The Pursuit of Emma, Dave Moyer [best contemporary novels txt] 📗

queue. They were going to make sure I was on the plane. Fine then.

With one last glance at them, I handed my ticket over and walked down the corridor. When everyone had boarded, and the safety checks had been done, the plane raced down the runaway and jolted into the sky. I, of course, was not on it. I was in fact sitting in an investigation room being questioned as to why I had ‘fainted’ in the boarding corridor and why my black holdall was full of women’s magazines.

I knew as I checked in that the only convincing way to make the Kozlovs believe I was no longer around was to board the plane. Except flying to Mexico and then turning around straight away seemed an awful waste of time. I also knew that if I took a black holdall full of cash to the airport it would be taken off me in seconds. So I had switched the contents in the car and filled it with some of Emma’s old magazines. I hoped that the Russians would be watching me carry the holdall inside and assume I still had the money, if they even knew about it. It was the scariest thing I have ever done leaving my newly found fortune in a car, in a crime hotspot, but I had no choice. The Russians would have seen me holding the bag tightly and getting on a plane. They would never assume I had switched it. I just looked like a typical coward fleeing the country.

That’s what I wanted them to believe. Chapter Fifteen

‘I was looking for something a little more common.’

To my relief, the money was still in the car when I got there. It had taken me over an hour to get out of the investigation room at the airport. I had been accused of everything from terrorism to cross-dressing (due to the women’s magazines). But eventually having found no evidence and after me pointing out that cross-dressing wasn’t illegal, they had to let me go. I headed straight back to my car, desperately fighting the urge to run and pulled out the sack of money. I felt much better after that. Right, so if everything had gone well enough, the Kozlovs thought I was out of the picture. That gave me the element of surprise at the very least. I still didn’t know where she was or how to get there but as long as I was careful they wouldn’t see me coming.

I knew that I could never go back to the flat. They might be keeping an eye on it, in case of my return. It was time to spend some of that money. First, I needed to find a place to stay: a base for my actions. I didn’t want to spend lots of the money and figured it was best to find somewhere a little inconspicuous. The problem was, in London, finding somewhere cheap was not easy. I wanted it close to where I knew but not so close that I might bump into the Kozlovs or Sophie. Eventually, after some serious consideration, I found a small apartment in a more central location than my old one. It was nice enough (for those of you that like stains and insects) and it was cheap. The landlord didn’t seem to care about organisation or maintaining anything but that suited me fine. I paid him up front for a month and took the keys from him. I was a little scared that I was going to get stabbed leaving the apartment but I put that to one side and ran whenever I had to leave. I had a place to stay. Now I needed a new car.

The car was the only way I thought the Kozlovs may find me and that needed to change. I resisted the temptation to walk straight into an Aston Martin garage and drive away in a DBS and instead found a horrible, third-hand car dealership. The car I drove there in was very old now and let’s just say the years hadn’t been kind. I accepted I wouldn’t get a lot for it. At first the salesman tried to push some expensive new motor that was only partially dented (a rarity for their products) but I refused.

‘I’m looking for something a little more common,’ I said truthfully, realising how middle-class that last sentence made me sound.

I found an old Ford Focus in the lot that looked pretty battered. Perfect. It had no price on it but when I asked one of the sales assistants, they asked for two grand. I laughed and offered them a thousand pounds cash plus my car for it and after the traditional salesman bollocks, they accepted it. Half an hour later I was driving away in my new Ford (I use the word ‘new’ loosely).

Although the car was a good start I was still concerned about it. On the way back to my new flat I saw a rundown garage called ‘Pimp My Car, Van or Motorbike’. Catchy. That could work. I pulled in and was greeted by an enormously fat man. He seemed to be wondering if I had pulled into the wrong place. As I got out of the car, I could see how impressive the garage actually was. It had appeared pretty poor from the outside. There were the obvious spaces for cars which had the usual smell of motor oil and B.O, but then the rest of the walls were covered with the largest range of car equipment I had ever seen. There were wheels of all sizes, the most incredibly expensive stereo systems and sub-woofers and plenty of things I knew nothing about.

