After months of meticulous planning I sprang into action
and kidnapped Randall, the tycoon, from his fifth mansion.
I bundled him into the back of the car and gagged him quite tightly
and took him to a remote Scottish location.
From that craggy, windy hideout I put the word out
that I had Randall, and made it known there was a ransom.
A million pounds, no more, no less. And I would return him
unharmed and I would disappear forever too.
That night, I took a call from someone using a voice changing box
so they sounded like the teacher in Charlie Brown cartoons.
They said: we will pay you two million pounds
so ask no questions and we will make the exchange
we know where you are and who you are
withdraw that ransom demand and the money is yours
Anyway it turned out that Randall had been waiting for me
the whole time as he had wanted to get the hell out of Dodge for ages
So I got paid well and discreetly, and off he popped in a hovercraft
and was never seen again. Everyone thinks he's dead, and he likes it that way.
Some time passed, and over a period of several months I’d managed
to finagle my way into the select inner circle of the widow Albertini.
Nouveau riche, I was, after a fashion. In fact, the rumours were
that I had invented some kind of new style of belt that had
swept the Milan catwalks that season. Well. I didn’t ever deny it.
I knew she was prone to sleeping alone and I meant to take her
and so I finessed my plan: I mapped out her nightly routine
and after a certain party I hid in the disabled toilet, waiting for the
automatic light to flicker off. I’d never been so still in my life.
And, oh, the cramp. But that’s part of the job isn’t it.
When everyone had gone home, I padded up the staff stairs, like a guilty housecat.
I stalked close to the wall to avoid setting off any alarms,
And eventually I very gently turned the handle to her bedroom.
There she was, the glorious widow Albertini, lightly snoring
under silk sheets, partly lit by a generous lovers’ moon.
I approached the bed. She turned over, gasped herself half-awake
and, without directly looking at me, peeled back the sheet
and with an elegant palm patted the space next to her.
I got in, willingly, and was Big Spoon that night, and it was lovely.
Anyway I think she’s my girlfriend now.
The Glittering Eye of Kazakh is the biggest, most flawless ruby ever found
and it was on rare display at the National Museum. Well, obviously
I put a daring plan in place, and abseiled down in the middle of the night
from the skylight, and disabled the laser-light grid around it, and replaced the Eye
with a very carefully-crafted replica of equal weight, size and more-or-less similar carat.
I mean, this thing cost me a bloody bomb. It was a thing of beauty in itself.
But against the Real Eye it was – to an expert – a piece of dog mess.
Thing is, most people weren’t experts so once I’d made the exchange nobody noticed,
and if the experts had noticed, they weren’t letting on. It was too embarassing
for them to acknowledge that their failsafe system had been so easily breached.
They’d said it was un-stealable. And so life went on as it was before
and people paid to come and see the ersatz Eye, and said oooo and aaaah
because my jewellery man had done such a wonderful job.
So now I was stuck with the Glittering Eye of Kazakh. I couldn’t sell it.
Nobody believed it was the real one. And those who did believe it was the real one
wouldn’t admit it, because that made them in some way complicit.
So I used it to prop the shed door closed and forgot about it.
A year or so later, someone broke into my shed and stole my lawnmower.
The Eye was untouched of course. I was really gutted about the whole thing
because it was a really good Flymo, and had those ace blades
that were sturdy and sharp enough to get incredibly consistent edging
whilst being flexible enough to slip over stones and snails without getting damaged.
