bouncers from downstairs, a slab of Algerian muscle who Tamalov sometimes used on collection jobs.

  ‘How’s it coming?’ Tamalov asked. They generally conversed in French, though Tamalov’s Italian was coming along.

  Franco yawned and ran his hands through his thinning hair. ‘These new bar codes are a bitch …’

  ‘By tonight though, yes?’

  ‘You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Alexei.’

  Tamalov thought for a moment. Sometimes the carrot was better than the stick with employees. He could add an extra thousand to the fee obviously, but there was one thing the man liked even better than money. He was Italian after all …

  ‘Come on, Franco,’ Tamalov said, slapping him on the back. ‘Get them done by tonight and come hang out in the VIP lounge downstairs with me. There are a couple of girls I know coming in later. Seventeen years old. Still at school …’

  Franco grinned. ‘We’ll be done,’ he said. ‘Pronto.’

  Tamalov laughed. So did Benny, looking up from his tabloid. ‘Ha. Eh, Benny? These Italians and women. Worse than a Russian even,’ Tamalov said. Then something caught his eye on the front page of Benny’s tabloid. Two faces he recognised.

  He reached for the newspaper.

  ‘Hey,’ Benny said.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  BOSCOMBE AND WESLEY were experiencing what was becoming a very familiar situation: they were sitting waiting in a French police station. This one, in Marseilles, was significantly warmer than any of the previous ones had been. A ceiling fan whirred feebly and uselessly somewhere above their heads as they stared at yet another tableau of French crime posters: rabies, pickpockets, car theft. They had been there nearly an hour and Wesley knew without glancing to his right that the vein in Boscombe’s right temple would be starting to throb. Indeed Boscombe’s entire face was now an iridescent patchwork of bruises and cuts and he was taking shallow, irritated breaths through his flaring nostrils. Wesley tried for some levity. ‘Still, probably pissing down back home, eh, Sarge?’

  ‘Pissing down? Fucking pissing about more like. What the fuck is taking them so long?’ He nodded towards the door where Lieutenant Halles, the Marseilles detective liaising with them, had disappeared some forty-five minutes ago. ‘I mean, it’s only some armed fucking rob—’

  At this the door opened and the slender, linen-suited form of Halles appeared. ‘Gentlemen, please …’

  ‘About bloody time,’ Boscombe hissed as they were ushered into a conference room.

  There, already seated at the table, was an older man, in his fifties. He had a thick moustache, glasses and a sad, hangdog expression, the expression of someone who routinely saw the very worst that humanity had to offer. In front of him were a glass of water, a fountain pen, a notepad and a manila file about the thickness of the average telephone book. (Or, more appropriately given its contents, the thickness of a Russian novel.) Wesley sensed the man’s gravitas right away. ‘This is Inspector Dumas from Interpol,’ Halles said as Boscombe and Wesley exchanged handshakes.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Boscombe said, taking a seat across from Dumas. ‘Interpol? Are we finally getting some real help on the case then?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Dumas said, slipping the rubber band from around his file.

  ‘Well, what’s going on?’ Boscombe said. ‘We’ve been sat waiting out there for a bloody hour. Our suspects could be out of here by now and on their way to wherever. We need to get cracking, pal.’

  Dumas took a sip of water and regarded this strange, angry Englishman. ‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Sergeant …’

  He slid a photograph across the table to Boscombe.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  JULIE AND SUSAN sat in the same booth at Le Punisher once again. A burly security guard had shown them in and then disappeared to fetch Tamalov. It was 6 p.m. and it was quiet as a church, as a mausoleum. No cleaners – the place was, well, not sparkling exactly, but you could see how, in a few hours, with the lights and strobes blazing, and the music pounding, it might resemble a drunk’s idea of paradise. Julie thought it odd there was no bar staff around, getting things ready, then again, these days, clubs didn’t really get going until midnight, did they?

  ‘I checked the flights again,’ said Susan, nervous, distracted. ‘There’s a 9 p.m. to London that Jill can just make and we can get the midnight to São Paulo.’ They had run through their plan for smuggling the money several times now. It was the last big risk and had to go smoothly. It wasn’t ideal, but what did they say? A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow and all that. Susan noticed after a moment that Julie hadn’t said anything. ‘She’ll be OK, Julie, she’s a smart kid.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Julie said. ‘Oh, here we go …’

  Susan turned and followed Julie’s gaze to see Tamalov striding across the big dance floor towards them, rubbing his hands together briskly, as was his manner. ‘Ladies! How are we today?’

  ‘Great, thank you,’ said Julie. Susan smiled at him as she took an envelope from inside her jacket and slid it onto the table. ‘It’s all there,’ she said. ‘You can count it.’

  Tamalov looked at the envelope but made no move to pick it up. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I am afraid that the price has gone up a little …’

  ‘Eh?’ Susan said.

  ‘What?’ Julie said.

  ‘How … how much?’ Susan said.

  At this Julie and Susan heard a metallic click and snap, the kind of noise both of them had only ever heard before in Hollywood movies. They turned round to see the bouncer who had shown them in and another, even larger, man standing there. They were both holding black snub-nosed machine guns, whose bolts had been the source of the click and snap.

