The Sunshine Cruise Company (12 page)

The notes were all fifties. Banded in packs of one hundred notes, each bundle then was worth five thousand pounds.

There were
a lot
of them.

‘He’s just a blowhard, Wesley,’ Boscombe said, slamming the car door. ‘Seriously, Ted Pritchard? Detective Inspector? My bloody arse in parsley.’

‘Wilson likes him,’ Wesley countered.

‘Wilson likes anyone who’ll kiss his bloody arse.’

They came out of the small car park and onto the top of the high street.

‘Bloody scorcher today, Sarge, eh?’

‘Not half, lad,’ Boscombe squinted into the glare. ‘Here, hold up. Tell you what – you let your old boss treat you to an ice cream, eh?’

‘Nice one, Sarge,’ Wesley said.

They started heading towards the bright yellow van parked outside the supermarket.

‘Hurry up!’ Julie growled, looking at her watch. Five minutes since they came in the door.

‘Mmmmmmm!’ Susan said, not wanting to speak.

‘You’ll never get away with this,’ one of the staff said. Julie leapt over and pointed her gun at him. More screaming. ‘Be quiet!’ Glass shrieked. ‘Just let them do what they want. That’s the policy in these situations.’

Susan was onto the fourth box.

There wasn’t much room left in the holdall.

Nails’s mind had wandered. Again. It kept doing this these days. In his head he was at the seaside as a boy. Down at Margate or Southend.

Lovely times, with his ma and da.

He looked across the street to the ice-cream van once more. Then back down the high street. What was he doing here? Something important, he was sure of that. He just couldn’t quite remember what. And he was so bloody hot. It’d only take a minute, wouldn’t it? Nothing could be that urgent that he couldn’t have a bloody ice cream. Could it? Slowly he got out of the car (and whose car was this?) and tottered across the street. Leaving the walkie-talkie on the passenger seat.

‘Mmmm!’ Susan motioned to Julie to come over so she could whisper to her. Julie came across and knelt down, not taking her eyes or her gun off the staff. ‘What?’

‘I can’t get any more in!’

Julie looked at the crammed holdall, at the one box remaining. And then at her watch – six minutes now since they came in. ‘Fuck it,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s go.’ She grabbed a couple of handfuls of banded fifty-pound-note bundles and shoved them into her pockets. Susan picked up the holdall. Or tried to. ‘Jesus,’ she said. They took a handle each and edged their way out of the door and into the corridor. Julie kicked the door shut and it automatically flashed back to red, locking the staff inside.

Susan took the walkie-talkie out of her pocket and keyed it. ‘Fear to Wheels. Fear to Wheels, come in. We’re ready to roll.’

On the passenger seat of the old Granada her voice reverberated out of the walkie-talkie and around the hot, empty car.

Nails was queuing for his ice cream. Two fellas in front of him. One of them turned round. ‘Oh, hello there!’ he said. Nails looked at the man, confused. He’d never seen this geezer before in his life. ‘Look, Sarge, it’s Mr … you know. From the dance group.’

Boscombe turned now too, his large 99 in his hand. ‘Oh yeah. Bert. How are you?’ Boscombe smiled kindly, the way you do at simpletons. Bert? Who the fuck was Bert? Nails wondered. What the fuck was all this? But something was making alarm bells ring in Nails’s brain. Sarge. Hold on. What the fuck … Nails remembered what he was doing here.

The girls came out of the front of the bank, Ethel bringing up the rear, holding her shotgun under her blanket, levelled at the still cowering customers. Susan looked around. Nothing. ‘
Where is he?
’ Julie said. Terror sparking through her, Susan hissed into the walkie-talkie again, forgetting all protocol now, saying, ‘Nails – where are you?’ People were starting to stop and point at them. Susan looked up the street. A few hundred yards away she could see an ice-cream van.

In a sharp moment of focus Nails realised that a) he was a criminal, b) he was here on business and c) that the man standing in front of him was a policeman who had somehow rumbled him. ‘Fancy an ice cream, do you?’ the copper was saying. ‘Here, on me.’ He was handing Nails his 99. ‘Give us another one, would you, son?’ the copper was saying to the kid working the van. Nails looked at the ice-cream cone now clenched in his fist. ‘Hot old da—’ the copper began. Fucking toying with him he was. Taking the piss out of old Nails. The fucking liberty of it. Go back to choky? No way. No fucking way.

Nails smashed the ice cream into Boscombe’s face.

