The Rich and The Dead

Chapter 1

Thursday. The day of Irina Lothario's murder

Irina Lothario was sitting in one of those cheap, chrome plated, tubular steel kitchen chairs, one upholstered in that revolting, old fashioned colour, known as burnt orange. Her wrists and ankles were strapped to the chair's frame with cable ties and her head had slumped forward due to the combination of being dead and the heavy, weight of the cast steel garden pick someone had driven into the top of her head.

She was, or rather had been, forty eight years old. She’d been married and had just one child. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a slim build. If she'd been able to stand she'd have been one point seven two metres tall, not including the pick head. Sixteen years ago she'd been a Russian national. Fifteen years ago she'd moved to Australia to be with her new husband, and eleven years ago the government had granted her Australian citizenship. She'd been dead exactly thirty two minutes and eighteen seconds.

DC Jayne Usher pulled out her little black note book and started taking little black notes.

Welcome back to Cairns DI Daniels, she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

Yea, thanks. Place hasn't changed much, I replied.

My name is Andrew Daniels and as DC Usher had just reminded me, I'm a Detective Inspector. I'm one point nine metres tall or six foot three, weight ninety eight muscular kilos, (Don't ask me what that is in imperial!) and I'm thirty three years old. Some days, like this one, I feel as if I'm ninety three years old. Some days I wish I was. At least then I'd be retired and wouldn't have to put up with shit days like the one DC Usher and I are currently having. Still, I have to admit, our day is unquestionably, infinitely better, than Mrs Lothario's.

Some of you may have already heard of me. If not, here's an excerpt from my personal CV. Until recently I was married to a wonderful woman called Rachel who was the mother of my little boy, Adam. He's seven. I've been a cop for a little over twelve years and three years ago I received a commendation for bravery from the Prime Minister, Nick Xenaphon (which is the only reason I imagine some of you may have heard of me.)

After twelve years I'm proud to say I still have a well defined sense of justice which, I hope, is balanced nicely against a profound belief in the rule of law. I have been told by some I'm passably good looking, I have a rich baritone voice and my hobbies are....well, let's just say holding down a full time job and bringing up a seven year old boy doesn't leave much time for anything else. But even though I don't always succeed, I always try to make every day I spend above ground worthwhile.

I used to be based at the Roma Street Police Headquarters in the state capital of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. But after my wife Rachel died I decided to return home to Cairns, the northern most city in the state. That way Adam and I could be closer to my parents. They’re the only family we have left now.

Cairns is in a beautiful part of the world, Far North Queensland, Australia. It's known as The Wet Tropics and unlike most of Australia, which is dry and arid, the area gets good rainfall and is consequently very lush and green. Occasionally it gets hot, but more often it gets even hotter. Of course, it's not all wine and roses in the tropics. Not only do we have searing temperatures, we also have salt water crocodiles, the occasional cyclone, deadly box jellyfish and venomous snakes and spiders. Not to mention the pervasive and insidious threat of Country and Western music. We also have sharks, but thankfully unlike the crocs, they'll only attack you if you're wet.

My late wife Rachel and I grew up in Cairns. We even went to the same high school together. We weren't a couple during that time, but we got together shortly after I returned from my induction into the Queensland Police Service twelve years ago. My parents still live in this beautiful tropical city, so I suppose the decision about where to go after Adam's mother died was largely made for us. I know I'm going to need help with bringing up my son, and grandparents seem to have an inbuilt genetic predisposition to understanding everything there is to know about child rearing. Adam and I have been back just three and a bit weeks. All things considered, so far so good.

Or to put it another way, the two Daniels boys are barely keeping it together

My offsider, the inimitable Detective Constable Jayne Usher, has been my partner in crime prevention for just sixteen hours. She's a gorgeous strawberry blonde, who’s around twenty five years old, (a gentleman never asks). She's one point five metres tall, with a full, womanly figure and pale skin which her genetic make up has lightly peppered with a dusting of slightly less pale freckles. She's got full pouty lips, a beautiful smile and a cute overbite which makes me feel that at any moment she's going to blow me a kiss. After just sixteen hours, I've already come to the conclusion she's also as sharp as a tack.

