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.
