Corkscrew

  Copyright © Peter Stafford-Bow, 2016

  Published by I_AM Self-Publishing, 2016.

  The right of Peter Stafford-Bow to be identified as the Author

  of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-1-911079-46-0

  This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of

  trade or otherwise, be circulated in any form or by any means,

  electronic or otherwise without the publisher’s prior consent.

  www.PeterStaffordBow.com

  @PonceDuVin

  @iamselfpub

  www.iamselfpublishing.com

  Trigger Warning

  Contains content some may find offensive, including but not limited to: the consumption of alcohol significantly in excess of government guidelines; references to sexual activity (both conventional and non-conventional); the casual use of and befuddlement by illegal drugs; disrespect to personnel involved in law enforcement; blasphemy; words of a sexual and potentially deviant nature; contempt for all norms of ethics and decency. Some vomiting.

  Not for sale in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

  To Curly, with love.

  “It smells like wine…”

  Contents

  ACT I: A BRACING APERITIF

  1.1 A Rude Awakening

  1.2 Cackering Hall

  1.3 The Great British High Street

  1.4 Crime and Punishment

  1.5 Tinto Towers

  ACT II: A THRUSTING NEW VINTAGE

  2.1 Bulgaria’s Finest

  2.2 Money Talks

  2.3 The Pink Priest

  2.4 Store Walk

  2.5 The Minstrels of Wine

  ACT III: A PRECOCIOUS LITTLE NUMBER

  3.1 The New World

  3.2 Van Blerk

  3.3 On Safari

  3.4 Madame Joubert

  3.5 Meet The Press

  ACT IV: A CHALLENGING MID-PALATE

  4.1 Harvest Day

  4.2 Come On, You Reds

  4.3 Le Récital

  4.4 Asti Spumante

  4.5 Conference Season

  ACT V: AN EXQUISITE PAIRING

  5.1 Goods Received

  5.2 Harlow Sunshine Tours

  5.3 Young Entrepreneurs Club

  5.4 Turkish Delight

  5.5 Sustainable Living

  ACT VI: A MAGNIFICENT FINISH

  6.1 The Inspectors Call

  6.2 Brainstorm

  6.3 The Promised Land

  Epilogue: A Cheeky Digestif

  Welcome Initiates, on this, the twelfth day of Dionysus!

  The day of Theemeter!

  Behold! The clearing of the wine.

  And now this pompe arrives

  Let the contest begin!

  And may all win, in the manner of Dikaiopolis.

  From ‘The Invocation of La Vendange’

  (Courtesy of the Worshipful Institute of the Minstrels of Wine)

  1.1

  A Rude Awakening

  “Do you have the slightest idea how much trouble you’re in?”

  The man had a coarse voice. He sounded like a plain-clothes policeman. An unpleasant one. Or maybe he was a particularly vicious civil servant. Was this how the Department of Health behaved these days? They’d been threatening for a while to get tough with alcohol retailers who failed to take their responsibilities seriously.

  “If you’re referring to the accidental sale of a case of cherry brandy to that thirteen-year-old in Twickenham, I can assure you that it was a completely isolated incident,” I croaked. “The cashier in question has been comprehensively retrained…”

  “We’re not interested in your cherry brandy, Felix,” interrupted the woman. Her tone wasn’t particularly welcoming either.

  The man pressed a button on the tape recorder before him. A recorded voice played clearly and loudly from the device. ‘It’s a Beretta 92. The best handgun in the world’.

  “Recognise the voice?” he asked.

  I did, of course. It was mine.

  ***

  I’d received a phone call just two days earlier from a very nice young woman. She had explained that the Department of Health was consulting with the retail industry on how to reduce the socio-economic and health impacts of alcohol, particularly within disadvantaged groups. As the powerful Head of Wine, Beer, Spirits and Salted Snacks for the country’s largest supermarket chain, would I be willing to speak to the government’s researchers?

  I couldn’t really be bothered, to be honest, despite her flirty tone. But she explained that expenses would be paid to the tune of five hundred pounds, which brought out the public spirit in me. She suggested a five p.m. appointment so as not to disrupt my busy working day too badly. How considerate, I thought. The date was set, and a couple of days later I found myself in dingy old Paddington.

