Not Passing Go! Ch. 03

Pain in Spain

They say Solitary Sal was anybody's for half a crown, but that was when half a crown was worth sumthink. Now old Sal's nobody's. Except when her son's conscience allows her to spend a week with him in sunny Spain.

Motormouth Mikey was never a friend of mine but he had his uses. Last time was just over five long painful years ago. I had a bank deposit vault that I had my eye on, where I was minded to max out the credit by making multiple withdrawals. Now, in the right hands an oxy-acetylene torch is to steel plate safe boxes what surgical stainless steel is to cancer tumours. Motormouth Mikey came highly recommended, apparently a consummate artist with the blue flame. In all other respects though, welder Mikey was an oxy-moron.

The job went like a dream, we was in and out with no trouble. The law chased us but I had a foolproof plan, which relied too heavily on honour among thieves. That's where I made my first mistake.

Mikey made a clean getaway with the whole damned community chest, moving via St Pancras to the Continent. Meanwhile, muggins here was caught at the opposite end of Go!, ending up doing a nap hand of years' mailbag-sewing time in Pentonville without a get-out-of-jail-free card within my properties.

Half a decade later I was out and looking to recover my fair division of the spoils. By hook or by crook I was going to get my cut - and a sharp blade in intimate connection with any one of Mikey's arteries came to mind.

Hence my tracking down his old Mum, at her favourite boozer. She was a floozie whose bloom had faded long ago.

Getting milk stout in a Wetherspoons pub is like asking a meths drinker if he has any Mouton Rothschild. Five years locked away without pubs adds a new perspective; for what the pimply barkeep charged for a splash of ready-mixed lemonade in half a Guinness, I could've previously bought a gallon of R White's.

I won't say Sal had let herself go, but I used to breathe more deeply in E Wing's latrines shared by 300 careless misfits, than sitting across a table in the Flying Ferret with Motormouth Mikey's Mum breathing in what she was exhaling.

Very boastful was Mikey, apparently. Told his old Mum all about how he screwed that dumbo Danny Matthews, who Sal obviously didn't know from Adam. According to the old sot, that poor sap Danny's still doing porridge as some banged-up drug baron's fudge-packed bitch, the whore cackled. I forced myself to agree with her that it was a great crack and Mikey must be as smart as paint, as I pushed a second sweetened stout in front of her at arm's length.

"So, my old mucker Mikey on his lonesome in his sun-drenched paradise, is he then, eh Sal?" I enquired.

"Nah, he hasz an 'arem of bootiful ladiesh at 'is beck'n'call. Doin' very nyshly f'rishse'f, me Mikey ish."

Figures, Mikey always boasted he had more sweet tarts lined up than Mr Kipling. He spread BS like a jobbing plasterer butters toast.

"I'll have to pay me respects to 'im on me holidays then, Sal," I said, ingratiatingly, "Looks like you brung your boy up sweet."

"Oh, 'e wush no trouble, my Mikey, a'waysh looksh after 'ish old Mum, dush Mikey."

"When you goin' over to see 'im again?" I asked, "Cos the forecast is grim over here, lots of frost and snow coming, an' you look like you could use some sunshine."

"Not goin' over meshelf fer a monff, bu' nexsht week, Mikey'sh shent me a ticket f'r'is former girlfriend Ange, an'll 'range fer a taxshi to the airport, 'esh so good like 'at."

Damn, I thought at the time. It was too soon. Only out of clink the previous day. Hadn't got no readies to hand. My wife Agnes was nursing twins without a recognised daddy at what used to be our flat, so I was living at me Mum's. Long story, I'd tell you, but it's hard writing this stuff when your eyes is misted up. Right now I needed a passport and a fistful of readies for the flight. I had more chance of flying to Mars on a bleeding banana. Mum's a nurse; she works all the hours under the sun and moon, and she ain't got two coppers to rub together.

Earning an honest living. That's a joke! What chance does an ex-Army NCO, a Staff Sergeant no less, used to hostile ops what I'm sworn to secrecy about, have to get a job?

I had no choice but to cash in my long-term investments. My broker Mikey had made me a whole lot broker, by cashing in all my dividends for five years. I needed some reimbursement therapy from him smartish.

Sal refused to tell me exactly where Mikey lived. And after three sweetened stouts, rather than loose her tongue, it relaxed her backbone to the extent she was all but comatose.

Good job my mucker Freddie's mouse tracked down Ange Spiller's flight for me. Freddie the Forger may have lost both his legs, one above and one below the knee, but his computer and graphics skills are second to none. He's cheap, too. Won't let me pay one single penny for his services. And I only carried him on my back for two or three kilometres through the Hindu Kush after he stepped on that UID. With his missing limbs and all that blood loss, he was a whole lot easier to carry than one of the exhausted twins home from the park after playing all day on the swings. Well, I imagine so, I'd not had the stomach to see the twins or even Agnes at that point.

Agnes rang Mum when she heard I was home, to try and get in contact with me. But, hey, she made her bed, right?

***

Well, that was last week. Then I had my luck driving a limo after I had slugged the driver, bundled the cheating creep in the boot and picked up Susan Kollikov. It was definitely the shortest trip and the highest tip any chauffeur ever got.

So, thanks to a pair of Russians having a terminal territorial tussle over a top tatty tart, I had more than enough cash to fly to Spain and back on a recently available Russian passport. Ask no questions, eh?

My best mucka Freddie flew with me too, as I have said before, he really don't get out much. He desperately needed some vitamin D in the form of sunshine and both his Spanish and Russian's so much better than mine.

Mum wrapped a big bandage round my jaw, tying a huge knot on the top of my head. I had a bump on my bonce as big as a duck's egg from one of the Russians anyway. A letter on "borrowed" NHS hospital stationary explained in English and Spanish that my injuries meant I was unable to speak, therefore seeing a noggin specialist in Madrid. Hopefully Freddie would doctor Mikey's UK passport with my photo for an easier return trip. I was still seeing my parole officer once a week.

Tailing 'Ashtray' Ange (Freddie's nickname, not mine; I find there's no-one more zealous than an ex-smoker) was simple. Mikey collected her himself from the Spanish airport.

Nice place it was, that villa in Spain, although a little off the usual tourist track, that my share of the loot had bought Mikey. Not a patch on the photos that Agnes sent back from my new beachside property in Bermuda, though. No independent door alarm had been fitted to the Spanish hacienda, which was a clear oversight on Mikey's side, so I was able to enter the master bedroom without any prior warning.

"Hi, Mikey," I opened, standing next to their bed, "Looks like you've been caught with your pants down."

Blimey, I thought as I approached, Ange hadn't been off the plane more than half an hour.

Mikey yelled a staccato expletive and reached into the bedside drawer, presumably for his handiest armament. I crashed my foot against the drawer, jamming his wrist in tight. MDF it was, poor quality furniture, a lot of give in the wood. Didn't stop him leaking arterial blood all over the show, though, I guess.

Mikey was screaming like a girl, outdoing Ange's high-pitched scream by decibels alone. Ange fainted first, though.

"Who's had his hand in the till?" laughed Freddie as he arrived in the bedroom. Even with his NHS tin pins, he's pretty pedestrian where stairs are involved. "Oh, caught red-handed too," Freddie chuckled. Gallows humour is an ore mined deeply by those who've been to that particular coal-face and back.

"Sing, Mikey," I said, "Where are that other pair of soon-to-be skeletons closeted?"

Mikey sang like a bird.

To be continued.