Even so, he couldn’t resist the odd peep at other folks’ pages, just in case there was anything he should know about. And Jackie Lamur was one of his favourites. A girl from Liverpool who could make him laugh even in some of his darkest moments, and Barry had had plenty of those.
“Hey, Jezza, take a look at this,” he said, as the pair settled down to breakfast after returning to the Shepherd’s Hut from taking Pete and Shirley for their morning walkies.
“Bloody hell,” said Jeremy, peering at the screen announcing the million pound reward for info on the whereabouts of the escaped megalomaniac bonkers banker. “That’s me,” he added, with a sharp intake of breath, pointing at the picture clipped from the bank’s in-house “Top Troopers” page. “What the fuck?”
Barry raised a perplexed eyebrow. “Hard to say, but there’re thirty-four thousand, eight-hundred and sixty-two hits already.”
(Including one from Dennis “Shorty” Dawkins using the sobriquet “Betty” and saying she was “on the case.”)
“According to this, you’ve already been sighted in Minsk, Sausalito, Prague, St Ives, Beijing, Mumbai, The Outer Hebrides, and…”
“Christ. Any clue who posted this crap?”
“Jackie Lamur. She’s a regular.”
Jeremy blinked. “Jackie Lamur?”
“You’ve read her too?” said Barry, surfing the site for more places Jeremy had been spotted—Helsinki, Cairo, Knotty Ash, Kansas City, Knotty Ash again…
Jeremy swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes. Her real name is Julie Mackintosh. Jackie Lamur is her alias.”
“And you know this how?”
“Because she’s PA to Sir Magnus fucking Montague, my ex-boss.”
“Ooops.”
Marie in Montmartre, Fritz on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, Anon in Knotty Ash again, Salah in Cairo…
“Ooops is right. The old bastard has no idea how to use the Internet, so he must have got Julie to do it for him,” said Jeremy, calming a little. “No doubt his idea of a clever plan to scare me back onside after the shrink idea had failed and I’d scarpered. What he won’t understand is what ‘viral’ means and the can of worms that can open.”
Jaime in Barcelona, Norman in The Maldives, Gianfranco in Naples, Anon in Knotty Ash yet again.
“Still, at least we now have a clue as to who’s behind all this,” said Barry, still scrolling.
“For all the good it will do if I’m to become the subject of a million-pound manhunt. And now you’re sucked into this nonsense too.” Jeremy sighed. “I’m sorry. Maybe the ‘chosen’ business was just a piece of foolishness and I should have stayed put and got on with it.”
“I think not, old chap. ‘Should haves’ don’t count. The past is a foreign country and there’s no point in revisiting it and wondering how one might have behaved differently and to what end. The conditional perfect is a pointless tense and should be elided from grammar. We are where we are and that’s all that matters. No good trying to re-live what we have already lived and attempting somehow to rearrange it. That way only madness lies. And you are not mad. Remember?”
Jeremy smiled.
“And as for my part in this little adventure, you’ve no need for regrets. Who knows, it could be fun,” said Barry, still scrolling.
Mike in Montreal, Isabel in Tenerife, Gunnar in Reykjavik, Samantha in The Scilly Isles… Anon in Knotty Ash…
“Still, strange of the old bastard to use the social media. You’d have thought his first option would be to call the cops.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not him. Far too much to hide. A major player in the two-thousand-and-eight banking fiasco and as yet still undetected.”
“And you, Jezza?”
Jeremy winced. “I was his right-hand man. That’s why he needs me. For my famous maths, but also to stop me singing.”
“I hadn’t realised.”
“Yup, Bazza. You have a reprobate on your hands. So sorry to have landed you in this mess, like I said.”
“No worries, old fellow. Between us we’ll find a way.”
Titch in Toronto, Dan in Damascus, “Horse” in Brooklyn NYC, the moron in The White House in Washington DC, Kitty in Nebraska, Giorgio in Calabria, Jim—named at last—in Knotty Ash.
“We’ll just need to put our thinking caps on, that’s all. And, to be square with you, Jezza, at my time of life there’s nothing a chap needs more than a bit of a challenge. Now, how about a nice bowl of my famed porridge with honey-roasted peanuts? Going to need to keep our strength up.”
Jeremy laughed for the first time in a long time. The devil’s laughter, was it? He no longer cared, just dipped his spoon into Barry’s special breakfast and took a bite.
“Yum,” he said after the first mouthful.
Sophie, Vince, Val, Gloria, Ron, Jonah, and Harry were astonished to find that when PC Dennis Dawkins said he’d be “right over,” he’d meant “right over.” Once he and Billy McCann had switched all incoming calls to Nighttime Assistance and closed down Fanbury Police Station, he’d told Billy he’d see him tomorrow then feigned his own departure by climbing on his bike and starting to pedal. When Billy was safely out of sight on his way back to Mrs McCann and their brood of mini-McCanns, however, Dennis—aka Facebook’s “Betty”—had swiftly backpedalled, dismounted, stowed his bike in its shed, fired up Fanbury’s only cop car, and, with blue lights flashing and wah-wah-wahs on full blast, burnt rubber to Jeremy’s ex-mansion, before which he skidded to a stop, showering gravel all over the place.
“Bloody hell,” said Vince, watching through the lounge curtains as Dennis climbed from the car, smoothed down his uniform, and headed to the door. “Never seen The Dork in such a hurry before.”
“The Dork” was what Vince called Dennis, both because he thought it a witty take on “Dawkins,” and because he reckoned Dennis to be a dork, given he’d never sussed even a single one of Vince’s shadier bookmaking schemes. Mind you, so much the better for Vince.
“Looks like he’s got ants in his pants,” said Val, as Dennis marched to the door and pulled the chime bell rope, which was still broken because nobody had thought to fix it after Sit Magnus’s yanking.
“I’ll let him in,” said Sophie. “This is my house and I’m the one who called.”
“S’cuse us if you wouldn’t mind,” chorused Jonah and Harry as they sidled out of the lounge into the abutting kitchen area, dimmed the lights over the six-foot-long “eating island,” and checked the back door for an escape route through the solarium/conservatory and into the “garden.” Why? Because, upstanding citizens though they might have appeared to be, there were certain little past misdemeanours—Internet banking fraud, for example—Jonah and Harry did not want broadcast around their new hideaway in Fanbury. It was one thing for them to agree to the coppers finding their pal, Jeremy, but quite another to meet one of them. Not when their mug shots were still on Scotland Yard’s computer.
“Missus Crawfish?” Dennis said as Sophie opened the door.
“Crawford”
“Ah-hah,” said Dennis, taking a notepad from his top pocket and scribbling at it sinistrally. “You called about your missin’ ’usband. Mind if I come in?”