Lottery Dreams Ch. 06: Smell of Fear

Charley was the only one who had any time for them. He asked questions to keep them on the side. Knowing that the men were changing. He was changing, and he was not sure who he was looking at, the morning he ordered champagne for breakfast, at the expensive hotel suite. Later that day, the counsellors could clearly see that he was worried, and sat with him, as they spelt out the catalogue of intending doom, which lay ahead.

"You will go around the world; buy a big house, and spend money on your friends," said Jill a young Doctor of psychology now working for the Euro lottery. "You are falling into the classic trap of delusion, that winners always face." Her job was getting easier, as the winners came and went. Human nature was so obvious and flawed, it was easy to predict the slope of drunken depression which accompanied every winner. Jill did find it refreshing that Charley was asking at such an early stage, that she felt hopeful he may not end up at the Betty Ford drying out clinic, like so many others.

"What really bothers me, Jill, is the other ticket? The other £200 million. The other guys talk about nothing else." Charley was passing the floor of his Grandchester suite, as he told his counsellor his worries.

"Why do you all feel you need even more money?"

"Because we have come up from nothing," he said pouring more champagne. "Working in rough factories sharpens the mind. It makes you an animal, hungry for money." Although he was very worried about it all, Charley could see no way out. He was headed down an all too predictable path, and there was nothing he could do.

Women had never played much of a part in Charley's life. Even when he was married, he was only doing it, because he felt it was expected of him.

Elizabeth was so cold and distant, but now he was sitting in a London Hotel room, overlooking the busy street below, he could see why. In his hand he held the letter, sent from her solicitor, telling of how much trauma she had suffered, and how at least 1 million of that money should go to her. Charley did not see why she should not share in their good fortune.

"She'll bleed you dry," warned Old Dave the night before, when he had shown him the letter in the hotel bar. "She's only out for what she can get, and once she knows you are weak enough to give in, she'll come back for more."

"I know Dave, but looking back, I was a bit of a shit." Charley tried to paint a picture of how he now felt. He was changing and wanted to show that he was changing. Things were very different now, and he was very conscious of what the counsellor had told them.

"Mine gets nothing." Old Dave was triumphant in the way he had handled his begging letters. "If she thinks she can get a penny out of me, she'll have to try harder."

"But we've got so much. 10 million each? Less what we gave to Nigel. We don't want to end up like those drunks, the counsellor talked about."

"Why give in?" protested Old Dave.

"We did well, why be greedy?"

"But those women did nothing. They never took the chances, or slaved at bloody Cobol?"

"My ex-missus did agree to marry me. She gave a good few years of her life. She made a commitment."

"Charley, you came home and found her naked with your best mate? What sort of commitment is that?" Old Dave had opened an old wound there.

"Maybe a million is enough for her?"

"She'll just come back for more."

"Well, maybe I can get a formal agreement from her?"

"It won't be worth the paper it's written on. Every greedy solicitor in the country will be after you." Old Dave drank his pint and left the matter there.

Now, standing on his balcony, Charley wondered what to do for the best. Should Elizabeth share in his wealth? Would she be content? Would his best friend Brian get any of the money? Difficult questions were coming at him, and he was not used to dealing with them.

But Charley no longer had the excuse of the factory to hide behind now. A new life was opening up for him, and a new side of him had to come out.

He phoned the lottery people and took them up on their offer.

"Yes please, sign me up to open an account with the solicitor you recommended. Also please instruct him to deal with a letter I shall be sending over by courier. I should like it dealt with promptly please."

He put down the phone and looked at his hands. There, it was done. He had actually done something. Elizabeth would have the money. Even Brian, if he wanted it. Although Charley doubted Brian had the guts to stand up to her. But he still felt she deserved it. After all, he had been a pain in the arse for all those years. As if he had been in training to be an old man.

He could walk out of here now and do anything. Buy a yacht and sail around the world. Go trekking across the Sahara for 6 months. Or just live in a hotel in New Orleans. Anything he wanted. The Euro lottery had set up their accounts and even given them a debit card to help spend the money. At first, they had been worried about spending a single penny of the money, until they found out, that the interest alone was paying for everything they spent.

