Martin seems cool, if not cold but he isn’t showing signs of throwing me out and, as far as I can tell, he’s not been back inside my luggage.
I fly out on the 1 st of August and I’m beginning to feel like a cross between a schoolboy going on his first trip abroad and someone looking at death row.
Chapter 48
Thursday July the 31 ^st 2008
D-day tomorrow. I need to be up with the sparrow fart but I don’t care. This needs to be done. I’m not on a standard holiday package — it seems Inca isn’t a hotspot for the visiting Brits — but I’m on a charter flight. Heaven help me — screaming kids, early morning boozers, cramped seating, delayed flights — the joys.
Martin is dropping me at the airport — not a happy bunny given the hour — but he’ll oblige. He has been very quiet on the whole thing. I’ve been expecting a grilling on my plans but it hasn’t happened. He knows the rough gist of the Charlie Wiggs conversation but not all of it and I’m keeping it that way.
He did ask me what the plan was when I get home and I realised I didn’t have one. I’ve been so focused on the trip to Spain that I haven’t given a second thought to what comes next. I’ve just assumed that whatever happens out there will dictate what happens back here. Martin was more practical. For instance where was I planning to stay? Where was the cash for living coming from? The basic stuff.
I asked if I can have one more month at his and I’ll be out of his hair. As to cash, that is something I’ll worry about on my return.
Early to bed.
Chapter 49
Friday August 1 st 2008
That was hell. I mean hell. Why would anyone put up with that nonsense to go on holiday? Forget the screaming kids, early boozers and delayed flights — let’s talk about the woman next to me with the social graces of an ill bred monkey.
I’ve never hit a woman in my life but twice I had to go to the toilet — an experience in itself — to avoid assaulting her. What didn’t she get about me? All I wanted to do was endure the two and half hour flight and get off the bloody plane. All she wanted to do was — and this is in rank order — chat, sing, ask me to move (three trips to the toilet), chat, borrow a pen, borrow some paper, read my newspaper, read my book, chat, fart, sing and chat — and that was all in the first hour.
She wasn’t even on the pop — although she should have been on something — Valium would have been good.
Palma airport was a surprisingly cool experience — my experience of Spanish airports, albeit more than 15 years ago, revolved around planes parked on the apron and being emptied on to saunas on wheels, then standing in industrial length queues to show my passport followed by a crazy length of wait for my bags.
Instead we were offloaded through an air conditioned air bridge. The passports queue went like snow of a dyke and the bags were as quick as I could have reasonably expected.
I breathed a massive sigh of relief when my bag appeared and I wasn’t stopped at customs — the tool kit had weighed on my mind for the whole flight.
Finding the car hire company was a battle. The office in the airport terminal, logically, had nothing to do with hiring cars. I was directed to a multi storey building two hundred yards away and had to dodge inbound cars and vans to find the service desk. I finally found a Spanish type queue and an hour later I was away.
Inca is not tourist central. It lies in the middle of the island and is by-passed by one of the island’s few motorways. It’s highly industrial and the main tourist attraction seems to be the weekly fair that runs every Wednesday. Other than that there is little to note.
My hotel is small but clean and, importantly, has the benefit of killing the climate through working air conditioning.
I dropped my bags and changed into something a little less heat retaining and went for a walk.
I found the bank quick enough and just down the road was the office of Mallorca Security. The one question still bouncing around my head is the link to the bank. The first note clearly decoded as the Colonya Caixa de Pollenca in Inca but the second sheet seems to refer to Mallorca Security. I’m working on the theory that the box, if it is a box, is in Mallorca Security and will have some connection to the bank.
I had formed the impression that Mallorca Security was a bit of a tuppence hapenny affair. Certainly Charlie’s description of the web site led me to believe that.
The truth is slightly different. The building is barely two hundred yards from the bank and looks more like a bank than the bank. It has a large frontage, which puts it at odds with the shops around it. To the left there is a shop that seems to specialise in art that is connected to light — lamp shades, chandeliers, lit sculptures — that sort of thing. It was open and a quick visit ruled it out as an entry point to my target.
The entire adjoining wall is floor to ceiling with racking, filled with every knick-knack imaginable. The wall behind looks solid concrete. There is a door at the rear to a small storage room and fortunately it was ajar. A quick glimpse inside and it was obvious the wall runs the length of the shop. If I had a jack hammer and three days to spare I might get through to the next shop.
On the other side of my target is a cafe and it doesn’t look any more promising. This time there is no storage room, just the adjoining wall that acts as the back drop to the serving counter. It is filled with an espresso machine, a rack of various crockery and a painting of a footballer in mid scissor kick. No way through.
I wanted to get out the back and have a look at the target from the rear but it was getting late and I was tired. The last thing I needed was to get caught somewhere I shouldn’t be. Anyway I need to meet Charlie’s friend. For all I know the Palma branch may be a better first bet — but I doubt it.
Chapter 50
Saturday August 2 nd 2008
Charlie’s friend turned out to be a bit more than ok. He is a little star. His name is David MacDonald and is one of your died in the wool ex-pats who hates everything Spanish but won’t go home because of the weather.
I met him at a small cafe ten minutes from my hotel. He looks like he could do with a good feed. He’s six feet four or so but probably weighs in at less than thirteen stone — painfully thin was a phrase created just for him.
We clicked from the start. He’s big into music and we hit common ground in seconds. Him a fan of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, me a fan of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark — go figure — I thought I was the only one. Fifteen minutes into the conversation he takes out a plastic folder and drops it on the table. I go to reach for it and he places his hand on it.
‘Ten percent or five grand.’
I give my ‘what the fuck’ look and he smiles.
‘The contents of the box — ten percent or five thousand — whatever is the greater.’
He had me sussed — wasn’t hard. I nodded and he pushed the folder towards me. If the box turns out to have no cash I would have to worry about his five thousand later.
I opened up the wallet and pulled out a number of sheets. I realised why he had ushered me into a seat with a wall behind me. The sheets were copies of the blueprints to two buildings. Mallorca Security, Inca and Mallorca Security, Palma.
