Trouble Espresso - The Third P. I. Hands Case

Chapter 1 – Trouble Brewing 

The cold winter light pierced through my bedroom curtains that I had failed to close properly after I dragged myself home in the early hours of the morning. The window was close but frustratingly too far away from my bed for me to be able to sit up and reach the curtains to finish closing them. The light seemed to go through my closed eyelids and burrow its way directly into the pain receptors in my head, reminding me of my sins from the night before. I lay on the bed for a few minutes and tried using my non-existent powers of telekinesis to shut them, and eventually gave up and slowly, clumsily got out of the bed instead. 

It had been a hell of a party from what I could remember, but then that’s the idea of New Year’s Eve, I suppose. Naturally, I’d spent it in The New Inn. Felicia had organised a proper lock-in party. No one had been allowed in before 10:30 PM, and no one was allowed out until 7 AM. The booze and the money were flowing, food and balloons and steamers noise-makers were everywhere. The house band played hard and loud until 5 when most of them were so drunk that no one could recognise what they were playing anymore, which then turned into an impromptu version of Name That Tune amongst the attendees. I wasn’t sure how many of us had survived, but we were certain to do it again in twelve months’ time – best New Year’s Eve party ever. I didn’t envy Felecia’s job of cleaning it up today, though. 

Felicia had been in her element last night, master of the party but letting her hair down too. I saw her quite often dancing to the music with one hand free, the other hand holding her drink, smile beaming, spinning, happy and care-free. I grinned to myself as I thought of it now. She’d certainly earned it after the year she’d had. I was delighted for her. 

I hadn’t been planning on playing guitar last night, but about 3 AM a tipsy Felicia had grabbed my hand when I wasn’t looking and pulled me up on the elevated platform at the back of the pub with the house band - still trying to look after me, still trying to fix me, even now. I had a bass guitar shoved into my hands and was egged on by the crowd, so I had to start playing and keep up with the band as best as I could, looking for riffs and chords and changes and clues from the others. It obviously made her so very happy, so who was I to say no and let her down? But then, Missing Cat were a friendly bunch of musicians anyway and I knew them well. The group name was their idea of a joke – “We’re “Missing Cat” – you’ve probably seen our posters!” That either made people laugh or angered cat lovers. It still made me laugh. 

I moved unsteadily across the bedroom, adjusting my directional walking targeting system to compensate for my shaky, bouncing double vision and headed for the bathroom. Digging into the medicine cabinet, I retrieved my severe hangover kit – three paracetamol, two dihydrocodeine, two Alka-Seltzer, and a triple vodka in my special emergency bottle labelled “Rubbing Alcohol”, which was to help rub out hangovers, or at least the memory of how I got the hangover to start with. I dropped the Alka-Seltzer into the vodka, downed the pills and then headed to the kitchen to light my first cigarette since 7:01 AM. 

The light in the kitchen was just as horrendous as the light in the bedroom as I lit up my cigarette and took a deep, satisfying, nourishing drag, held it in, coughed it out, and felt it do its magic. Wonderful. After staring at the clock on the microwave until it stopped shaking, I discovered it was 2:17 PM. I was guessing that was only because it didn’t know it was the end of the world in my head, but a part of me was thinking “great, only a few hours until the pub re-opens”. I decided to have another “hair of the dog” to help me drink myself sober and pulled the vodka from the fridge and a frosted glass from the freezer. 

I made the life-threatening hazardous trek to the sitting room and flopped on the couch, spent by the exertion needed to get there. So this was the New Year. It felt a lot like the old year so far in many ways. I was happy to put that old one behind me and start afresh. My last case of the year hadn’t gone the way I expected, so it had a lot in common with most of my cases. My client had tried to double-cross me and pin a murder on me by planting a body in my office and making an anonymous call to the chief of police, making me their patsy and distracting the police to give them time to get away with their own crime and the prize. 

But I’d been prepared for it. I usually was. It came with trusting no one, part of being a talented and lucky private eye. I’d outmanoeuvred and out-smarted my louse of a client when I saw them set the trap, and they’d ended up busted by a call from me to DI Brad and eventually stuck to rot in the Toukville Pen for 34 years to think about where they’d gone wrong. I smiled grimly. No one crossed me and got away with it. I’d have been happy for them to just pay me what I was owed and let them get away with it, but they wouldn’t play fair. Tough luck to them. 

As usual though, I was left holding the bag. The villain was eliminated. DI Brad got a pat on the back and a police commendation from the chief for getting an internationally wanted criminal handed to him on a silver platter by me, which he couldn’t acknowledge, of course. And I got nothing but a free lesson, an empty fuel tank and a few days older. But I was alive and free, and that counted for everything. 

I had just thrown a cushion at the clock on my wall because it was ticking too loudly and making my head hurt sixty times a minute when my landline phone next to the couch erupted with a ring that instantly incapacitated me and made all four of my limbs fly in different directions. My head felt like someone had shoved a stick of TNT through my earhole and set it off. Time slowed to a crawl as I struggled to coordinate my recalcitrant hand and arm in the general direction of the hideous device while my eyes throbbed and deceived my depth perception, also trying to kill me. Each ring seemed louder than the last, and closer as well. The phone was only two feet away, but it might as well have been two miles. Who the devil was that, calling me on New Year’s Day – I hope they were prepared to die when I was well enough to kill them. 

I finally managed to pick up the phone, taking ages to orient the receiver right way around to ear and mouth. I decided to forego my usual greeting and said softly, “Is that the Toukville Morgue? I’d like to order a taxi please.” 

“HAPPY NEW YEAR, HANDS! IT’S ME, BIG PHIL!”, boomed the voice through the receiver. 

My world split open in front of me as every part of my body went into meltdown. “Do you have any idea just how much that hurt, Phil?”, I stammered down the phone. “You utter, utter bastard. You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. It felt good. REALLY good. A friend who was at The New Inn last night called me and told me what a wreck you’d be, so I had to take advantage of it.” Big Phil laughed at the other end uncontrollably. 

“I’ve got a long memory and I’ll have you for that one day, Phil. Just you wait.” 

“Yeah… but not today!” His smugness and satisfaction were almost dripping out of the phone. 

“Any last wishes before I kill you in a slow, painful, yet strangely comical fashion – once I sober up?”, I said with as much venom as I could muster. 

“Hey, admit it, you’d do the same to me if the tables were turned. That’s what mates do.” It was as powerful an argument against friendship as I had ever heard. But yes, I’d do the same to him and worse, next time I got a chance. 

“Done now? Care to dance on my grave too?” 

“Maybe later”, he chuckled, “but I thought you’d like to start the year on a high and partner me on a case. Starting now.” 

“NOW?” I hurt my own head from yelling. “Now?”, I said much more softly. “What’s so urgent that we need to start now? Are you nuts?” 

“I got a call from our favourite caffeine pusher, who’s afraid for his life. Nelly thinks someone is trying to kill him and wants our help. I’ll pick you up in an hour and take you to his joint – you may be too drunk to drive, but I know your skill is still sober. See you soon.” He hung up, and I perked up a tiny bit. This might be good. 

.......... 

Chapter 2 - Full of Beans

I stood outside in the cold overcast steel grey afternoon waiting for Big Phil to collect me to go over to Nelly’s and do some digging. The temperature combined with my severe hangover kit were starting to sharpen my senses up a bit, but I was still in no state to drive without risking a DUI. 

Even in these conditions, I noted that the GT-R looked magnificent. Inky black, moody, evil – how I loved that car. But what I didn’t love were the paw prints smudged up on the bonnet from the neighbourhood feline. It didn’t have a name to my knowledge, no collar or tags. It just showed up unannounced and unwanted one evening a few years ago and decided to be the bane of everyone’s lives. 

I liked animals in general. Cats were cool in my books. Independent, sleek, inquisitive killers. But not this one. I’d named it Ratbag for no other reason than it completely suited it. I had tried to make friends with it, and it responded by biting me without warning once it got close to me. An instant dislike was born. 

Because the GT-R’s carbon fibre bonnet retained a lot of the heat generated by the monstrous engine, the tortoiseshell furball liked to curl up on it when I drove home and parked, especially in the winter. In the summer, it made a perfect reflective sunbed, so it stretched out on the bonnet then too. I couldn’t win, and I’d been spending more time polishing the mangey thing’s prints off the paint than I could stand. 

I was looking at the stupid flea-bitten cat sitting on my car now when the sound of a car horn immediately behind me made me jump out of skin. I whipped around to see Big Phil’s car inches behind me. He’d seen me, switched off the engine and coasted up behind me, then nailed the horn to get a rise out of me. It worked. I could see Big Phil’s laughing face through the windscreen, and my hangover headache had made a sudden and unwelcome return. That was two I owed him. Grumpily, I walked slowly over to the passenger’s side and climbed in, Big Phil restarted the engine and we made our way towards Nelly’s, me in stoney silence and Big Phil sniggering to himself with evil satisfaction like the cartoon dog, Mutley. 

… 

It was 3:32 PM when we pulled into the car park at Nelly’s. We could see through the big windows and in the glare of the neon and the fluorescent strip lights that the place was jumping with juiced-up java junkies getting their fix. Nelly, as usual, was just a blur, never standing still for too long, brewing, refilling, and cashing in. 

The place had changed little over the years until recently. The big neon signs out front now read “Nelly’s Coffee & Pies”. He’d been looking for a way to get his customers to linger and stay in his place to fleece them out of more cash, and decided pies were the natural thing to go with coffee. He’d considered donuts, but people could take donuts and coffee away with them in their cars, and that was no good to Nelly. You had to sit down at a table to eat a piece of apple or cherry or blueberry pie, and then you were his. The pies were on display at the counter and on a trolley that he’d push around the tables to tempt his addicts. What do you use to soak up the caffeine? A piece of pie. What do you need to wash down a piece of pumpkin pie? Some of Nelly’s special coffee. Slice and a brew. “Want some whipped cream on that pie for only 50p?” He bought in the pies from a local catering firm, inflated the prices by 500% and was cleaning up. There was no cooking to do, no kitchen to maintain. Profits were way, way up. Customers were now both caffeine and pie addicted. Nelly was a happy man. 

Until now, of course. 

Big Phil had stopped chuckling at my hungover discomfort and was merely grinning when we went in grabbed a table. Nelly clocked us out of the corner of his eye and trotted over to us as soon as he could. 

“Man, isn’t this great? Look at all these customers! You should see how much they can pack away! I should have thought of this years ago!”, Nelly blurted out. 

“Happy New Year to you too, Nelly”, said Big Phil. “It’s too early for your brand of greedy chirpiness. Get us some of your best soothing coffee, not that Jet-A kerosene you sell to fuel planes down at Toukville International Airport. Hands here has a hangover and is likely to kill someone if he’s crossed.” 

“Including you BP, you’re rapidly moving up my list.” Big Phil started sniggering again. He was really enjoying this. That made one of us. 

“Want some pie?”, aske Nelly. 

“No thanks, the paperwork for my second mortgage to pay for it hasn’t cleared yet”, I snarked. 

“On the house?” Now I knew something was wrong with Nelly. 

“Thanks, no, I’m already addicted to your coffee, that’s enough life-shortening for me.” 

“I’ll have the apple”, said Big Phil and Nelly scuttled off to get it all. This lark had better be worth my while, I thought. 

Nelly brought the coffee and Phil’s pie back and sat down at the table with us. It may have been the hangover, but I thought I saw the sugar bowl recoil slightly in terror from the contents of the full coffee cups. I put two large spoons of sugar and a good splash of full fat milk into mine, stirred it until I was sure it safe, and took a long sip of the life-giving, and ironically life-shortening elixir. Big Phil was still able to drink his black. It made me shudder. 

“Right then Nelly, you told me on the phone you think someone’s trying to kill you. Why do you think that?”, Big Phil questioned as he drank. 

“I’m getting threatening letters, that’s why!”, Nelly replied tetchily. “Letters telling me to prepare to meet my maker, that my time is almost up, that revenge will be theirs! I don’t understand it. Who could I have possibly upset so much that they want to kill me?” 

Big Phi, who had started eating his pie, suddenly began choking and coughing at this reply. I reached over and patted him firmly between his shoulder blades until the choking had stopped. Tears of discomfort were running down Big Phil’s face, but he nodded he was okay. I’d have done the same if I’d have been eating when I heard Nelly say that. 

“Who??? Are you kidding?”, I blurted. “No one, of course. Apart from the customers addicted to your coffee and seeking help to kick it. The bookies you’ve cheated. The owners of the casinos you’ve frequented. The boyfriends, husbands and probably the fathers of all the women you’ve enjoyed. The suppliers for your business who you haven’t paid on time, maybe at all. The taxman. Anyone you can think of, Big Phil?”, who had now recovered the power of speech. 

“That pretty much covers it, but I’m sure I can think of others. Go get me your White Pages, we’ll start at Aaron A. Aardvark and work our way through to Zachary Z. Zochowski”, he snarled. “You really have the nerve to ask “who”?”

“Oh man, I’m so screwed! I’m going to die, I know it!” Nelly was now in a proper state of despair. 

“All right, calm down”, I said to him, “let’s take a look at these threatening letters. We can learn a lot from them, the spelling, the grammar, the handwriting…” 

“They were cut and paste letters, words cut out from newspapers and magazines, stuck down with glue and posted to me here. No stamps on the envelopes either. I ended up going to the post office and paying for each one, the swine.” 

“Yeah, there’s nothing more irritating than a tightwad assassin, is there?”, Big Phil said while rolling his eyes. It was my turn to chuckle now. 

“Hey, this isn’t funny you know, my life’s at stake here!” 

“Okay, I’m sorry I laughed. Let’s see these letters of yours.” 

“I haven’t got them. I burned them all.” 

“Why would you do that?”, Big Phil asked incredulously. 

“I thought it was all just a big joke, until today. Then I got this.” Nelly produced a full strawberry pie in a box from his trolley and showed it to us. The top of the pie was decorated in pastry that read “HAPPY DEATH YEAR NELLY”. It looked sinister, yet oddly delicious. “They’re going to kill me and put me in a pie!” 

The mental image of Nelly Pie tore me between revulsion and bizarre amusement, but I shook it off. “Look Nelly, I know it’s all rattling you, but no one is going to kill you. They’re just trying to frighten you.” 

“How can you be so sure?”, he asked. I looked at Big Phil and nodded. He knew as well as I did, but I’d let him explain while I finished my coffee. 

“Because if they wanted you dead, you’d BE dead. No one writes to their victims in advance and gives them the chance to get away. That would be ridiculous. It’s just someone you’ve upset screwing with your head to get their own back, that’s all.” 

The realisation and relief slowly spread across Nelly’s face. “Really? They’re not trying to kill me? I’m safe?” 

Big Phil and I in unison: “Yep.” 

“PHEW! Oh man, what a relief! So I can ignore these letters and get on with life?” 

Another “yep” in unison from the two of us 

“Thanks guys, I really appreciate it! Thanks! I’ll bring you some more coffee in a minute, I just have to write out this tab for a customer on table fifteen.” The relief on his face was obvious. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an oversized Mont Blanc ballpoint pen. 

“Wow, nice pen Nelly. Expensive too.”, I said offhandedly. 

“Yeah, can you believe it? Some rich customer who was in here earlier today left it behind! What an idiot. You know what they say, finders keepers, losers weepers!” That was Nelly all over – an opportunist without scruples. It takes all types, I thought. 

Nelly turned the top of the pen clockwise to extend the pen tip when he suddenly started to shake violently and fell to the floor, convulsing from head to foot, shaking like a tuning fork. The pen was gripped firmly in his hand and was making a loud rapid clicking noise. Nelly was unable to speak and obviously in extreme pain. 

After a few seconds, I recognised what was happening, stood up and kicked Nelly’s hand as hard as I could, dislodging the pen from his grasp and sending it skidding across the floor. Nelly stopped convulsing and Big Phil and I helped him up and into a chair. 

“Wha…wha…what was that?”, Nelly stammered as he continued to twitch involuntarily, his eyes out like organ stops. 

I went over and carefully picked up the now silent pen with a thick cloth. Carefully unscrewing it, I found it contained not ink, but a lithium battery, a charge point and a high-voltage capacitor with a wire running to the top of the pen. It was a booby-trapped and now fully discharged Taser pen – and a bloody expensive and effective one too.

I returned to the table and showed it to Big Phil – a look of concern crossed his face as well as mine as I bent down and spoke softly to Nelly: 

“My colleague and I stand corrected. We regret to inform you that someone may indeed being trying to kill you.” 

..... 

Chapter 3 – Spilling The Beans 

Nelly sat open-mouthed in shock, ironically, at what had just happened to him. I looked about to see the reactions of the customers. Sometimes, the perpetrator likes to stay behind and watch, to enjoy seeing their work first-hand. No one batted an eyelid. I reckoned it was because they were so used to seeing people twitch uncontrollably from caffeine overload that they couldn’t tell the difference when someone was being zapped by a Taser. 

With Nelly temporarily not in the land of the fully functioning, Big Phil and I started talking about the situation and making plans. 

“That pen was pretty nasty.”, I offered, “But it wasn’t designed to kill, just to punish light-fingered people.” 

“True. The question is, did it come from the same mind who gave him the notes and the messaged pie, or was someone else just getting their own back?”, Big Phil replied. 

“A fair question. We can’t be sure there’s not more than one person after Nelly.” 

“More than one person after me?!” Nelly was alert enough to have heard that much. 

“Do you mind? We’re working here.”, I said to Nelly, then turned to Big Phil. “I’m up for taking this on together if you are.” 

“Me too. Nelly’s grassed both of us up so often we practically need to be mown. It’ll be good to dig into his wardrobe and have a chat with all his skeletons.” Big Phil sniggered to himself Mutley-style again. 

Big Phil and I chatted and drank our coffee, while Nelly composed himself enough to go back to serving customers, but not before pocketing the Taser pen, no doubt to return the favour to someone deserving one day. Finders keepers. 

In cases of revenge, and this was clearly about revenge, there’s two primary motives – sex and money, and sometimes both. Over the years, Nelly was a bit of a notorious charming swordsman with Toukville’s ladies, a frequenter of the wedding chapels as well as the divorce courts. I had lost count, but I thought the current Mrs Nelly might be Number 5. 

Bless him, Nelly just couldn’t see it coming, no matter how many times it happened. Successful businessman flattered by a beautiful young very high-maintenance woman, charmed by their feminine ways and attention. Married for a few years, having his fun and her having his debit and credit cards. They had all ended explosively and expensively. 

Some of them had married Nelly as a project. It’s a truism that women get married and see the potential in a man and think they can change them, mould them into something better, improve them. Men get married because they think they’re going to get regular sex. Both parties tend to be wrong. And really wrong. 

However, the former Mrs Nellys were unlikely to be the ones out for revenge. They’d each done very well out of their divorce settlements and led happy lives on hefty settlements and alimony payments. Zapping the goose that laid the golden cheques wasn’t a sound move. 

More likely were the boyfriends and even fathers of the prospective Mrs Nellys he’d been auditioning between marriages over the years. He certainly had the magic touch with the ladies, a gift not every male in Touksville had viewed with admiration and appreciation. The stories of Nelly jumping out of bedroom windows in various states of undress and followed by an angry male may or may not have been true, but they were numerous. Part of me was slightly envious, but only part. 

