Broken Eggshells: A Black Comedy in Several Hues of Yellow

By Christian Cook

At the end of an alleyway in London, a dark blue Jaguar is found neatly parked into an inconveniently placed brick wall. There is no sign of the driver or any clue as to who they were.

Meanwhile, a group of cynics who are fed up with how futile the world has become decide to payback society in a series of the most bizarre and pointless terrorist attacks ever.

The world's media attempt to discover if there is any link between these two incidents, or a link between any of a number of random incidents they overheard being discussed down the pub at lunchtime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 7, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469703275

Christian Cook

Christian was born in 1974. Everything since then has all been a bit of a blur. This is his first novel, and things should get a lot less blurry from here on. He currently works as a designer just outside London.

Book preview

THE PROLOGUE

It started in a pub.

Enough said.

That, in itself, was probably the most significant fact about the situation—the whole ‘pubness’ of it all. Pubs, often mistaken as just social venues where alcohol is consumed, also serve as the philosophical powerhouses of the world. Pubs are the central collective points where most of the world’s population gathers to exchange views and thoughts with other such ‘illuminated’ thinkers.

If science and psychology had ever bothered to make an accurate study of the cause and effect of pub interaction then they would have stumbled upon some very important information, in fact, dangerous information. The very sort of information that evil scientists and dictators had been seeking since year dot.

The following results are from a psychological study that never happened. If it had happened, and a long in-depth pub study had been carried out, then the psychologists would have found that there were two levels to pub interaction. There was the reflection and revelation level and a much deeper level that would have been given some large and ridiculous name. A name so stupidly scientific, it would have young psychology students stuck on that particular paragraph for long enough to give up their revision and raise the volume on the TV back up to a level where the textbook was no longer a distraction.

For the sake of the statistics of psychology student success rates, we will call this deeper second level ‘Other Pub Thoughts’. This is a need that of course does not exist, as the study has never happened and the information is therefore safely unknown. Should the study ever happen, then rather than the information appearing in a textbook for psychology students, the researcher would invariably become the world’s most successful dictator or evil scientist that ever lived.

The need for authors to invent non-existent psychological reports is also a condition that after careful research would receive its own long scientific name. A name that would have psychology students closing the book, switching off the TV and continuing the rest of their revision along with all their fellow students…down the pub.

If any brave students actually battled through the sections on Psychareportoinventology (the study of the needs of authors to invent psychological reports) and decided to actually start the chapter on PubVocalextendogy (Other Pub thoughts), then they would learn the following illuminating information.

Almost 95% of talk amongst adults in pubs concerns the stresses of life, their failed plans, their hopes for the future, why they could run the world better than the UN etc. etc. Interestingly enough, in the pubs where the UN gather to drink they discuss the stresses of life, their failed plans, their hopes for the future and how it was becoming increasingly obvious that most of the rest of the world could do the job much better than they could.

This normal talk is completely harmless, futile, everyday chatter and serves no purpose other than to stop people having a sudden urge to go back home and read that chapter of the textbook that starts with Psychareportoinventology is a condition that is unrecognised by most Western studies and its origin is reported to have been the ‘Institute of banal futility in New Mexico’ where several studies blah blah blah. and quickly loses the reader by inducing hallucinations of the TV volume control, or in extreme conditions, visions of the pub.

The other 5% of chatter in pubs is far more interesting. The problem of recognising ‘Other Pub Thoughts’ is that they could easily be mistaken for jokes, general banter, or just plain stupidity. In fact, most of it is. A phrase in this category would typically start with Imagine if you actually. or Wouldn’t it be funny if you really did. and so on. What keeps the world safe from the potential devastation is that most of these ‘Other Pub Thoughts’ remain as just private jokes or just get forgotten. In some cases, they might re-emerge on a birthday card or even get re-enacted at the odd office party, but no-one ever has the notion to turn the ‘Other Pub Thought’ into its more dangerous form: A ‘Definite Significant Action’.

Hangovers and common sense keep most people from venturing beyond the speculative fantasy of ‘Other Pub Thoughts’ into the dark reality of’Definite Significant Action’. What this of course all boils down to is that despite all the idle talk and crazy ideas you hear in a pub, no-one ever has the wisdom or stupidity (and there is arguably a case for both) to actually go and do any of it. That would just be stupid.