Then he turned and broke into a run. Well, ‘run’ would be pushing it. Although everyone – judge, prosecution, defence, jury – would later agree that it had been an astonishing effort for someone of his age, testament to what the human body could achieve when
in extremis.
Nails had once again slipped into being 1972 Nails, who could fight and outrun policemen. He had forgotten that he was pushing ninety and needed a puff on his oxygen tank to pick up the remote for the TV. He had also forgotten that his vision was limited to about twenty feet in front of him.

Wesley, Boscombe – who had ice cream dripping from his face and the words ‘What the fucking fuck’ forming on his lips – and several other witnesses watched in astonishment as the ancient man turned on his heel and ran twenty feet or so – smashing full force into the plate-glass window of the Morrisons supermarket.

Julie and Susan turned in the doorway of the bank, hearing the explosion of glass from the other end of the high street. ‘Look!’ Ethel shouted behind them. She was pointing across the road – at the Cancer Care minibus, parked there. Empty. The driver’s door open. The bunch of keys visible in the ignition from here. Susan became aware of a rhythmic panting noise close to her – Jill crying.

This was a nightmare. What had happened? Where was Nails? What now? Where –

Susan’s interior monologue was terminated by the piercing note of the alarm going off. Somewhere within the bank, one of the staff had finally hit the button.

Wesley turned from regarding Nails scrabbling around, trying to get to his feet amid a hundred thousand tiny jewels of broken glass, bleeding quite badly, and squinted down the high street, into the sun. He saw it immediately – two hundred yards away, three figures in overalls, wearing balaclavas, holding … Jesus Christ.

‘SARGE!’ he shouted.

Boscombe stopped advancing towards Nails, wiped ice cream and broken bits of wafer from his face, and turned to follow Wesley’s gaze towards the distant sound of a fire alarm. He saw them too.

‘LET’S GO!’ Ethel screamed, already wheeling herself towards the minibus. Its back doors were open and the platform for loading and unloading wheelchairs was already at street level. ‘QUICK!’ Julie yelled, pushing Susan after Ethel, grabbing Jill by the arm and pulling her behind them. They piled into the bus, Susan and Julie throwing the huge holdall onto a row of seats. Julie went to clamber over into the driver’s seat only to see that Jill had jumped in there. She was panicking, crying and screaming ‘OHMYGODOHMYGOD!’ over and over as she tried to turn the key.

‘COME ON!’ Boscombe yelled, taking off at a sprint, Wesley following.

As Susan slid the side door of the Cancer Care minibus shut, she heard a low humming noise, and looked towards the rear of the vehicle to see Ethel magically ascending on the checkered steel platform. ‘GET US THE FUCKING FUCK OUT OF HERE!’ Ethel was yelling over her shoulder. From where she was sitting on the back of the bus, framed in the open doors, Ethel had a perfect view of Boscombe and Wesley sprinting towards them, shouting ‘STOP! POLICE!’

They were about a hundred yards away.

Now eighty.

Now seventy.

‘TELL THAT STUPID BITCH TO DRIVE!’ Ethel yelled again.

Julie leaned forward and screamed in Jill’s ear: ‘DRIVE, JILL!’

‘What the fuck!’ a voice very close to them said and Susan turned to see, through the passenger-side window, the very angry driver of the minibus, coming out of the Cancer Care office.

Fifty yards.

Now thirty.

Ethel could see the sweat on Wesley’s face. The ice-cream-spattered forehead of Boscombe.

‘AAGGHHHHHH!’ With a scream Jill finally got the key to turn and the engine growled beneath them.

Boscombe was upon them. With a roar he launched himself up onto the platform at the back, right at Ethel. Ethel dropped the spent shotgun and picked up her grabbing stick.

Two things happened simultaneously.

1) Jill crunched the bus into gear and hit the accelerator. Well, to say ‘hit’ would be engaging in hyperbole of the highest order. If Jill Worth wasn’t the most cautious driver in the world she was certainly in the top five. More accurate to say she pressed gingerly down on the accelerator and moved off at a speed of about five miles an hour.

2) As he came at her Ethel shot out her grabbing stick and took an absolutely perfect – and robotically strong – hold of Detective Sergeant Boscombe’s testicles. He fell backwards off the platform but found he was still tethered to the moving minibus by the vice-like grip of the grabbing stick. In order not to have his balls ripped off Boscombe suddenly found he was having to run quite fast after the minibus.