Of course, the life of the lusty gentleman is an expensive one. Feminine pleasures in quantity does not come cheaply, nor should they. It’s one of the reasons he worked so hard, so that he could support the lifestyle. The hard work and long hours were also the reason every one of his relationships and marriages had failed. Mrs Nellys didn’t much like sitting at home on their own and being taken for granted while Mr Nelly stayed at work, so they went out without him and spent all his money to entertain themselves and get their revenge on him, making him work that much harder to support Mrs Nelly. It was all a vicious circle that for some reason none of them could ever see. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, after all. 

The thing neither Big Phil nor I could figure out was where he was getting all the money from. The number of covers and the profit margins couldn’t possibly support the lifestyle he was enjoying – could it? I looked at my coffee cup with deepening suspicion and wondered just what muck I might have been consuming all these years if he was getting that rich, and even richer it seemed with his pie empire. 

It didn’t add up, particularly as he was a notorious gambler, and a lousy one at that. You can always spot a lousy gambler. They’re the ones that the clubs, casinos, and racetracks are not only happy to see, they positively fall over themselves to get them inside. Private blackjack tables. Complimentary suite. Access to the stables for private viewings of the animals and chats with the owners and trainers. Complimentary limos. Free food and drink. Anything to make them feel good, feel special, and bleed them dry. They loved watching Nelly show up. It’s why those places all have big windows out front – it’s so they can see him coming. 

Nelly was also quite the trader of information, and it might just be possible he was blackmailing one or more people to finance his lifestyle. People who drank at Nelly’s didn’t understand just how much eavesdropping was going on and tended to talk more freely than they should have. Being a blackmailer was both a profitable and a dangerous business. Blackmailing the weak until they were broke was easy. Blackmailing the strong and powerful was a death sentence for the blackmailer. 

Big Phil and I agreed the best way to solve this quickly was to divide and conquer. He would take the sex revenge motive and see where it got him. Seeing as he was a big charming guy who wasn’t a slouch with the ladies himself, it seemed he was the best man for that part of job anyway, so I was happy to agree. Since I was more familiar with the dirty side of Toukville, I’d chase up the money side of it and see what I could unearth. It's another truism - follow the money. 

We turned to Nelly, who had staggered back to our table, and Big Phil started to talk. “We’re going to help you out Nelly, but it’s going to cost you if you want us to find your “admirer”. Big. We’re going to need to know everything about your private life.” 

“Everything?”, a nervous Nelly said softly. 

“EVERYTHING.”, I said sternly. “Either you can tell us, or we can dig it up ourselves. The first way is much quicker, and the second way gives your “admirer” more time and opportunities. We need your little black book full of ladies you’ve known. Your financial details. A list of your enemies. The skeletons. The lot.” 

“And if I don’t?” 

“Then it’s bye-bye, Nelly.”, Big Phil said matter-of-factly. 

Nelly paused to consider the options, which numbered only two, both of which he didn’t like. He sighed heavily. “Okay…we’ll do it your way.”, his voice full of resignation. 

“Then there’s just the small matter of our fee.” I tried to suppress the grin tugging at the corners of my mouth without much success. “Big Phil and I discussed it on the way over, and our fee to assist you is... free coffee and pie.” 

“Free coffee and pie? Is that all?” 

“For life. Unlimited.”, said Big Phil, full Cheshire cat grin plastered on his face. 

Nelly sank into the booth next to us and put his head in his hands. “All right. All right. You win. Unlimited free coffee and pie for life for each of you - IF you solve this for me.” 

We both shook Nelly’s hand, and I left Big Phil to start by questioning Nelly about his love life over the years, hoping he had a big enough notebook with him to hand. As I left to go outside in the crisp Toukville night air, have a smoke and catch a cab back to The New Inn, I said to Nelly, “One last thing…” 

“What’s that?” 

“I’d get rid of that strawberry pie if I were you. I think it might be bad for you.” 

………. 

Chapter 4 - Percolating 

I stood outside’s Nelly’s for ten minutes and had three cigarettes in a row to help me think, their glowing tips generating a tiny but welcome amount of heat on my face as the cold winter wind blew against me, then hailed a cab to take me to The New Inn. 

I hated cabs, for a lot of reasons. Mainly, because someone else was in control. They were like rolling torture chambers. Cab drivers were either ridiculously friendly and familiar, surly and miserable, or downright obnoxious. Tonight, it was surly and miserable taking me on my journey. 

The black cab was ancient and probably had enough mileage under its decerped wheels to get to the Moon and back. Maybe twice. It was no longer a taxi as much as it was several thousand parts flying in close formation. I put a cigarette in my mouth and leaned back in the sagging, worn out seat. 

“Hey! No smoking in here”, said my grumpy pilot. 

“I know that. I’m not smoking”, I replied calmly. 

“There’s a cigarette in your mouth!” 

“Yeah, and there’s shoes on my feet, but I’m not walking, am I? That’s why you’re driving me to where I want to go.” 

The rest of the journey passed in an awkward silence of aggressive lousy driving. Well, awkward for him. It was blissfully quiet for me. He pulled up outside and cursed under his breath when I didn’t tip him as I exited his death trap and went into my warm and welcoming second home. 

Felicia’s place had the unmistakeable air of the day after the night before – sombre and quiet. She’d managed to get the place pretty much straight again, but there was the detritus of fragile patrons scattered around who had stumbled back in tonight for some hair of the dog in a vainglorious attempt at salvation from their sins. They were pretty much the shells of the people I knew, drawn back to the scene of the catastrophe in which they’d earlier been gleeful participants. 

I went to the end of the bar and took my usual place. Felicia had made a superhuman effort to get the place and herself ready again, but there was no disguising how she really felt. I opened my mouth to say something, but she immediately put her hand over my mouth and gently shook her head. She didn’t want to hear it, whatever it was. Her head was hurting her too bad and noise was not her friend. She brought over my glass, some ice and my bottle, and a copy of tonight’s Toukville Tribune so I could work, then exited stage left with slow, light steps. 

Reading the Toukville Tribune was my regular evening work, but I read it differently from most people. I started off in the Crime section, looking for anything juicy or for anyone I knew or had the displeasure to lock horns with in the past. It was always good to know what they were up to and if they were having an unplanned holiday in an 8’ x 10’ concrete villa. 

After that, it was on to the Classifieds, or Hatched, Matched & Dispatched as I called it. Although you’d pick up something interesting, something secretive in the Personal Ads once in a blue moon, it was mainly reading the Obituaries that I benefitted from. It was good to learn when your trusted and mistrusted clients and your enemies had left the departure lounge and flown out to destination unknown forever. 

I’d noticed a few things over the years of reading the obits. First, husbands almost always died before their wives in Toukville. Practically every obituary for a husband finished with “survived by his wife”, while most obituaries for wives ended with “preceded in death by her husband”. I’d asked an old friend why he thought that husbands usually died before their wives and he replied, “Because they want to.” 

Another thing was that people in Toukville apparently only died one of two ways – peacefully or suddenly. I kept my head down and watched my step in the periods when more people were dying suddenly rather than peacefully. 

There was little of interest in the Crime section except the report of an explosion at Club Flamingo that had killed someone a couple of nights ago. Police had been called in to investigate, but it had turned out to be an accident. Justin Smallhorn, former amateur hitman, dimwit extraordinaire and now club employee, had been asked to check the fuel level in the limo’s tank by the boss before they went to fetch a high roller, but he didn’t have the keys to the car to check the fuel gauge. He had decided to check it instead by removing the fuel cap, striking a match for illumination and looking down the filler neck. I looked forward to a new description of the way he died in his upcoming obituary. “Suddenly” didn’t really cover it. It must have been akin to something much more like “spectacularly”. 

My work done and nothing of real interest found, I closed the paper quietly and refilled my glass, took a sip and thought about Nelly. I’d start working on the money part tomorrow. He’s probably be drained after Big Phil finished grilling him on his love life, and I needed him fresh and able to give me all the info I needed. I made a mental note to get a copy of all Big Phil’s notes, though – why should he have all the fun? 

Whatever Nelly told Big Phil or me about the dirty little secrets of his life, one thing was for sure – his admirer wouldn’t be in that lot. Nelly was too secretive, too possessive of the truth. Sure, he’d give us lots of info, but only the info he knew we couldn’t hurt him with too badly. All the stuff we’d get out of him would just be a list of exclusions, a list where not to look. That was useful, but not effective. It was stupid of him not to tell us everything, but predictable. I was sure we could solve this in a day if he’d only be honest. As it was, it would take however long it took and he’d be in constant danger until he decided to be up front with us. 

The more I thought about the whole thing, the more I was convinced it was money related. I could be wrong, of course. I often was. But my guts were telling me it was financial. How could he afford his extravagant lifestyle? Fund his business improvements? Keep paying his ex-wives? Was it really just the profits of his coffee and pie? Or was it from the current Mrs Nelly? Maybe she was dirty as well, getting the money to give to Mr Nelly from a dodgy source?

There were too many things running through my head now, and it was getting late. I finished my glass, stood up and waved goodbye to Felicia, who waved in return with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Which was none at all, the poor thing. I gave her a slight grin and a wink. She’d be fine tomorrow. 

The walk home was only a few minutes. I went in, locked down, got undressed and went to bed, hoping for a good night’s sleep to aid my recovery. Unfortunately, our newly acquired neighbourhood stray feline Ratbag was apparently now in season and had decided that the best place to entertain every tomcat in town was directly under my bedroom window. My slumber was punctuated for several hours by the noises of toms fighting each other for the privilege of her favours and the wailing of her being serviced. No amount of shouting from me would deter the randy cats. I gave up at 5 AM and went to the kitchen for a smoke, the yowling continuing outside unabated. At least someone was enjoying themselves. 

..... 

I fell asleep again on the couch while watching the morning news and woke up with a start at 11 AM. I hated it on the rare occasions when it happened. I liked making the most of my days, and starting at 11 wasn’t good in my books. 

I quickly showered, shaved, grabbed a cup of coffee and chain smoked four cigarettes to get my system going quickly, then put on some clean clothes, grabbed my gear and left the house. Ratbag was on the GT-R, resting from her night’s exertions and pleasures. I pressed the alarm button on the key fob and the loud shrill siren went off, making a startled cat jump straight up and run off into the bushes to hide. I smirked grimly to myself, shut off the alarm and blipped the door open as I walked to drive off. 

I was pulling the driver’s door handle of the GT-R when out of nowhere, a feminine hand appeared from behind and into view and wrapped itself over the top of mine. Long, thin fingers. No rings. Manicured red nails. Soft palm. I suddenly became aware of a delicate scent of expensive French perfume, a fragrance that was all too familiar. I tensed slightly as her body weight pressed me lightly from behind, her warm breath on my neck as she whispered in my ear. 

“Hello Hands. Want to take a lady for a little ride?” 

………. 

Chapter 5 - Zappuccino 

There were a lot of ladies in my life, almost all of them clients or my secretary Brenda, and there were a few men who had crossed Brenda who later questioned if she was a lady when she’d had her revenge on them. I knew instantly who it was holding my hand and whispering in my ear, and my heart skipped a beat – Broodytat. 

“Long time no see”, came the soft voice behind me. She withdrew her hand and leaned back, allowing me to turn around so I could face her, but she was still uncomfortably close to me. My hand instinctively felt to make sure my Glock was in the pocket of my black trenchcoat. “Did you miss me?” 

“Hello Broodytat. True, long time no see. What brings you to my little heaven – looking for help to trap another Touker?” I was casually but thoroughly scanning the area to see if she’d brought some muscle or if there was anything out of the ordinary. It looked clear enough, but my alarm bells were ringing like mad. No weapon in her hands. Not even a handbag. That was unusual. 

“No, no no no. I have everyone I want now, even the new residents of Toukville, practically the minute they move into town. They’re all mine – except for you, of course”, she smiled broadly at me, her voice dripping with mischief. 

“And now you’ve come for me at last, have you, so that you can complete your collection?” I was working hard to make sure my voice stayed steady, unwavering. I didn’t want any part of her menagerie. 

Broodytat took two steps back and looked me up and down slowly, purposefully, then returned her gaze back up to look me directly in the eyes. She was wearing a tight crimson knee-length red pencil skirt, black patent leather 4” high heels, expensive 10 denier sheer black stockings, an expensive black and red designer jacket with gold buttons, and gold diamond earrings, probably five carats worth. It radiated class and high danger at the same time in equal measure. “Again, no. I’m not here to add you to my collection. I don’t need to add you. You see, I already know how to control you.” 

“How’s that?”, I said with mild surprise. 

“Oh, you’re much more fun to play with this way. You see, you’re the same as me. We both have a disease, and that disease is curiosity. I satisfy my disease by acquiring new pieces for my collection and watching them, playing with them, toying with their lives. I live for knowledge and power and control, and they satisfy that. 

“But you’re different. The curious disease leads you to trouble, and it leads trouble to you. You can’t stand a mystery. It’s not the knowledge that gives you the buzz you crave, it’s solving the puzzle. Once you solve the puzzle, you’re on to the next one to satisfy your hunger.” 

She paced lightly back and forth before me as she talked, footsteps one foot in front of the other the way catwalk models do to draw your eyes to them, alluring, enticing. It wasn’t working with me. Broodytat was the most dangerous person in Toukville and I knew it. I was going to keep my wits about me. 

“All I have to do to play with you when I want is set you a puzzle, a glorious riddle, and then I can just sit back and watch you go. I’ve done it several times already and you weren’t even aware it was me doing it. It was fun, playing with you instead of controlling you – such delicious fun”, she purred with cool satisfaction. 

I remained cool. “Uh-huh. Sure.” 

“Oh, I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true. You’ll find out for yourself. Not today, but soon enough. I promise – and I always keep my promises.” No doubt. A huge wicked smile spread across her face, pearl white teeth shining between her lips covered in gloss red lipstick. 

“Why are you here today then? Just to toy with me in person? I’ve got things to do.” Whatever evil plot she had in mind, I wished she’d just get on with it. 

“Ah yes, the Nelly business. What great fun to watch. It’s not me, of course, not my style killing people. Not good practice losing a plaything you’ve invested in. I’m quite fond of Nelly actually, such a naughty, naughty boy, so entertaining. I’d hate to lose him. I do hope you can crack the case before anything happens to my toy… I mean him.” The tone of her voice was twinkling with both deviousness and parental concern at the same time. “But for you…I have a little surprise for you, but I need you to give me a lift so I can give it to you.” 

Broodytat clearly saw the look of caution now on my face. “Don’t worry, relax, there’s no danger at all.” That was just when I was at my most worried about danger, I thought. “Do you like surprises?” 

“It depends. Good or bad?” That was a bit of a lie. I hated surprises, full stop. 

Broodytat was positively sparkling. “Well, this will definitely be a surprise. Only you can decide if it’s a good one or a bad one.” She chuckled softly to herself. 

She was right, of course. She was dangling a mystery in front of me, and she knew I couldn’t, wouldn’t leave it alone. Broodytat was toying with me again and loving every minute of it. She knew I’d succumb. I did. 

“Fine”, I said in an exasperated voice. “Where are you taking me to?” 

“Oh splendid!”, she replied with unhidden delight. “I knew you’d want to see the surprise. Toukville Central Park. The south entrance. Your surprise is waiting for you there.” I fixed her with my best penetrating stare. It had no effect at all, so I opened my car door and climbed in. 

“Wait a minute Hands – aren’t you forgetting something?”, she said as she stood by my side of the car. 

“I don’t think so.” 

“A gentleman is supposed to open a car door for a lady.” 

“I believe you’re forgetting something yourself. I’m no gentleman, and you are certainly no lady”, I said with heavy irony as I slammed the heavy driver’s door home, with a lifted eyebrow and a smirk on my face. 

Broodytat sulked to the passenger side and climbed in. I pressed the Start button and the power plant whirred and then roared to life before settling down to a low steady growl. I selected the Sport setting on the dash and pulled the GT-R smartly away from the kerb and headed towards the unknown. 

..... 

The stereo was on when I’d started the car and it covered the heavy silence during the journey until a particular track came on. I went to turn the stereo off but Broodytat’s hand swiftly moved under mine before I could reach the power and blocked it, then turned the volume level up slightly. “Please don’t – I like this one.” I withdrew my hand and stayed silent. 

The lyrics were crisp and clear of course, and normally I’d love that, but not now, not under these circumstances… 

♫ On a morning from a Bogart movie 
In a country where they turn back time 
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre 
Contemplating a crime 
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running 
Like a watercolour in the rain 
Don't bother asking for explanations 
She'll just tell you that she came 
In the year of the cat ♫

“That was one of your special songs for her, wasn’t it? For Carol?” There was a playful, evil, controlling slight smile on her face. She was trying to control me. I didn’t know how she knew that, but she did, and it was all I could do not to respond with outrage. As it was, I kept my cool and calmly reached over and shut the stereo off. “Oh dear, such a pity. I was enjoying that”, she replied with a fake sadness to her voice. 

The rest of the journey to Central Park passed awkwardly but uneventfully, and I parked the GT-R near the gates to the south entrance and shut off the engine. I undid my seat belts and opened my door, and she did the same on her side. We stepped out and I closed my door, and Broodytat walked towards the entrance without closing her door, forcing me to do it for her – fifteen all, I thought to myself. A blip secured the car and as we reached the entrance, she slipped her arm through mine uninvited. 

“Where’s this surprise, then?” I couldn’t wait to get done with it. 

“Patience, my pet, patience. It’s just around this corner.” I hated blind corners. My free hand was holding my Glock inside the trench coat pocket as we turned, and there on the bench I saw the surprise – and it couldn’t have been a bigger one. 

Graham. 

..... 

Chapter 6 - Refill 

Broodytat wasn’t kidding when she said she had a surprise for me. There’s not much more surprising than a dead man now animated and sitting on a park bench, feeding the birds with breadcrumbs. Seeing as I’d witnessed him dying in a violent way, I’d been under the natural assumption that he was busy feeding the worms. 

Yet there he was, big as life. Same wild orange hair and Marty Feldman-type boggle eyes. Same build. Just not the nervous, twitchy, scary character as I’d seen before. Quite calm. Serene. This couldn’t be happening. 

“Surprised?”, whispered Broodytat gleefully in my ear. She had felt me tense up the instant I saw him, ready to run, but she pulled me closer to her side. “I knew you would be!” 

This was a trick. One of Broodytat’s evil ploys. Dead men don’t come back to life. My thoughts swirled in a vortex of confusion as I scrambled to find a logical explanation to an illogical situation, but none came to mind. My brain was like a pinball machine and my “TILT” light was on. 

“Let’s go say hello to him.” What??? It was the last thing I wanted, but Broodytat started pulling me forward. My common sense desperately wanted me to escape, but my curiosity was getting the better of me yet again, and I found my legs and feet joining in and moving me towards where I shouldn’t be. We walked up to, well, whoever or whatever this was. He stopped feeding the group of feathered flying tree rats in front of him and looked up at us. 

“Can I help you?”, the man said. 