Bob wanted to draw all his money out in cash until they took them all to the bank vault and showed them what 10 million in notes actually looked like. Even Old Dave had to admit they would need a van each to transport it. And where would they keep a dangerous amount of money like that? The whole world would be watching to see where they buried it. Or at least the whole of Ampswell.

No. The bank was best.

As Charley wondered about the newfound freedom the money had brought him, his mind went back to the thorny subject of the missing ticket, and the remaining

£200 million. Needless to say, it would take them a while to get through all the money they had now, but it still sat there, eating away.

All the others had purchased huge houses in the first few days of their money clearing. The riot at the factory had only just calmed down when Stuart bought the old Manor house on the edge of Ampswell. Ironically it overlooked the industrial estate, so he still looked out on the same site he had pondered for all those years. But that did not seem to bother him.

The others settled for large houses in and around the county of Rutland, not being able to move away from each other, but not being able to say so either.

Only Charley now lived in the hotel rooms. He liked the idea of not having to do anything.

"It will cost you a fortune," worried his mother, as she readily accepted the offer of having her mortgage paid off. Charley tried to explain about the interest being so much, he could live there for years and never touch his capital, but he gave up.

Charley had come back to Ampswell to lock up his house and find the Big Issue seller, who had loaned him the pound, on that fateful day. Once he found the man, standing in the same corner of the high street, he handed him the wad of notes.

"There you go mate, thanks for the loan of the pound. Can I have my watch back?"

The man stood there, opened mouthed at the huge bundle of notes. "How much is there?"

"Hell, I didn't count it. About ten thousand I think." Charley just smiled and put his watch back on.

As the others settled down to buy Rolls Royce's, and garden furniture, Charley stood and thought about that ticket. Where could it be? He had toyed with the idea of hiring a detective agency to track it down. But just as he was leafing through the directories, something stopped him.

Maybe this was what it was all about? Maybe this was why he was sent the £50 million, to get out and look for the £200?

Odd as the statement sounded in his head, the more Charley said it, the more it made sense. He wondered if he should tell the others? Old Dave would understand. They met in the Dirty Rabbit, for what was supposed to be their last drink together, before going their separate ways.

"What have we got in common now?" said Old Dave as they stood in the bar and drank the beer, which uniquely looked frothy and flat at the same time. "Even the beer is different in London. Nowhere in the world, could you get a beer like this." He held his pint up to the light of the fruit machine. "It looks shit, and by God, it tastes shit!" Old Dave drank heartily. "Nothing matches it."

"True," said Charley. "We seem to be drifting away from that now. This could be the last time we see each other."

"That's for the best," said Old Dave. "We aren't married to each other. People come and go. Look at the factory? We saw a good many faces come and go there, over the years?"

"True," continued Charley. "How's it doing?"

"I heard Eurco is still there."

"So it's still going?"

"Oh yeah. Once the right pockets were lined, they let them go on trading. Things just slotted back into place. Even the asylum seekers have started drifting back."

"What happened to Neville?" asked Charley.

"They tried to sow his hands back on."

"Any success?" Charley found that hard to believe.

"Some. He'll never work again, but the factory got off with the accident. Sure enough, Eurco tried to get the police to blame Bob."

"So did he get off?"

"We are so rich now, just a few thousand in the right place, and the lawyers just smooth everything out." Old Dave took another swig of his strange pint.

"I still feel bad about Neville losing his hands though," said Charley.

"Why? The bastard brought it on himself?"

"But that's the end of his life, just as ours is getting underway."

"He would not feel sorry for you Charley, now get a grip. We have to be on our toes now that we have money. Do you remember that counsellor telling us we might all end up round the bend? We don't want that."

Just then Bob walked through the door, wearing what looked like a cast-off from the wardrobe of Elvis.

"What the hell have you got on?" Old Dave and the rest of the pub stood in amazement at the site.