  ‘Everything,’ Tamalov said, before adding, smiling, ‘Mrs Fear.’

  ‘No …’ Julie said.

  ‘Benny?’ Tamalov said. ‘We’ll use the service entrance. Ladies – follow us to the basement please.’

  FIFTY-NINE

  BOSCOMBE AND WESLEY were looking at a grainy black-and-white photo. It was taken at a distance, with a zoom lens, but it very clearly showed Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham walking along wearing sunglasses. ‘These are your bank robbers from England? Yes?’

  ‘Yes they bloody are!’ Boscombe said, grabbing the picture and staring hatefully at it.

  ‘This was taken yesterday morning here in Marseilles.’

  ‘Yesterday?’ Boscombe said. ‘Eh? Why the fu— Why haven’t you arrested them yet?’

  ‘As I say, it is not that simple.’

  ‘Not simple? Listen, I –’

  Dumas slid another grainy, telephoto lens photograph onto the table. It showed a white-haired man with a silver beard and a heavy gold chain around his neck. He was laughing at something off camera, a mobile phone pressed to his ear. ‘Do you know who this man is?’

  Boscombe and Wesley shook their heads.

  ‘This,’ Dumas said, taking his glasses off and polishing them with his tie, ‘is Alexei Tamalov. Also known as Little Sergei, Dimitri Schenkmann and the Bear of Minsk. We’ve been after him for years. Gunrunning, drugs,
credit and identity fraud, people trafficking, money laundering, you name it. But we’ve never been able to pin anything on him.’

  ‘I don’t see what this –’ Boscombe began.

  Dumas held a hand up. ‘We have very good reason to believe your robbers are using this man to obtain false passports in order to leave the country. This might be our best chance to, what’s your expression? Yes, to nail him.’

  Dumas reached for his water glass and took another long, cool draught while Boscombe responded. ‘Passport fraud? Bloody passport fraud? I’m talking about armed robbery here and you’re going on about –’

  ‘Sergeant Boscombe,’ said Inspector Dumas of Interpol, ‘do you know what the penalty for passport fraud is?’

  ‘Ah …’ Boscombe said. ‘I think … well, you’d get a fine obviously and, depending on the circumstances,’ he was totally free-forming now, ‘maybe a –’

  ‘Is it ten years?’ Wesley said.

  ‘Very good, Detective,’ Dumas said.

  Boscombe shot Wesley another hateful ‘swot’ look.

  ‘Ten years in prison for each offence,’ Dumas went on. ‘If he’s getting these ladies two or maybe three passports … twenty to thirty years in prison is hardly a parking ticket. It’d take this man off the streets for the rest of his criminal life.’ He closed the file and stood up.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Boscombe said.

  ‘We are going to watch and wait,’ Dumas said, buttoning his suit jacket, ‘until we catch him in the act. You may accompany us in an observational capacity but you are not to interfere with us at any point.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Boscombe bristled. ‘Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to speak to my superiors back home. I don’t think they’ll be at all happy about this.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve already taken the liberty of informing them,’ Dumas said, his hand on the doorknob now, Halles behind him, following him out. ‘I spoke with a Chief Inspector Wilson? He feels it would be best if you … followed our lead on this.’

  Boscombe snorted dismissively. ‘Wilson said that?’

  ‘Well, those weren’t his exact words.’

  ‘I bet they weren’t,’ Boscombe said.

  ‘No, his exact words were “if that useless fat bastard gets in your way lock him up and throw away the key”.’

  The door closed behind the two Frenchmen.

  There was silence as Boscombe’s eyelid quivered and his vein throbbed.

  ‘Old Wilson,’ Wesley said. ‘Always playing the joker, eh, Sarge?’

  SIXTY

  JILL LAY ON her single bed watching a game show in French. Ethel sat closer to the TV in her wheelchair, eating boiled sweets from a paper bag, mechanically unwrapping one after another and popping them into her mouth. Vanessa sat on the floor between them. After a few minutes Jill said, ‘You don’t worry about eating all that sugar, Ethel?’

  Ethel looked at the sweet she was about to munch. ‘No.’

  ‘I mean, with your weight, type 2 diabetes, all that stuff …’

  ‘Fuck no,’ Ethel said.

  ‘Really?’ Jill said. ‘Is there really any need to swear there? Couldn’t you just say “no”?’ Vanessa giggled. ‘I mean,’ Jill went on, ‘look at the example you’re setting for young Vanessa here.’

  Ethel and Vanessa were exchanging an eyebrows-raised glance when there were three knocks at the door, a pause, then two more knocks: the code. Vanessa jumped up and went to open it. Just before she did Ethel said, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s us …’ Julie said.

  There was something in her voice, something defeated Ethel thought, but she said nothing as Vanessa slid the bolt back.

  Julie stepped into the room, followed by Susan.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter with –’ Ethel said as soon as she saw their faces. But her words stopped as the two huge Algerians stepped into the room behind them, followed, a moment later, by a short man with a silver beard.