But if time travel were possible and a researcher were to go back to any significant historical event, where would they find himself? What if we were to travel back to when Hannibal decided to get the elephants out, as the mountains would be a cracking route to form a sneak attack. Would we find ourselves in a large ornate forum where the great leader was planning his campaign alongside his most trusted captains? Or would we find ourselves down Hannibal’s local pub with the team of strategists slowly slipping into despair at the utter lack of sound military ideas?

Then after another round of drinks and a long silence one person suddenly pipes up with, elephants, my lord. We could sneak at them over yonder mountains upon great elephantine beasts.

You stupid prat!

Can someone else please come up with something even slightly sensible?

All day, ‘n’ all we have is boiling oil, longer spears and flamin’ elephants.

Several giggles are stifled.

But Hannibal, who has been sitting in silence, suddenly allows his thoughts to wander into the realms of actuality. Elephants—strong animals, unstoppable. The mountains—surprise attack, the perfect assault. Elephants over the mountains. Huge great elephants right over the huge great mountains. As an ‘Other Pub Thought’ it was a stupid comment, the sort of plan that caused warlords to giggle into their pints of ale. But as a ‘Definite Significant Action’ it was brilliant, a devastating rampage of victorious power. All that had to be done to turn the one into the other was to actually do it. It was that simple and he, Hannibal, was going to be the one to set this up and actually go and do it. For real. On huge great real elephants over huge great real mountains. No more pussyfooting around with hotter oil and longer spears. Elephants. Mountains. Wham! Brilliant.

Of course, if a researcher was intelligent enough to invent a time machine, they would hardly go back and sip pints with Hannibal and his cronies. They would more likely travel back to the point in time when the psychology lecturer had been about to write the chapter on PubVocalextendogy and had suddenly realised they were about to become the most evil ruler of the planet ever. The time travelling historian would then bludgeon the psychology lecturer to a pulp and use the manuscript of an unfinished psychology textbook to become the most evil and successful scientist the world had ever known.

***

Despite the claims of some of the more outlandish brochures of today’s travel industry, the Antarctic is a rather boring place. Yes, the rolling sculptures and dunes of the wind swept wastelands are breathtaking and truly a natural wonder, but it isn’t long before the complete desolate whiteness of it all really starts to bug you. And long before that occurs, there is of course the entire freezing cold routine that becomes a rather obvious distraction from the whole romantic ‘white’ notion. And then all your extremities begin to fall off and that just about kills off the whole romance notion, once and for all.

This particular piece of Antarctic wasteland was particularly dull. Even amongst the plain whiteness of it all, this bit was mind-numbingly boring. Scott and Amundsen had never set foot anywhere near it on their treks to the South Pole and not even the bravest of penguins would ever bother to venture here. It wasn’t that the penguins feared the treacherous conditions, it was just that even penguins recognise that some things are just plain stupid. There were no pure crisp white mountains to make you go ‘Wow,’ no smooth untouched drifts to make you go ‘Ooooh,’ and no hidden deep crevices to make you go ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!’

For the sake of the true enthusiast, a few mind-numbingly futile facts can be revealed about its location and contents. It lay near to the edge of French claimed territory within Australian claimed territory. It was at an approximate location of 130° Latitude, 75° Longitude. But none of this is either interesting or relevant. All that needs to be said is that it was cold, empty and an insomnia-curing plain white.

Nothing stirred.

Silence.

BOOM!

The explosion ripped a large gaping hole in the boredom and sent a huge tower of white spray thousands of feet into the air. For several hours afterwards icy debris rained gently down upon a steaming crater that had previously been smooth white desolate landscape. But it was all over rather too quickly; the steam soon died down and the raining debris was rapidly swallowed up by a blizzard that had turned up to see what all the fuss was about.

No-one had seen or heard any of it. No human had witnessed this fleeting excitement and not even a brave or incredibly stupid penguin was close enough to hear the faint echoes of the blast roller coasting over the snowy dunes. The land returned to being a dull piece of white boredom, albeit with an interesting new crater in the middle of it. But even the writers of outlandish travel brochures would need an extra strong coffee to sell that in a snappy list of bullet points.

Silence.

CHAPTER 1

Tuesday 11th May 1999. Four days after the event. Time—00:23 GMT.

A million miles away from the South Pole, a tramp staggered through the streets of Clerkenwell, attempting to remember what a large dose of methylated spirits had deprived him of recalling, which was pretty much everything. It wasn’t that the tramp thought he had something significant to recall, it was more that he wanted the choice of knowing whether or not he knew anything significant at all.