I like being partnered with a female police officer. Generally I think most women cops are every bit as good as their male counterparts and quite a few are a lot better. I also like the way they think differently from us blokes. Okay it's a bit of a generalisation, but women are a bit more sensitive than we are and this allows them to see things from a different perspective. Okay, they may have difficulty in understanding the well known biological fact that the only reason farting stinks is so deaf people know when to laugh, and that may cause a bit of a problem if Jayne and I are ever stuck in a car on a long stakeout together, but that's a small price to pay for having a good, obviously intuitive sidekick.

Having said that, I wasn't really wanting a female partner when I first moved back to Cairns. I'll admit that losing Rachel has left me a bit fragile and although it might seem a bit strange, I can't cope with a lot of well meaning sympathy right now. Maybe it's my ego talking, but baring my soul to a sensitive female partner would make me feel weak. I'd much rather put up with the uncomfortable silences and occasional friendly cuff on the shoulder that a male comrade would offer.

So how come I now find myself with an opposite gender side-kick? Well, Jayne's a little different from most female police officers, you see DC Jayne Usher may be a great police officer, but she's also gay and for some totally inexplicable reason, many of the other (read male) officers feel uncomfortable working with her. As if her very existence, threatens their masculinity. Me, I couldn't care less if Jayne's a lesbian. But luckily for her, Jayne's hairdresser girlfriend Megan, a cute brunette hailing from the Emerald Isle does. Luckily, she's similarly inclined. Isn't it nice how some things work out?

As it happened, Jayne didn't have a work partner when I arrived and so she and I ended up as a team.

Before formalising our alliance, my new boss, Superintendent Peter Miles, asked me how I felt about being partnered with a woman cop, I told him I didn't have a problem with it and he had nothing to worry about.

But how do you feel about working with a lesbian woman? he asked hesitatingly, sitting up straight in his seat and adopting what he obviously felt was a no nonsense posture. No doubt he was preparing himself to leap to the defence of 'his' sexually diverse law enforcement officer should I give the wrong answer.

It's got nothing to do with me Sir, I replied. But as far as I'm concerned, apparently she and her girlfriend love each other. I can't see how that can be a bad thing. Though from a work point of view, I've been told she can get a bit distracted when she's down wind of the fish market.

Okay I made that last bit up.

D'you want to have a quick look around before the forensic guys get here Andrew? Jayne asked. Maybe we should just leave them to it and go let Mr Lothario know we've found his wife's body?

Hmmm. Yea, maybe. Naturally we'd better let the forensics guys process the actual crime scene before we blunder in and possibly contaminate any possible evidence. But we'll just take some photos in here, carefully check the other rooms and the perimeter outside, then drive over and inform Mr Lothario.

Jayne agreed. We went back to the car and armed ourselves with plastic overshoes, gloves and those extremely fashionable, chic hair covers we knew we should wear but really didn't want to, then re-entered the house. Both of us knew we had to be extremely careful not to contaminate the crime scene. So every room we entered, every step we took, every surface, object or item of possible interest we inspected was done with the utmost care and then noted in Jayne’s notebook. The last thing either of us wanted to do, was to accidentally destroy vital evidence.

The house was an older, three bedroom, one bathroom, low set dwelling which had been constructed around the late nineteen forties. It was built out of timber, with timber weatherboard on the outside, and plywood wall panelling on the inside. Someone had slapped black paint on the inside of the windows to keep out prying eyes, but the walls themselves hadn't been repainted in years. They were coloured a particularly revolting shade of pale, baby shit, brown. The floors were covered in a cheap, black and white chequered vinyl which was badly stained in places, and had yellowed and hardened with age, curling up along the edges near the walls. There was an old, tubular steel framed single bed in one of the bedrooms, with one of those cheap plastic, seat and bucket, camping toilets beside it. Apart from the burnt orange vinyl chair currently supporting the recently deceased Mrs Irina Lothario, there was no other furniture anywhere in the house. The mattress on the bed was stained with sweat and smelt of urine and there were leather restraining straps attached top and bottom to the bed's frame. In the back bedroom we found a twenty seven metre long electrical cable wrapped loosely around the room's door handle. Each end of the cable had had the insulation stripped back about 300 millimetres from the end exposing the three inner wires. The ends of these wires had also been stripped of insulation and the inner copper cores exposed. I inspected the wires and found, as expected, that the copper ends had been twisted to stop them fraying and there was a tiny flat spot on the side of each core where it had been connected into either an electrical appliance, or more than likely, the next door neighbours fusebox. There was also a big yellow industrial workshop light, on its own stand, perched in the middle of the floor. Jayne reached over to the light switch next to the bedroom door and gingerly flicked on the light, confirming what we'd both already surmised. The power to the house had been disconnected, probably months ago.