My years of experience and instinct kicked in, albeit rather shakily. “I’m sorry, it's just that you look amazingly like someone I used to know. A man named Graham.” My hand was still tightly wrapped around the Glock in my trenchcoat pocket. 

“That’s interesting. My name is Graham.” 

Impossible. I had to be dreaming, but if it was, it was the most intense and realistic dream I’d ever known. I caught a glimpse of Broodytat’s wide smile out of the corner of my eye. She was loving every minute of it. 

My curiosity pressed me on. “Nice to meet you. The name is Hands, and this is…” 

“His wife, Mrs Hands. How do you do?”. Broodytat clearly didn’t want to be identified by “Graham” so butted in before I could do so. I could live with her lie - for now. 

Graham’s interest perked up. “Hands? The private investigator?” 

“That’s right.”, I said, my nerves twitching like a rabbit’s nose. 

“I read about you in the paper, the big car crash behind Club Flamingo. The article said you weren’t expected to make it. I guess the reports of your demise were slightly exaggerated.”, said Graham brightly. “It was you and some other car, wasn’t it? One dead in that car, lots of fire, police at a loss to explain it, according to the press. That’s about all I remember of it.” 

I wished it was all I remembered. I had reminders every minute of the day from the pain of the injuries that would never quite heal, and nightmares kept me company when I tried to sleep. 

“Well, it was all surprisingly complicated… but it’s all behind me now – I hope. Sorry, I can’t quite get over how similar you are to the Graham I knew. It’s rather uncanny - do you by chance have any siblings?” 

His face changed and went ashen. “Well…I don’t really like to talk about it…but yes, I do. A twin brother. His name is Cameron. We call him Cam for short. The family haven’t seen him in years, though. We’re not sure where he is these days.” There was a sadness to his voice. 

“Was, I mean, is he your identical twin, by any chance?” 

“He is, yes. We look identical in every respect. The doctors took DNA samples from us as kids and said we were very rare, monozygotic twins. We share 99.9% of our DNA, and we even have the same fingerprints, but we can’t be more different in personalities.” 

The fog in my mind was beginning to lift, slowly. “How do you mean, different? If you don’t mind, it’s just that I’m very curious.” Broodytat said softly under her breath, “You can say that again.” 

“Our parents were great and we had a very happy home, but Cam has a dark side, always has, right from when he was young. He can’t take criticism or take no for an answer. He kept to himself a lot. Muttered when he was alone. Eyebrows always lowered, the corners of his mouth always turned down into a frown. Always seemed to crave being isolated. Wrote in his notebooks a lot, which he fiercely kept secret. I never knew what was in those notebooks, but one day our parents got hold of them while he was at school and read them. Whatever they read, it was enough for them that they sent him away to a military boarding school with hard discipline and strict routines shortly after that.”

The memories were obviously hard for Graham to bring out. “Cam never wrote to me after he got there. Never wrote to any of us. We only saw him during visitor days a couple times a year. When we did see him, it was plain that he’d changed, and not for the better. If anything, his personality was even darker than before, but now with what seemed to be some weird sense of being and purpose. Sinister focus. He creeped the hell out of us all. 

“Once Cam graduated, he just disappeared, went off radar totally. Never to be seen again. Although there were odd moments, ones we all had where we felt like we were being watched… monitored from afar. Does that sound strange to you?” 

“No, Graham. That doesn’t sound strange at all. Just very sad. I’m sorry I made you think of that again. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please accept my apologies.” 

Now I saw it. Cameron had adopted Graham’s persona and identity to use for his own twisted purposes in Toukville. The crimes and evil Cameron did would get blamed on Graham through images and DNA, and as no one had seen Cameron in years and years, any claim of innocence Graham made if arrested wouldn’t be believed by the police or by a jury. I was willing to believe Cameron had probably found a way to destroy the report on the matching DNA as well to ensure he’d never be caught. 

“So you say you’ve seen him – my brother Cameron?”, Graham’s voice a mixture of interest and hesitancy combined. 

I thought about my words carefully for a minute. “I last saw him in the summer, but he didn’t seem to be in the mood for talking about anything. I got the impression he was going away for a very long time, though. I’m not sure any of us will see him in Toukville again.”, I said to Graham in a gentle voice, trying to be empathetic. “I’m sorry that I can’t help you more.” 

“You know, I had a feeling of intense pain late one night in the summer.”, Graham said. “I’d had feelings of pain for no reason before, but nothing near that strong. I had a check-up and they didn’t find anything wrong with me at all. 

“Some people say twins can tell when the other one is in pain and that they experience the same levels of pain. It always sounded like nonsense to me, and there’s no science behind it. But for some reason, I haven’t had any of those kinds of pains since then. Strange.” 

I nodded. “Strange indeed. Probably nothing to it, though. Let’s hope you never get those pains again.” 

“Yeah, absolutely! Something inside me tells me I won’t. Just a feeling. That’s all.” 

There was a silent moment where the three of us gathered our thoughts, and then Graham stood up from the park bench. “Nice to meet you, Mr and Mrs Hands. Such a coincidence! I wish you both well, but I need to get back home now and pick up my wife and son. We’re visiting my parents. If you don’t mind, I don't think I'll mention to them that I met you today. Talking about Cam isn’t something we like to do.” 

“I understand. Nice to meet you too. Are your parents well?” 

“Liam and Pam? They’re great.” 

“Your wife and son as well, I hope?” 

“Samantha and Hamilton? Sam and Ham? We couldn’t be happier.” Graham paused. “Strange how these chance meetings happen, though. I wasn’t even planning on coming here today. It’s just that I suddenly felt a need to do so. No idea why, but it was a very strong need. No idea why.” 

I looked at Broodytat, who wore a look of innocence. “My, that is strange, isn’t it? I doubt even a private investigator could solve a mystery like that.” I raised an eyebrow at her, but she didn’t respond. 

“I’d be happy to give you a lift Graham, but I’m afraid my car is a two-seater – sorry.” 

“Oh, that’s okay. I prefer to use public transport anyway.” 

“Bus?” 

“No – tram.” 

..... 

Chapter 7 – Café Lightte 

The three of us walked out of the park together, the arm of the temporary and soon to be ex-“Mrs Hands” still interlocked through mine. We talked about something or other, banal pleasantries, perhaps the weather – I wasn’t sure. My brain was too busy auto-piloting my body to do anything else useful. 

I was in a state of shock, understandably. My reality had just been turned inside out and upside down. It was going to be a difficult conversation with Felicia, that was for sure, probably an after closing hours, full bottle of vodka, talking until dawn conversation, but it had to be done. I imagined how horrified she’d be if she bumped into Graham in person before I could tell her, and I resolved to do it that evening. 

On the other hand, it might be a good laugh to wind up Big Phil and get my own back for his hangover abuse on me. Even better would be the look on DI Brad’s face if they met. He’d have a job figuring that one out, and especially trying to explain it to his bosses. A smug grin tugged at the corner of my mouth, but I supressed it. Broodytat was still here and the danger level still high. I had to stay on my toes. 

We got to the tram stop and waited with Graham until it arrived. He climbed aboard and gave us a cheerful wave as it quietly rumbled off into the distance. Broodytat turned to face me. “There! Wasn’t that worth it? I told you that you’d be surprised!” Her perkiness annoyed the hell out of me under the circumstances. 

“How much of that did you engineer, then? Clearly you brought Graham here with your toys, that’s obvious. But what about Cam? Were you responsible for what he did? The bombing? The deaths? Turning Felicia’s life upside down? All that pain and misery? Did you do that?” 

I was hoping she was going to say yes. Part of me hoped she did control Cam and made him do it all. If she did, I’d have killed her myself and made her disappear too, without a second’s thought or hesitation. I hadn’t believed in a benevolent supreme being since that night so many years ago, so the eternal consequences of putting down another evil, sick creature for the greater good didn’t faze me one iota. 

Her smile dropped a fraction. “Cam? Well, yes and no. I knew he was sick when I implanted my chip into him. I thought I could control him, calm him down, get him if not back to what passes as normal, then as less of a threat to everyone around him. 

“But it didn’t work. I couldn’t control him. He was too far gone. By the time he’d set that bomb off, all I could do was watch my screens and try to contain the situation. I was helpless and as it turned out, hopeless. That night behind Club Flamingo, I was trying to get the police there before she got hurt, but I hadn’t counted on you and what you did next. It upset me so badly, to see you do that to yourself to save Felicia.” 

“I did what I had to do. Simple as that.”, I said back flatly. 

“For the lady you love?” I could feel the dig in her voice, emphasised by her squeezing my arm. 

“To stop a good and kind person being harmed by a bad person. Don’t read more into than that.” It was none of her business how I felt. She could see a lot of things, but she’d never see inside me. 

“Say what you like… but I sense I’ve plucked a nerve.” The grin came back. 

“I can’t stand around here all day. There’s a bad smell in the air and I need to clear my head. I’m sure you understand. I’d offer you a lift, but if you look on the roof of my car, you’ll see there’s no “TAXI” sign. No doubt you can get home without difficulty yourself, you’re the resourceful type.” 

“I’d rather you gave me another ride…”, she purred at me, chancing her luck, seeing if my curiosity would get the better of me. Broodytat was a very attractive woman, there was no mistaking it, but you didn’t have to stand in front of a moving train to know it wasn’t good for you. 

“Taxi rank is over there – use it.”, I said curtly. 

Broodytat pulled her arm out from under mine, a slightly hurt look and a pout on her face. “You’re not the gentleman I thought you were.” 

“We’ve already established that an hour or so ago, remember?” I took a pack of cigarettes out, tapped it on the back of my hand until one cigarette came out far enough for me to pull it out between my lips, then put the pack back in my pocket and lit the cigaette in my mouth with my battered old Zippo. 

Broodytat turned smartly on her heels and started walking away, hips swaying, walking almost heel to toe. It was very, very alluring, but then other predators use similar lures to entice their prey to their doom, and that all I was to her – prey. That’s all any of us were. 

The first taxi in the queue suddenly started up and the passenger door opened by itself, and in she climbed. The door closed by itself and the window motored down without her touching the switch. “See you again soon, Hands…see you again very soon.” 

I had no doubt. 

The taxi, with its expressionless driver under her control, pulled away and out of sight... 

..... 

I unlocked and climbed back into the car, pressed the Start button and brought the beast back to life. It was then I noticed my phone vibrating in my shirt breast pocket. I’d switched off the ringer last night but hadn’t turned it back on thanks to being distracted by Broodytat. 

I pulled the phone I hated so much out and looked at the screen – 12 missed calls. Scrolling through, 11 were from Nelly and the last one was from Big Phil. I hit redial and called Big Phil first. He answered the phone almost straight away. 

“I couldn’t reach you. What happened? Everything okay?”, said Big Phil. 

“I’m fine, but I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you - later. You rang?” 

Nelly started yelling in the background. “WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN? SOMEONE’S BEEN SHOOTING AT ME! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? WHY DON’T YOU ANSWER YOUR PHONE? GET YOUR STUPID BUTT HERE RIGHT NOW!” 

I heard a noise that sounded like Big Phil thumping Nelly once, and the yelling turning into quiet groans of pain. “Sorry about that, a little interference at my end. We should be able to talk now.” Big Phil was an ex-rugby prop forward, so if you upset him once, you didn’t upset him a second time. 

“Someone has been shooting at him all right, but not literally, just metaphorically. I’m at his coffee shop…” 

“That’s coffee and pie shop!...” Nelly groaned in the background, getting his wind back. 

“My apologies – coffee and pie shop." I grinned as I imagined Big Phil rollng his eyes. "How soon can you get here?” 

“On my way – be there in ten.” 

..... 

The afternoon crosstown traffic was fairly light with no issues I couldn’t make disappear with a press of the accelerator. Shots fired…that was a fairly hefty escalation of the situation for sure. From his yelling, Nelly was probably okay, until Big Phil had thumped him of course, but still okay. I was intrigued as to someone would go through the trouble of shooting at Nelly yet missing him completely. 

The GT-R burbled into the car park at Nelly’s place and for fun and devilment, I gave the throttle a light touch for exhaust noise and effect, blue overrun flames from the unburnt fuel licking playfully from the tailpipes, to get a reaction from Nelly and Big Phil, who were standing in front. Before I could shut the car off, Nelly was running towards me with Big Phil walking casually behind. I shut the monster off, unbuckled and got out, closing the door behind me. 

“This is it! I’m a dead man! I know I am! Now they’re shooting at me! You have to find them or I’ll die!” Nelly was hysterical. I hated histrionics with a passion. Nothing ever got solved through being hysterical unless you want to get locked up in the Padded Rubber Suite at the Ha-Ha Hotel, in which case it’s 100% effective. 

“All right, calm down, calm down. You look in one piece…” I looked at the coffee (and pie) shop – all seemed normally abnormal. “I can’t see any bullet holes or customers diving for cover anywhere. How do you know they’re shooting at you?” 

Big Phil had reached us by now. He looked at me and raised one eyebrow, then pointed at the massive neon sign, which when lit up, which was always, normally read “NELLY’S - COFFEE & PIES”. "How? That's how!", Nelly snarled. 

I looked at a shaking Nelly and a stoic Big Phil, and then looked up at the sign. Someone handy with a gun had taken careful aim at the neon lettering and shot out some of the tubing. It now read: 

“NELLY – COFF & DIE” 

..... 

Chapter 8 - Costa Packet

Phil and I looked up at the damaged sign. I kept a pair of binoculars in the car, so I got them out from the boot and looked through them to see the sign in more detail. From the small pockmarks made in the sign, it looked as if a pellet gun had been used to shoot out the neon tubes. It made sense. A pellet gun, especially one fired from inside a parked car in front of the sign, wouldn’t have made enough noise to attract anyone’s attention, but it was enough to do the job. 

“So? What do you think?”, said a rattled Nelly. 

“Hmm. Excellent aim with a minimum number of misses, plus I good sense of humour. Got their number? I’d like to hire them for future jobs.”, I replied with a smile. Big Phil sniggered his Mutley snigger under his breath. 

“You two better figure this out before I get killed!” 

“Well, if you do get killed, there’s a bright side.”, said Big Phil. 

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” 

“You don’t have to give us free coffee and pie for life.”, he answered. 

Nelly was about to give us a full mouthful of verbal abuse when a brand-new red BMW convertible rolled up, stopped next to us and parked. The driver’s door opened, and a tall, shapely blonde with piercing blue eyes stepped out and walked with tiny steps around the rear of the car towards us. At 5’11” without her white stiletto heels, she was already taller than Nelly. Dressed from head to toe in expensive white designer clothes. Ears, fingers and wrists almost invisible under the gold and diamonds. Her perfume was unmissably expensive, as was her makeup. The hairdo alone cost £300, minimum. If you looked up “high maintenance” online, her image would be at the top of the results. She looked about 21 years old to my eye. Nelly probaly had an ingrown toenail older than that. 

“Hello, my darling little snookums, my cute little sugar lump!”, she cooed in a high, excited voice. 

Big Phil and I looked at her in amazement, and then at each other in disbelief. She was talking to Nelly – it was the previously unseen Mrs Nelly. 

“Hello, Sindy dearest. What are you doing here? I’ve told you that you should never visit me at work.”, Nelly said sheepishly. 

Sindy Nelly? Really? My head was spinning for the second time today. I looked at Big Phil and his jaw was hanging down, mouth open. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, my precious little sexy toy boy, don’t be cross with me! I just wanted to see you to tell you I’ve booked our summer holiday. I knew you’d be excited!” 

“Summer holiday? But you’ve already booked three other holidays for this year!” There was a slight tinge of both panic and irritation in Nelly’s voice. I could hear the calculator in his head whirring away. 

“I know! One for each season! Isn’t that great? I’m so excited!” Mrs Nelly’s high-pitched voice could probably incapacitate a warthog at thirty paces. She was undoubtedly banned as a torture device under the Geneva Convention. 

Nelly drew up his strength and screwed on his best polite smile. “Where to? More importantly, how much?”, his voice trembling. 

“You wouldn’t say no to me , would you? I was only thinking of you. You work so hard!”, Mrs Nelly said back in a demur voice, her full, Botoxed lips pouting. She was good. Nelly sure could pick them. 

“Of course not, my little frosted cupcake…but where?” It was obviously a routine familiar to Nelly. 

“Monte Carlo! It’s beautiful in the summer and you can have fun playing in the casinos!” She was obviously proud of her choice. Nelly’s face went ashen grey. 

“All right my princess, we’ll talk about it a bit later, Daddy’s got to talk business with his two friends here. You toddle off home and I’ll see you later, okay?” 

Mrs Nelly looked at us both. She hadn’t even noticed us when she first drove up. “Oh, hiya! I’m Sindy, Nelly’s wifey! How do you do? I didn’t see you arrive!” I was confident I could beat her IQ with one dart. 

“Nice to meet you.”, Big Phil said, but Sindy had already turned away towards her husband and was talking to him. “Can I have some money please, my gorgeous little teddy bear? I need to get a new coat.” 

“What happened to your last one – the one I bought you two weeks ago?”, said Nelly. 

“I left it somewhere. I can’t remember where. You know how forgetful I am! I’m so cold. You don’t want me to be cold, do you?” 

“No, of course not.” Nelly sighed heavily, reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of £50 notes that was big enough to choke an elephant. Nelly peeled off about £500 and handed it to her. “Make sure I get the change and a receipt!” 

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m going to put it on your credit card. I just thought of that! What a good idea! And I can get my nails done and a few other things with the cash!” Sindy was gushing and squealing with delight. I was wondering where the nearest place was where I could discreetly vomit. She gave Nelly a quick peck on the cheek. “See you in the hot tub when you get home!”, and with that she climbed back into her new car and drove off. 

Nelly, Big Phil and I stood together in silence and watched her disappear into the distance. Nelly was clearly embarrassed to have been revealed as that daft and such a soft touch. Big Phil and I just wondered if anyone had gotten the number of the Surprise Bus that just hit us. 

Nelly spoke first. “Not a word out of either of you. Not. A. Word. Just find this lunatic, and fast! And don’t come back until you do!” He stomped off, across the car park and went back inside to keep his addicts satisfied. 

“That was… it was…” I struggled to find the right adjective. 

“Yeah…it was, wasn’t it?”, Big Phil replied. “Did you see that wad of cash? Where is he getting that kind of money?” 

“No idea, but you don’t walk around with that kind of dosh pouring out java and flinging slices of pie. I have a feeling his accountants don’t have an idea about it, either. How have you made out with his old flames so far?” 

“Brilliant! I started with his last ten ladies. Seven email addresses, five phone numbers and three dates – that’s me sorted for a bit!” I wasn’t the tiniest bit surprised. Big Phil was rumoured to be a classy man with the ladies, a smooth talker and a gent that they swooned over. It was also rumoured that he wasn’t known as “Big” Phil just because he wore size 14 shoes. 

He had a twinkle in his eye as he talked. “Funny thing was, not one of them had a bad thing to say about Nelly. They all still adored him, even missed him. Apparently, he can charm the birds out of the trees, but he’s a serial monogamist, never strays while he’s in a relationship. I think the romance side might be a dead end.” 