The issue was finally resolved when the tramp fell over flat on his face and, if he had been conscious enough to experience the event, he would have to admit that this was what he had been attempting to achieve for the last half a mile or so. All the staggering and grunting had been vain efforts to hit the floor, but on each try, the tramp had somehow managed to wave gravity aside with a dismissive, if shaky, hand and miss the ground entirely. Now he was happily face down in a puddle and the cold pavement was busy plumping itself around his spinning head, welcoming him back home.

The tramp didn’t move.

Silence.

Fortunately, for the sake of any form of plot throughout the rest of chapter one, the tramp began to recall the events of the past few days. In order for this to happen, we have to skip over two very important facts; firstly, that as much of the past few days had been spent consuming a cocktail of alcohol, drugs and various other chemicals, there really wasn’t much to remember that made a great deal of sense. And secondly, there was the fact that the tramp had actually lost his memory completely.

In truth, the tramp’s long term memory was not actually lost, it was hiding. When the first suspect substances had started to enter the body, the memory had noticed that most of the real nasty effects had gone straight to the head area and had shown every sign of taking over the running and control of the whole show. The problem the memory had with all this, was that this new supposed ‘control’ that had come in didn’t bring much overall control to the body or seem to produce anything that was worth remembering. With these new substances dancing amok in the cranium, the memory could clearly see that an alternative place of residence was called for, and rather rapidly.

It was currently in the liver.

The liver may seem a rather stupid place to escape the ravaging onset of extreme drug and alcohol abuse, but at least it was nowhere near the head area which was clearly getting the full brunt of the pre-emptive strike. The tramp had made several attempts to restore his memory by knocking his head against large, rather hard and uncompromising objects. These had included a wall, a small van, the odd lamppost and even an overweight cat. In the memory’s mind (huge ability to brush aside obviously stupid concepts required here) this new phase of self-inflicted head damage was even more reason to stay put in the liver, as it was clear that the whole cranial neighbourhood was going seriously downhill. So, all medical fact to one side, the memory took up permanent residence in the liver and decided that this is where it would stay, until such circumstances arose to suggest that maybe a further change of venue was required.

These two concepts notwithstanding, the tramp was now free to unconsciously ponder and reflect upon the past few days’ unconsciousness (by this point all medical students are either turning up the volume on the TV or are off to their local pub).

In its new state of illuminated thinking, the tramp’s mind was free to assort and categorise the past few days, in order to understand what actual events had occurred and find appropriate slots for everything else. This was actually a far more challenging task than one would first imagine, as the tramp’s head seemed to contain an awful lot of things that were strange, surreal or just plain stupid. Even the very idea of attempting to think about these thoughts seemed nonsensical. It was rather like placing a small exhausted hedgehog in a room full of marbles and requesting it to vacuum the wardrobes.

The word ‘eyebrows’ drifted into the forefront of the battle-scarred brain and was immediately broadsided by the phrase ‘penguins don’t eat chutney’ skidding in from another angle. There was definitely some form of undergarments in there somewhere hiding at the back but this could have just been a few thoughts from the fantasy room coming in from next door to complain about the noise.

A car; there was definitely a car in there at some point. Now this seemed significant, amongst all the other bizarre concepts (including the one about the shrew with a suggestive tin opener), the car seemed to take on a certain solidity. It donned an overcoat of sense as if to disassociate itself from the other concepts about it and threaten to leave. The car thought, taking such a rigid stance, persuaded some of the other factual recollections to step forward and testify. The suit, of course! The new suit. If the tramp had been conscious at this point he would have been able to look down to see that he was in fact wearing a rather nice Armani suit. Whose suit was this and why was he wearing it? There was some vague recollection of picking up the suit jacket from a puddle and.hang on.ah yes. That was it. The person who had previously owned the suit didn’t need it anymore; he was dead.

The tramp’s brain was on a roll now; there was definitely an abandoned car, a rather nice car at that. There was a dead man’s suit. There was also a lot of blood at various points. And then there were all the penguins, chutney, eyebrows and undergarments that were rapidly displaying the same solid realism as the car. Then there was just blackness, a void of empty nothingness. The brain had certainly done more thinking and recollecting than the usual unconscious kind and so it was time to give up, join the realms of medical fact, and truly flake out.

CHAPTER 2

Still Tuesday 11th May 1999. Four days after the event. Time—02:57 GMT.

Not a million miles away, a large moving mass of fear was strutting through the wet streets of London without any real purpose or reason. Well, in fact there was a very real purpose and reason for its journey but acknowledging that would be so terrifying that it was best, for the moment, to view this whole journey as a complete random waste of time. At least that is how the fear viewed it. But that was its job—to be fearful.