  ‘Who the fuck –’ Ethel began, going to rise from her wheelchair. The lead Algerian whipped something out of his coat and Ethel felt the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed against her forehead.

  ‘Sit down and shut up, old lady,’ the man said. Jill stifled a scream as the short, bearded man closed the door behind him.

  ‘Where is it?’ Tamalov said.

  Stifling a sob, Susan pointed to the wardrobe.

  While the two gunmen trained their weapons on the girls Tamalov moved to the wardrobe and opened it. There, on the floor, covered by a few sweaters, was the grubby holdall. He knelt down, unzipped it, and whistled. ‘How much?’ he asked. No one said anything. Tamalov nodded to Benny. Benny pressed his gun against the crown of Vanessa’s head.

  ‘Just under four million pounds,’ Susan said miserably.

  Tamalov clicked his finger at the other heavy and, not without difficulty, he leaned down, grabbed a handle and swung the holdall up onto his shoulders. ‘No!’ Vanessa shouted. She launched herself at Tamalov, but Benny caught her a good backhanded slap, sending her tumbling onto one of the beds.

  Jill was crying. Ethel stared straight at Tamalov.

  ‘Please,’ Julie said, fighting her own tears. ‘Don’t take all our money. We have nowhere to go.’

  ‘Don’t take it so bad,’ Tamalov said. ‘These things happen in business. You did well to get this far. Besides, I’m saving you a lot of headaches, ladies – you could never launder all of this anyway. Or you’d get caught trying to take it out of the country.’

  ‘Why?’ Susan said, standing quite close to Tamalov. ‘Why are you doing this to us?’

  Tamalov shrugged. ‘Come on. You know the old Russian story. There was a frog sitting by the river. A scorpion came along and said, “Give me a ride to the other side.” “But you’ll sting me,” said the frog. “I won’t,” said the scorpion, “I promise!” So the frog gave him a ride on his back. Just as they reached the other side the scorpion stung the frog. As the frog lay dying he said, “Why?” The scorpion said, “I’m a scorpion. It’s in my nature.”’ He looked around the room at the crying, broken women. ‘Hey, cheer up. We’ll let you keep the car, eh? We are not total animals. Au revoir, ladies.’

  SIXTY-ONE

  SATURDAY NIGHT IN Marseilles – a party town.

  Boscombe and Wesley sat in the back. Dumas and one of his men were in the front. They had been opposite and down the road from Le Punisher for over two hours now. Outside, in the dark, the streets were beginning to come to life: young men in lurid shirts, girls in micro miniskirts and spiked heels tottering from bar to bar, music booming out from various doorways. The queue to get into Le Punisher was starting to snake along the block, the entrance to the nightclub guarded by two headset-wearing security men and a girl wielding a clipboard, deciding who was fashionable enough to cross the threshold. During the two hours they’d sat there, troubling news continued to come over the radio. The two English ladies had entered the nightclub hours ago, around 6 p.m. They had yet to come out. (Of course. Although they were watching both the back and front entrances, it was impossible for Interpol to know that Tamalov’s service entrance to the nighclub utilised part of the old warren of catacombs that ran under much of Marseilles. A door in his basement led to a tunnel that brought you out in an alleyway five hundred yards along the street. Tamalov had already been, gone and returned right under the noses of the surveillance team.)

  ‘How long are we going to sit here?’ Boscombe asked.

  This guy, Dumas thought. He was like a child on a trip. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? ‘I told you, Sergeant,’ Dumas sighed. ‘We can’t just burst in there. We’re going to wait until your ladies emerge with the documents and then we’re going to arrest them and they will give us Tamalov.’

  ‘In return for what?’ Wesley asked, winding his window down. He was pretty sure that Boscombe, the animal, had been releasing a couple of stealth farts. He’d seen him shifting uncomfortably now and then, had caught the slight reek. At one point he
thought he’d seen a frown cross Dumas’s face in the front passenger seat.

  ‘Well, we will have to cut a deal.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Boscombe said. ‘Our collars get off with a slap on the wrist as long as they send your boy down? That’s the deal, is it?’

  ‘Collars?’ Dumas said.

  ‘Our arrests,’ Wesley said.

  ‘Alexei Tamalov is responsible for untold misery, gentlemen. He has had men killed. Your ladies are not exactly career criminals, are they? From everything I’ve read it seems to be a one-off crime with much in the way of mitigating circumstances. I am simply concerned with the greater good here.’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll see,’ Boscombe said. He was sitting right behind Dumas, so he couldn’t catch the slight smile playing across the man’s face, but Wesley did. The cause of the smile was the fact that Dumas knew exactly why Boscombe was taking it so personally with these women. Earlier, at the station, one of the junior officers had shown Dumas a clip on YouTube: CCTV footage showing Boscombe screaming his head off while being dragged behind a minivan by his very balls.

  Boscombe sighed and looked across the street, at people drinking at tables. Christ, he could murder a pint.

  SIXTY-TWO

  WHAT WOULD THE collective noun for tears be? Ethel wondered. A meddle of tears? A dragoon of tears? A filibuster of tears? Whichever way, there was a festival of salty crying going on in room 38 of the lowly three-star Hotel Splendid right now.