“Agreed. The cash doorstop in his pocket makes me think so even more. Where in the hell is he getting all that money from?” 

“We need to ask the people who know him best. Nelly’s a secretive guy, and the house plant he married isn’t going to know squat. Who knows Nelly better than anyone else?”, Big Phil mused. 

“The people where he spends most of his time – at the racetracks.”, I said. Pretty obvious. 

“Talking to other punters and the on-track bookies.” 

“Yep. It’s obvious what we need to do – follow the money. You head for Toukville Downs and chat with the horse people, and I’ll head to Toukville Greyhound Stadium and find out…” 

“…who let the dogs out?”, Big Phil said with a grin. 

“Stop that. Let’s meet back at your office about eight o’clock tonight and exchange notes.” 

“Sounds good – see you then.” We got into our cars and drove off to look under a few stones for scorpions. 

Chapter 9 - Filtering 

As it worked out, Big Phil and I didn’t meet up until nearly ten o’clock. The meting at Toukville Downs was just finishing when he got there, but there was a night meeting at the greyhound stadium, and it took me a while to talk to everyone there that I needed to talk to. 

It was better that Big Phil did his digging at Toukville Downs. Horse racing tended to attract a higher class of punters, the sort he naturally knew or had done work for. He was smooth, suave, fitted right in. No one questioned his right to be in corporate boxes and champagne receptions. 

Me, on the other hand... my clientele tended to be somewhat more down to earth. I’d stand out a mile in the company Big Phil ran with. They’d be patting their pockets to check to see if they still had their wallets the second that I walked in the room. I didn’t look shabby, but I didn’t exude class either. My journey through life was etched across my rugged face and no amount of help was going to hide it. I was okay with that. I’d earned every wrinkle, every scar, the slightly sunken eyes, the look of someone with a chequered past. I didn’t see any reason to hide what I’d earned.  

But at the greyhound stadium, I blended right in and no one looked twice at me. The punters were working class stiffs, looking for a little working class excitement. It was miserable place. Greyhound racing had thankfully very much had its day and the stadium was a shrine to faded glories. Peeling paint. Threadbare carpets. Crumbling concrete and plaster. Tarnished brass and chrome fittings. Toilet facilities with ancient porcelain and dripping taps. The atmosphere of the place had a whiff of cheap cigars, spilled beer and stale urine where tanked-up punters had relieved themselves behind grandstands and around corners after being unable or incapable of finding the toilets. 

There were ten races on the card that night, and the stands only about a quarter full, all diehard gambling addicts, looking for that one big score to keep them going, unable to accept the fact that they were fooling themselves. Greyhound racing was as bent a sport as you’d ever find. There wasn’t a single race where the outcome wasn’t arranged in advance by organised crime. I wasn’t the gambling type, at least not with money, and I just had to look into the faces of the addicts to reaffirm why I didn’t like gambling. 

I talked to as many people there as I could without becoming conspicuous by my probing. I chatted with the track employees, the on-track bookies, the dog owners, and the punters, asking them loose, open questions about Nelly. It wasn’t long before I got a pretty good picture of things. I wondered if Big Phil had found the same. 

The lights were on in Big Phil’s offices when I pulled up. I parked the GT-R and knocked on the door, and a buzzer sounded indicating it was now unlocked – I went in. Big Phil was sitting at his desk with his feet up and a glass of Glenmorangie in his hand. He offered me one, which I politely declined. Not my spirit of choice. I grabbed a chair and sat down, and we started to compare stories. 

He’d found out exactly the same as me. Nelly still went to the tracks and all the meetings, enjoying the hospitality and chatting with the owners and trainers, but he had stopped gambling. Not by choice – he’d been banned by both tracks and all the bookies working trackside, and he’d been banned for months. He had been getting too good at it and fleecing them for huge amounts of money, winning massive bets and bleeding them all dry. He’d gone through every bookie until none of them would take his bets any more. Apparently, even Club Flamingo had banned him from betting on the horses and dogs at their place. 

We both immediately smelled a rat. No one legit is THAT good at gambling, and Nelly had a long and distinguished history of being rotten at gambling. Why were things different now? What had changed so radically? Insider info? Trainers on the take? How was he still placing bets - and winning? Whatever it was, Nelly’s success wasn’t being met with universal acclaim. There were plenty of bookies who weren’t going to be sending him a birthday cards any more. 

More to the point, if he was banned by all the licensed bookies and gambling joints in town, how was he still getting this money? Nelly wouldn’t be dumb enough to leave an electronic trail by gambling online, and the next nearest town where he could gamble legally was a two-hour drive away. 

It only left one option to our minds, but we had to check it out before we could confirm our suspicions. The only way to do that was to change tack and follow Nelly. We worked up a rota to take it in turns to watch and follow him 24 hours a day until he led us to where we thought he would lead us. 

..... 

For the next five days, Big Phil and I tailed and watched Nelly morning, noon and night from a distance. Working, travelling to restaurants, going shopping with his Sindy while looking distraught, to and from home. Nothing of any significance cropped up. All quiet and incredibly tedious. 

But then, if my personal theory was right, the lack of anything happening was about right, and that would all change in an hour when the next race meeting at Toukville Downs took place. Big Phil and I had followed him from his coffee joint to the track separately in our cars, just in case one of us needed to stay and the other follow someone he met. 

We paid our entry fee and did our best to blend in, walking thirty paces behind Nelly at various angles, not staying in any one place too long. We didn’t want him to know we were there. Nelly looked like a nervous ferret, darting about, looking furtively, scanning everywhere. He was obviously up to something, and it was hard to stay hidden from his view. After about thirty minutes, we watched as Nelly weaved his way through the crowds, through a door marked TRAINERS ONLY, and disappeared into the stables, which was somewhere we couldn’t follow without him seeing us. 

Five minutes later, Nelly came back out from the stables, now looking much more relaxed and calmer. Very odd. We watched as he walked with quick, light steps and headed straight for the exits. Big Phil and I struggled to keep up with him while staying under the radar. Just as we reached the exit ourselves, we saw Nelly climb into his car and drive off at speed into the night. 

“What the hell was that about?”, I said. “Where’s he going?” 

“No idea on the first one, but I can help with the second.” Big Phil pulled out his smartphone and tapped a few times on the screen, while I looked confused and befuddled, a look I had perfected when it came to electronic gizmos. “I planted an old phone under the seat of his car. Using this app, I can now watch where the car is, and we can follow him at a safe distance and find out where he’s going.” Impressive stuff, but most of it went over my head. “You drive, I’ll navigate.”, said Big Phil. We climbed into the GT-R and I followed Big Phil’s directions. 

After about a twenty minute drive, we’d reached one of the grubbier industrial areas of Toukville, where we found Nelly’s car. He was just getting out of it and walking towards a dead-end alleyway between two old abandoned light industrial units. Big Phil and I got out of the GT-R and followed on foot to the dark alleyway entrance, peering down to the end. 

There was nothing down there that we could see apart from cardboard boxes, empty pallets, a few large metal bins and a single steel entrance door with a single light screwed to the wall over it that illuminated the area rather poorly. Nelly was knocking on the door in what seemed like a secret entry code – two raps, a pause, four raps, a pause, and one more rap. He waited – no response – and repeated the coded rap, again without response. He looked confused by this outcome. 

This was all too odd. It was time to get to the bottom of things. I knew Nelly wouldn’t tell us everything from the start, and this was the proof of it. He was hiding things from us, and we’d never find out what was happening to him until he told us. What was in the building? Who was he supposed to be meeting? Why was he in the middle of nowhere? I looked at Big Phil, who obviously felt the same – fed up with all the nonsense. We walked down the alleyway to confront Nelly. 

We’d just arrived at the end of the alleyway and tapped Nelly on the shoulder, which made him jump about six inches off the ground and spin around to face us when I heard a noise behind us, coming from the entrance to the alleyway. It was a very distinctive metallic noise, one I’d heard before and which was impossible to forget. The sound of a bolt being pulled back by hand and cocking in place on an old Thompson submachine gun, a weapon that usually carried fifty .45 calibre rounds in a circular magazine and fired them at a rate of 600 rounds a minute. With its characteristic “rat-a-tat-a-tat” sound when fired, the gun had earned the nickname over the years of the "Toukville Typewriter". 

Big Phil and I spun around to face the alleyway entrance just in time to see the flames start spitting out from the barrel, and we instinctively ducked down, pulling Nelly down with us. I hadn’t been quite fast enough though – one bullet had managed to cut through my trenchcoat and cut my left upper arm. I could feel the warm blood start running down my arm. Well, this wasn’t working out too well, I thought to myself. 

..... 

Chapter 10 - Extra Shots 

It had been a gunfire burst of one, maybe one and one-half seconds long, but it was enough to get our attention. We were at the end of a dark alley and the only things lit up – sitting ducks. Whoever it was about forty yards away still had 35-40 rounds of ammo left in his circular clip. Three rounds would be enough to do the job – the odds weren’t great, on the face of it. 

Instinct kicked in for all three of us. Big Phil pulled out his Smith & Wesson M&P9.20 9mm handgun from his shoulder holster. I’d managed to talk him into ditching his old revolver and spending some cash on a decent weapon with a lot more accuracy and some stopping power, and we needed that right now. He took quick aim at the light over the doorway and squeezed off two rounds, extinguishing the light that exposed us. Our end of the alleyway was now thankfully in darkness, but we weren’t much better off. 

The two metal waste bins near us and up against the wall were huge things, about four-foot-wide by three and one-half foot high and three-foot-deep, but they were on wheels – that was lucky. A good dose of adrenalin running through my system, along with the high doses of painkillers I had been on since the big smash, blocked my pain receptors enough for me to pull the bins forward a couple of feet, which were quite full of waste by the amount of effort it took to shift them. We then dived behind the bins, which made a very effective shield from the gunfire, but it still didn’t get us out of the situation. 

Nelly panicked. A lot. He was very good at it, but it wasn’t much help. 

“Not a great situation, is it?”, Big Phil said evenly. 

“We’ve both been in worse. We’ll get out of it. Thank goodness we’re only up against a Thompson.” 

“Thank goodness someone is firing at us with a MACHINE GUN? Are you insane? We’re going to die!”, screeched Nelly, helpfully. 

I was indeed thankful our assailant was using a Thompson submachine gun. Despite it being a rather ancient, heavy, ponderous and highly illegal weapon, there were still enough Thompson submachine guns around Toukville to cause plenty of trouble. They’d been around for nearly a hundred years, and although they hadn’t been manufactured for decades, it wasn’t hard to get one if you knew where and who to ask. 

However, the Toukville Typewriter had plenty of shortcomings and you had to be savvy when buying one to make sure you got the right version. What I was thankful for was that the one currently trying to ventilate us didn’t have a Cutts compensator. The cheaper models without one were recognisable from a distance when firing, because the muzzle fire came straight out of the end of the barrel, like the one our new friend was firing. The blowback from each round fired produced a severe recoil, meaning the person firing it suddenly found the weapon pushing so hard it altered their aim with every bullet fired after the first, pushing the following bullets upwards and to their right. The preferred method for shooting was to aim left of the target’s knees and hope they were hit by three or four rounds as the gun moved up and away from the recoil. Our friend didn’t understand that. If they’d spent a bit more and bought one with a Cutts, where the muzzle fire was directed sideways as it left the barrel, we’d all be dead now. Cheapskates – I loved them. 

Next was that it was dreadfully inaccurate at distance. At anything past fifty yards, you’d be lucky to hit an hippo broadside. It’s probably another reason I’d only been clipped by one round, I thought. The ammo didn’t have much punch, either. While it would happily kill a person stone dead, anyone with body armour would have survived. It made me wish we had body armour, but huge bins made of thick galvanised steel and full of rubbish would protect us nicely. 

Finally, after the fifty rounds were gone in five seconds, reloading wasn’t quick or easy. In fact, almost no one reloaded unless they were in a very secure place where they would be shielded as they did so. Reloading took a good 30 seconds, and if you think that’s not too long, get into a fire fight, stand unarmed and alone and count to thirty. No way our man was going to reload. He’d just empty his magazine and run. We just needed him to waste his ammo by shooting at us and missing - hopefully. 

The alleyway was silent. Nelly was whimpering with fear between us behind the bins, and Big Phil put his hand over Nelly’s mouth. “Shut up! Do you want us to get killed? Just shut up and do what we say!”, he hissed at Nelly, who nodded his understanding, his eyes popping out of his head and trying to escape themselves. 

I found a small rock behind the bin and showed Big Phil, then stood up and threw it down the alleyway before ducking down again. The noise of the rock bouncing down the alleyway startled the gunman, who opened fire with a two-second burst, spraying our area with more bullets, which pinged off the metal bins and gouged the brickwork of the building, showering us from above with brick dust. 

“Okay, he’s at least half empty now. I’ve got an idea.”, I whispered to Big Phil. “You stay left behind the bins and when I give you the signal, fire a few rounds down the alleyway and duck back again. Hopefully he’ll fire at us, and I can see where he is.” 

“Got it.”, he replied flatly. Big Phil was a cool cucumber under fire, I thought. 

“What should I do???”, Nelly said nervously. 

“Nothing. Not a damn thing. Shut up, sit still, and don’t move. Got it?” 

“Yep! I’m good with that!” I’ll bet he was. 

We were about to make our move when the huge plastic top lid of the bin in front of me suddenly and violently swung open, landing on my head. “What the hell is going on out there? Can’t a guy get a little sleep?”, came a grizzled voice from inside. I couldn’t see who it was, but I didn’t need to – it would be one of Toukville’s tramps and homeless miscreants, who chose to climb into these bins at night and go to sleep. It may have been smelly and dirty, but then so were they, and the bin protected them from the elements and from getting beaten up. Hobo Hotels, they called them. 

The occupant of the bin got a reply, but not the one he was expecting. The gunman opened fire and let off another short burst, peppering the front of the bin with bullets. There was a thud as the tramp dropped down in the bin out of sheer terror. “Never mind!”, he yelled in fear, “Do what you like!” I pushed the lid shut again and ducked back down. 

We waited about twenty seconds and got into position, Big Phil on the left, me on the right, and Nelly curled into a petrified ball in the middle. I gave Big Phil a nod, and he fired off four rounds down the alleyway, which ricocheted off the brick walls, then ducked back behind his bin. Sure enough, the gunman returned fire aimlessly in response. The muzzle fire of the Thompson was just enough in the darkness for me to see his outline. I aimed the Glock just above and to the right of the muzzle flames, pulled the trigger smoothly and fired off three quick shots at the figure, and we heard the gunman cry out in pain, followed by the sounds of the Thompson falling to the ground and the gunman dropping as well. 

With extreme caution, Big Phil and I stood up and made our way back up the alleyway, him on the left, me on the right, while Nelly continued being Nelly and stayed put. We moved quickly and quietly, guns still drawn, ready to react. When we reached the end, our new friend was lying on his back. I kicked the Thompson away from his reach and kept him covered with the Glock while Big Phil searched him for any other guns or any ID. Nothing – he was clean. 

We looked down at him. I’d managed to hit him twice, once in the shoulder, once in the upper right chest. From the wet rasping noise he was making, I’d probably punctured his lung. Very painful, but only life threatening if he didn’t get help. I’d call him an ambulance… in a few minutes. We wanted answers first. 

“Who are you? Who sent you? Who wants to kill Nelly?”, I barked at him. 

It was hard to see his face in the darkness, but I could at least see he was a bit of an ape. When he spoke, he even sounded ugly. “I ain’t sayin’ nothin!” 

“You ain’t sayin’ nothin’? That means you are saying something, then.” 

“Huh?” 

“”You ain’t sayin’ nothin’” is a double negative. The second negative negates the first negative. It means you WILL tell us something. Didn’t you pay attention in grammar classes?” 

“…..huh?” 

“Dear oh dear,” tutted Big Phil. “My associate and I don’t like bad grammar. You’d better start talking unless you want to end up in detention.” He was enjoying this as much as I was. 

“…huh?” 

My patience was running out. “Look brainiac, I’m sick of this, and I’m starting to hurt from your gift, so it’ll be the last time I ask. I don’t care who you are any more. I don’t engage in a battle of wits with a tackling dummy. You’re too dumb to do this on your own. Who sent you?” 

“I’m not saying!” 

“I think you will…”, said Big Phil in a low, menacing tone as he put his foot on the opposite side of the gunman’s chest and stepped down harder and harder, cutting down his already limited oxygen supply. The gunman started gasping and flailing about under his foot, eyes bulging. 

“All right! All right! I’ll tell you, just get off me!” 

“WHO WAS IT?” Big Phil’s foot hadn’t moved. 

“Toasty! It was Toasty who sent me!”, he screamed through the agony. 

Big Phil and I looked at each other in recognition. We knew Toasty, and he wasn’t a man to be trifled with, but this had gone way too far, and it had to end. I nodded to Big Phil, and he took his foot off the gunman’s chest. I bent down and got face to face with the gunman, who was a picture of pain. “I’m going to go to that phone box now and call an ambulance for you. You’re going to get patched up at hospital, and you’re going to get word back to Toasty that we’ll bring Nelly to him at his place tomorrow night at 6. You got that?” 

“I got it, I got it, I got it! Don’t hurt me!” 

“Good boy. Don’t let me catch you playing with guns or using bad grammar again, understand? We don’t like your kind of ilk around here.” 

“You know what an ilk is, don’t you?”, growled Big Phil. 

“Umm… a big deer?” 

Big Phil rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Yeah - kind of. Just tell Toasty, you moron.” He turned down the alleyway and yelled. “Nelly – all clear! Hurry up and get down here, we have to leave fast before all that gunfire brings the police!” Nelly came out from behind the bins and nervously scampered up to us, and after making a quick anonymous call from the phone box for a gorilla ambulance, we left the scene. At last, we were getting somewhere. All for stupid coffee and pie. We must be nuts. 

..... 

Chapter 11 - Toasted 

The sirens of attending police cars could just be heard in the distance as we left the scene. We took a route away from the ones we could hear and headed back to Nelly’s in a random, zig-zag fashion through the darkened streets to ensure we wouldn’t be followed or associated with the noisy ruckus we’d just lived through. 

It took us nearly an hour to get there and it gave me, and probably Big Phil too, plenty of time to think about things and put the puzzle pieces together as we drove. I had a pretty good idea of the bigger picture now, but we needed to pin Nelly down and force the truth out of him. He held the answers. He probably had held them all along, but it didn’t surprise me that he hadn’t wanted to share them if my suspicions were correct. 

We parked up in the lot under the half-working neon sign to use as some lighting – we didn’t need to alarm the customers with my blood. I opened the boot of the GT-R and pulled out my basic first aid kit, took off my trenchcoat and looked at the hole in the sleeve. Luckily, I knew a good dry cleaner who could fix the coat and get the blood out of it as well. My arm was throbbing with the pain, but I knew the wound was more dramatic than serious despite the amount of blood loss, probably about half a pint. A little blood really did go a long way, particularly when it’s your own. Nelly took a look at my arm and went a bit green, then looked away before it made him throw up. 

