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I chuckled to myself. Maybe she would say the same thing about me? After all, were we not in exactly the same position? Both of us forced into a situation we didn’t want to be for the sake of our families? The difference was, she wanted to go through with it, while I’d rather shave my balls with a rusty razor than end up as a married man.
Lost in thought as I was, the drive back to the house went by quickly. I used my buzzer to open the gates and the garage beyond. They both opened swiftly, and I drove through and straight into the confines of the garage. The gates had swung shut behind me, but I still wanted more security so also closed the garage doors behind me. I stopped the car and climbed out, then clapped twice to turn on the lights. It was a double garage with plenty of space, and a workbench that I never used for anything that had to do with DIY.
I retrieved the holdall from the car and carried it over to the bench. I opened it and took out one of the bundles of notes. Using a flick knife from my pocket—kept there in case of emergencies—I slit open the top of the cellophane. I took out the first of the fifty quid notes, sliding it between my fingers, testing it for the quality and authenticity. I nodded, pleased with what I’d got.
Keeping going, I flicked through the rest of the bundle, and paused. My heart lurched. What the fuck was this? Beneath the first layer of notes were yet more fifties, but these were different. I could tell by touch alone that they were in no way the same quality as the initial ones, and I slid one out and held it up to the light. The money was a terrible forgery. It looked as though whoever had made it hadn’t even bothered trying. Creating a replica bank note that would pass all checks took time and skill, and the things that were hidden beneath the high-quality notes could have been made by a child with an Etch A Sketch.
I snatched up my phone and swiped to call Sly. I didn’t even let him speak. “Have you checked your goods?”
“What? No, not yet. I just got home.”
“Check it, now. I’ll stay on the line.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Just do it.”
There was a rustle and a pause as I assumed he was moving to wherever he’d left the cash. I paced back and forth across my garage, wishing he’d hurry the fuck up. If I’d been there, I’d have had him by the throat by now and thrown him at the bag.
Heavy breathing, and then his voice again. “Okay, I opened the bag. What’s wrong?”
“Did you open one of the bundles?”
“Hang on, I’m doing it now.”
“Fucking do it.” I was losing my temper.
“Tam, I don’t understand what you’re getting at...”
“The money, it’s fake.”
He hesitated. “Wasn’t that the plan?”
“Check it again. Someone’s switched out our money for a crap version.”
Why wasn’t he getting it? Surely, he could see that this was an inferior version to what we’d paid for. Unless the bundles he’d taken hadn’t been switched, but I couldn’t see how it was possible since we’d shared them out without any kind of organisation.
“I guess...maybe it could be different,” he said.
“I fucking knew it.” I kicked out at the workbench, sending the stack of forged money on the top fluttering to the floor. “Motherfuckers.”
Someone was going to pay for this. You didn’t rip off the Cornells and get away with it. The question was, who was responsible for the dud money? Surely the original forgers who we’d bought the cash from at a ridiculously low price hadn’t been dumb enough to switch it. They’d know we’d go straight back to them and cause them problems. So that meant it was someone along the transport route. How many different hands had it been in over that time? There would have been transport from the forgers to the lorry where it would then have been taken to the port. At the port, it would have been loaded into the logging container. The container would then have been placed on the ship, where it took several days’ travel to reach London. Numerous people would have had access to the container then, but how many of them had knowledge of what was inside and would be able to make the switch without being seen? No, my instincts told me that the switch would have been done before the container had been loaded onto the ship, which meant it had happened in Estonia. I wanted to believe our contact at the port here in the UK wouldn’t be stupid enough to try such a thing—he knew what would happen if he was caught—and besides, we paid him well. Screwing us in a deal like this wouldn’t work well for him either, but when things went wrong, someone had to pay, and we’d need to be sure he had nothing to do with it.
Even so, my instincts told me that we needed to look further afield, to a country where people might not know the name Cornell as they did in London. If I had to go to another country to make sure whoever fucked us had my family name on his lips as he died, then so be it.
