‘Iraq, Iran, Syria. They’d loot temples, archaeologists some of them, robbers all of them. Smuggle them out. I’ve seen stuff come up from time to time, stuff that shouldn’t be for sale, stuff you’d do serious time for. But I never saw nothing like this. Hoo boy, not never. Those clever Afghan boys were smuggling a box worth tens of millions into the country, Mitch, and they never even told you. That’s why everyone’s killing everyone. No one cares about your hundred grand.’
Mitch points his gun at Joyce now. ‘Give me the box. Now!’
Garth points his gun at Mitch. ‘No, Joyce, give me the box now.’
‘No one else needs to get hurt,’ says Mitch. ‘This is my box, fair’s fair. I’ll take it, I’ll give it back to Hanif, no more guns, and no more trouble.’
‘Dude, my wife died,’ says Garth, gun still trained. ‘I’m having the box.’
Mitch swings around to point his gun at Garth.
‘Perhaps there’s one more death to come?’
‘Perhaps there is,’ says Garth.
Mitch unlocks the safety on his gun. Garth unlocks the safety on his.
‘Boys,’ says Joyce. ‘I don’t mean to spoil your fun, but I don’t have the box any more.’
‘No, no,’ says Mitch. ‘Not when I’m this close.’
‘It was under my sink for a few days, but it started to smell quite musty. Alan didn’t like it one bit, so I put it out for the binmen yesterday,’ says Joyce. ‘It’ll be at the Tunbridge Wells tip by now.’
What a day we’ve had of it. Alan and I are both pooped. He is face down on the rug with his tongue out, and I’m just going to get everything down on paper before bed. I’m going to do it as a list, in the order of everything that happened today, as I’m very sleepy.
They have had almond milk in the shop for some while now, but I had never paid it much attention until my row with Joanna. I was pretending to browse there earlier and I saw two people pick it up and put it back down again. You can just feel it’s going to catch on. I sent Joanna a photograph of me next to it with a thumbs-up, but no reply yet. I think she is in Denmark for work, so perhaps the message hasn’t got through.
Alan was chased by a squirrel. Honestly, I wish he would defend himself sometimes. He ended up hiding behind my legs as the squirrel stopped about five yards in front of me and stared.
There is a new afternoon quiz show on ITV called
The man calling himself Jeremmy came down from London to visit us, with a large holdall, hoping someone was going to give him five thousand pounds. As so often when people think they are going to be able to get things from us, he left disappointed. Tea, biscuits, a good gossip? Yes, we will provide you with those. Money, heroin, diamonds? No. Anyway, we used the heroin we dug up the other day, and, long story short, Mervyn has his money back and Jeremmy is going to prison.
There was something different about Ibrahim. Don’t ask me what, but I will find out when there aren’t quite so many distractions.
Mitch Maxwell and Garth (I’m sorry, I realize I don’t know his last name) came in with guns to get (so we thought) the heroin. We told them the police had it, and you could tell that Mitch was devastated (I’m not sure how much he enjoys his job) but Garth laughed, and we soon found out why.
The heroin wasn’t the issue at all. It was the box. It’s six thousand years old, and it protects you from evil or something along those lines. Though it is doing a fairly bad job of that, I would say. Elizabeth said she had already worked it out, but, honestly, I think she just worked it out in that second, because she had said nothing to us about it. But it was nice to see her on the front foot again, so I didn’t say any of that, I just said, ‘Well done.’
I told them I had put the box out for the binmen and Mitch Maxwell went as white as a ghost – you could see clean through him. He ran. For his life, I suppose. Garth took it in good part and said, ‘Them’s the breaks,’ which is a fun expression, and then we all had a cup of tea. He said how well he thought we had handled everything, and if we ever needed a job to come and talk to him. Then he and Elizabeth spoke for a while and I left them to it.
As Garth was leaving, he spotted the ‘Picasso’ I’d picked up from Kuldesh’s lock-up. As he was looking at it, I told him I knew it was a fake, but I liked it anyway, and he shook his head and told me it was real. Apparently his wife produced most of the fakes in the UK. ‘This is Picasso, not my wife,’ were his exact words. So I own a Picasso. I texted this to Joanna too, but, again, I think maybe the internet is slow in Denmark. They definitely
