‘Where’s she spending Christmas?’ asks Ron.
‘Lithuania,’ says Mervyn.
‘The Jewel of the Baltic,’ says Ibrahim.
‘I’m not sure we’ve seen her at Coopers Chase, have we?’ asks Elizabeth. ‘Since you’ve moved in?’
‘They’ve taken her passport,’ says Mervyn.
‘Goodness,’ says Elizabeth. ‘That sounds unfortunate. Who has?’
‘The authorities,’ says Mervyn.
‘Sounds about right,’ says Ron, shaking his head. ‘Bloody authorities.’
‘You must miss her terribly,’ says Ibrahim. ‘When did you last see her?’
‘We haven’t, just as yet, met,’ says Mervyn, scraping tartare sauce off a scampo.
‘You haven’t met?’ asks Joyce. ‘That seems unusual?’
‘Just been unlucky,’ says Mervyn. ‘She had a flight cancelled, then she had some cash stolen, and now there’s the passport thing. The course of true love never did run smooth.’
‘Indeed,’ agrees Elizabeth. ‘Never did it.’
‘But,’ says Ron, ‘once she’s got her passport back, she’ll be over?’
‘That’s the plan,’ says Mervyn. ‘It’s all under control. I’ve sent her brother some money.’
The gang nod and look at each other as Mervyn eats his scampi.
‘Apropos of nothing, Mervyn,’ says Elizabeth, adjusting her paper crown just a jot, ‘how much did you send him? The brother?’
‘Five thousand,’ says Mervyn. ‘All in all. Terrible corruption in Lithuania. Everyone bribing everyone.’
‘I wasn’t aware of that,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I have had many good times in Lithuania. Poor Tatiana. And the cash she had stolen? Was that from you too?’
Mervyn nods. ‘I sent it, and the customs people nicked it.’
Elizabeth fills up the glasses of her friends. ‘Well, we shall look forward to meeting her.’
‘Very much,’ agrees Ibrahim.
‘Though, I wonder, Mervyn,’ says Elizabeth, ‘next time she gets in touch asking for money, perhaps you might let me know? I have contacts and may be able to help?’
‘Really?’ asks Mervyn.
‘Certainly,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Run it past me. Before you have any more bad luck.’
‘Thank you,’ says Mervyn. ‘She means a great deal to me. Been a long time since someone paid me any attention.’
‘Although I’ve baked you a lot of cakes in the last few weeks,’ says Joyce.
‘I know, I know,’ says Mervyn. ‘But I meant romantic attention.’
‘My mistake,’ says Joyce, and Ron drinks to stifle a laugh.
Mervyn is an unconventional guest, but Elizabeth is learning to float on the tides of life these days.
Turkey and stuffing, balloons and streamers, crackers and hats. A nice bottle of red, and what Elizabeth assumes are Christmas pop songs playing in the background. Friendship, and Joyce flirting unsuccessfully with a Welshman who appears to be the subject of a fairly serious international fraud. Elizabeth could think of worse ways to spend the holidays.
‘Well, Happy Boxing Day, everyone,’ says Ron, raising his glass.
They all join in the toast.
‘And a Happy Wednesday, 26th of December, to you, Mervyn,’ adds Ibrahim.
2
Mitch Maxwell would normally be a million miles away when a consignment was unloaded. Why take the risk of being in the warehouse when the drugs were present? But, for obvious reasons, this is no ordinary consignment. And the fewer people involved, the better, given his current circumstances. The only time he has stopped drumming his fingers is to bite his nails. He is not used to being nervous.
Visit iDEB.io for more books - Also it’s Boxing Day, and Mitch wanted to be out of the house. Needed to be out, really. The kids were playing up, and he and his father-in-law had got into a fist fight about where they’d seen one of the actors on the Call the Midwife: Christmas Special before. His father-in-law is currently in Hemel Hempstead Hospital with a fractured jaw. His wife and his mother-in-law are both blaming Mitch, for reasons he can’t fathom, and so he thought discretion might be the better part of valour, and driving the hundred miles to East Sussex to oversee things himself turned out to be very convenient.
Mitch is here to ensure one simple box containing a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of heroin is unloaded from a truck straight off the ferry. Not a lot of money, but that wasn’t the point.
The shipment had made it through customs. That was the point.
The warehouse is on an industrial estate, haphazardly constructed on old farmland about five miles from the South Coast. There were probably barns and stables here hundreds of years ago, corn and barley and clover, horses’ hooves clattering, and now there are corrugated-iron warehouses, old Volvos and cracked windows on the same footprint. The old creaking bones of Britain.
A high metal fence surrounds the whole plot to keep out petty thieves, while, inside the perimeter, the real villains go about their business. Mitch’s warehouse bears the aluminium sign SUSSEX LOGISTICS SYSTEMS. Next door, in another echoing hangar, you’ll find FUTURE TRANSPORT SOLUTIONS LTD, a front for stolen high-performance cars. To the left is a Portakabin with no sign on the door, which is run by a woman Mitch has yet to meet, but who apparently churns out MDMA and passports. In the far corner of the lot is the winery and storage warehouse of BRAMBER – THE FINEST ENGLISH SPARKLING WINE, which Mitch recently discovered is actually a genuine business. The brother and sister who run it could not be more charming, and had given everyone a crate of their wine for Christmas. It was better than Champagne, and had led, in no small part, to the fist fight with his father-in-law.
Whether the brother and sister at Bramber Sparkling Wine had their suspicions that they were the only legitimate company in the whole compound, Mitch couldn’t guess, but they had certainly once seen him buying a crossbow from Future Transport Solutions Ltd and hadn’t batted an eyelid, so they were sound enough. Mitch suspected there was good money to be made in English sparkling wine, and had thought about investing. In the end he hadn’t taken the plunge, because there was also good money to be made in heroin, and sometimes you should stick to what you know. He’s beginning to revise that opinion now, however, as his troubles keep piling up.
The warehouse doors are shut, and the back door of the lorry is open. Two men – well, a man and a boy, really – are unloading plant pots. The minimum crew. Again, because of the current situation, Mitch has already had to tell them to be careful. Sure, the little box hidden deep among the pallets is the most important cargo, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make a few quid off the plant pots too. Mitch sells them to garden centres around the South East, a nice legitimate business. And no one is going to pay for a cracked plant pot.
The heroin is in a small terracotta box, made to look old, like a tatty piece of garden junk, in case anyone comes snooping. A boring ornament. It’s their regular trick. Somewhere in a farmhouse in Helmand, the heroin has been placed in the box, and the box has been wedged shut. Someone from Mitch’s organization – Lenny had drawn the short straw – had been in Afghanistan to oversee it, to make sure the heroin was pure and no one was trying to pull a fast one. The terracotta box had then made its way in Lenny’s care to Moldova, to a town that knew how to mind its own business, and there it had been carefully concealed among hundreds of plant pots and driven across Europe, by a man called Garry with a prison record and not much to lose.
Mitch is in the office, on a makeshift mezzanine level at the far end of the warehouse, scratching the ‘God Loves a Trier’ tattoo on his arm. Everton are losing 2–0 to Man City, which is inevitable but still annoying. Someone had once asked Mitch to join a consortium to buy Everton Football Club. Tempting, to own a piece of his boyhood club, his lifelong passion, but the more Mitch looked into the business of football, the more he thought, once again, that he should probably stick to heroin.