The fear was attached to a fat American in an ill-fitting business suit and overcoat, weaving his way silently through the alleyways and dark cold streets. Well, as silently as he could manage, there was a lot of heavy breathing and wheezing but the usual shouts at passing children or the disdainful looks at other peoples’ lack of BMWs had completely vanished. In his left hand hung a heavy nondescript black briefcase.

He could have taken a much safer route but John Crachet had spent his life conning people out of millions so he didn’t see why he shouldn’t just con fear itself. Besides which, Crachet had his own philosophy about ‘safe’ and ‘scary’ routes. He reasoned that if you walked down a well lit crowded street then there were certainly more people around to mug you and it was certainly light enough for them to be able to clearly see their intended victim. But in a dark deserted alleyway, who was likely to mug you? And as it was so dark who would actually be able to see you? Unfortunately he only actually believed this theory and loudly quoted it to himself when he was in those very same dark lonely alley ways where he was very likely to get mugged and so it was all too apparent that he was in fact conning himself.

Damn.

Towering office blocks snarled at him from a gloomy night sky, they were now empty of the stressful shouting that people in the city use to conjure up money from thin air. The roads were empty of cars and the traffic jams of leaves and crisp packets, that only venture out at night, were now beginning to form swirling tailbacks down Holborn Viaduct. He was alone, very alone; large bustling crowds of loneliness were pushing past him and leaving him standing on the pavement. Cold, wet and beginning to feel that he should definitely be somewhere else, somewhere far away and remote and safe. The South Pole even, anywhere but here.

But he was here, he was nowhere but here. ‘Here’ was currently a bridge that led up to Holborn Circus and he could already make out the statue of ‘some chap on a horse.’ He had never known whose image the statue was, but figured that as he wasn’t in Trafalgar Square or Piccadilly, then he could hardly be that big a character in history’s play. He found himself staring around at the various other statues that were looming from the sides of the road; there were knights and dragons, and winged lions, and also four large figures that stood and stared at him. The claustrophobic darkness was beginning to echo with the deafening silence of sheer panic. He looked closely at the statue nearest him as if to introduce himself and familiarise himself with this new environment, it read ‘FINE ART’ upon the inscription on its base. There was obviously a fine art to scaring the pants off people and this bridge was achieving it all too well. Off the side of the bridge he could see the beckoning friendly lights of Farringdon Road below. If only there were some steps down to it he could take a short cut and get off this lonely dismal road and on to the meeting place and just get it over with.

He found a short cut just past the statue.

He stared into a set of dark steps that was about as welcoming as his late mother. His mother had never liked her third son because he had lost his moral upbringing in favour of power, money, drink and loose sex, and all the other fancy add-ons that the international financial business threw his way. Then again, he had never liked her that much either. She had taught him about justice, freedom and compassion and he’d been left to his own devices to learn about all life’s ‘true’ values.

He suddenly shook himself back to reality, the steps were a dark uncharted void though not empty; there was definitely something alive grunting lightly somewhere in the blackness. He could either walk down these steps and end up on Farringdon Road or take the long way round. He stood there thinking. Obviously he wasn’t scared, it was probably just a sleeping tramp but he reasoned that he had better take the long way round anyway. After all, he had been given strict instructions to ensure that he took a long winding route in order to shake off any tails that might follow. The truth of the matter was that in comparison to this dark set of steps, even meeting his late mother seemed like a pleasant option, but he had his excuses and he was sticking to them.

He walked off towards Holborn Circus and the now reassuringly friendly chap on the horse.

Now his mother was gone and so was all the drink, the sex, and the money…Oh the money. The money. The money hadn’t actually gone, not all of it anyway. Some of it in fact, was very nearby, too nearby. The $300,000 in the briefcase was the part that made him feel the sickest, this was certainly not part of his plan. That money was his and now he was about to hand it over to some two bit, good for nothing punks.

The two bit punks in question were the Di Farello Family, the Mafia clan responsible for overseeing the drug and money laundering operations of the Sicilian Mafia in London. The ‘two bits’ of these ‘punks’ were estimated to be in the region of $28 billion a year and their London operation formed a key node in the global crime infrastructure. But still, this was his money and what did he have to show for it? A mess, a very messy mess at that. A very dangerously messy mess. How had he managed to stuff this one up so badly? Remember the plan, take the money, leave the mess firmly with someone else.

