A mber gave Bradley an indulgent smile and slowly pulled out the Joey Pockets again. Centimetre by centimetre, the marsupial emerged.
Bradley felt sick.
Amber paused. Joey Pockets’ wide eyes peered over the lip of the bag. “I’ve gotta ask,” she said.
Bradley’s hand was next to the pile of coins on the table. They rested on the empty plastic bags from the kids’ caravan. He tapped the edge of the pile.
“The money’s all there,” he said impatiently.
“No, but I’ve got to ask. Why do you really want this toy?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, I think it does,” she said. “I mean, I see a lot of gamblers in that place. Real gamblers down at the over-18s fruit machines but also people who come here for a holiday and spend the whole time feeding coins into the coin cascades. But offering to buy this from me… that’s not gambler behaviour. You actually want this.”
“I do,” he said and heard the hardness in his own voice.
“Why? Did you have one as a kid? Have you got a kid at home who wants one? I mean, it’s just a soft toy. You can pick ‘em up on the internet for a tenner.”
“I just need it.”
“Why?”
He closed his eyes for a second and bit down on his irritation. “I’ve got a friend. She wants it. She really wants it. She asked me and I’m going to get it.”
“Ah, a friend.”
“Yes!”
“A girlfriend?”
“A girlfriend,” he said and then suddenly he’d had enough. “For fuck’s sake, Amber, I’m gay. I have a friend called Jodie who’s… going through some things. She told me to get it. I’m getting it. Give it to me.”
If Amber was surprised by his outburst, it didn’t show. If anything, she just looked disappointed that her playful game had been cut short. She pulled the toy out with no further ceremony and thrust it into his hands.
The moment had turned unpleasant but Bradley felt nothing but relief. He’d worked so hard to get hold of this, and now he had it. The toy was light in his hands. He frowned. It felt very light for something that held a brick of cocaine inside it. He gave it a tentative squeeze.
“I hope it makes you very happy,” said Amber. She grabbed the coins by the handful and deposited them in her handbag. Just chucked them in.
Bradley squeezed and massaged the toy. “Did you open this up?”
“What?” she said.
“Have you got it?” he said.
“What?”
He looked up at her face, searching for evidence that she was toying with him.
“Where is it?” he said.
“It’s there,” she said. “Joey bastard Pockets, Bradlop. Or Bradley. Whichever it is.”
“No, you’ve done something.”
Amber was standing now. “It’s a brand new one! I went to the extra effort. Ten pound off the internet. See, it’s still got the tags on and everything.”
Bradley held it up to the light, seeing for the first time its sparkling newness.
“What? No!” Its smiley kangaroo face was blameless, but Bradley really felt like punching it. “You idiot!”
“It’s been good doing business with you,” she snarled and walked briskly towards the exit.
The plastic bags wafted across the table as he hurried to follow her.
At the exit, he saw Amber stop to talk briefly with another woman and then slip by into the night. The other woman looked at Bradley. She was young, a full head taller than Amber. She had long straight hair and a slender figure. In a bar full of people in their smart casual best, the woman looked out of place in her cartoon T-shirt and jeans.
Bradley was still hoping to follow Amber but the woman was coming forward to intercept him.
“Bradley Gordon,” she said.
He looked at her. “I don’t know you,” he said and made to move past.
“You and I need to talk,” she said. “Weenie sent me.”
Her voice wasn’t exactly posh, but it sounded crisp and clear. She looked too young to be a police detective but he couldn’t be sure. She might be older than she looked. And how old did you have to be to be a police detective, anyway?
“Oh, fuck,” he said.
“Yes. Oh, fuck,” she agreed.
* * *
Camara leaned back and lost himself in thought, or gave a good impression of someone who had lost himself in thought.
“It’s definitely odd,” he agreed.
“Thank you,” said Sam.
“Ignoring the possibility that it is a perfectly ordinary company and you’ve just failed to grasp what it does —”
“Yes. Ignoring that possibility.”
