‘Brilliant!’ he said. ‘Absolutely bloody brilliant!’
‘What do you want us to do?’
‘Just have her tracked, Bill. It’s vital she doesn’t know she’s being followed. I want her to get on the flight, but I’m going to need some officers there with her – and some support in Nice. Can you find out if the flight’s full – and if we could get two officers on? If they’re full, maybe you could persuade them to bump a couple of passengers?’
‘Leave it with me. I already know that the plane is only half full. I’ll get on to the French police. I take it we are interested in who she might meet?’
‘Spot on. Thanks, Bill. Keep me informed.’
Grace clenched his fist for joy, then he called Glenn Branson.
123
‘So when do I see you again? Tell me. When?’
‘Soon!’
‘How soon is soon?’
She lay on top of him, their naked skin running with perspiration from their exertions in the morning heat. His spent penis nestled in her hairs. Her small round breasts pressed into his chest and her eyes gazed into his, nut-brown eyes, filled with laughter and mischief. And hardness. For sure.
She was savyy, streetwise. She was a piece of work.
A very rich piece of work.
And she liked this goddamned humidity. This cloying heat which made him perspire constantly. She insisted on making love with the terrace doors of her house wide open and it was about a hundred fucking degrees in the room. And now she was pummelling his chest with her tiny fists.
‘How soon? How soon?’
He brushed her jet-black hair away from his face and kissed her rosebud lips. She was so pretty and she had a great body. He’d come to appreciate slender Thai girls during his month holed up in Pattaya Beach, waiting for Abby to give him the signal that she was on her way.
And oh wow! He had lucked out big time with this one. Totally unexpected! Because she was everything he had fantasized about, but with a whole lot more. About twenty-five million US dollars more! Give or take a few percentage points on the Thai Baht conversion rate.
He’d met her in a stamp dealer’s shop in Bangkok and just got chatting. Turned out her husband had a chain of nightclubs, which she’d inherited when he died in a scuba-diving accident – a tourist on a jet-ski had chopped his head off at the neck. She had been trying to flog his very serious stamp collection and Ronnie had given her guidance, stopped her being ripped off, got her treble what she’d originally been told they were worth.
And had been banging her once and sometimes twice a day ever since.
Which left him with a problem. Although it wasn’t too big a problem. He’d already started tiring of Abby. He couldn’t say exactly when that had begun to happen. Perhaps it was the way she had behaved – or looked – after her assignments with Ricky. Like, certainly after the first two occasions, she had really enjoyed them.
Which had made him realize what she was capable of.
A woman who had no limits. She would do anything to get rich and was, for sure, just using him as a stepping stone.
Luckily, he was one step ahead. He’d screwed up twice before. Water had not served him well. Something had gone wrong with the damned storm drain in Brighton. And who the hell could have predicted the drought continuing in Melbourne?
Fortunately there were plenty of boats for hire in Koh Samui. And they were cheap. And the South China Sea was deep.
Ten miles out and there was no chance a body was going to fetch up back on the shore. He already had the boat moored and waiting. Abby would love it. It was fuck-off stunning. And cost peanuts. Relatively. And, hey, you had to speculate to accumulate.
He kissed Phara.
‘Not long at all,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
124
Instead of following the signs for Departures when she stepped away from the easyJet check-in desk, Abby headed back into the main concourse and made her way to the toilets.
Having locked herself in a cubicle, she removed the Jiffy bag from her carrier bag, ripped it open and shook out the contents – a cellophane bag containing an assortment of stamps, some loose, some in sheets.
Most of the sheets were just replicas of the ones Ricky had wanted so badly, but several of the other sheets and individual stamps were genuine, and looked old enough to excite someone who knew nothing about philately.
She also took out the receipt from the stamp dealer South-East Philatelic, which she had visited two weeks ago. It was for one hundred and forty-two pounds. Probably more than she had needed to spend, strictly speaking, but the assortment did look impressive to the layman, and she had rightly placed Detective Sergeant Branson in that category.
She tore the stamps and the receipt into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet. Then she removed her jeans, boots and fleece jacket. She wouldn’t need those where she was going. She pulled out of the carrier bag a long, blonde wig, cut and styled much how her hair used to look, and pulled it on, adjusting it a little clumsily with the help of her make-up mirror. Then she put on the sundress she had bought a couple of days ago and the cream linen jacket that went so well with it, together with a rather nice pair of white, open-toed shoes. She completed her new look with a pair of lightly tinted Marc Jacobs sunglasses.
She crammed the clothes she had discarded into the plastic bag, then went out of the cubicle, adjusted her hair in the mirror, put the Jiffy bag into a bin and checked her watch. It was 1.35. She was making good time.
Suddenly, her phone beeped with a text.
Can’t wait to see you tomorrow. Just a few
hours now. XX
She smiled. Just a few hours. Yes, yes, yes!
She walked, with a spring in her step, back to the left-luggage area and checked out the suitcase she had deposited just over two weeks ago. She wheeled it over to a corner, unlocked and opened it, then removed a bubble-wrapped Jiffy bag. Then she shoved the carrier bag with her old clothes inside, closed it and locked it.
She returned to the check-in area, found the British Airways section and walked up to a business-class desk. An extravagance, but she had decided she would celebrate the start of her new life today in the style in which she planned to continue it.
Handing her passport and ticket to the woman behind the desk, she said, ‘Sarah Smith. I’m on Flight 309, connecting through to Rio de Janeiro.’
‘Thank you, madam,’ the woman said, and checked the details on her terminal.
She asked Abby the usual security questions and tagged her suitcase. Then the bag jerked forward, fell over on the conveyor and disappeared from view.
‘Is the flight on time?’ Abby asked.
The woman looked at her screen. ‘At the moment, yes, it looks fine. Leaves at 3.15. The boarding gate opens at 2.40. It will be Gate 54. You’ll find the signs to the lounge after you’ve gone through security into the duty-free area.’
Abby thanked her, then checked her watch again. Butterflies were going bonkers in her stomach. There were still two more things she had to do, but she wanted to wait until closer to the time for both of them.
She went through into the BA lounge, helped herself to a glass of white wine to steady her nerves, craving a cigarette. But that would have to wait. She ate a couple of finger-sized sandwiches, then sat down in front of a television screen, with the news on, and went carefully through her mental checklist. She was satisfied she had not forgotten anything. But to be doubly sure she checked that her phone was set to withhold her number from anyone she rang.