Damn.

Perhaps he should just turn and run. Take the money and just go. But go where? Surely they would find him. The small time Italian crook who had help set this whole deal up was already missing and there was talk of a few others mysteriously disappearing too. Perhaps he was next. Then again, if he fled, he certainly would be next. No, that settled it, just do as they said. Besides, they surely wouldn’t kill him tonight, the $300,000 was only a down payment and, in all, there was a further $40 million to come. They’d at least wait till they had all the money before killing him. Yes, that was right. Nothing to worry about. Stick to the plan. He was safe.

Safe.

He hated the Di Farellos; the two Italian brothers were the sort of people who made you feel uneasy even when they were pleased with you. With just a nonchalant scratch of the nose, an assassin could be signalled to turn the friendly atmosphere into your last moment on Earth. Crachet had never intended to have anything at all to do with either of the two. His plan from the start had been to work alongside the Di Farello Family’s accountant, Henri Rucaarte, and accumulate as much trust as possible with the Belgian until such time as it was necessary to grab the lot and make a run for it. He had to admit that it was a rather old and primitive formula but it was the only one that he knew and he was certainly good at it.

He had no criminal record at all anywhere on the globe as ‘John Crachet’ had only come into being some four years ago. Four years! This was the longest time that he had ever spent building up a character. But as this particular job involved getting close to Mafia-connected businessmen, he figured that an awful lot of trust would have to be built up before they would allow him to go walking around unattended with vast sums of their cash.

In all, 15 of his characters were wanted across various States in the US and it was this that had convinced Crachet that he ought to pick a new continent, pull off one last huge scam, and then retire. Well, that had been his intention but clearly things were getting out of hand and he was no longer in complete control of the situation. In fact, during most of these scams, he was rarely in control of anything but always managed to convince himself that everything was in hand, it was all going to plan, and he would surely be waltzing off with a vast amount of someone else’s money just as soon as the prize became large enough to consider concluding business.

Damn.

He had now reached Holborn Circus and made a sharp right turn into Charterhouse Street and began striding at a leisurely pace towards Farringdon Road. Had it been a bright sunny afternoon with birds singing and warm friendly crowds smiling happily then his pace would indeed be leisurely, as it was with all the darkness and gloom, his leisurely pace soon quickened and adopted a more realistic panic to its step. There were no crowds here at all. Well, no friendly ones.

As he neared the junction to turn left onto Farringdon Road he froze. There were shouts and general drunken brawl type noises drifting in a violent way towards him. The brawlers in question were not quite in view yet, but it was obvious that they were in front and to the left, in a horrible type of ‘in front and to the left as in just where I am heading’ kind of way that churned in Crachet’s stomach. He tucked himself into a small crevice in the wall near some steps.

Hey! Who’s that up there? Oi, you! You up the steps! The shout echoed around his head. It had actually come from a second direction; his immediate left, down the steps, and it caused him to jump in shock. This was the last straw and he turned and sprinted back the way he had come.

A couple of minutes later Crachet was back standing next to ‘FINE ART’. The friendly, if anonymous, chap on the significantly lesser-known horse was a way back and off to his left. From this commanding position he monitored the fight as it drifted down Farringdon Road and across into the realms of Smithfield Market and the Barbican beyond. It was now safe for him to walk up Farringdon road, but there was still the source of the second shout to worry about and this would involve avoiding Charterhouse Street altogether. There was only one thing for it.

Crachet found himself staring back down the dark steps. The shortcut. The very dark shortcut that would probably become infinitely long once any person chose to set foot inside its depths. But then again, at least the grunting noises had stopped; it was probably just a tramp sleeping in the little shelter that the steps offered. All he had to do was to step carefully past the tramp, who would probably be too drunk and tired to be disturbed by any noise, and sneak off into the welcoming light of Farringdon Road.

He stepped onto the first step and stopped breathing, no breath went in or out at all for the whole time he was in the dark. He slowly stepped down until he could sense that in front of him was the large floor area where the steps made a sweeping turn down onto the road below. He reasoned that anyone sleeping here would be in towards the wall and so he made a firm deliberate step onto the middle of the floor.

In the middle of the floor, a large soft tramp’s head was restfully sleeping and awaiting a pointy con man’s foot to sink into its mouth. Crachet, who wasn’t used to stepping into people’s mouths tripped and fell into a pile of boxes.

Aaaaaaaargh, Feggov ya gurt garrenkin boosta.