I dropped the trenchcoat into the boot and looked at my arm – I’d been lucky, if you could ever call being shot lucky. It had grazed the outside of my upper arm about midway between shoulder and elbow, opening up a gap that would probably take a dozen stitches to sew up. Big Phil took out his highly illegal flick knife and cut my shirt sleeve off at the shoulder, then held the skin together between his fingertips while I applied some rubbing alcohol over the wound, which hurt like hell. I then took the super glue from the first aid kit and sealed the wound – it’s what the stuff had been invented for, after all. Big Phil used his knife and made a bandage out of the sleeve, which he tied firmly around my arm and over the wound. It would do for now. I obviously couldn’t go to the emergency room at the moment and bump into our gunman again. 

Cars locked, we wandered towards the door as a light cold rain began to fall on us through the chilly Toukville skies. Great time not to have my trenchcoat. We were soon inside though, and Big Phil and I led Nelly to a corner booth where we could trap him between ourselves and keep him confined until he squealed and we knew it all. Nelly signalled to one of his well-built young waitresses and a fresh pot of his quality brew and three cups were brought over. 

It didn’t take long to coerce Nelly into finally telling us what I now believed was happening was essentially correct, and the look on Big Phil’s face told him he was thinking the same. The fear from the gunfire had acted like dynamite on the dam of info on his private life that Nelly had been holding back, and now that the dam had been breached, all of it came pouring out of him in an unstoppable torrent. 

Nelly had been frequenting the tracks and clubs for years of course, and we knew he’d been banned by them when he got on a hot streak after many years of being useless at gambling. The winnings had been funding his big lifestyle and his various bits of totty, but being banned made that cash dry up. Gambling online was a big no-no for him, as it left an electronic footprint that the tax people could follow and like the rest of us, Nelly wasn’t keen on paying taxes if could avoid it. There was only left one way to gamble here in Toukville, and that was by using illegal back-street bookies. 

There were dozens and dozens of these back-street bookies available if you knew where to look, and Nelly was just slippery enough to know what rocks to look under and where to find all of them. They were usually working from derelict warehouses, run-down offices, cheap and nasty flats, and other places that could be closed-down and moved quickly and cheaply when the coppers started nosing around. Sometimes the joints were more salubrious and had lounges and bars as well as betting booths in the areas where the local flatfoots were on the take, nothing as grubby as cash, but tipoffs on horses and dogs where the fix was in so they could lay down a legal bet at the track. 

At the end of the day, these back-street bookies didn’t care whose money they took – it all looked the same to them. They enticed the more gullible punters with better odds than they’d get at the track and with no tax to pay on their winnings, who little realised or cared just how fixed the races were. A fool and their money are soon parted as they say, and it was no different here. 

Nelly sweated profusely as he told the story, downing cups of java at an unhealthy pace, shaking like a leaf on a tree in a high wind. He obviously needed to unload and frankly, it was the only way in my opinion that he was going to be saved. His speech became jittery and it took some effort for Big Phil and I to cut through the fog. 

He still hadn’t told us where it went wrong, but I had a suspicion. The trigger point had happened about eight months previously, when Nelly lost his shirt on a big bet when the nag he backed in the 3:30 race came in, but not until a quarter past four. His high-maintenance lady of the time was threatening to leave him and he needed money, lots of it and fast if he was going to keep her, so Nelly started playing a very dangerous game. 

The next race meeting, Nelly went into the stables that the owners and trainers had so gleefully been happy to let him do in the past, with some sugar cubes as treats for the horses. But these weren’t ordinary sugar cubes. They were doctored sugar cubes that contained the same stuff he’d been getting customers addicted to at the café, just in a much more concentrated form. He chose a horse that was joint favourite to win at 5-1, gave the horse the sugar cubes, and left the stables to go watch the race. 

The doctored horse won by twenty lengths and almost did another full lap. 

From there, it had been a slippery slope for Nelly. Doctoring horses and dogs, betting big, winning big. The luxuries got more expensive and so did the women. He needed to win bigger and more often to keep the lifestyle going, but there was only one problem – he was too “lucky”. Nelly didn’t lay down decoy bets often enough, bets where he knew he’d lose but which made him look like he was just on a lucky hot streak. The bookies and courses in turn smelled a Nelly-shaped rat and banned him from betting, but didn’t ban him from going to the tracks. A change of tack was necessary. 

Nelly then started using the back-street bookie network but being more careful, betting rarely and at different bookies so they wouldn’t suspect. That meant he had to win less often but win bigger when he did – much bigger. 

Nelly still had access to the stables and kennels pre-races and could still dope horses and dogs with his concoction, which he’d perfected over the months. He knew how much to give based on the weight, age and health of an animal to get them to perform out of their skins without causing long-term health issues. Nelly now started doping the outsiders and longshots, the 15-1 dogs, the 25-1 horses, the ones that could make him a huge payout with minimal effort and exposure. 

It worked a treat. Nelly would go in to a back-street bookie, lay down a thousand on an apparent no-hoper and walk out temporarily rich. It was sweet and it almost always worked, and because he was spreading his net wide and the back-street bookies didn’t talk to each other, he was getting away with daylight robbery. 

Nelly’s downfall was the same as it is with any gambler – greed. He started doping animals who had no form and stood no chance, and betting on them when not even an owner with rose-coloured spectacles would do so. 50-1, 100-1, even 200-1 shots romping home when they should have been turned into pets or glue. His greed made him sloppy, and it was now his undoing. 

What Nelly and Big Phil didn’t understand, but that I did, was that all the back-street bookies got their odds from one man – Toasty. Toasty was the spider at the centre of the illegal betting web in Toukville. He had a posh office, discreet and out of the way, where he ran his empire of illegal bookies, calling the odds, manipulating the races, running the show.  

It was a beautiful thing. Toasty set the odds that the bookies used, which he distributed to them via coded ads in Craigslist. The bookies got the odds, took the bets and got paid a percentage of the winnings. Runners, usually neighbour kids, got paid to take the cash winnings from the bookies to a tame accountant, who got paid to launder the money into multiple Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts and off-shore companies. None of it could be traced back to Toasty, but he had the dirt on enough high-ranking coppers to ensure he was never bothered – he’d never been raided once, let alone arrested. I’d sometimes wondered if Toasty had Brad in his pocket. 

Toasty was uniquely qualified to set the odds because he had an eidetic memory. He remembered every horse, every dog, every race of the last forty years. He could tell you what the odds were in the past for every animal, how they’d been handicapped for each race, what courses they raced, what surfaces they preferred, their lineage, whatever you wanted to know on race animals in Toukville for as far back as you could think, Toasty could tell you in the blink of an eye. When Toasty set the odds, he could be confident of the win, place and show, and confident of making a lot of money. 

This is how it had come to a head, I thought to myself – Nelly was cheating Toasty out of his winnings by manipulating races that Toasty thought he’d already manipulated. He was taking money straight out of the pockets of one of the most dangerous people in Toukville, and Toasty and his eidetic memory had seen the patterns, figured it out. Nelly had been giving Toasty’s his not-so-subtle messages to knock it off, and Nelly had been ignoring them to keep Sindy in luxury. 

It was time for Nelly to face the music. If he was lucky, he’d only get a pair of broken hands and two broken kneecaps. If he was unlucky, he’d join the loser of the 4:15 race at the dog food factory. I had a plan that might, just maybe, save Nelly’s life, but he’d still have to meet Toasty and take his lumps at 6 o’clock when Nelly, Big Phil and I all came face-to-face with Toasty – also known in Toukville as The Original Steve. 

..... 

Chapter 12 – Under Pressure 

Between us, Big Phil and I kept a handle on Nelly all day before our meeting to make sure he wouldn’t run away. I’d gone back home, showered, shaved, put on my best suit as was my tradition when I was closing a case, opened my bedroom window and poured a bucket of ice water mixed with brown vinegar over Ratbag while she was loudly being serviced by a tom outside, shut the window again, grabbed two packs of cigarettes and after stopping at a toy shop and then a liquor store, I’d driven back to Nelly’s. 

We decided to take a taxi to Toasty’s place. It seemed the easiest way to control Nelly, him sandwiched between us in the back seat. As we had a few minutes before we left, I took the opportunity to explain the history of Toasty to my friends, who didn’t have the same history as I did from my experience digging about in less than salubrious circumstances. 

Steve was a man in his mid-thirties, about 6’2”, rake thin, chestnut brown hair, hazel eyes, clean shaven. Always had the alert look of a hawk circling overhead, searching for prey. Long, slender hands that made him ideal for either counting money or playing the piano. Married, one child, baby daughter. Lived with his family in stylish comfort in the top floor of a swanky condo block overlooking everything, located in Toukville city centre. Drove a Bentley Continental GT, when he drove. Most of the time, he was chauffeured about in a Rolls. 

As a young man, Steve had been studying mathematics at university and was at the top of his class when he realised his eidetic memory could be put to much more effective and rewarding use in the world of gambling. While Toukville had plenty of opportunities for legal betting, Steve saw the huge potential for illegal gambling that wasn’t already there. He quit university, borrowed some money from his father, and set himself up in an office over a derelict warehouse at the Toukville docks. Over the last 15 years or so, he’d built up his empire of back-street bookies and was raking in the money so fast that he could barely keep track of it all. No one knew for sure how much he was worth, but the informed guesses ranged from 200m to 300m, all cash and all hidden abroad. 

He’d acquired the nickname “Toasty” about five years ago when another enterprising man of gambling, also named Steve, came to Toukville looking to set up a rival back-street bookie network of his own. The first Toasty came to know of his rival “Steve” was when his takings dropped off dramatically. A few of Toasty’s “colleagues” were sent to investigate why and when they discovered out-of-town Steve and his set-up, they persuaded him that Toukville wasn’t the healthiest place to start up his new business venture – and they persuaded him with prejudice. New Steve took the hint and just as soon as he was discharged from hospital a fortnight later, he moved three hundred miles away to the gambling resort town of Lake Placid, where he could set up unopposed amongst the gamblers, crooks, cheats and con men. 

Thereafter, just to make sure everyone referred to the right person in future and no one was offended, the two Steves were given their own nicknames – The Original Steve and Bootleg Steve. The Original Steve was shortened to “TOS” working out of “TV”, while Bootleg Steve was usually shortened to “BS” out of “LP”. However, “TOS” didn’t quite sound quite right, so this was changed to “TOSt”. That didn’t “work” either, so after a bit more it was changed again to “Toast”. Eventually, it modified out to “Toasty”, a nickname Steve liked - allegedly. People could ask him or those who worked for him if things were going well - and Steve always made sure they were – and the standard reply was “everything’s toasty”. 

Toasty wasn’t a man for violence. He found it distasteful and wisely distanced himself from it. But he knew and appreciated its effectiveness, and indirectly used it through his language that his heavy mob understood. He never instructed any of his apes to hurt people, just to pass on messages that were all based around the word “disappointed”, with adjectives inserted to express levels of his displeasure. If you got a message that Toasty was “a touch disappointed”, that meant a slapped wrist and to make sure you never did it again. If the message you got was that he was “very disappointed” in you, it was probably a good time to move out of the country or have a fitting for a new suit, a casket and a headstone. 

With that information safely imparted to an alert Big Phil and a quivering wreck in Nelly, we left the coffee shop and after a few minutes standing in the cold and wet, rain dripping slowly from the brim of my best hat, we flagged down a black cab just as dusk started to descend. I went around to the far side of the taxi and entered through the offside back door, while Big Phil gently flung Nelly into the rear seat from the near side and climbed in next to him. I gave our cabbie the address and we pulled out into rush hour traffic as a complete silence filled the taxi. It wasn’t the most awkward journey I’d ever experienced, but it was right up there on my list. 

..... 

Forty-two minutes later, the taxi dropped us off outside Toasty’s place. I turned my collar up against the stiff damp breeze and looked at the building. It was still a dilapidated old empty eight-storey warehouse from the outside, one of many Art Deco-era buildings in this part of Toukville, a town that had failed to adapt to a changing economy and a changing world and seen manufacturing and blue-collar jobs disappear in their thousands. What was different here was the fact that in Toasty’s building, all the windows were not only intact but also clean. Only the lights in the lobby and on the eighth floor were burning. 

We walked to the locked entrance and pressed a button by the door, which buzzed loudly. A bright white security light above the door came on suddenly, illuminating the three of us and the street behind us. I guessed there was probably a CCTV camera there, and someone on the eighth floor was taking a good look at us. After about ten seconds another buzzer sounded, and the front door unlocked. We pushed the door open and entered the lobby, the door closing behind us and locking again, the exterior light extinguishing shortly thereafter. 

All was quiet in the eerily empty marbled lobby. We stood waiting for some response, anything, but there was no movement, no noise at all. I didn’t like it, especially as we’d come unarmed. Going in with our sidearms would have been idiotic. We’d likely be cut down like a manicured lawn in a hail of bullets before we got the guns out of our holsters. Besides, we weren’t the ones in trouble here. At least two of us weren’t, anyway. 

A gentle electrical hum started about thirty feet in front of us – the lift. The illuminated red dial pointer above the lift doors showed the lift car on Level 8, and it wound its way anti-clockwise across the face until it reached G. The doors opened to reveal that the car was empty. Clearly, we were being summoned to go up in the lift. We entered the lift and the doors slid closed behind us, and the lift started to ascend. The button station in the lift was gone, replaced by a small digital screen indicating the floor number. There was no visible way to control the lift if you were a passenger. We were trapped. 

“Oh my God…what should I do?”, Nelly whimpered. 

“Two things”, said Big Phil curtly, “shut up and say nothing.” We didn’t need this getting messy through panic. 

The lift suddenly stopped on Level 7, one floor lower than either Big Phil or I was expecting. The doors opened again and standing outside the lift were three massive apes. Well-dressed apes, but apes, nonetheless. Two of them entered the lift with us and gave us a thorough pat-down search, looking for weapons or wires, and searching the bag I had brought for Toasty. Satisfied that we posed no threat, the biggest ape nodded to the third ape, still standing outside, who reached forward and pressed a button. The lift doors closed again, and the lift quickly carried the five of us up to Level 8. 

When we reached the top, the lift doors opened for the last time. The apes stepped out first, walking forward side by side like a cashmere eclipse, no light shining through between them. We left the lift and walked forward behind them for a dozen or so steps into a brightly lit boardroom. Ornate wood panelling on the walls, delicate plasterwork ceiling, 30s style lighting fixtures, high back leather chairs against the walls – a beautifully preserved piece of Toukville history. I was so impressed that I didn’t notice the two apes suddenly split, one going left, the other right, and walk around a massive and magnificent antique solid oak desk. They went behind the desk and stood either side of a very tall business chair that was also behind the desk, its back turned to us. 

Silence. The apes stared at us. Nothing moved. We then saw a wisp of smoke slowly rise from the chair, and the chair slowly turned around on its axis, until we were face to face with the man, the myth, the legend that was The Original Steve. 

Steve motioned to the apes, who brought over two chairs and placed them in front of his desk and gestured for Big Phil and I to sit down. No seat for Nelly – that spoke volumes, just as Steve had intended it to do. We eased into the chairs, maintaining eye contact with Steve all the while, who was smoking a very expensive cigar, and waited for him to speak. 

“Good evening gentlemen… and Nelly. Welcome to my offices. I’m very pleased to see you here. It saved me a considerable amount of hassle. It’s just like having two exterminators bring me a troublesome rodent so I can see it before it’s dealt with. I appreciate that.” Steve’s voice was smooth, even, controlled. Friendly yet icy. One of us was in one hell of a lot of trouble. 

“Good evening sir”, I said in a very polite and respectful tone. “Thank you for seeing us.” 

“The pleasure is mine, I assure you and please… call me Steve. Not “Toasty” – I hate that nickname, but it seems to command respect, so I tolerate it.” More like fear, I thought to myself. 

“How is your wife? I understand congratulations are in order – a new baby?” I’d heard about the baby, about a year old now to my knowledge. The giveaway was the photos of it and his wife in silver frames on his desk, which I gestured towards. Both beautiful. Steve had the bags under his eyes only worn by a new father who wasn’t afraid to do his share of 2 AM feedings and 4 AM nappy changes. 

Steve’s face softened as he looked at the photos. “Aren’t they amazing? That little thing has me wrapped around its little finger. I love it.” His smile lit up his office and eased the tension for a minute. 

“Big Phil and I brought you a couple of gifts as a token of respect.” I passed the bag to Ape #1, who came around the desk, looked in the bag again, then walked back around and passed it to Steve. “The stuffed horse is for the baby to cuddle at night – a horse seemed appropriate for a child of yours. The bottle is for daddy – because sometimes daddy needs a bottle too.” It was a bottle of Talisker 18-year old single malt scotch, the best I could get on short notice, and a very fine scotch it was too, as well it should have been at a C-note. 

Steve’s smile grew even larger, and he chuckled softly. “Thank you, gentlemen. You have honoured and flattered me – three presents in one night!” He opened the lower right drawer of his desk and produced three crystal glasses, opened the box the scotch was in and then the bottle itself and poured out three drinks, two of which he passed to Big Phil and I and the third he kept for himself. 

“To the health of you and your lovely family”, said Big Phil as we raised our glasses. Big Phil and I took a drink first as Steve watched us and then, satisfied the scotch wasn’t adulterated, downed his glass in one. “Many thanks, gents, much appreciated.” 

With Steve softened up, it was time to get down to business. “We brought Nelly with us because we believe you have a grievance with him, and we’d like to help you both sort it if we can.” 

“Grievance is a polite term for it. He’s a thief. I don’t know how he did it, but I worked out how often he did it and how much he cheated me out of as a result.” 

I winced slightly, unable to stop myself. “…and how much would that be?” 

“He cheated me eighty-seven times out of a grand total of £3,964,788.42 exactly.” Eidetic memory at work – impressive. Steve fixed Nelly with an icy stare. "I'm extremely disappointed with you." 

“Plus interest.”, muttered Ape #2. 

“The amount of said interest depending on when he pays me my money back. Which, in Nelly’s case, is immediately.” A sudden chill descended upon the boardroom. 

Nelly started shaking from head to toe. “I haven’t got it! I can’t pay him back! I've spent the lot!”, Nelly hissed at Big Phil and I. Big Phil gave Nelly a swift backhanded shot to the groin, which served to shut Nelly up and to also double him over in pain. “I told you Nelly – shut up.” 

“What’s that?”, Steve asked. 

“Nothing sir, not to worry, nothing at all. Nelly was just informing us that he’s currently experiencing a severe liquidity flow issue and is afraid can’t pay you back tonight.” I tried to sound confident, but I wasn’t sure I was being entirely successful. I was still reeling at how much Nelly had not only stolen, but also spent and in a short period of time. 

“He should be afraid, as it’s entirely possible his next and imminent "severe liquidity flow issue" will be experienced from the inside of an oil drum dropped off the back of a boat ten miles off Toukville Harbour. He’s been effectively stealing food out of my baby’s mouth. That cannot stand.” That was true, but I wished he’d hadn’t thought of it that way. Steve was being polite, calm, friendly, and terrifying. I knew Nelly was going to be “toasted” unless Big Phil and I could save him. 

