Graham did take the bus from wherever he was in Rotterdam to Rotterdam train station, and was also impressed with the efficient Dutch public transport. He also took the train from Rotterdam to Amsterdam, and was amazed that such a journey only took half an hour. He also had the time to feel a bit lonely. He had set out on Friday morning, and now it was Monday afternoon. In that time, he had done more outrageous things than he had in ten years – there were likely to be ramifications to his night of drinking he would never know, and as for the whole thing with being massively stoned… At any rate, these would have been awesome times to be had, if he had had anyone to share them with. His old friends from university, some of Miranda’s friends who she wasn’t suspicious he was going to cheat on her with (yes, even the guys), fuck it, even some of the brainless corporate drones from work would have been nice. And so far, he had only found literal mad people, drunken students, and contemptuous public service people. While he had quite successfully gotten away from Miranda… shit. He realised that it was umpteen days later, and he still hadn’t gotten rid of his SIM card. Thankfully, he had been spared by his battery going flat, so he flicked the little chip out of the back of his phone, and threw it in a nearby bin. Problem solved.
As he was thinking, he had gotten away from Miranda, but he had also gotten away from anyone he could have talked to as well. Any time he hadn’t spent inadvertently off of his face, he had been thinking about what stupid things he had done off of his face, and re-reading the two books he had packed in his bag, and after only a few days, this was depressing all by itself. He was a social animal, part of the reason he had run away was because Miranda had stopped him seeing people. On reflection, it wasn’t the best plan anyone had every come up with, but since he’d started it, he thought, he might as well carry it out to wherever it went. If only he had someone to keep him company.
* * *
In an unrelated series of events, Pies and Dave were back in Hull, sat in front of the telly. This was not a surprising turn of events in the least, Pies loved being sat in front of the telly with a large pork pie, and Dave liked watching telly with people. Unfortunately, Pies was even more of a stuck record than he normally was.
“Mate, you remember the other night, with that Graham bloke? That was a fucking mint night, that was! Man, I hope he comes back, that was the best fucking night ever!”
“I know, you keep reminding me,” sighed Dave.
“Because it was fucking AWESOME!” Pies shouted. Dave sighed again. They only had to kill half an hour of TV time, then there was a show about massive car crashes on an obscure freeview channel, and then they could go out, get plastered, and he’d eventually not notice what Pies was on about. But the only thing on was the news. And the main thing on the news seemed to be a fugitive fleeing the country with “unknown substances”, attempting to bring them to known terrorists on the continent. They showed a photofit picture.
“Its Graham!” shouted Pies.
“Bloody hell, so it is!” declared Dave.
“And the police are after him!”
“Looks like it, mate.”
“Does he know?”
“Does he know? How would I know that?”
“We need to… to go save him! Yeah! It’ll be a mission! We’ve got to, man!”
“We?”
“I’d go, but I don’t have a car.”
“And you think I can bunk off lectures to go running off after a criminal we just happened to get pissed with the other week?”
“Yeah!”
“Who I set up to be carrying illegal shit in the first place.”
“Yeah!”
“And you remember how they’re going to kick me out of uni if I miss any more lectures?”
“Yeah, but… but mate! Legendary!”
“What about the time we went drinking with that man with the dreadlocks…”
“He was legendary too!”
“And he stole Jerry’s bike? Was that legendary?”
Suddenly, Pies had an idea.
“Well, look at it this way, mate, you got your cousin to get him that job, so its on your conscience if you end up sending down some randomer.”
“He asked… no, you asked me to find him work! Don’t pull that round on me!”
“He thought you meant, like, carrying letters or shit, and he’s in some mad shit. And now the old bill are after him. Your call, mate.”
And with that, Pies got up from the sofa, which surprised Dave more than the half decent argument he’d put together.
Pies stomped despondently upstairs, with an incongruously big grin on his face. He’d be going to Holland, and it’d be a fucking mint time.
Which wasn’t what Miranda was having at all. She had called Graham’s manager back, to find out what the hell was going on.