Crachet screamed, as he had never had the floor swear at him and then fell into another pile of boxes, which punched him hard in the stomach.

Hoggat wid ya.Andee, ez et dem fagging pigs agen??

Nah, raggleman, jest a fagging dozy boosta wid a case a summit

The part of the body that takes over in these situations and automatically lifts you out of trouble failed to ever kick in and it was several punches and another fall later that Crachet found himself with his case intact on Farringdon Road. He began to walk up the road towards Clerkenwell Gardens. He hated this place so much, the Di Farellos knew how much he hated it and that’s why every meeting was always usually around the same location. They obviously did it deliberately. Still, he had already been shouted at and attacked violently, his bad experience quota for the night was well spent and things could only get better from here on in.

It had all been going so well, the amount of money moving around had been phenomenal. Huge astronomical sums of cash had been bounced across continents with all the ease of a child throwing a ball against a wall. And with each new transaction, the money was getting more and more towards the worthy sum of a final glittering prize.

There were arms deals and drugs deals spanning the globe involving all the major criminal gangs of the world and several governments too. The Di Farellos were rubbing shoulders (albeit through trusted contacts) with multi-national corporations, charity agencies, the secret services of several countries, freemasons, politicians, corrupt police officers and judges, and a long list of other mind numbingly vast and powerful contacts. The Sicilian clan had graduated beyond the mere prehistoric crime of simple drug smuggling; they were skimming money from UN and EU resources through several hundred false charities and businesses and they were involved in some of the more serious aspects of the illicit arms market. Whereas other gangs were smuggling machine guns and grenades hidden in freezer lorries, the Di Farellos were shifting warheads, tanks, planes, and stockpiling many of the world’s extremist movements, terrorists and dictatorships.

Of the two Di Farellos, it was Salvatore who was clearly the grand puppet-master of this vast global criminal empire. His brother, Luciano, was destined to be a comparatively small time hood, always living in the shadow of his infinitely more successful elder. Luciano was brash, too vocal to ever be safely discrete and generally thought of as the loose connection that would eventually send Salvatore down for good, if that ever happened.

But few people ever believed that Salvatore Di Farello would see the inside of a prison cell. It was clear that he knew that his younger brother was brash, too vocal to be discrete and generally the sort of person who could send the whole operation down the pan if he were ever to be trusted with any important task or delicate information. But being a staunch believer in the unity of the family, Salvatore would often throw small crumb operations to Luciano in order to keep him busy, but only after ensuring that the task was foolproof enough for Luciano to carry out safely.

It was for this reason that all the law enforcement groups attempting to take Salvatore down concentrated their efforts on Luciano. Salvatore was the big fish, the corner stone of the whole outfit, but there was no way that any effort to dig up any dirt on Salvatore would ever yield a usable result in court. Salvatore was infamous for his security in all things criminal; he used codes that didn’t sound anything like the obvious codes of most criminals, he ensured he was always several steps removed from any incrimination, he was well connected to the best political protection corruption could buy and he had a team of lawyers that could manipulate any judge and jury on the globe. Basically, Di Farello was untouchable, and had regularly humiliated scores of police officers and prosecutors in a string of show-trial acquittals.

But Luciano was different. Despite Salvatore’s efforts, the younger brother would insist on occasionally embarking on his own ventures and set up operations for which he had spent a number of years inside at various times. Several groups were continuously monitoring Luciano’s every move, convinced that he would make that one fatal mistake, that one careless slip that would lead them to even a scrap of evidence to get Salvatore put inside for good. Few of them actually believed that they would ever achieve this. The FBI had tried and failed, the Italian DIA had made several attempts without success, the Metropolitan police had launched various cases without even a parking ticket sticking and it was rumoured that HM Customs and Excise were about to launch their seventh major inquiry into the Di Farello’s vast import/export interests.

That was one of the main reasons that Crachet had wanted to get near to Salvatore’s vast empire, he could amass a huge amount of cash and plan the ultimate rip off without any fear of arrest, he could sit under the protection of the Don whilst safely planning his retirement on another continent paid for with stolen mob money. Now maybe that part of it was stupid, why not just work for the Mafia and live off the income? But just think of the sense of victory he could have writing his memoirs—’How I robbed the Mob and lived’. Now that would be something, a real legacy to leave in the criminal world, then surely even his mother would be proud and smile down on him…then again, that was maybe stretching it a bit far.

Crachet drifted back into the cold dark reality of the night ahead. He wandered across the