Next we went outside. The grass around the house looked as if it hadn't been mown in over a year and there was a distinct track leading through it, around the side of the house towards the back garden. Confirming my earlier suspicions, the track lead to a power-pole and an open meter box. The main circuit breaker inside the box had been by-passed and someone, undoubtedly Irina's killer, had cut the wires and tapped into the live feed.

At the rear of the neighbours house someone had connected a garden hose to a water tap fixed to the back wall and fed it through the window into the kitchen of number 96. It appeared the water had also been disconnected.

Jayne grabbed hold of my arm and pointed at the ground directly under the kitchen window.

Look, she said. So I did. There in the damp mud below the window was a perfect shoe print. It was a man's shoe print, a large man's, a left shoe and, I guessed, around size twelve or thirteen. From the heavy tread pattern it was probably some form of industrial work or hiking boot. We found another print, this one slightly deformed near the edge of the footpath leading to the front of the house. Sadly these were the only clues we found before the forensic guys turned up.

Eight minutes later we reluctantly relinquished the scene of Irina Lothario's brutal murder over to crime scene super-tech John Williamson and his team. Jayne had worked with John many times before and she assured me the site was in good hands.

Something is badly out of place here Andrew, Jayne proclaimed as she piloted our unmarked Ford, back through the side streets of Manunda and headed towards Palm Cove. D'you know what I mean?

Yep.

As I said, DC Usher is as sharp as a tack. I'll explain her reasoning.

There are three types of kidnapping:

One: a child is abducted by its estranged father or mother. The kid's parents can't get along any more and so get divorced. For some reason, one or the other parent is denied access to junior and Daddy or Mummy can't accept that situation. So they snatch the kid and take them away somewhere, usually on some sort of holiday. In almost every case the child is in no real danger and eventually the situation resolves itself, though the outcome is seldom satisfactory to all concerned.

Two: Some sick fucker, almost always male, snatches some poor woman or little kid off the street for his, and occasionally her, sadistic or sexual pleasure. All cops hate that type of abduction. It shows us the very depths of depravity a human being can stoop to, and even if the victim survives, things never end well.

Three: and this is the type of abduction Jayne and I have been investigating, there's kidnapping for financial or political gain.

Mrs Irina Lothario's husband Oscar is filthy rich. The guy owns a half dozen iron ore and coal mines, real estate worth tens of millions, a fleet of huge cargo ships, a large sailing yacht, two helicopters, and a private jet. He wears jewellery on his left pinkie which is worth more than DC Usher and I will ever earn in our entire lives. The lucky bastard.

Irina was kidnapped two days ago. Oscar was sent an e-mail from an untraceable server, demanding three million dollars in small denomination notes to be delivered to an as yet undisclosed address before midnight on the seventeenth. If Oscar Lothario didn't comply, they would send Irina home. One kilogram at a time.

So how come Mrs L ended up dead? Well, on the one hand, three million is a lot of money even for the likes of Oscar Lothario. But there was simply no question he would ever refuse to pay. Also, and this is very confusing, today's only the sixteenth! Lothario still had sixteen hours before the midnight on the seventeenth deadline expired. Okay Oscar had broken one of the kidnappers demands, he'd called the cops. But Irina's abductors must have known right from the start there was a good chance that would happen. They certainly would have taken that likelihood into consideration when they planned the kidnap, and would have put contingency plans in place to accommodate the possibility Oscar might call in the cavalry. So why murder Irina now? That's the big question. She’s no value to them dead. No one is going to pay three million dollars if they know the hostage has already been murdered. So her death just doesn't make sense. By killing her before the deadline had elapsed, her abductors had quite unnecessarily killed the proverbial 'Golden Goose'.

Also, the method of her murder was strange. Driving a large, sharp, garden tool into her head was far too violent to be just a quick way of getting rid of her. There's real hatred and loathing in such actions. Which led Jayne and I to one inescapable conclusion.

All was not as it seemed.

As far as the who, what, where, why, when and how associated with Mrs Lothario's abduction was concerned, we knew the when and how. Until her kidnapper drove the spike of a garden pick into her skull we also thought we knew the why. Money.