“Hello, managers office…”
“Its Miranda, where is my husband?”
“Pardon me?”
“Graham didn’t come home last night, he said the training was for the weekend, I want answers.”
“You’ll have a bit of trouble getting them out of me, he didn’t say where he was going…”
“The hell he didn’t tell you! You told me it was a company organised training retreat!”
“What? I said no such thing!”
“Well, where is he?”
“I don’t know! He told me he had organised some external training, and was going to be away for several months! I thought you…”
“Several months?!?”
Miranda was horrified. He had run away! What the hell was going on here?
“Mrs Burricombe? Are you there?”
A brief pause, as Miranda digested this news, and came to a few conclusions.
“I’m not Mrs Burricome, I’m Ms Miranda Sefton, and I want you to tell me everything.”
“I have told you everyth…”
“Well, either you haven’t, or you’re lying out of your arse, and I will sue you for every penny you’ve got if I find you’re keeping my husband away from me, do you understand?”
The manager thoroughly understood, repeated everything he’d already said, and told her he’d let her know if he remembered anything else. Miranda could be incredibly scary when she was angry, and he didn’t want to be in the way when she was really pissed off.
Neither did the man who called her from the train station, who called her fifteen minutes after she’d finished shouting in the manager’s ear.
“Hello, is that Mr Graham Burricombe?”
“No, he’s run off somewhere, I’m his fiancé, what the hell do you want?”
“Well, I’m calling from the train station lost property, and we’re wondering what to do with the bag he said he’d pick up on Friday…”
“What bag?”
“Its an old bag, we haven’t looked at it, but he left it with us, arranged to collect it in Friday, and never did.”
Miranda had already been planning to head up to the police station, to complain very loudly about the man from the other day, and to file a missing person report. Perhaps this bag might provide some answers.”
“I’ll come and collect it myself, have it ready in fifteen minutes, or I will break your face in. Understand?”
“I’m afraid we can’t take threats of violence, madam…”
“Well, you won’t have to, as long as I take that bag.” With that, she slammed the phone down, grabbed her coat and car keys, and stormed out of the front door.
She would have been a lot happier if she had waited another five minutes, as the phone started to ring almost as soon as she’d set out the front door. It continued to ring until it went over to answer phone, and then a message was left.
* * *
“Went over to answer phone this time, so I’ve managed to leave a message”, said Agent Townsend.
“Thank god, we’ve got somewhere at last. Have we contacted the Dutch authorities, let them know what’s going on?”
“Yes we have, and they’ll have surveilance on the location Winterton confessed, Amsterdam airport, and train station in no time at all.”
“Do they know how urgent this is? We already missed this guy because we didn’t get surveilance on him quickly enough.”
“I’ll get back on them about it.”
“So you will. Now, do we know what sort of thing he’s actually smuggling yet?”
“Once again, you’re the man who knows more than I… Hallo? Krijg de hoofdcommissaris. Ja, weet ik deze tekst slecht vertaald is, nam ik het de website met de vissen door. Krijgt lacht u de hoofdcommissaris, of omdat ik een module van mijn graad op een Nederlandse taalcursus verspilde ik niet de helft van kan herinneren? Ga met het verder!”
Leaving Agent Townsend to break the fourth wall in Dutch, Agent Stevenson went through to the ops room. The ops room, in this case, was the office in Hull Police Station he had commandeered to run the operation. And until I had that thought, I too was imagining a darkened room, walls lined with monitors, people tapping away at keyboards and talking into headset mikes. No, there were two computers, and while people were tapping away, it was more like one person and whichever agent was there at the time. But there was one TV on, showing the news report of the case he was working on at that very moment.
“Who the fuck leaked that to the press?” he fumed. This was supposed to be a maximum security, high clearance case, and it was on the BBC afternoon news? He was not impressed whatsoever, and threw a polystyrene cup of water at the screen. While a coffee cup might have been nice and dramatic and would have shattered the screen, the cup of water simply sprayed water everywhere and bounced off. Agent Stevenson swore again. This case was getting out of hand already.