“Tonight?” Garston replied, confused. “I thought you didn’t want him there until tomorrow night so you could go across in the early hours of Friday morning.”
Meade was short with him. “Like I said, the plan’s changed and you need to bring the cargo down tonight.” His tone became surly. “I would’ve thought you’d be pleased to be a day ahead of schedule.”
“I am,” Garston said defensively, “but it might be too early to move him.”
Meade tutted irritably. “Listen, I’ve been asked to run another cargo over as well as yours, and this new job pays a hell of a lot more than the chicken feed you’re giving me. I’m not sure if it’s arriving tonight or tomorrow, but I need to be ready to set sail as soon as it gets here, so I need you to get your man down to the cottage by ten o’clock tonight just in case.”
“What you’re asking is going to be difficult,” Garston complained. “I’m going to have to rush around like a lunatic to make it happen, and for what? You might not even end up sailing tonight.”
Meade grunted ill naturedly. “Don’t make a plank out of a splinter, son,” he complained. “Just do what you need to do to get your man down here tonight. If all goes well, he’ll wake up tomorrow morning in La Belle bloody France. Worst case scenario is he gets to spend a lovely day by the sea at no extra cost to himself and we go on Friday as originally planned.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Garston said aggressively. They had an accord and it wasn’t right that Meade had just upped and changed the conditions of their deal just because someone else had come along and offered him more money to go a day earlier.
“I can’t help that,” Meade said bluntly. “Be here for ten p.m. tonight. If you’re not, and my other cargo is, you’ll have to wait until next week for it to be safe for me to make another night time crossing.” With that, the cantankerous fisherman hung up, leaving Garston staring at the handset in silent fury.
He paced the hall, wondering what to do. Had there been a viable alternative, he would have told the pirate to shove his mainsail right up his inbred arse, but people smugglers were hard to find at short notice and he needed to get Winston out of the UK as quickly as possible.
He daren’t mention this to Winston, or his uncle would probably shoot the fisherman as soon as he saw him. Realistically, there was no real choice but to comply with the instructions he’d been given. If Meade sailed tonight, without Claude Winston on board, he would be stuck with his uncle for another week, and he doubted his sanity would be able to withstand that.
Garston stormed into the lounge, where Rodent was curled up in his sleeping bag in the centre of the room, snoring away contentedly. Feeling the need to vent his frustration, Garston kicked him viciously in the side. “Get up,” he snapped.
Rodent cried out in pain. When he sat up, his eyes were full of fear and confusion. “What’s the matter?” he whimpered, looking around in a panic. “Are we being raided?”
“No,” Garston said irritably. “I need you to get up and run some urgent errands for me, and then I need you to go and get your mate’s van like you said you could.”
Rodent unzipped the bag and gingerly rose to his feet, still favouring his side. “But I’m not supposed to be getting that until tomorrow,” he mewled.
To Garston’s disgust, the small-time drug peddler was still clad in the same clothes he’d worn when he had picked them up from the hijacked helicopter, and the ripe smell of his body odour came flooding out of the sleeping bag with him.
“Yeah, well, there’s been a change of plan and we need to drive him down to the coast tonight, so you need to have a word with your mate and borrow his van this evening instead. Tell him I’ll make it well worth his while.”
“But he uses it for work during the week,” Rodent snivelled. “What if he can’t let us have it tonight?”
Garston stepped forward and slapped him around the top of the head, making him flinch. “Tell him if he doesn’t, I’ll put a fucking bullet through his head. I’m sure that’ll convince him to make his poxy van available.”
Motioning for Rodent to follow him, Garston went through to the cramped kitchen. His half-eaten poached egg on toast had gone cold, and he pushed it aside as he sat at the small Formica table.
“You stink,” Garston told him bluntly, his voice dripping with contempt. “Don’t you ever change your clothes?”
“Normally I change them every day,” Rodent told him, and his young face flushed with shame.
“So why haven’t you changed them since we’ve arrived?” Garston taunted him.
Rodent stared down at the floor. “Because,” he said meekly, “every time I try to go into my bedroom to get anything, Mr Winston shoves a gun in my face and shouts at me to get out.”
Garston’s face softened. “You should have told me,” he said.
The kid shrugged. “I’m not a grass.”
Garston nodded. “Good for you,” he said, “but even if you can’t change your clothes, you could still shower and spray on some deodorant.”
“I’m sorry,” Rodent said, feeling browbeaten.
A notepad and pen were lying on the kitchen worktop. Garston ripped a page out of the notebook and began to scribble frantically. When he’d finished, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a large wad of cash. “I need you to get some more medical supplies, some men’s clothes in the sizes I’ve written down, and some food for Claude to take with him. Also, pop into a phone shop and buy yourself a