“I would struggle to think of any reason for Rich to want to run a fake company.”
“I was starting to suspect him of money laundering.”
“Well, that’s possible but unlikely. You know what money laundering is, right?”
Sam felt she sort of understood what money laundering was, in the same sort of way that she knew how car engines worked or why aeroplanes stayed in the sky. The details were sort of hazy and any time she tried to sharpen up the edges, her unhelpful brain provided her with an image of bank notes in a massive washing machine.
“Yeah,” she lied.
“The whole purpose of money laundering is to move ill-gotten gains through a legitimate business so that those proceeds are unconnected to the original crime. If the business is clearly not legitimate then it defeats the object. It’s much more likely that the company exists as some sort of tax-dodging ruse.”
“Tax evasion,” she said.
“Or just tax avoidance,” he replied. “What he’s doing could be morally dodgy without actually being illegal. Do you want to find that Rich is doing something illegal?”
Sam began to protest that she didn’t, and yet she hesitated. She liked Rich, after a fashion. He was her ex-boyfriend and their relationship before and after the split had never been spiteful. Surely she didn’t want proof he was up to something dodgy? And yet… and yet… the man was a wilfully naïve and over-confident fool and too bloody happy to boot. She recognised that within her was a desire to bring him down a peg or two, to make him feel some of the frustrations that ordinary humans felt.
“I want to know the whole picture,” she said, honestly.
“Could be data phishing,” Camara suggested. “A fake business which exists solely to harvest customer data.”
“If only there were some actual customers.”
“Then maybe the employees are the targets. What if this is some sort of elaborate recruitment selection process.”
“It’s all one giant job interview?” she said and smiled because there was a weird cleverness to the notion. “Work two months in a madhouse and, if you survive, you get the job.”
Camara shrugged. “Maybe it’s like that Apprentice show. Maybe, it’s all a big reality TV show. Are there hidden cameras?”
There were CCTV cameras in the building, but that was normal, she guessed.
“The women in the office think I’m a spy for management,” she said.
“Well, you are suspicious.”
“Suspicious as in acting suspiciously or suspicious as in I suspect things?”
“One of those two, yes,” agreed Camara.
On the ground floor below their mezzanine level, a man caught Sam’s eye. He had a shaved head and wore a blue Leicester City football shirt. He was bending down and picking up what looked like nothing more than a scrunched up polythene bag, and what had perhaps drawn her eye was the energetic bewilderment and anger this bag seemed to have caused in him. He swung round, backwards and forwards, searching.
* * *
Candelina had looked Bradley Gordon up and down and assessed him. Bradley wasn’t overly tall but he was a compact and athletic man, clearly someone who spent time in a gym. She could try to physically wrestle the Joey Pockets toy from him, but there was every likelihood she would fail. And yet, at the same time, there was a look of fear in his eye. He was a pathetic specimen, a coward and an idiot. She would have to keep him that way.
“You are potentially in a lot of trouble, Bradley,” she said.
“Shit. I haven’t done nothing.”
“We both know that isn’t true.” She held out her hand for the toy.
“No, you don’t understand,” he said.
Candelina could tell he understood enough to realise he was in trouble. Maybe he thought she was with the police. She was happy to let him think that.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” she said.
She inwardly cursed herself for falling back on cliché, but as Haugen said in Cheery Thoughts, ‘People say ‘Rudi, why do your cosy bushes often look alike?’ And I say, ‘Because that’s the way I like them. Don’t be afraid to repeat something you enjoy. ’’
“Give me the toy,” she said.
“This isn’t what you think it is,” said Bradley and pulled the toy towards him. She instinctively made to grab it and that was perhaps a mistake because he instinctively pulled further away.
But then a hand latched onto Bradley’s upper arm and spun him round. An angry-looking man, whose stubbly head shone with sweat, shook a clear plastic bag in Bradley’s face.
“Did you drop this? Did you drop this?”
“What?” said Bradley. The man was loud and confrontational but Bradley couldn’t keep his eyes off Candelina.