‘Can I help you?’ asked the enormous whale of a man. It would have been hard to find an overall that would have fitted him but he hadn’t even attempted to locate one. He had used brute force to drag the trousers over his expansive behind and had clearly given up trying to wrap it round his torso. He had instead draped a vest over himself which was probably once white but was now a filthy grey.

‘Yeah. How much to kit out the whole car? I’m talking tinted windows, sub-woofer, lights underneath, the whole business,’ I said pathetically. What was going on? I was talking in some ridiculous tone like I knew what I was talking about. I didn’t.

‘Well, that depends. If you want the top end stuff it’s going to cost you. For the very best, you’re looking at three grand.’

‘OK, I’ll give you five grand cash if you get it done by the end of the day,’ I said matter-of-factly.

The blue-whale looked confused at first but knew a good deal when he heard one.

‘Done!’ he replied quickly. ‘What things do you want?’

‘You choose. Surprise me. But I want the windows dark, like a limo, OK?’

‘You got it boss.’

I pulled out a wad of notes and counted some out.

‘There’s two and a half grand there. I’ll give you the rest when it’s done?’

He grabbed it, almost in disbelief, and we agreed on a time for me to return. I left the garage and walked around the streets until I found a tube station. There was still plenty more shopping to be done. I was exhausted already. How do women do this most weekends? What made it worse was that I had to carry a bag around with twenty thousand pounds in it and guard it with my life. I had hidden the rest of the money painstakingly in my new home before I had left. I had managed to find a loose enough floorboard in the lounge and after an eternity of pulling I freed it enough to fit my holdall underneath it. I didn’t want to imagine what manner of creatures would be crawling over it but it should hopefully be safe. It had better be.

*****

The next thing to think about was communication. My phone could have been tracked and I was so worried the Kozlovs might have the technology to trace me that I had ditched it. I had spent a minute jotting down the numbers I needed and then dumped it in a hedge when leaving the airport. If they could trace it, they might just believe I dropped it in my hurry. I would be needing a phone and now they could have no way of tracing it. I decided that I might as well get the best one possible.

I convinced myself that I'd bought the latest iPhone for a purpose. I could use the internet whenever I wanted to access useful information... or something like that. The truth was I had never had money and I was loving having it. Emma wanted me to be happy and for this brief sneeze of time, the iPhone made me very happy. I hadn’t taken a contract out; I'd simply bought the handset and topped it up with fifty pounds credit. That should last me a while. Right, what else was on the list?

I had a new flat, a new car and a new phone. There were two things left to change. Number one: my clothes. It showed both greed and incredible foresight on my behalf, but I decided to get a very expensive new wardrobe. I had some idea that owning expensive suits would help me with my future plans, but I think deep down I just wanted to know what it felt like to wear designer clothes. No more Matalan for me.

The clothes shopping experience was exhausting. I headed to Oxford Street and put myself entirely at the disposal of a gay sales assistant called Stephen. I knew his name was Stephen as it was embossed on his chest and as he strutted towards me, he peacocked his chest out so far ahead of him that his name badge reached me several minutes before the rest of his body.

I must have been a dream to Stephen as I had money to burn and was willing for him to dress me like a Ken doll (not literally, I am capable of dressing myself). He sold me this line about the modern man only needing sixteen expensive items to have a complete wardrobe but it didn’t seem to hold true as he insisted on me buying well over thirty things. I had designer jeans and suits that cost more than my new car had. I had very little change from ten thousand pounds as I left the store, but I was certain nobody would recognise me. So far, so good. I decided against taking all the clothes with me and agreed to pick them up later, once I had my car back.

That just left one thing to be changed: Me. I could never pull the clothes off convincingly with the beard I was cultivating and my hair was no longer in any style. It had gotten relatively long and the fringe was hanging well over my eyes, causing me to sweep it off my face constantly. Looking at my new (expensive) watch I still had well over an hour until I could collect the car. Time for a haircut.

In the end I didn’t get a haircut, I got a complete styling