Page 61 of The Impossible Fortune

‘And you can’t show me down there?’ Ron asks.

‘We’d need a client with us,’ says Bill. ‘The only way you could get down there is to persuade a client to bring you along, and persuade me to let you accompany them.’

The two men go quiet for a moment.

‘What have they got in their box?’ Bill asks. ‘Holly and Nick?’

‘Something worth stealing,’ says Ron. ‘Is there any way you can change their code? Something like that?’

Bill shakes his head. ‘Only Holly and Nick could change it.’

‘So it’s just sitting there?’ says Ron.

‘I mean, behind about fifty doors, and retinal identifiers and fingerprint scans,’ says Bill. ‘But, apart from that, yeah, it’s just sitting there.’

‘Thanks for trusting me,’ says Ron.

Bill nods. ‘Thanks for trusting me. Jesus, I can’t believe she’s dead. Who did it?’

Isn’t that the question? Ron is thinking.

The two men are alone with their thoughts for a minute.

‘We need to get that box open,’ says Ron. ‘Before someone else does.’

‘Well, best of luck, Ronnie,’ laughs Bill. ‘You need four things. Me, Holly’s half of the code, Nick’s half of the code and a client. And so far all you’ve got is me.’

‘Bill,’ says Ron, putting his hand on the big man’s shoulder, ‘remember the strike in 1974? Everyone against us. The government, the coppers, the courts? Powerful people. Bullies. They threw everything at us, and we never buckled, we never raised the white flag, and we never gave in.’

Bill nods, heartened, then has another thought. ‘I mean, we did lose though.’

‘Course we lost,’ says Ron. ‘We always lost. But we gave it a bloody good go, eh?’

33

Connie Johnson sits cross-legged on a coconut mat, eyes closed. One way or another it has been a stressful week, and she is enjoying the ‘Sounds of the Rainforest’ playlist on Spotify. She has had to take out a premium subscription now, because you can’t meditate when the sounds of the rainforest are interrupted every fifteen minutes by adverts for Burger King Whopper Meal Deals.

She breathes in slowly through her mouth and counts to three, then breathes out slowly through her nose for a count of six. A lot of people are resentful that she is back on the street. She’d been able to control her empire fairly well from her prison cell. The Wi-Fi could be patchy at times, due to the thickness of prison walls, but, all in all, deliveries arrived when they were supposed to, suppliers were paid on time and cash continued to be laundered in an orderly fashion. But the odd two or three dealers had got ideas above their station during her unfortunate absence, and she is having to deal with them one by one, which has been time-consuming, and stressful. More stressful for them, Connie admits that, but she has still earned a bit of down time in her yoga annexe. Though she doesn’t often have two guests with her.

‘And find your centre,’ Connie says. ‘Find your centre, and let a flower bloom. Let the petals unfurl and catch thesun. Feel the warmth and feel the beauty. Let your mind drift on the breeze. Let your thoughts fade into nothing.’

She hears Tia hum in contentment.

‘I understand the principle,’ says Ibrahim, also cross-legged. ‘But I can’t let my thoughts fade into nothing without thinking about my thoughts fading into nothing, so I now have a new thought in my head, the thought of thoughts fading to nothing, and what am I to do with that thought? It’s cyclical.’

Connie opens her eyes. ‘You don’t love being “in the moment”, do you, Ibrahim?’

‘I don’t,’ says Ibrahim. ‘The trouble with the moment is that there’s always another moment on its way, and I find constantly being in them exhausting.’

‘Truth,’ says Tia.

‘But you tell me all the time to relax,’ says Connie. ‘To find a new way of thinking and being.’

‘Yes, I think it’s all well and good for other people,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I just can’t manage it myself.’

Connie is not entirely sure what Ibrahim is doing here today. Has she ever seen him on a Sunday before? She doesn’t think so. But he asked to pop round, and she’d told him he’d be very welcome if he didn’t mind joining her and Tia for a spot of yoga as they talked.

Connie pushes herself up. ‘How about a whisky?’