"I got it from a theatrical agency, I brought a share in. Costumes and that." Bob paraded before the bar in the suit. "It belonged to a game show host on some TV programme." He was pleased with his strange attire and strutted up and down the well-worn carpet.

"It belonged to a pimp!" said Old Dave.

"Don't knock the threads, it's an investment." Bob tugged at the sleeves to show he was happy in the outfit.

"What did you think you were doing? Buying that? They saw you coming."

"I like it. It's made from a space-age material, specially designed for the show."

"You can't walk about the streets in it."

"I won't be walking around here anymore. My new girlfriend and I will be living in our new home in Spain." Bob had an air of smug satisfaction, as he said this.

But as Charley looked at Old Dave they both knew it was over. Now everything changed.

"You know I want to find the missing ticket?" Charley wondered how Old Dave would react to this.

"Charley, what chances have you got of finding it? I mean seriously?"

"Let's face it, I've got nothing else to fill my days. It might take my mind off things."

"Where the hell did the machines go, once they left here? asked Old Dave. The bar was filling up now, with the rest of the lottery winners, and their now considerable camp followers, all filling in.

"The last I could find, they were purchased by a company specialising in asset stripping." Charley looked around the bar, never realising, that the men had so many relations.

"That was a strange thing?" said Old Dave putting down his pint to focus on the problem. "Why did they close the factory so quickly? It was almost as if they were waiting for an excuse."

"Who could have foreseen Neville's accident?"

"The way they cut corners, an accident would have occurred eventually?"

"I still think it's a coincidence," said Charley.

"Maybe, but we still think it's fishy."

Fishy it was, to say the least, as Charley was to discover over the next few days.

Publicity had followed the men after the lottery win, and it now began to rear its ugly head. Once the tabloids had toasted the working-class heroes, in their honeymoon period, but now that same cruel hand began to turn against them. The very same paper they had loyally purchased every morning for years, now began to draw out a series of ugly stories about the men. Many were false, but sadly only too many were true. Some were so well known in the area, that the chequebook journalists found Ampswell a dream come true.

The Dirty Rabbit, became a second dole office, as a source of income. As people queued at the bar to spill the beans. Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty. There were so many disgruntled kiss-and-tell stories, that the editor of The Brit took the unprecedented step, of actually turning down several offers. On the grounds that just one small group of men, could not possibly have led such a hedonistic lifestyle.

But sadly the truth was the truth, and when it all came out, it made for sorry reading. Strangely Charley did not feel as embarrassed as he thought he would, once he read the stories. As he sat in the hotel suite, with all the papers laid out before him, he realised that no matter how badly they painted him, they never mentioned the fact that he had just given his wife a million pounds.

"Wife left through boredom!" read his headline of The Brit. "Thrown over for best friend!" said another. And: "Lazy lover!" was the final insult.

The worse thing was, Charley agreed with it all. He got several calls from the personal agent, assigned them by the Euro lottery, offering the services of vicious Rottweiler lawyers, for retaliation. Charley declined.

He left Ampswell as the legal capital of the tabloid world and set off to find the missing machines and his £200 million tickets.

Charley was worried about setting foot on foreign soil, as he had never travelled abroad. The first thing he was to find, was that they were not the least bit concerned with the British tabloid press. A phone call had led him on a trail to track down the transport company handling the movement of the guillotines, and in turn, he was on his way to France. He might never have left Ampswell, if not for the good graces of his Eurco lottery minder. The company was so concerned that winners blew so much of their money in the first few months, that they began assigning a team of people to help; advise, assist, and even to bail them out. So many of their clients had ended up in jails; drying out clinics, or pouring their hearts out on daytime chat shows, that they felt they had to do something.

The Euro lottery was gaining the reputation of a company that ruined lives, and this had to stop.

The man assigned to Charley was a kind-hearted, middle-aged man named Gerald. After a career in the Royal navy, and the taking up of an offer by an old friend, Gerald had found himself in a job looking after MPs. An old navy pal had mentioned the offer of a vacancy in a successful security firm, he had set up next to the House of Commons. Initially, the job description was security guard, but Gerald soon found it meant keeping your clients out of the headlines. So you had to keep him sober enough to stay one step ahead of the tabloids. He could tell many a tale of bedroom indiscretions and hotel chases, featuring girlfriends; boyfriends and wives, but chose to disclose none of them. Which brought him to the attention of the Euro lottery.