I sat up straight in the chair, took a deep breath and began. “I completely agree with you, sir. Totally. You have every right to make an example out of Nelly to everyone else in Toukville. If Big Phil and I were in your shoes, I have no doubt we’d do the same.” Big Phil nodded sagely. “My colleague and I want to thank you for your hospitality this evening – we’ll finish our drinks and be on our way.” 

Big Phil and I necked the drinks and set the empty glasses down gently on the desk, then stood up together and started walking towards the lift, leaving Nelly behind. In the background, I could hear one of the apes crack his knuckles expertly and Nelly saying “No! No, please! No! Wait!” 

We reached the lift door, which opened automatically, probably from a button under Steve’s desk. Big Phil took one step in, but I stopped and slowly turned around to look at Steve. “Forget something?”, he said. 

“There’s just one thing, you see. Nelly owes you all that money, but he currently doesn’t have it. Taking care of Nelly doesn’t get you your money back, even if it is satisfying.” 

“True.” Steve’s eyebrows went up slightly. “Why? Have you got an idea how I can get my money back?” 

“As a matter of fact, I do”, I said, a smile slowly lifting the corners of my mouth. “An idea for you to not only get your money back with interest, but to get it back using Nelly and in the most delicious way you could ever imagine…”

Chapter 13 – Revenge Brewing 

“I don’t know… I’ve got a very good imagination”, Steve replied. The expression on his face didn’t flicker as the smoke from his cigar lazily curled upwards. There was an agonisingly long silence. No one moved an inch. No good trying to rush these things. Steve was sizing us and the situation up, and he had to be the one to react, to open the door for us. Overselling the plan at this point would put Nelly in mortal danger. 

After what seemed like forever, Steve motioned to us to return to in front of his desk and to sit back down, which Big Phil and I did with a relief that was hard to conceal. Another silence while Steve peered intently at all three of us. He was in total control of the situation, something none of us liked but there wasn’t one thing we could do about it. 

Finally, he spoke. “All right then, I’ll bite. What’s this big plan of yours?” 

It was all I could do not to exhale sharply with a loud sigh. I could really do with a double and a cigarette right now, but I hid my trepidation and carried on. “It’s a plan so good that they’ll be talking about it for years to come, and about the legend of Toasty.” Steve winced a bit – that was a mistake, but I carried on. “But first, the fewer people who know the plan, the better. Loose lips sink ships and all that. We need to limit the pool of people who know all the details to you, me and Big Phil to make sure nothing goes wrong.” 

“Are you trying to say my associates are untrustworthy?”, said Steve in an annoyed yet icily still tone. 

“Not at all. I’m saying our mutual caffeine pushing friend should be kept out of the loop.” 

Another pause… Steve turned to the apes. “Take our little guest here and put him in the lift.” The door to the lift opened as if by magic, and the apes each lifted Nelly off the floor by an arm and deposited him inside the lift car, the door shutting immediately afterwards. 

“Will he be okay in there?”, asked Big Phil. 

“Depends what you mean by “okay”. If he’s claustrophobic, then no. If he panics and starts hyperventilating, possibly no. That lift is sealed, soundproof and has 22.584 cubic metres of air in it, and someone small like him could burn through it in about 15 minutes if he panics. Whether or not he suffocates is down to how quickly you can convince me about your plan, isn’t it?” Ape #2 grinned, showing a row of perfect white teeth interrupted only by a gold tooth on the lower front. 

No pressure, then. “Here it is. How would you like to hit Bootleg where it really hurts – in his wallet?” 

“I’m listening…” 

“The biggest flat race on the calendar is just over two months away, yes?” 

“Toukville Stakes? Yes. Sixty-four days, twenty-two hours, and twelve minutes away.” 

I soldiered on. “Our friend Nelly has a way with horses. Some would call it magical. Some would say he’s a horse whisperer. But what he has is a way to make a horse reach its true potential, and then some, on command.” 

“Just how does he do that, then?” Steve’s face was still stone. 

Big Phil spoke up. “We don't know all the exact details, but we know it works. We’ve seen the evidence. It’s why Nelly owes you £3.9m right now.” 

“£3,964,788.42”, Steve corrected him. 

“Right. Anyway, how he does it isn’t important and besides, if you knew, that could leave you open to a conspiracy charge, and no one wants that.” 

“You can only charge someone with conspiracy if there’s evidence.”, Steve retorted. “My associates are good at making sure there’s no evidence. Or witnesses.” Yeah – I’ll bet they were. 

“The point being,” I continued carefully, “you need not worry yourself about how it works. It just does. What we’re proposing is that the horses that win, place and show in the Toukville Stakes are pre-arranged with the help of Nelly.” 

Steve snorted with derision. “Still not seeing how that helps get me my money back.” 

“Okay, follow us here. You send two of your associates to each and every one of Bootleg’s back street gambling dens two to three times a week from now until the day of the race. Ideally, they need to be a good mixture of unremarkable men and women, not handsome or ugly, but good actors. Each time they go, they stay for a few hours and bet on a few races. No big bets, and no higher than average number of wins. Win some money, lose some money. They have to look just like regular Joe Shmoes off the street, normal everyday punters looking for some excitement and fun, blend in with the wallpaper. They can also watch and get a good idea how much money changes hands there each day and how much each bookie has on site in total. 

“About two weeks before the race, they continue the pattern but start betting a little bit higher each day, medium stakes, and sometimes betting on long shots. Gets the bookies under Bootleg used to the idea and so they see them as important regulars. It’s vital that they do so or Bootleg’s boys will be suspicious on the day of the big race.” 

“Keep going…”, Steve said. I could read him well enough to see his interest was picking up. 

Big Phil took over from there. “On race day, Nelly is at the track. He goes into the stables and works his magic with the four horses with longest odds against them – with 35 horses running, they’ll probably be 100-1, 150-1, 200-1 no-hopers. Hands and I run interference and make sure nothing stops him from doing so, then we get him away from the track before the race starts to avoid any suspicion…” 

"…while over in Lake Placid”, I continued, “your associates go to their regular Bootleg locations first thing and enjoy race day there. Place a few small bets, have a drink or two, but they let it be known they’re waiting for the Stakes. 

“At exactly three minutes before the race starts, your associates at every one of Bootleg’s places all put down massive each way bets on the long shots, bets just big enough to probably take 95% of the total money they have in the joint so that extra funds for winnings aren’t required from Bootleg’s HQ when they’re paid out. The associates, being well-known punters, will not be viewed with too much suspicion but their bets will make them look like complete idiots. Tempted by the lure getting rich from the huge bets versus the seemingly ludicrously low risk of a massive pay out, with the pressure of the race imminently starting, and with no time to call Bootleg or anyone else to get clearance, they take the bets." 

“The long shot horses then romp home, the associates collect their winnings and leave quickly, and in the space of a few short minutes, everyone of Bootleg’s joints is financially decimated and Bootleg himself is down millions – probably tens of millions.”, Big Phil continued. “From placing the bets to taking the winnings and leaving, it’s all over in a flash before anyone knows what hit them. The associates depart Lake Placid immediately, leaving town by separate routes and only head back to Toukville when they know they’re not being followed.” 

The merest trace of a smirk was starting on Steve’s face. He could picture it all clearly. The chance to get his revenge on Bootleg and to make him poor at the same time. 

“But that’s not all. You play the Toukville punters at the same time. You give them very attractive offers on the favourites by adding three points to each. If the favourite is on 5-1, you offer it at 8-1 and so on. People bet with you instead of at the track as a result. The long shots come home in front and everyone tempted by the favourites loses their shirts. It’s a win-win scenario with the delicious dish of cold revenge for dessert.", Big Phil finished. 

A wicked grin had spread across Steve’s face. The full picture was in his head and he was already crunching the numbers, looking at the pros and cons, weighing everything up. He quickly had the fine details worked out and knew exactly what the operation would cost him and how much he stood to gain. The temptation of getting even richer at the expense of your hated enemy was very, very strong. The risks were there, but they were manageable risks. 

“Are you confident Nelly can do it for you?”, Steve said. 

“We’re staking his life on it”, I replied. “Big Phil and I will sit on him day and night before the race to make sure he delivers.” 

Steve was still grinning. The apes were still standing there, being apes. I glanced at the huge antique pendulum clock on the wall, which had been tick-tocking softly in the background the whole time we’d been there, helping fill in the silences slightly. It had been eighteen minutes since Nelly was locked in the lift, but Steve was still checking and double checking the numbers in his head. Interrupting him would only slow things down. It would take as long as it took. 

Finally, Steve slowly stood up, and taking our cue from him, we stood as well. Ape #1 produced a portable folding silver ashtray from his jacket pocket, opened it, and put it directly under Steve’s cigar, which was now mostly ash. Steve tapped the cigar lightly and the ash fell into the silver container, and he then placed the butt in afterwards. Ape #1 closed the ashtray and put it back in his pocket. All the while, Steve never stopped looking at us intently. It was nerve-shredding. Twenty minutes gone now. 

Eventually, the smile disappeared from Steve’s face. He looked at Big Phil and I, and he spoke at last. “This had better work. If it does, Nelly’s debt will be paid and you two will be suitably rewarded. If it doesn’t work…” He left the sentence hanging in the air. 

Without a word being said or a motion being made, the lift door opened. Nelly staggered out and immediately dropped to his hands and knees on the floor. He was bright pink, having been starved of fresh oxygen and from breathing in his own carbon dioxide. It had been a close-run thing. 

Steve strode slowly, evenly over to Nelly, who was busily gasping and sucking in fresh air for all he was worth, face down, unable to speak or even focus. When he got there, he calmly grabbed Nelly by the hair and turned his head upwards to face him. “Listen up. Your friends just bought you a reprieve – but only a temporary one. Your gambling days in Toukville are over. If I find out you’ve bet on which raindrop runs down a window pane first, you’ll live to regret it. You will do exactly what your two friends…” 

“Not exactly friends…”, said Big Phil under his breath. 

Steve looked at Big Phil for a few seconds, then looked back at Nelly and continued. “…what these two gentlemen tell you to do at all times until our business is at an end. If you fail to do so… let’s just say my disappointment in you will be made painfully clear. Do you understand me?” He vigoursly nodded Nelly's head "yes" for him befoe he could speak, then let go of Nelly’s hair and walked back to his chair, sat down and poured himself another glass of Taliskers. 

Steve turned to the two apes and spoke. “Kindly escort these two gentlemen and that thing off my premises. Bring the Roller around, take the two gentlemen wherever they wish to go, then come back and collect me to take me home.” 

“What about me – do I get a lift too?”, said Nelly. 

“Be grateful you aren’t being put UNDER the Roller. Use your feet or thumb a lift, it doesn't matter to me. Just do what you’re told and you might be around long enough to see the year out. Now go.” 

The five of us left the office and took the lift down. Nelly was chucked into the rain-lashed street, while Big Phil and I followed the apes to the garage downstairs to get the poshest lift home ever. We had done it. We had given Nelly a way out. I just hoped he could pull it off – for his sake. 

.... 

Chapter 14 - Hot To Trot

Day – the Toukville Stakes. We were as ready as we could be. Big Phil and I had done our research and found the paths of least resistance in and out of the racecourse to pull it off. We had a plan, a backup plan, and a contingency plan if the backup plan failed. We’d done three dry runs on other race days to test the plans during crowded conditions, and it had worked flawlessly. 

The weather was bright and sunny, the course dry and firm, and the going was good to fast, exactly what we needed, no conditions that would interfere with the grand plan. If the weather was forecast to be rotten or the track was soft, we’d have aborted the scam yesterday and set up a new one, but that wasn’t necessary now. 

Nelly had been busy perfecting his magic sugar lump formula as well. He’d studied the form on the horses and gotten the low-down on all the outsiders to make sure he got all the dosages right. It was critical that it didn’t look too obvious and the horses won comfortably and not by a ridiculous amount. This was already going to look suspicious as it was. 

Toasty had done his part as well. The racecourse veterinarian was nearing her retirement, and Toasty offered her a handsome reward to get the blood samples from all the horses before the race. It was the law that blood be drawn to ensure there was no horse doping or tampering. I had no idea if Nelly’s super booster would be picked up on a screening test, but it was better to be safe than sorry. 

We’d worked out exactly when to get to the track, where to park the car in the parking lot to ensure a quick getaway after Nelly had done his work and before post time, what routes out to take that avoided traffic jams, and where to lie low afterwards if required. 

We were as prepared as prepared gets. We were going to pull this one off. I could feel it in my bones. 

The three of arrived in plenty of time to allow for the unexpected, and as it turned out, it was a good job we’d done so. We already had bought our race day tickets and went through the turnstiles without issue. Security thoroughly patted us down, and of course they’d found nothing as we’d left our heaters in the gun safe in the boot of Big Phil’s car – still there if we needed them later. Nelly’s sugar cubes got the once over, but a suspicious guard had been satisfied when Nelly lied about needing them due to being diabetic and using them if his blood sugar levels in busy places. 

Once inside, we walked straight towards the entrance to the stables, which was next to the main grandstand and the parade ring where the horses would be shown before the race… and that’s when the day’s best laid plan of mice and men started to unravel in front of us. We got close and Nelly stopped dead in his tracks. 

“What’s wrong with you?”, Big Phil hissed at Nelly. 

“Those guards – they’re new. I’ve never seen them before. They don’t know me. I’ll never get past them!” 

Inconvenient, but not terminal – we had to stay focused. “Oh, do calm down Nelly – we’ve got it covered”, I replied under my breath. We turned away quickly before the guards got a good look at us and headed inside the main stand. Big Phil and I had taken the precaution of going to the shop in Toukville that sold all the official uniforms for security guards, taxi drivers, firemen, ambulance drivers, utility workers, bus drivers, everything up to and including police uniforms. We’d bought two full security guard outfits and on a dry run, hidden them in public coin lockers near the men’s rooms. It would be a simple case of getting changed into them, going back to the stable entrance and escorting Nelly into the stables area with a back story about him being an ex-jockey who was there to wish the others good luck. Simple. 

We casually strolled into the concourse area under the grandstand, which was already quite busy and starting to get even busier, and headed towards the where the lockers were. That’s when we saw it… or rather, we didn’t see it. 

“Hands…”, said Big Phil, “…where are the lockers? I can’t see them.” 

Gone. The lockers were gone. I could see the dirty outline on the wall of where they’d been before, but that was it. Oh sh… 

I saw a track official walking nearby, recognisable by his bright green blazer and gold badge, and fought my way through the crowd to get to him. “Excuse me… where have the lockers gone? I left something in one of them when I was here at the last meet, forget about it until I got home and I need to retrieve it. Can you help me please?” I tried to keep my rising anxiety out of my voice but I wasn’t too sure it was working. 

“Oh… I’m so, so sorry. They’ve been removed today for the Stakes. The race is a high-profile target for terrorists, of course. Security, you know. Don’t want someone putting an explosive device inside a locker, do we?” He sounded calm, apologetic. It didn’t help. 

“No… no, of course not. How can I get my stuff?” 

“The lockers are away from site, but they’re being brought back and reinstalled tomorrow. You’ll have to come back then to get your things. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to help you – sorry you’ve been inconvenienced. Hope it won’t spoil the race for you!” 

“Yeah. Hope springs eternal… thanks”, I muttered through a rictus grin and under my breath and turned to fight my way back through the throng to Big Phil and Nelly to tell them the news, who both acted just as pleased as me when they heard. It wasn’t time to panic yet, but the clock was certainly starting to move that way. Big Phil and I were going to have to think on our feet if we were going to get Nelly through security and into the stables. 

We headed out of the concourse area and back to the now packed area outside in front of the grandstand. Things were not going well, and in my experience that’s usually when things started to go even more wrong. My experience then decided it was time to prove me correct as I felt a hand slip itself behind my left bicep, and a soft feminine voice behind a hot breath whispered in my ear. “Hello, hubby. Fancy seeing you here today.” 

“Broodytat – what are doing here? What are you up to? What the hell do you want from me now?”, I growled back. This was the last bloody thing we needed. Big Phil and Nelly, having never seen Broodytat before, looked very surprised to see a gorgeous woman appear on my arm. I wished that I was surprised as well, but Broodytat appearing unexpectedly had ceased to be a surprise for me these days. 

She pulled away from me with a look of mock horror. “That’s not a very nice way to treat your wife, now is it?” 

“Wife?” Big Phil said, his eyes opening wide with surprise. 

I sighed heavily. “EX-wife. Sort of. But not. Long story. Another time.” He filed that away in his memory and I hoped he’d lose in in there eventually, but that was probably a forlorn hope. 

“Ex-wives… they’re nothing but trouble”, said Nelly sympathetically. 

“How right you are, Nelly… you simply have NO idea!”, Broodytat purred back to him through her broad, evil grin. “But you soon will.” She then turned her attention back to me. “I told you I’d see you again soon, Hands – remember back at the park? I’ve been watching you ever so closely, you see. I love watching you. You’re so much fun to play with that I just can’t keep away from you.” Her eyes locked with mine, a gaze I knew all too well. Most men would be entranced by her spell. It made me nothing but nervous and twitchy, which I always had to hide. 

“You called me Nelly – do I know you? Didn't I take you to Mexico for a week once?” 

“Not now, Nelly…” I hissed at him. “Not now.” 

“Since I knew you’d be here today Mr Hands, I decided I had to be here too.”, she continued. “I also thought it would be a good idea if I made sure your other friends came today as well to say hello. Wasn’t that thoughtful of me?” The words came out like honey dripping out of a hive, sweet but with the threat of a thousand stings behind it. The Collector was using this as a giant game, controlling the Toukvillers in her collection and bringing them all here to mess with me. 

“I get it, don’t worry. How considerate and thoughtful of you. Was it you who put new guards on the stable entrance?” 

“Might have been”, she said demurely, her eyes twinkling. 

“…and arranged for the lockers to be removed?” 

“The ones with those nice new security guard uniforms in them? You know me – safety first. You can’t be too careful. There’s so many bad people in the world, don’t you think?” The grinning evil temptress had been watching me and heaven knows how many other people for two months now, all right. Somehow, she’d put it all together and was doing this to me, to us, all on purpose and just for her own fun. “I wanted to watch my favourite private eye in action. I do love it so. Is that so bad? Now you can show me just how very, very clever you are, my dear hubby.” 

“You should have put a chip in me when you had the chance, Broodytat. If we get out of this alive, I’m coming back to close my account with you.” I was fighting to keep my temper under control. I wasn’t going to let her win. 

“I look forward to seeing you try it, but there’s still plenty of games left to play with you. If you’ll forgive me, you're about to be busy and I’m retiring to my seat in the grandstand so I can watch you work from a good vantage point. I do hope you pick the right horse today, sweetheart. I’ll be rooting for you… and who’s this coming your way? Why, it’s DI Brad from the Toukville Police. Looks like he wants to have a word with you. Do give him my best, won’t you?” Broodytat winked at me and turned on her high heels, sauntering away alluringly, heels tip-tapping as she left a trail of expensive perfume for other men to catch on the breeze as she passed by, making them stop and turn their heads to see from where it had come and to who it belonged. 

I turned to Big Phil. “We’ve got company…” 

“More company? Besides your wife?” 

“That’s EX-wife. No, not my ex-wife… never mind. It’s DI Brad.” 