Irina had been snatched from the alleyway behind 'Hair Apparent', her favourite hair salon and beauty parlour, at around 11:30 am on the fourteenth. Which in itself, doesn't quite make sense. Her Chauffeur, Simon Glazer had dropped her off at the salon at 11:00 am and then crossed the street to the Witch Hazel Café where he was to wait until Mrs Lothario's appointment finished at 2:30. When she failed to put in an appearance at the allotted time, Glazer checked with the proprietress of 'Hair Apparent' only to be told that Irina had left, by the back door two and a half hours earlier. She had a regular, weekly appointment at the salon and apparently she did the same thing each and every time she came in. Though, the proprietress informed Glazer, she had normally returned well before her Chauffeur came to pick her up. It appeared Irina Lothario was in the habit of regularly meeting with someone in secret. That someone looked to be our most likely suspect. But who were they?

Curiouser and curiouser, said the white rabbit.

Chapter 2

Fifteen years ago.

It was his first offence . There'd been extenuating circumstances and he'd shown true remorse. He'd also been a model prisoner during the last twenty two months. He'd kept his nose clean, worked hard and uncomplainingly, and he was polite and courteous when dealing with the warder and his staff. All reasons why Graham Skyberry was now being considered for early parole.

Of course in prison it's not always easy to stay out of trouble. There's always someone who believes he needs to make a point, and when you're locked up, walking away isn't always possible. But if you're one point nine three metres tall, had spent the previous six years in the Australian Special Armed Services and could bench press one hundred and twenty kilos, people tend to leave you alone.

Dave Topaz read through Skyberry's case file and smiled. The truth was he felt like laughing. But this was his first time on a parole board and he wasn't exactly sure how the other members of the board might react. Perhaps they would think he wasn't taking things seriously. Luckily for Dave someone else also found Skyberry's case a little absurd.

So let me make sure I have this right, said Pamela Oakdale, a grey haired sixty eight year old spinster who had served on the board regularly since she'd retired from the bench five years ago. "This Skyberry character went to the offices of Associated and Consolidated Insurance Company with the intention of starting up a life insurance policy.'

The prison warder said, Yes. His younger sister became a single mother after her husband died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. She was to be the sole beneficiary.

Skyberry claims that later that evening, his sister's two year old daughter realised she'd left her favourite Teddy Bear in the Associated and Consolidated offices and became very distraught, Oakdale continued.

The prison warder again said, Yes. According to her mother she would not be consoled no matter what they tried.

Pamela Oakdale shook her elaborately coffered head in disbelief and continued to read out loud from the document in front of her.

Everyone from ACI had gone home for the day so Skyberry, climbed three stories, up the side of the building, jimmied open a skylight on the roof and climbed in to retrieve his sister's kiddie's bear?

Yep. But although the manager of ACI denies it, it seems likely the skylight was already unlocked.

Dave Topaz put his hand in front of his face to hide the fact he was grinning from ear to ear and chuckled quietly. He wondered if anyone else saw the irony in an insurance company leaving its roof access wide open.

You're joking? He broke into the office just to get back his sister's kid's teddy bear? asked one of the other parole board members.

Yep. replied the warder. Skyberry's explanation of the event seems legit'. The security guard who caught him said Skyberry was attempting to climb back out through the skylight when he caught him. He had nothing stolen on him, just his own personal effects and the bear.

Gezus! exclaimed Oakdale. So we spend one hundred and fifty thousand, taxpayers dollars to lock up a decorated, returned serviceman for nearly two years, for doing nothing more than climbing in through an open skylight and retrieving a ten buck toy that belonged to his sister's child anyway. What Madness!"

Everyone agreed, but no one in the room chose to explain the obvious flaw in Oakdale's argument. When arrested, Graham Skyberry had readily admitted to breaking and entering, so in the eyes of the law he deserved to be incarcerated. The totally absurd circumstances of his crime were irrelevant. 'You do the crime, You do the time,' the old adage stated. Pamela was a retired judge, and she more than anyone else knew that.

But according to this document, initially he was also charged with assault occasioning bodily harm, though that charge was later dropped, Dave Topaz pointed out. What's the story there?