Happy to babysit Charley on his adventure, he found it all so easy, setting up passports and booking hotel rooms. The massive amount of money involved guaranteed the smooth running of the whole affair, and Gerald just drove Charley around, not knowing what he was really doing, and not really caring.

Charley had carried out some extensive research for the scheme. After Nigel had told them about the machines being taken away, the lottery winners had been fascinated as to where they were going. One of them had suggested bribing the men involved with the removal, and in the end, this proved to be the most successful way of getting any information. Charley stood at the factory gate and photographed the lorry with his new digital camera, as it carried the last load of machine parts off down the motorway. In his hotel room, he had installed a home computer. A few weeks ago Charley would have broken out in a cold sweat if you had mentioned the word computer. But after paying for a private course, he sat confidently in front of the screen. The teacher had shown him there was nothing to fear from the keyboard, and that very soon his biggest fear would rear its head.

Sure enough, Charley found it. As he sat there, the terrible truth hit him between the eyes. It was the fact that he finally realised he had wasted all those years in the factory. And now he had to own up and admit it was easy. He could have been doing this all along. Although Charley knew he would never have done it without the lottery money.

Once he had stopped beating himself up over this, as the teacher predicted, he started work.

The digital image revealed the name of the firm, plastered all over the lorry. A quick search on the internet showed it to be a general shipping company, really operating from the south of France. Charley wondered why but thought no more of it. He tried to find out where the shipments were all going to but found honest enquiries were the last thing people wanted. So he tried something else.

The company was called Mammon logistics. They had a huge depot in the north of London, just off the M25. All the lorries seemed to go there, so Charley drove there to take a look at it.

With his new Mercedes things could not have been easier. Long gone were the days when he was terrified of taking his old Fiesta out on the road, In case it broke down, and he could not get back. This car could go anywhere. Equipped with the latest gadgets, you could not even get lost. Charley had thought about buying a Rolls or a Bentley as Bob had done, but settled for something which might attract a little less attention. They certainly had enough of that lately. After asking a few drivers in motorway cafes, Charley had got nowhere.

And so he turned to Gerald.

Gerald found it slightly strange, that Charley should want to enquire about the shipment of old machines, but he had been asked for stranger things in his career and got to it. He quickly found someone in the transport depot, and with a wad of fifty-pound notes, supplied by Charley, they walked past the security guards and into the building.

"Just tell them you are conducting a survey to set up your own transport business," said Gerald, as they walked towards the office. "That's what politicians do when they want to cover something up."

"Oh right," said Charley nervously. "That way they might believe I have a genuine reason for all these questions?"

"Right," said Gerald, opening the door. "So whatever you're real reason-and I don't want to know- they will think it's hidden in good old fashioned greed."

Charley was nervous about doing anything out of the ordinary, but Gerald was so good at charming people, that events flowed smoothly. If they hit a real problem, Gerald would ask to look at some paperwork, and simply hand it back with some of Charlie's fifty-pound notes inside. It worked like a dream with most people in the warehouse. With the only exception being a little foreman who refused to help, for his own zealous reasons. He seemed sealed to the rest of the world, and would not budge. Impervious to the questions, and astonished at the fifty-pound notes, he just stared at them.

Gerald could see the writing on the wall and gave up. On asking a clearer question down the line, it turned out the man was in and out of mental hospitals, and might not understand them anyway. Although he was deemed fit to run a transport firm.

At the end of the day, Charley rode back with Gerald, ever helpfully at the wheel, and thought about what he had found. The London traffic was too much for him and he was content to sit in the back and reflect on his thoughts. Charley had done a lot that day. He: little Charley, had finally tried to achieve something, instead of letting it happen around him. The world of Cobol was drifting further away now, as he thought about what he did know concerning the movements of the old guillotines.