The man, who Candelina could now see was quite drunk, pulled at the bag to show the scrap of paper within.
“Jordan ! It says Jordan . You want to tell me why you’ve been stealing stuff off my nephew, you creepy nonce?”
“That kangaroo is mine,” said Candelina, not wanting to be left out of the conversation.
“You stealing from this girl an’ all?” said the bald guy. “The fucking grief I’ve had off my missus cos she thinks I took the boys’ money. I fucking love ‘em, too.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Bradley, but he had lost all confidence in the sentence before he even reached the end.
“If I can just get the kangaroo,” said Candelina.
“But this isn’t your kangaroo,” said Bradley.
* * *
Up on the mezzanine, Sam had turned to watch the unfolding commotion downstairs.
“You seeing this?”
“Yes. I’d hasten to add I’m off duty,” said Camara, but he was rising even as he spoke.
Many of the pubs throughout the town had bouncers posted on the doors but Hooray Henry’s was a new place, a supposedly classy wine bar, and perhaps they thought they didn’t need such things.
“There’s going to be a fight,” said Sam.
“Yes,” said Camara, like it was an inevitability.
* * *
The woman took hold of the kangaroo. Bradley pulled it out of her grasp and turned away.
“Thieving nonce,” said the bald man and slapped him hard.
Bradley’s face went numb and hot at the same time.
He twirled away, staggering through the doors and onto the pavement. The night was warm. Multicoloured lights illuminated the side of the street furthest from the sea. Bradley thought of just running into the darkness with Joey Pockets.
“Hey,” said the woman and grabbed his wrist. She twisted it, as if she was about to do some painful martial arts manoeuvre, but she just gave him a friction burn.
Striking blindly, Bradley gave her a hard flat-handed shove which connected with her face.
“Where’s my fucking money?” demanded the bald guy as he pushed through the doors.
“Hey!” shouted a new voice, a man’s voice.
Bradley was lost in the whirlwind of confusion, of voices and grabbing hands, of light and darkness.
“It’s mine,” said the woman.
A foot came up, aimed possibly at Bradley’s groin but connecting instead with his thigh, almost as painfully. Bradley lost his grip on the kangaroo, flailed and snagged something else, the strap of a bag. The woman yelled.
A thick sweaty arm wrapped itself around Bradley’s neck.
“Nonce!”
“Police! Cut it out!”
Something clattered on the floor. A fist punched into Bradley’s ribs from behind. The man was pulled away from him.
Bradley stumbled. There was an old Nokia brick phone on the pavement and a rectangle of folded paper. He saw a shadow, the woman, running off down the road.
“He’s a fucking nonce!” yelled the bald man in complaint.
There was an ‘oof’ from the new person, a declaration of “Oh, shit” from the bald guy and then more running feet. Bradley automatically picked up the phone and the piece of paper.
“Are you okay?” asked the new guy.
He was a tall man in a polo shirt.
“Um, um,” Bradley managed to say. He rubbed his cheek.
“I’m DC Lucas Camara. I’m a police officer.”
“Um, um.”
Now there was a woman next to the police detective.
“Did they take anything?” she asked, and looked along the street, first in the direction the woman had run and then the other way where the bald guy had fled.
“My kangaroo,” said Bradley without thinking. “It was the wrong kangaroo.”
“Sir, you’ve been assaulted,” said the detective. “Can you come down the station to make a statement?”
The detective put his phone to his ear and turned to the pavement to make a call.
Bradley still had the paper and the woman’s phone in his hands. The policeman wanted to take him to the station and ask him questions, and Bradley thought about what he could possibly say and how the conversation would inevitably turn to the contents of the Joey Pockets and then there would be questions about the pier and Jodie and the police dog and —
Bradley legged it.
“Hey!” the woman shouted. Something about her rang a bell, but Bradley didn’t have time to place her.
Instead he just ran and ran. He crossed the road and a car beeped. He hit the far pavement and just kept running.