The warder consulted his own notes which were much more comprehensive than those given to the panel. The security guard was injured. Uh!.... A gun shot wound to his right foot. The guard was taken to hospital for treatment. He was questioned later and admitted he'd shot himself, by accident, when he was trying to get his gun out of his holster to arrest Skyberry. Actually that's how Skyberry got caught. He went to the guard's aid. Skyberry dressed the wound with strips of cloth from an old t-shirt someone had left behind in the washroom to staunch the blood loss, then he called an ambulance. He stayed with the guard until they arrived. Of course when Skyberry told the emergency operator the nature of the guard's injury, she immediately called the cops.

Gezus! exclaimed Pamela Oakdale. According to his file, he's been a model prisoner during his entire incarceration? Why the hell are we even debating this case? With the best of intentions, Skyberry did a stupid thing. We can't bury a guy for one stupid mistake. I vote we grant the man early parole and let him go.

Everyone else agreed and three days later Graham Skyberry walked out of the Lotus Glen Correctional Facility a free man.

His life was about to take a massive change in direction.

Chapter 3

Three weeks before Irina's death

The three guys were used to's. One used to have a full head of hair, one used to be the captain of his high school football team and one used to have a life he considered worth living. Now they were all just lower escutcheon office or factory workers, three bland mice who had wives who nagged and kids who showed no respect, and who shared a morbid acceptance of the indignity of having to wear things called polyester slacks. They were now in their early forties and had been friends since kindergarten. Now though, their friendship was more out of habit than any true affection. Life ended up like that sometimes.

If you let it.

The eldest of the trio by seventeen days was called Ernie. He was forty three, one point five tall and badly overweight. Once his hair had been a dirty blonde colour, now it was a dirty scalp colour. Ernie had a secret. They all had a secret.

Ernie was addicted to sex, something his wife Audrey certainly wasn't addicted to. At least not where Ernie was concerned. So Ernie had sometimes taken a mistress, and sometimes engaged the services of a streetwalker and had recently (not) been seen in the company of a luscious brunette. The girl had the face of an angel, long legs, pert tits and a penchant for spending her lunch breaks luxuriating in a Cairns Hilton Hotel suite, usually with Ernie's condom encased wang in her mouth. Amazingly, somehow all this happened for free.

Of course if Ernie hadn't been obsessed with sex, or if he'd had just a scintilla of common sense, he would have realised that just as with financial investments, if it all seems to be too good to be true, it probably is. Two days ago he'd learnt that the gorgeous brunette had a condom encased wang of her own, and had been secretly video recording their most intimate moments in preparation for Ernie helping ‘her’ out financially.

Perhaps in modern day Australia, having such images sent to your boss, your wife, your kids and your ageing parents, before being uploaded to a popular Chicks with Dicks website, wouldn't create the life ending scenario Ernie felt it would. But he wasn't prepared to take the chance. But where in the hell was poor Ernie going to find the $100K Brenda / Brendan was demanding?

Bruce, younger by seventeen days, taller by three centimetres and narrower by shit loads was faced with a similar problem. He too needed money, though in Bruce's case the amount was closer to $120,000. That was the sum he owed to a recently acquired gambling buddy. A man who just happened to recover from an unbelievable run of bad luck, just when Bruce had a full house of aces and twos in his mitt. (The card playing, heavily tattooed, and suddenly gun wielding 'friend' somehow managed to come up with an ace high royal flush just at the wrong / right time.) Similarly, Bruce had no way of ever paying back the money he owed. Certainly not within the five days grace the card shark had allowed him.

Which left Steve, the baby of the group. Cairns is a city, not a village and that made defining Steve difficult. If Cairns had been just a village, things would have been simpler. Steve would have been the village idiot.

Steve had been a naughty boy twenty six years ago. Towards the end of a particularly hormone enriched puberty, the then fifteen year old Steve had made the mistake of not accepting his fourteen year old female next door neighbour's declaration that she didn't want to have sex with him. Later the little girl ran home to her mummy and daddy and Steve ended up in a youth detention centre for a couple of years.

Of course as Steve was a minor at the time, his criminal record had been sealed and later expunged. As far as the public was concerned, the rape never happened. But the now grown up next door neighbour had recently re-emerged and was now threatening to take his arse to civil court and sue him for every last cent he and his family didn't have. The seemingly all encompassing symptoms of mental anguish and resulting loss of earnings were sited in the papers which had been served on him just two days ago.

So far Steve had managed to keep the knowledge of the prospective nightmare away from the harpy like Mrs Steve. If he could somehow come up with a hundred grand or so, he might be able to assuage his former victim with an out of court settlement. That way his wife would never even need to hear about it. But for Steve too, such funds were not readily available.