“Oh, GREAT… hang on a minute. That gives me an idea… let me do the talking”, Big Phil said. 

“Have you got a cunning plan?”, I asked hopefully. 

“It’s only cunning if it works, so that’s yet to be seen.” It was getting harder and harder to hear him with the din of the crowd around us. “But it is devious.” 

“I’m good with devious. I like devious. Try it." 

“Oh my lord, please no, anything but that!”, we suddenly heard Nelly mutter. 

Big Phil and I went on the alert like a pair of meerkats, standing tall, heads turning left and right, eyes searching. I couldn’t see anything particularly ominous. “What?” 

“THAT”, said Nelly, pointing to our eleven o’clock position, about thirty yards away. 

“All I can see”, Big Phil muttered, “is a small group of flashy, overly made up, expensively dressed tarts on stilettos. Nothing unusual there on Stakes Day.” 

“What you rightly describe as a small group of flashy, overly made up, expensively dressed tarts on stilettos is the EWoNC.” 

“EWoNC? What’s that?”, I queried. 

“The Ex-Wives of Nelly Club… all my ex-wives, who get together for lunch once a week and dish the dirt on me, trading tips on how to screw me out of more alimony money… and they’re headed this way.”, Nelly gulped nervously. “Oh, sh…” 

I turned to look in the posh seats in the grandstand, and saw Broodytat already there, looking down at us, laughing. She waved at me and blew me a kiss. Thanks a bunch, I thought. It was thirty minutes to race time. 

.... 

Chapter 15 – Well Stirred 

Things were starting to spiral out of my control and fast. In my youth, I’d have used speed and strength to get me out of these kinds of situations. Advancing years, being unfit and an unending level of pain meant that these days I used guile, deception, diversion and charm to do it. I had no doubt that this afternoon would be no different. 

Nelly’s ex-wives had spotted him and were making an unsteady drunken beeline for us when I got a tap on the shoulder. I turned around to see my secretary Brenda standing next to me, dolled up to the nines for a change. I’d never seen her outside my offices in her off hours before now. 

“Brenda! What a surprise? Decided to go to the races today?” 

“Well, yeah, Brainiac – you left me a free ticket on my desk, remember? You really are slipping these days, aren’t you, you old fart?”, she replied. Brenda showed me the ticket – on the back, it read “Have a wonderful day out and enjoy! Cheers, Hands”. I hadn’t left her the ticket and it wasn’t my handwriting but it wasn’t hard to guess who had done it. “I was so surprised. It was really unexpected. You never do anything nice for me, Hands." Charming. 

“… it was just my way of saying thanks for all you do. A man can change, you know.”, I offered. 

“Uh-huh. Sure.” she said, through a face of lifted eyebrows and suspicious eyes, and turned away from me to look for a bar and a bookie, just as another familiar face suddenly appeared. “Hello Mr Hands! What a pleasant surprise! Good to see you again!” 

“Er, ah, why hello there Graham. Yes, good to see you too.” The whole Graham clan – Graham, Sam, Ham, Pam and Liam. Another huge distraction, and time was ticking away. “Nice to meet you all at last.” Good Lord, they all looked so alike, it was like a bad science fiction film. “So… I take it you got the tickets that… 

“…your wife sent? Yes we did, thanks! What a surprise! We weren’t planning on coming at all, but when the free tickets arrived, we decided, why not?” A big grin was on his face, a grin that he was being made to grin, no doubt. 

An idea suddenly pinged into my brain, and it was a good one. “Yeah – why not? Listen Graham, sorry, I’m just really, really busy working right now, I hope you don’t think I’m being rude, but would you like to say thanks and hello to my wife? She’s just up there in the stands, and I’m certain she’d love to say hello too and meet your family. I’m sure she’d like to buy you all a drink and a bite to eat as well. She’s such a wonderful wife. I hope you understand.” I pointed Broodytat out to him, and their eyes met, his eager, hers panicked.  

“Oh yes, I see her. Really? That’s very generous of you! Thank you, we will! Will we see you later?” 

“I have no doubt. Give her my love when you get there. Have fun and good luck!” I shook hands with everyone in the clan, and they turned and started climbing the steps to the top of the grandstand where the reality of the situation became clear to Broodytat. A pained but polite smile came across her face as she waved back to them as they got closer and closer. Score one for me for a change. 

I was trying to absorb it all and think on my feet when the gaggle of Nelly’s ex-wives tottered over on their spikes. They’d seen him hiding behind Big Phil and I, and now there was nowhere for him to hide. In the midst of this full frontal expensive bimbo assault, it was impossible to discern which one was saying what, but the general high-pitched babble of shouted words directed at Nelly implied he was way behind on his alimony payments, that someone was being highly economical with the truth, had never answered or returned their calls, and that his parents were unmarried when he was born. 

Nelly was cowering behind us, trying to avoid the blows that had now started raining down on Big Phil and myself. A fist to the stomach here, a handbag across the face there, the odd stiletto heel being driven into my foot, trying to get past us and give a piece of their minds and a lot more to Nelly. It was a real effort to not respond and hit them back, but neither of us would harm a lady. Or even a bimbo, for that matter. Normal procedure in normal circumstances would be to grab one and carry her away to somewhere else and shoo her away, or if necessary, sit on her until she calmed down, but there were four ex-Mrs Nellys, and that was way too much for us to contend with.

It was just then when DI Brad sauntered up, a huge grin on his face, standing back just far enough to enjoy the show without getting involved himself in the punch-up and therefore spoiling his day off, judging by his somewhat more casual dress. “Hello gents – looks like you got your hands full, Hands”, he chuckled loudly. 

“Very funny, Har Har Binks. Looks ain’t deceiving”, I grunted back at him as the melee continued and a kneecap from ex-Mrs Nelly #2 narrowly missed my groin, “Any chance of some help from the boys in blue?” 

“Four against two? No, I think that’s sufficient. You two have got it covered. No need for my help.” 

“You know what I like about you, Brad?” 

“What?” 

“Nothing. Not a damn thing.”, I said with as much venom as I could muster. Brad gave me an angelic smile. 

Brenda, who been momentarily distracted, now turned to see what was happening, which I figured would not go well. It didn’t. Being the clever woman she is, Brenda quickly assessed the bad situation and to her eye, saw which ex-Mrs Nelly was causing me the most difficulties. She walked up to ex-Mrs Nelly #1, who was futilely trying to push me to one side to get to Nelly, and tapped her on the shoulder. 

“Whadda youse wants?”, said the eloquent ex-Mrs Nelly #1 said as she turned on Brenda. 

“Leave my boss alone, you cheap strumpet!”, shouted Brenda. 

“Strumpet? Who are you calling strumpet? Stay out of it! And what if I don’t leave him alone…whaddaya gonna do about it, you old battle axe?” Oh no no no, dear God, please… no, I thought. 

“Then you’ll get this!”, Brenda snarled back as she pulled her fist back and delivered a straight right to the chin of ex-Mrs Nelly #1, who promptly dropped to the deck like a well-dressed sack of spuds. One punch, out cold. I knew that would happen. At least we were down to three now. 

Ex-Mrs Nellys #2, 3 and 4, who had watched all this, now turned on DI Brad, demanding he do something about Brenda. He hadn’t see that coming, but Brenda was only getting warmed up and grabbed ex-Nelly #2 by the hair from behind, pulled hard and wheeled her around to deliver another punch. Brenda was clearly enjoying her big day out. I wish I could say the same. Brenda drew back her right arm and swung a haymaker at ex-Mrs Nelly #2, who instinctively ducked, and Brenda’s punch landed square on Brad’s left cheek with a loud thud. 

This seemed to stun and surprise Brad for some reason, just enough for me to signal Brenda to make a run for it, which she wisely did. I looked down and ex-Mrs Nelly #1 was still out cold, laying on her side. A crowd was standing around her and chuckling, which seemed cruel until there was a big enough gap in the crowd to permit me to see what all the mirth was about. Her very short skirt, which was more like a pelmet, had ended up above her waistline, exposing her red satin knickers for all to view. That in itself wasn’t funny, of course. What was embroidered on them was what was causing all the laughs. Across the front of her knickers, the wording read “I Would Do Anything for Love”, along with a red rose. Across the back of her knickers, the writing read “But I Won’t Do That”. The sound of laughter was mixed with that of phone cameras clicking away like mad. 

Meanwhile, in all the commotion, Nelly had disappeared into the crowd. This was all we needed. Thinking quickly, Big Phil waded in to talk to the ex-Mrs Nellys. “Ladies! While you were busy attacking us, your ex-husband has disappeared. First one of you that finds him and brings back to us within the next five minutes gets five hundred smackers!” The remaining ex-Mrs Nellys, smelling the money like sharks smelling blood in the water, squealed with delight and ran off in separate directions to hunt him down, moving as fast as their high heels would permit. I hoped it worked. Nelly special formula needed time to work, and we were running out of time. 

Big Phil quickly went to a shaken and dazed Brad and gave him a huge bear hug. “Brad! So good to see you here today! How’s my favourite copper doing? Family good? All well? It’s great to catch up with you!” I felt nauseous, and Big Phil’s face didn’t look genuine. He was up to something, I knew it. 

“What just happened back there?”, a puzzled Brad asked him. 

Big Phil let him go and took a step back. “That? Oh, nothing for you to worry about, nothing at all. Just a flock of common bimbos passing through.” I wondered to myself if “flock” was the correct collective noun for a group of bimbos. I would have thought that “brothel of bimbos” was more appropriate. “I didn’t know you liked the horses.” 

“I don’t. In fact, I’m not sure why I’m here right now. Something just possessed me to come here, and here I am. Isn’t that weird?”, said Brad. 

“More common than you’d think.”, I replied. “Brad… I thought Graham, Felicia’s stalker, was dead after that car crash behind Club Flamingo…” 

“Of course he is. Saw what was left of his body myself. Dead as a doornail. Deceased. Gone to join the bleeding choir invisible. Brown bread.“ 

“So what’s he doing here…in the grandstand on race day…with Broodytat?” I pointed them out to Brad, whose jaw dropped.  

“Bloody hell! It can’t be! He’s dead! That can’t be him – it’s impossible!” 

“That’s it’s maybe, but that sure looks weird enough to be like Graham to me”, I said. “I think you need to check it out, don’t you?” 

“I think you’re right… see you two later. No time to call for back up, I’ll have to tackle him on my own” Brad said grimly, trying to stay cool. Broodytat hadn’t seen Brad yet, and Graham didn’t have a clue of course, which gave Brad the element of surprise. 

“Hang on a second Brad, Hands and I will get those two security guards to help you.”, Big Phil said to Brad. 

We walked over quickly to the two new security guards at the stable entrance, and Big Phil produced a Toukville Police ID and badge. “Toukville Police – my undercover colleague and I need your help apprehending two dangerous wanted criminals in the top of the grandstand. They know me and my colleague, so we need the help of people they don’t know so they can’t run away. Can you assist please?” 

“Sorry, we can’t leave our post”, said the second guard. “Orders.” 

“No problem, we’ll cover your post for you while you assist. We law enforcement officers have to stick together, you know, keep each other covered. We’ll wait here until you get back. It’ll only take five minutes…but you have to hurry or they’ll get away. Please - we need your help.” Big Phil was a better liar than I’d previously given him credit for. 

The two guards looked at each other, then back at us. “Five minutes?” The thrill of a real arrest sounded exciting to them. 

“Five minutes. We promise.” 

“Okay,” said the first guard. “Five minutes.” We pointed them to Brad and they trotted over obediently, and the three set off for the grandstand to arrest an unsuspecting Graham and probably Broodytat too. 

“Where did you get that police ID and badge?”, I asked Big Phil. 

“Lifted it from Brad’s pocket when I hugged him a few minutes ago”, he grinned back at me. Devious indeed, and I loved it. 

Just in time, ex-Mrs Nelly #4 suddenly appeared, dragging Nelly behind her by the ear. “Here’s my louse of an ex what youse wanted. Now pay up!” Pure class, that woman – sheesh. Big Phil opened his wallet and took out five hundred, all in twenties, and she snatched it from his hand. “But youse still owes me my alimony, you bum!” she yelled at Nelly. “I want it tomorrow!” 

“Of course my pumpkin, my angel delight, I’ll have it for you, I promise!” he called to her as she clip-clopped away. 

“I think I’m going to puke.”, said Big Phil. 

“Never mind that now! Nelly, it’s twenty minutes to the off – get in there with those sugar cubes or we’re all dead! Move it!”, I barked at him, and Nelly ran down the corridor towards the stables like the wind. 

The few minutes it took Nelly to go and do the necessary seemed to take an eternity. There was chaos in the top of the grandstand around Broodytat, Graham and Brad as the situation was unfolding and Graham was explaining, while Broodytat glared at me, eyes like daggers – I laughed and blew a kiss to her, returning her earlier favour. Ex-Mrs Nellys #2 and 3 continued to prowl, looking for Nelly and unaware ex-Mrs Nelly #4 had already scored, while an ambulance crew wheeled ex-Mrs Nelly #1away on a stretcher, still unconscious from Brenda’s punch. 

At last, Nelly reappeared from the stables. “All done! Nelly’s magic sugar cubes deployed! Tomorrow, the racing world will be singing the praises of Whykickamoocow, Bodacious Tatas, Sotally Tober and Hoof Hearted!” 

“Now I think I’m going to puke”, I replied. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Stay behind us, keep your head down and make a beeline for the exit and the car. Say nothing, look at no one. Just move!” 

Big Phil and I formed a wedge, with Nelly immediately behind us, pushing forward through the bustling crowd, ignoring the chaos and excitement going on all around us. We fought our way through the outside area in front of the grandstand and into the concourse. 

I looked at my watch. Less than ten minutes to race time. We’d done it. Not how we’d planned to do it. But we’d done it. We kept moving forward and reached the exits. I could see the car ahead. Nearly home and dry. 

That’s when two of Toasty’s apes stepped out of nowhere and blocked our route to the car. “You gentlemen going somewhere?”, said Ape #1. 

“We were…but I’m guessing you’ve got other ideas…”, Big Phil said with a sigh. 

“Mr Toasty requests the pleasure of your company in his private luxury box here at the track. He wishes you to enjoy the race with him. Follow me please”, said Ape #2 as he put his hands over Nelly’s shoulders and pushed him towards the lift call station, with us close behind and Ape #1 on our tail. When we got there, he pressed the button and the doors opened, and we all stepped inside. The doors shut and the car started upwards. 

“Well,” I said out loud and to no one in particular, “here we are in the lift – again.” 

..... 

Chapter 16 -  Bottom Of The Pot

The lift reached the top of the shaft and stopped with a mild thump that made us all go light for a split second. Nothing happened. Time appeared to be standing still, as if we’d gone into a dimensional warp. Everyone continued to stare straight ahead, saying nothing, although Nelly shifted nervously on his feet. I could see how someone could become claustrophobic in these situations. 

After what seemed like an eternity the lift doors slid open fully to the left. The daylight from the glass window in the luxury box streamed in, making my eyes hurt as they tried to adjust to the brightness from outside. We stepped out of the lift and into the room. The air was slightly musty, and the room was about three race seasons past its best. Not shabby, mind you, just elegantly faded, a charge that could never be levelled at me. There was a bar on the right-hand side, but it was not staffed, and no drinks were in view. The only things in the rooms where half a dozen leather chairs and two round coffee tables, glass topped on metal frames. That – and Toasty himself, seated in one of the chairs and wearing an extremely expensive dark grey cashmere pinstripe suit and royal blue silk tie with handmade patent leather shoes. He swivelled his chair further around to face us but remained seated. 

“Gentlemen… good afternoon. So glad you decided to join me for our moment. Come in – have a seat.” Toasty’s voice was calm, cold, even. Not a flicker of nervousness or excitement in him. It was just another business day, nothing special. There was just a lot more zeros involved than usual, that was all. “You weren’t planning on watching the race from anywhere else, now were you?” 

Big Phil, Nelly and I walked slowly forward, the apes staying behind and blocking the door to the lift. It gave Big Phil and I a chance to scope the room. No other exit doors in the room, but there was a balcony on the front of the box on the other side of the windows, with an access door to it on the far right, which allowed you to stand outside and watch the races if you so wished. I looked at Big Phil and nodded lightly to the balcony door. Big Phil nodded back. He knew what I was thinking. If things went wrong, it was our primary escape route. I had no idea what was under the balcony, if anything, but two broken legs from jumping beat being dead in a private luxury box in anyone’s book. We’d use the coffee tables and chairs as weapons against the apes and try to go that way if we needed to. 

We got to the chairs and sat down, Nelly on the far left, then Big Phil, then me and finally Toasty on the far right, and we looked through the windows. In the distance, the horses were being loaded one at a time into the starting gates. The race would start imminently. Nothing we could do now. We were in the lap of the gods, awaiting our fate. 

I wasn’t nervous, and neither was Big Phil. We’d both been in situations far worse and with much worse odds than this before. We knew if it went wrong, we wouldn’t get hurt. Nelly would cop all the grief for not delivering, even if the idea for this scheme was primarily mine. Toasty had agreed to it, after all. It was down to Nelly to deliver it or die trying. The problem was, we couldn’t sit back and let Nelly get killed. He was still our client. But Toasty didn’t understand that we were as committed to Nelly as much as we were to ourselves. All we could do is hope that the race went our way and that things didn’t come to something terrible. 

“I rarely come here”, Toasty said flatly as he looked straight ahead. “I don’t like being here. Too public. Too visible. Too near my customers. I find the whole place rather seedy and squalid. The track owners gave this box to me, partly to thank me for drumming up so much business, partly to try to suck up to me. Haven’t been here in three years now. Sorry about any dust. I don’t waste time and money having it cleaned when I’m never here. In fact, you’re the first people I’ve ever brought here.” He sat back and smiled gently. “And maybe the last.” 

We could hear a racket in the stands directly in front of us. It was the Broodytat impromptu rave party. Not much could be seen, but the unmistakeable voices of Broodytat, Brad, Graham and his clan, three of the four members of the Ex-Wives of Nelly Club and my Brenda could all be heard shouting angrily, lightly punctuated by feminine swearing and the odd punch landing, presumably Brenda’s. It was impossible to make out what was happening, but at a guess it seemed like Brad was trying to arrest a few people and take them in for questioning, while those he was trying to detain disagreeing with him somewhat strongly. It would all play out and be cleared up in its own way, and the chaos suited my needs. I did hear two spectators in the grandstand noisily betting on Brenda to knock out the other EWoC members, which made me chuckle to myself and wish I could put some money on Brenda to win as well. 

Toasty’s mobile phone started dinging like mad on the coffee table in front of him. Text message after text message, dozens in the space of a minute, suddenly pouring in. When they stopped, Toasty looked down and calmly reached for his phone and scrolled through the messages rapidly. I carefully looked over out of the corner of my eye at the phone to see the messages. They were all the same – GO. Obviously, they were all from his network, the ones over in Lake Placid scamming Bootleg Steve, and those in place here in Toukville, confirming the traps had been set. No turning back now, I thought. 

