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'OK,' she said. 'But if you don't get away with this cocaine deal, if they catch you, you'll go down anyway. For life probably.'
'That's right, but I'm going to get away with it.'
'So before you even start to get some money for yourself you've got to pay back a million?'
'When the stuff arrives in Nice, that's the million paid. And the rest is for me.'
'Nothing for Ben?' 'Oh, I'll see him right.'
'And how about me?' she enquired. 'Aren't I taking any risks?'
'You won't know what's in those cases, Reet. I'm going to make sure of that.'
'When they nab Ben, and ask him where he got the stuff, he'll say from me. Because he knows me better than he knows you, and he trusts me. So he'll say it was me.'
A silence.
'But he knows that he is taking something from me to a friend in France.' A silence. 'From me, Reet.'
'But I'm in it too, aren't I? Ben doesn't know enough to lie well. We can't count on him. He'll say it was me and you.'
Johnston cut this knot with, 'You just tell me something. How do you see yourself, Reet? You don't fancy this life — so I've heard you say, haven't I? Well, you stand by me in this and I'll see that you get out of this life, for good.'
'You'll see me right, like Ben?'
Now Johnston leaned forward, waving away swathes of cigarette smoke, and spoke to her — she saw clearly enough — from the heart. 'Look, you and I have gone along together — how long now, Reet? Three years? I haven't let you down ever — well, have I?'
'No, you haven't.'
'Well then?'
He continued to lean forward, all drunken appeal, desperate, his reddened eyes wet — from the smoke? From tears?
'It's such a gamble,' she said. 'You're taking such a chance.'
'I've got to, Reet. If I get away with this, then I'm clear for the rest of my life.'
She lay back again, this time with her two legs straight in front of her, and stared at him, and thought she didn't know which of them she was more sorry for, Johnston, who she knew had it in him to be better than he was — she knew because this was true of her, too — and who had such a power to impress people, looking as he did like Humphrey Bogart — well, most of the time he did, a little at least, but not now when he was drunk and stupid — or Ben, who was being sent off into such danger, to save Johnston.
But when she came to think of it, and she was thinking hard now, she owed more to Johnston than to Ben. She supposed she could say Johnston was her man: she didn't have another, after all. And it was true, he had been good to her. And what he said was true, that she hated this life and had several times thought of doing herself in. 'Better do myself in before some sex maniac does it for me.' She knew she probably wouldn't last long, anyway. She was unhealthy. Her skin was bad. Her hair when not dyed silver-blonde was a coarse limp black mess: you had only to touch it to know she was sick. When she was not made up, not dressed for the kill, she looked at herself in the glass — and put on her make-up as fast as she could.
Now she thought, Right! Suppose they do catch Ben and send me down, it couldn't be much worse than this life. And she decided to help Johnston. In every way she could.
And now Johnston took Ben through what would happen at the airport. When he was finished, Rita repeated it all, again and again.
Everything was going to depend on Johnston's 'friend' — 'I knew him in prison, Reet, he's all right' — he would be with Ben at the airport and then on the plane and then go with him into Nice and look after him.
'And how much are you paying him?'
'A lot. When you put everything together, and add it all up — clothes for Ben, the luggage, the trip on the aeroplane, the passport — that was a hundred for a start — and Richard — that's the contact then it all adds up. And there's the hotel, too. But even so it's peanuts compared with what there's in it for us.'
'Well, don't spend it before you have it, that's all.'
'Look, Reet, I know you think I'm barmy, but it'll work, you'll see.'
'Luck, that's all,' said Rita. 'They have sniffer dogs, they check the luggage.'
'Sometimes they do. But they aren't going to bother with a load of tourists going to Nice. And that goes for the French narks too. They'll be watching planes from Colombia and the East, not a nice little harmless plane from London.'
There was one thing Rita didn't know. The plan was for three cases: one very big, stuffed with packets of cocaine, with a layer of clothing over it, which would be checked in at the desk; one with Ben's things in it; and one to take on the plane. When Rita heard that Johnston pla
'The whole thing is mad,' Rita kept saying. 'And poor Ben — it's cruel, I think. Just imagine him in prison.'
'It's just because he's so weird that it's going to work.'
It did work. There was a period while Johnston and Rita could not believe how much things were changing; the difference between their circumstances now, and what was possible to them was too great. Johnston was not so stupid to allow large sums of money to appear in a bank account, but large sums found their way deviously to him over the next few months. He gave Rita enough to buy a restaurant in Brighton, which did well. She could have married, but did not. Sometimes Johnston came to see her, meetings precious to them both, since only they understood how narrowly they had escaped lives of prison and crime.
Johnston had seen on a television programme that it was easy to buy a title and right to land from impoverished (and surely cynical?) aristocrats, for sums that now seemed to him negligible. He did this, became a lord of a manor, but was soon restless and knew he had made a mistake. He did not like doing nothing. He became owner of a very superior car-hire firm, chauffeuring the rich and the famous, mostly around London, and employed the kind of person whom once he would have thought of as far above him. He enjoyed his life, loved his Rolls-Royces and Mercedes, and cultivated respectability. His children, when he got them, went to good private schools. So you could say that this part of our tale had a happy ending.
On the morning of the great gamble Ben was dressed by Rita — Johnston supervising — in a bespoke shirt and a good jacket. Rita was crying, when Johnston put Ben into one of the minicabs, and instructed the driver exactly what to do. The last thing Ben said was, 'When am I coming home?' 'We'll see,' said Johnston, and Rita turned away so Ben would not see her guilty face.
He allowed himself to be driven to Heathrow, though he was feeling sick. The driver parked in Short-term Parking, and got a trolley for the bags, a black one, a red one, a blue one. He took Ben to the club-class check-in desk, handed in Ben's passport, took it back with the boarding pass, and nudged Ben when he was asked if he had forbidden items, and if he had packed the bags himself. Rita had told him over and over again that he must say that yes, he had packed them himself. He remembered, after a hesitation. The check-in girl had taken in 'Film Actor' on the passport, and was staring at Ben during her ministrations to his cases and the boarding card. This stare did not discompose Ben, he was so used to it. The driver, a Nigerian, who was being paid a good bit extra, walked with Ben to Fast Track, gave him his carry-on case, the blue one, his passport and the boarding card, and told him, 'Go through there.' When Ben hesitated he gave Ben a little push, and stood back to watch him go, so he could report back.