But these three decidedly unhappy men, with three perfectly horrible secrets, would soon be offered a lifeline. A lifeline which would ultimately end in the death of Mrs Irina Lothario.

Chapter 4

Fifteen years ago

Graham Skyberry had wondered briefly if his sister and her daughter Krystal might be there to meet him when he walked away for the first and last time from Lotus Glen Correctional Facility. But then he'd also known she'd had to sell her shit box car to help pay his legal bills after his arrest. For a young single mother, someone who worked just fifteen hours a week as a teacher's aid at one of Cairns's many Catholic primary schools, it was almost impossible merely to earn enough to keep a roof over their heads and put three cheap meals on the table each day. Buying another car, even an old bomb, was simply not on the cards. So he hadn't been overly surprised when the two girls weren't there to meet him.

But he had been totally shocked to see who was. Waiting in the car park outside the correctional facility's main entrance was a Rolls Royce. It was sitting idling, close to the kerb, near the prison's front gate. Graham knew precious little about cars in general and even less about the highly esteemed Roller. But this one was silver and looked to be fairly new. The paintwork had been polished to a blinding sheen and the chrome sparkled in the bright mid morning sunlight as if the metal itself had somehow been charged with electricity. There was a man leaning against the car's driver side front fender. He was a big man, though not quite as big as Graham was. He was tall and slender, athletic rather than muscular, and with the unmistakable poise of a runner. He was a man who had spent many long hours pounding the roads as he ran one of his enumerable marathons. Though again, maybe not as many as Graham.

Ex Sergeant Graham Skyberry looked across at his old mate ex Lance Corporal Oscar Lothario and grinned like the Cheshire Cat.

Hi Sarge, Lothario called. I told you they'd catch up with you and throw you in the slammer one day. It's got to be a crime to be as ugly as you are. You should have known it was only a matter of time before they put you away.

As Graham sauntered over towards his old friend, his face nearly spliting in two he was grinning so hard.

Lance Corporal Oscar bloody Lothario, you old rogue. What brings you to this part of the world? asked Skyberry.

Oh I came to break you out of prison. Looks like I got here too late. Who'd you bribe to let you out early this time?

Lothario threw his arms around his old friend and hugged him, slapping him on the back and telling him just how pleased he was to see him. They spent the next twenty minutes catching up, reminiscing about their times together in Afghanistan and what each of them had done during the ensuing two years. Then Oscar led Graham over to the waiting Rolls and opened the rear, off-side door.

Sitting comfortably on the plush, white, kid leather seat was a woman. She was blonde, tall and quite voluptuous. She was aged in her early to mid thirties and was dressed in a simple yellow sun dress and pale tan, sling back sandals. She climbed out of the roller, smiled expansively at Graham and held out her hand.

Grim, I'd like you to meet my wife Irina, said Oscar. We were married just last week.

Graham reached over and took the new Mrs Lothario's hand in his own and held it briefly.

It's a great pleasure to meet you Mrs Lothario, Skyberry told her.

Please call me Irina da! You are friend of Ossie, so you friend of Irina also, the woman replied in heavily accented English.

I suspected you might be out of a job at the moment, said Oscar, leading Graham around to the other side of the car and pushing him into the back seat. So I have a proposition for you old mate. I need someone with your special skills, someone I can trust implicitly.  Irina needs someone to keep an eye on her, a body guard if you like, someone who can keep her safe from all the riff raff my business and life style seem to attract. If you're interested, the job entails you driving her to wherever she wants to go while I'm away or at work. You know, shopping, social events, her English language classes, whatever. I also want you to vet any visitors who may call on her to make sure they're on the up and up. Plus I'll need you to keep close to her when we're out together in public just in case something goes awry. You interested?

Skyberry nodded. Yea of course. Thanks, he replied as the Roller's chauffeur started the engine and nudged the gearbox into drive. It sounds like you've got your self in a bit of bother there Ossie. Care to elaborate?"

Oscar Lothario reached over and draped his arm around Graham's shoulder. Yea. Nothing specific, just the usual riff raff and ‘Tall Poppy’ brigade, he said. "But now is not the time for talking business. Now it’s time for catching up and having fun. I'll give you the run down on things later. Now, I want to hear all about what it's