might as well have been a rag doll. Andy could still see her contorted features as she screamed at him while she was carried away, ‘Mr Andy! Mr Andy, help me!’ Jesus wept. But, hey, not Andy. Heart of stone. What if it cracked? Had it begun already? Little fault lines everywhere. Mr Andy! Mr Andy, help me!
It felt as if he had done nothing but drive up and down the A1 all day on a tide of caffeine. His car must have dredged a channel in the road by now. Travelling salesmen spent less time in their cars than Andy did. He supposed that was what he was in many ways. A rep, peddling his wares around the country. No shortage of buyers, that was for sure.
He thought again of those washing-machines, the ones that had fallen from the Holroyd lorry. Casualties of the highway. There were only so many washing-machines you could sell, but there was no limit on the trade in girls.
Andy wondered whether Steve’s wife – holier-than-thou Sophie – knew about the caravan, her husband’s ‘other office’. ‘Stephen works all the hours God gives,’ she said to Andy at a New Year’s drinks party. ‘Yeah, he’s a real workaholic,’ Andy agreed. Wendy and Vince had been there too. Wendy had had too much to drink and Andy caught Sophie rolling her eyes at Steve. If only she knew where all their money came from she wouldn’t be quite so up herself. ‘He does it for me and the children, of course,’ she said. ‘He’s selfless that way.’ Yeah, right, Andy thought.
It wasn’t about sex, none of them ever touched the goods – well, maybe Tommy occasionally – it was about money. All profit, no loss. For Andy it had always been just a job – enough money to live on and a comfortable retirement at the end of it all in Florida or Portugal, somewhere with a really good golf course. A house with a swimming pool for Rhoda to lounge around, wearing one of her big supportive swimming-costumes, drinking a pina colada. A little paper umbrella. There was something about a little paper umbrella that signalled the good life. He didn’t suppose Lottie would share that view.
He had enough put away for this good life, so why carry on? Where was the boundary? Where did it stop? He had crossed so many dodgy frontiers by now that he supposed there could be no going back. He’d gone over the top and he was stuck in no-man’s-land. (‘Christ, Andy,’ Steve said. ‘When did you begin to think? It doesn’t suit you.’) It had become like one of Carmody’s carousels, one that you couldn’t get off. ‘Well, you know what the song says,’ Tommy said. ‘You can check out but you can’t leave.’
Steve had tried to bring in a fourth musketeer. Vince Ives. More Dogtanian than d’Artagnan. Vince and Steve went all the way back to school and Steve thought Vince might be ‘useful’, he’d been in the Army apparently and knew a lot about IT, but neither of those things was of any use to them, both Steve and Andy were pretty skilled at all the internet stuff.
Steve seemed to think that he owed Vince because decades ago he had pulled him out of a canal. (If he’d just left Steve to drown, like an unwanted cat, they wouldn’t be in this trade. So really if anyone was to be held responsible for what they were doing, it was Vince.) It was immediately obvious that Vince wasn’t the kind of bloke who would have the stomach for the kind of business they were in. The fourth musketeer turned out to be a fifth wheel and they decided to keep him in the dark, although he still tagged along with them on the golf course and at parties. In the end Vince had proved to be more of a liability than an asset, especially now with Wendy’s murder attracting police like flies on horseshit. And he couldn’t even put in a decent round of golf.
Andy sighed and drained his coffee. Left a generous tip, even though he’d had no service to speak of. He made his way to Arrivals. Their names were on the iPad already, he fired it up and adjusted his face. Mr Congeniality. The doors to Arrivals opened and he lifted up the iPad so they wouldn’t miss it.
They were a pair of pretty blondes, Polish, genuine sisters ensnared by Steve. Nadja and Katja.