Jill turned the corner and headed up Court Street, the one-way running off the high street. Her driving was being hampered not only by the fact that she was crying but also by the deafening roar of Julie and Susan screaming behind her, urging her to go faster. She tapped the accelerator and took the van up to a speed approaching ten miles an hour. ‘Straight over the roundabout!’ Julie was yelling. ‘Head for the dual carriageway!’ As the roundabout came into view Jill was aware of a keening, high-pitched scream. She crunched up to second and nudged the pedal a little more, hitting fifteen miles an hour.

Wesley gave up and stopped running. He watched his boss in astonishment. Boscombe was
hurtling
after the bus, going full pelt just a few feet behind it, his legs just a crazed blur. From his vantage point directly behind him, Wesley had no way of knowing that, rather than suddenly discovering superhuman reserves of speed, his boss was simply being pulled after the minibus by his very scrotum.

‘JILL! FASTER, FOR GOD’S SAKE!’ Julie was screaming.

‘WE’RE IN A TWENTY!’

‘YOU’RE NOT EVEN DOING TWENTY!’

‘IT’S A LIMIT – NOT A TARGET!’

‘ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING M—’

Jill found third gear and the needle on the speedometer passed the 20 mph marker.

Usain Bolt has been recorded running at speeds of just over twenty-seven miles per hour. To do this requires incredible levels of musculature and training, levels well beyond the fifteen-stone frame of DS Hugh Boscombe, who was now looking in astonishment at his own madly blurring legs while screaming his head off. With the incentive of retaining his testicles to help him, he was somehow managing to run at just over twenty miles an hour. He looked back up – into the merciless eyes of Ethel, staring at him through the slits of her balaclava, the word ‘FUCK’ glaring in white capitals across her forehead.

She was sitting in a wheelchair, Boscombe realised. He glimpsed a bumper sticker fixed to the front: ‘WHERE’S THE BEEF?’ Somewhere in his agonised, screeching mind this rang a bell.

‘JESUS CHRIST, JILL!’ Susan screamed. ‘WILL YOU PLEASE PUT YOUR BLOODY FOOT DOWN?!’
Right, enough
, Julie thought.

She clambered over into the front seat, threw herself down on Jill’s lap and mashed the accelerator to the floor.

The van rocketed off across the roundabout just as Ethel tore the grabbing stick from Boscombe’s nuts, making a
riiippppping
sound, tearing the front of his trousers open in the process.

Boscombe screamed as he watched the leering, wheelchair-bound figure disappear into the distance. He also had a split second to register disbelief at how fast he was still running – much like the cartoon character whose legs are still frantically pedalling in mid-air after they’ve run off a cliff edge – before he rocketed into a parked Ford Fiesta at twenty-five miles an hour, cracking the windscreen and knocking himself senseless in the process.

Mayhem in the minibus: Ethel wheeling herself further back into the boot area, the wind whistling through the open doors, Susan screaming to take the dual carriageway, Julie sitting in Jill’s lap, driving, Jill crying and screaming and trying to wriggle out.
Well, this beats
Lovejoy
repeats and digestives at four o’clock,
Ethel thought to herself as Julie tugged the wheel hard to the left and they went careering down a ramp towards the dual carriageway. Ethel just had time to register the ‘NO ENTRY’ sign they’d just passed.

‘Oh fuck,’ Susan said flatly as they saw the first car coming towards them.

Wesley came screeching down the high street in their car. He’d barked garbled instructions to the two uniforms who’d been loading the battered and bleeding Nails into the back of a squad car (‘assaulting an officer, malicious damage’) before slapping the blue light on top and hitting the siren. He took the corner onto Court Street fast and was about to accelerate again when he saw Boscombe stumbling into the middle of the road. Jesus Christ – what the fuck?

Wesley hit the brakes hard and came skidding to a halt six feet in front of his boss. Boscombe looked like he’d been smashed to pieces. The crotch of his trousers had been torn open. He came round to the driver’s side.

‘Sarge,’ Wesley began, ‘what happened to –’

‘Shift,’ Boscombe said, already getting in the driver’s door. Wesley scooted over.

‘Are you OK?’ Wesley asked. There was a good-sized gash in Boscombe’s scalp and his face and hair were matted with blood.

‘Pensioners. Dancing,’ Boscombe said, already pulling off, his face a grim mask of blood and determination, staring straight at the road ahead.

‘Ah, Sarge?’