Toasty turned to his right and spoke to me suddenly, which startled me. His face was earnest and sincere, a flicker of regret across his eyes. “Hands - I never got the chance to apologise for that bullet you took. I was horrified when I learned about it, truly I was. It’s just not my style, you see. His instructions were to scare Nelly, fire over his head, not at him. I had no idea you and your associate would be there as well. I only found out when my former and injured employee informed us from his hospital bed of what he’d done and what had happened – I fired him immediately, of course. Disgraceful. You just can’t get the help these days.” 

“Tell me about it”, muttered Big Phil behind me as I flipped two fingers at him behind my back in response. 

“I’d like to formally apologise for the pain and inconvenience you suffered.” Toasty reached into his jacket breast pocket and pulled out a card. “This is my tailor. He works over in the garment district in Toukville. Go and see him and tell him I sent you, and he’ll measure you up for a new handmade suit and a couple of shirts. I hope that you’ll accept it as my apology.” 

“I understand totally. It’s a most generous, professional and thoughtful way to apologise. Thank you – I accept”, I replied with enough obvious pleasure to ensure it was clearly visible to Toasty, who visibly relaxed at my response. 

“Of course, if only Nelly would have taken one of my hints, it never would have happened, and you wouldn’t have been hurt.” 

“True. None of us would be here right now otherwise. May I compliment you on your hints, by the way? The message pie. The shock pen. The neon sign. Delightful. Masterful. Frightening and yet darkly humorous. It was a privilege to have been there to witness them.” A smile spread across Toasty’s face, pleased his work had been appreciated. 

“Thank you. There was more to come, but I won’t spoil it for you by telling you what they would have been. I do take great pride in my work.” 

The last horse went into its stall and within a second, the starting bell rang and the gates holding the horses back opened, and all thirty starting horses burst out to start the race as the crowd cheered. Nelly jumped up out of his chair and ran to the window, desperate to see the action. Big Phil stood and slowly walked to the window as well, appearing calm but no doubt as nervous as I was. The Toukville Stakes wouldn’t take long. The record for the fifteen-furlong, left-handed dirt course was three minutes seventeen seconds, which seemed to take forever if you had money riding on it. 

I decided to take my cue from Toasty, who hadn’t moved. In fact, he wasn’t watching the race at all. He was simply staring outside into space, deep in thought. I waited for a few seconds as the noise of the excited crowd on the other side of the glass filled the air. He swivelled his chair towards me slowly and looked directly at me. “Isn’t it boring? Isn’t it all just so sad and dull and dreadfully boring?” 

I was a bit taken aback. “The race?” 

“The race. The venue. The gamblers. Gambling. The lot. Boring. I’m bored witless right now.” It seemed an odd thing to say when everyone else in the place was excited and when he had so much money at stake. “You strike me as a man with a wise old head on your shoulders, Hands. Were you born an adult in a child’s body?” 

“No”, I said, “I got my old head put on my youngish shoulders as a free gift when I was in my early twenties after something terrible happened that changed my life. It was like a door slamming on my heart and my future. Life became something to be endured rather than enjoyed. In some ways, it still is. Whether or not I’m wise is for others to judge. I’m sure plenty of people I know would offer contrary evidence. You?” 

“Me? I was born old. Born out of my time. The kids my own age I mixed with were idiots, stupid and childish, and the adults around me were morons who didn’t understand, who treated me like just some dumb kid. I had a miserable childhood. Lonely. Friendless. You know, you get a big target drawn on you in school when you’re a very smart and mature little kid with sophisticated tastes. Bullied from sunrise to sunset. I was aching for time to pass in the classroom, to reach adulthood, longing to be done with the prison sentence of school and growing up. I couldn’t wait to leave it all behind. I only ever had one friend, and that was numbers...” 

Toasty paused for a moment. In the background I could just make out the sound of the race announcer informing us our horses were at the rear of the pack after three furlongs as they approached the end of the back straight. It wasn’t what we wanted to hear. Nelly looked nervous and frightened. Big Phil was admirably calm on the outside, at least. 

If he heard what I heard, Toasty didn’t let on. “Numbers are the best friend you can have. They’re beautiful. Smart. Elegant. Simple. Intelligent. Magical. They work in complex and amazing patterns. You can explain almost anything in the universe using numbers. They never lie. Never. Unchanging. Two plus two will always equal four. Always. Numbers never let you down, stab you in the back, plot against you... in a world filled with turmoil and chaos, numbers are a constant you can rely on. I love numbers and find out something new and glorious in them every day.

“This bookie thing… pffft. It’s just how I earn my money. Sure, I know the horse racing system inside out and back to front and inside out, but they’re all just numbers to me, dancing in the sky, dancing and playing with each other as I open my mind and watch them circle before me. The money is great, but it doesn’t excite me. It just means I can give my beautiful wife and precious little girl the best possible life. I love them both dearly but numbers… they’ll always be my best friend. My wife understands that… well, as best as anyone could understand it, I suppose.” He leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh, then swivelled back and looked aimlessly into the distance at nothing in particular. I stayed silent, letting the words sink in. 

From what I could hear in the background, the horses were in the home straight now, about five furlongs from home. It was obvious from the change in tone that the crowd had seen something that was getting them excited. “They’re doing it! They’re moving up and pushing their way through the middle of the pack! They’re on the charge! Come on you lot, you’ve got this! You can do it!”, Nelly was yelling, imploring our horses on. The race would be over in ninety seconds. It was now or never. I wanted to watch, but all I could think about was Toasty. 

“The problem is, Hands, numbers won’t leave me alone.”, Toasty continued. “I see them in everything I say and do, everywhere I go. I see them in my dreams. I see them at work, at home, on holiday. There are patterns everywhere, formulas, equations that call to me. I can’t shut it off. I’m addicted to numbers and while numbers can’t hurt me, they won’t let me rest either. I’m exhausted. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to shut off.” 

I smiled at him. “Toasty, you’ll be able to shut off just as soon as that beautiful little girl of yours starts talking, the moment she first says "Daddy". Little girls wrap their daddies around their little fingers. Little girls own their daddies. They can do no wrong in daddy’s eyes. Your little girl will soon push everything else out of your head and steal your heart, and you’ll be enchanted and love every minute. You’ll be able to be comfortably wealthy and turn your back on all this world, and she’ll be your best friend, your reason for living each day to the full, and you can put all this behind you. Today’s jackpot will make sure of it. I envy you that, truly I do.” Toasty looked at me as I smiled.. “You’re about to go on a long, magical journey.” 

“You think so?”, he asked hopefully. 

“I know so. I’ve seen it too many times not to know. The problem is, it never lasts long enough.” Toasty slowly smiled back at me. Perhaps he understood. If not, he soon would. His number-driven world was about to be replaced by a chaotic one where he revolved around his daughter, and probably none too soon. His little girl would be his professional ruin and his personal salvation in one hit. He was a lucky man. 

The crowd was screaming hysterically now as the runners approached the finishing line. The horses Nelly had doped had formed a flying wedge together and pushed their way through the field like a knife cutting through butter, spreading them left and right, and were now at the front with a furlong to go. I stood up and joined Nelly and Big Phil at the window as they charged for home and crossed the line, taking the top four spots only a length ahead of each other and about three lengths ahead of the fifth-placed horse. The three of us were jumping up and down, whooping, cheering ourselves silly. We'd done it. We'd pulled off the greatest fix in horse racing history and saved Nelly's skin. We couldn't believe it. 

The announcer’s incredulous voice could just be heard in the background…”and in the biggest shock in the history of this race, as they cross the line at the end of this unbelievable, incredible Toukville Stakes, it’s…” 

“…Sotally Tober at 200-1 who wins the race, Whykickamoocow at 100-1 comes 2nd, Bodacious Tatas at 125-1 in 3rd place, and Hoof Hearted at 150-1 finishes in 4th”, said Toasty evenly from inside the lift. He’d silently walked over to the lift behind us, his two apes behind him. “A satisfactory result, gentlemen. Nelly, I consider that your debt to me is now cleared. You are the luckiest man here to have such fine friends. 

“Big Phil and Hands, you can expect to receive something from me very soon. Thank you all. Good day.” Toasty was all business again. The lift doors started to close. 

“Wait!”, yelled Nelly, and one of the apes stopped the lift doors from closing, then reopened them. Nelly ran to the lift door. “Please – tell me! I have to know!” 

“Know? Know what?”, said Toasty as he raised one eyebrow at Nelly. 

“You didn’t watch the race at all, yet you knew exactly which horses filled the top four spots as they crossed the finish. How? How did you know that?” 

Toasty looked down at his expensive shoes and took a deep breath, sighed heavily, then looked up at Nelly. “Because, my little caffeine friend… it was just in the numbers, all of them written in the sky. All I had to do was look.” 

Toasty smiled, nodded to the ape at the lift control panel who pressed a button, and the doors slid shut. The three of us stood in silence for a few minutes after he left, contemplating our journey to this place and time. I wondered if I’d ever see Toasty again. 

……… 

Chapter 17 - Pie in the Sky 

A few days later, Big Phil and I were in a booth at Nelly’s place around lunchtime on our third cups of coffee. As usual, the place was buzzing with addicts on their lunch hour, who I’d noticed were becoming increasingly obese thanks to consuming his pies along with their full-fat tall lattes. Nelly had his hooks into them good and proper. 

Big Phil and I could easily come in here every day and eat and drink ourselves silly and for free, but it wasn’t really the point. We’d just been playing with him when we’d agreed to take on the case, never knowing just how much trouble we were letting ourselves in for in the process. I’d calculated that from all the different coffees and pies Nelly did, we’d be able to come here every day for more than five years before we repeated a meal. Maybe Big Phil would want to exercise that right, but all I wanted was straight coffee, black, two sugars and keep it coming, without putting my hand in my pocket again. I’d probably take some pies away with me once in a while and give them to a local soup kitchen I knew so at least they’d be doing some good. 

I was still reeling from the whole situation and the fallout. Big Phil and I had separately received anonymous envelopes in the post with almost identical printed messages. I took mine out of my inside jacket pocket, opened it and read it again: 

Grand Cayman Savings & Trust 

ACCOUNT HOLDER: P I HANDS 

ACCOUNT NUMBER: 52997346 

BALANCE: $2,500,000.00 

It was obviously our reward from Toasty, and an incredibly generous one it was as well. It was hard not to feel overjoyed at the windfall. The problem was that things weren’t quite that simple. There was no way I knew to get it out of Grand Cayman and into the country without setting off federal alarm bells and getting hauled over the legal coals for money laundering, and having all sorts of questions asked about how’d I’d come by the money to begin with. There was undoubtedly a way to do it that was highly illegal, but I didn’t need that sort of hassle. The only way to withdraw it would be to do so while I was actually in Grand Cayman, and then I’d have no way to get it out. 

I’d done some research on the place. With that kind of loot, it would be easy to get citizenship there, buy a modest place, settle down and retire. Warm days. Tranquil nights. Glorious scenery. Amazing sunsets. Maybe find a lady and live happily ever after. Leave it all behind and look after myself for once. It didn’t sound too bad. 

The trouble was, I wasn’t ready to do that yet. I should have been, but I wasn’t. I’d miss things too much. The buzz of working a case. My banter with Brenda. My professional friendships with the likes of Big Phil and dare I think it, even Brad. The rocket fuel I was drinking and the lunatic serving it. I’d even miss the adrenalin rush of being cornered by Broodytat from time to time, the whole dangerous game we were playing – I wanted to see how it would end. 

But most of all, I’d miss The New Inn and my place at the bar, being served by Felicia, our late-night chats and drinking sessions. I wondered if I could get her to move out to Grand Cayman and set up a bar out there instead that I could haunt… no, of course not. Stupid idea. 

Big Phil and I both realised as well that the money was effectively a curse. Until we retired and withdrew the money, it was golden handcuffs that tied us to Toasty. He could get us to do whatever he wanted or else he’d simply withdraw the funds and clean out the accounts, or even worse, he’d anonymously tell the tax man about the accounts and get us in trouble that way. Clever. 

My complex thoughts were interrupted by a surly Nelly, back to the table with a fresh pot of coffee and a sour disposition. He refilled our cups without saying anything, just wearing a face like a slapped arse. 

“Service with a grimace, eh Nelly? What’s your problem?”, I asked. “You should be over the moon. Debt gone. Threat of being killed lifted. Thriving business. Everything should be great.” 

“It’s Sindy. She said unless I get more money and we start living the way we used to before, she’s going to leave me.” 

“Oh dear. How awful.”, said Big Phil with clearly limited sympathy and a tinge of sarcasm. I raised an eyebrow at him to show I’d picked it up. Big Phil fought back a smirk that was trying to escape, without much luck. 

“My ex-wives are going crazy too. I’m way behind on the alimony. The only thing I can do is raise the prices in here and raise them up big. My customers are addicted, but they’re not that addicted. They’ll go somewhere else for their java and I’ll be sunk. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Nelly grabbed a chair and sat down at the table with us. He looked all in, a beaten and desperate man. 

Big Phil put a big, muscular arm around Nelly’s shoulders. I thought to myself that he could probably break Nelly in two like a breadstick if he wanted to do so, a sight I wouldn’t like to see. “There, there, now… it’s not all that bad.”, he said. 

“It bloody well is that bad, and then some. I’m finished.” 

Big Phil’s voice was soothing and friendly. “No, you’re not – in fact, Hands and I thought this might happen and we came up with an idea that might help.” 

“You did?” 

“We did... and don't look so surprised.”, I replied. “Did you hear the Ice Cream Gang got convicted and sentenced yesterday?” The Ice Cream Gang were a local group of drug pushers who’d formed a cartel, pushing all the other drug pushers out of town or forcing them to join. One of them had come up with the wheeze of selling and distributing marijuana out of an ice cream van. They’d serve the local kids their ice cream treats but also sell pot to adults along with a vanilla cone so as to not look suspicious. 

It worked well for a while, so much so that they got more and more ice cream vans to cover the town. Inevitably, their downfall was their greed. Ice cream vans were roaming the streets from sunrise until two in the morning, which most people found a touch odd but somehow went unnoticed by the police. Then the gang branched out and started selling ecstasy, coke, meth and heroin out of the vans, but still the police didn’t catch on. It wasn’t until citizens started complaining that the ice cream vans never had ice cream to sell and that children were being told by the van operators to go away that the penny finally dropped at Toukville Police HQ and the gang was caught. 

“Yeah, I heard about that. What a bunch of morons. I hate pushers, getting vulnerable people hooked on drugs.”, Nelly replied. 

“You do realise you’re a drug pusher yourself, right?”, said Big Phil. Nelly didn’t reply. 

“Never mind that now.”, I said. “The police seized the vans and they’re selling them off at auction next Friday. Big Phil and I were thinking you should buy one of the vans to expand your business and take your coffee and pies on the road. You know, circle the businesses and industrial parks at breaktimes and lunchtimes and sell direct to those who can’t make it here during the day.” 

Nelly perked up at the thought. “That’s a pretty good idea. In fact, it’s a great idea. Mobile Nelly’s. Nelly’s Direct. That could work…” 

“We thought so. Go to the auction, buy a van, which should be cheap because no one wants to buy a used ice cream van, convert it to brew coffee and hit the road.” 

“I could sell sandwiches too! Nelly’s Deli!” He was brightening up, warming to the idea. 

“Good idea! You see, there’s lots of possibilities you could do with a van in the business”, chimed in Big Phil. 

“You’re right! I could get new customers hooked that would come here when they needed a fix! I could take it to sporting events, concerts, outdoor venues, all sorts of things and places, and expose the whole of Toukville to my fantastic coffee and pies!” 

Distant alarm bells started going off in my head. “That’s a possibility, yes… just start off slow and see how you get on.”, I said, trying reel him in a bit. 

“I could go twenty-four hours on wheels! Dial A Brew, delivered straight to you! This is great! Do you think the vans still have the loudspeakers that play music?” 

“I expect so…”, Big Phil said nervously. 

“I could play music related to where I take the van to get people to come out and buy!  9 to 5 by Dolly Parton around the business areas… maybe something a little more loud, aggressive and wired when I take it around the universities and high schools…” 

“When?” I tried to keep the rising panic out of my voice. 

“…something like Pump It Up by Elvis Costello, or Firestarter by The Prodigy!” 

“Say what, now?” Big Phil’s eyes were out on stalks. 

“Of course, I don’t need to limit it to high school students! Coffee isn’t illegal…” 

“Yours should be”, Big Phil muttered. 

“…so why not sell it to little kids? It’s never too early to get them started! I can do special mixes! Baby Brews! Drive the van outside nurseries and sell to youngsters and to the parents dropping them off!” 

“Now wait a minute here…!” 

“The loudspeaker could play special versions of popular children’s songs! Tra la la, la la-la la! One espresso, two espresso, three espresso, four! Nelly brings espressos straight to your door!” 

“Oh my God…” 

“Coffee Pig! Doo doo doo doo, doodoodoodoodoo doo!” 

“Calm down, Nelly…” 

“Coffee Shark! Doo doo doo doo doo doo! Latte shark! Doo doo doo doo doo doo! Caffeine shark! Doo doo doo doo doo doo!” 

“NELLY!” 

“Huh?” 

“Calm down. Get a grip. Besides, we’re talking about just one van here.”, I said in exasperation. 

“One van. Sure. You’re right. The auction’s next Friday, yeah?” 

“Yep, 10 AM, Toukville Police HQ. They’re auctioning all fourteen vans, so you can choose the best one you can afford.” 

“Fourteen?” 

“Yep.” 

Nelly was deep in thought when a grin slowly came across his face that froze my blood. “I’m going to buy them all!” 

“WHAT?”, said Big Phil. “ALL OF THEM?” 

“Why not? I’ll get them all cheap, do them up, hire people to run them and take over the market in Toukville! Television and radio ads! Billboards! Soon it’ll be more like Nellyville and everyone will need my coffee. I’ll be rich!” 

“Ah, but you can’t afford them! Where are you going to find the money from to buy them all at short notice?”, I said triumphantly, my brain masterfully rescuing the situation. 

“Simple. I’ve still got some of my magic sugar lumps left. Toasty said I couldn’t gamble in Toukville, but he didn’t say I couldn’t gamble in Lake Placid. I know a few people over there. I’ll get in the stables at the racetrack, pass out some sugar lumps, bet on few horses, make a fortune again and buy all the vans! 

“Listen, I’ve got to go so I can start setting this plan in action – you guys are geniuses! Thanks! Enjoy your coffee, I’ll catch up with you later!” Nelly darted away and into his offices to work things out and doom the good citizens of Toukville to a fate worse than death… universal caffeine addiction. 

Big Phil and I sat silently at our table for a long time, deep in thought, deep in shock. The horror of what was to unfold danced like demons in our minds. What the hell had we just done? 

“Phil…” 

“Mmm-hmm…?” 

“I have a feeling that when future historians look back at this moment, the two of us and our work here today will not be judged kindly.” 

“I have a feeling you’re right.” 

We sat in silence until the waitress came over with a pot of Nelly’s special blend. “Another cup?” 

“Yes please”, said Big Phil. 

“Yes please”, I added. 

Big Phil and I looked at each other as she poured, and we turned to our waitress and said in unison: 

“No sugar!” 

THE END