  Central London’s explosion of fine restaurants and glass-fronted offices had yet to gild this grimy corner of the capital. It was only a matter of time, of course. Here and there a crane towered overhead, and every so often the air vibrated with the growl of a great machine, carving into the earth behind a plywood hoarding. But for now the streets were lined with cut-price hotels, poorly disguised brothels and tired old pubs. I quite liked it.

  I found the address just a stone’s throw from the station, one of a hundred identical doorways in a peeling white mansion block stretching the length of the street. The intercom framed ten buttons, nearly all anonymous. The third buzzer, however, was neatly labelled SG Consulting. I pressed it. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then the electric lock hummed and I pushed the door open.

  I’d left enough time to enjoy a couple of large Ports at a faded wine bar near the station, so there was a spring in my step as I climbed the stairs to the first floor. Before me lay a solid white door, bare but for a small number three. It opened before I could knock.

  “Good evening Mr Hart. Please sit down.”

  There was only one free chair. It was positioned in front of a plain wooden desk in the centre of the room, upon which lay a few files and a complicated-looking tape recorder. On the other side of the desk sat a man and a woman. He had a thin face and wore a grey suit, no tie, and a look of impatience. She looked stern but intelligent, smartly but conservatively dressed in a buttoned up blouse and plain jacket.

  I dropped my laptop bag next to the vacant chair, strode over and held out my hand. “Please call me Felix. Nice to meet you.”

  Neither of them moved. Then the man gave a slight shake of his head and repeated, “Just sit down please.”

  What a funny pair of buggers, I thought. Then I heard the door shut behind me with an unusually heavy clunk. I turned and saw there was a third person in the room, a rather large man with very short hair. Despite his neat suit he looked like a rugby forward, a right brawler. He stood in front of the door with his arms folded, looking me up and down, face neutral.

  I had a bad feeling about the whole set up. My stomach started to churn, the way it does when unpleasant things are afoot. “What’s going on here?” I demanded.

  “It would be much easier if you just sat down, Felix,” said the woman.

  “So, we’re on first name terms are we?” I said. “How about you introduce yourselves?”

  I looked around the room. It was small, windowless and there was no other exit, just a closet door in the far wall. There were no pictures or pot plants, only a rather incongruous old standard lamp in the corner with a wooden base and faded yellow shade, although most of the light came from a bare bulb overhead.

  The man at the desk gave another shake of his head and looked to the empty chair.

  These three were
a peculiar lot. Who were they? The mafia? Was I being kidnapped? I considered making a run for it. The fellow standing at the door was a big chap but then, so am I, and I was two Ports ahead. But what about my expenses – all five hundred pounds of them? I hesitated. I was definitely on the back foot.

  “Felix,” said the woman, “you are simply helping us with our enquiries. If you’re helpful enough we may be able to look favourably on your misdemeanours. Cooperation is generally the better strategy in such circumstances.”

  So they were detectives. But why invite me to this horrible little place? The whole setup stank, and it wasn’t just the whiff of the cheap brothel next door.

  “I’ve got a better idea” I said, glancing at the big silent man by the door. “You let me leave right now and I won’t sue you for unlawful imprisonment.”

  The woman sighed and the seated man piped up again. “Do you have the slightest idea how much trouble you’re in?”

  And then he played his little recording of my voice and I realised that, sure enough, I was up to my neck in it.

  “The crimes you have committed are extremely serious, Felix,” said the woman. “They have an international dimension too. The British authorities aren’t the only ones to be taking an interest.”

  “Did you know you’re a person of interest to the FBI, Mr Hart?” asked the man.

  I didn’t, and it sounded like very bad news.

  “You’ve upset the authorities in a number of countries,” he continued. “But it’s the Americans I’d be most worried about if I were you. They’re under the impression that you’re involved in the subversion of a foreign government. It doesn’t matter that you’re not American. If they extradite you, which they are perfectly entitled to do, I can promise it will be a deeply unpleasant experience. They’re a lot more… direct than we are.”

  The woman looked down at the file in front of her. “Bulgarians, Italians, Turks, a Middle Eastern conspiracy. People smugglers, drug dealers, left-wing extremists, unidentifiable Islamists.” She raised her eyebrows. “Even slave trading.”

  I sat down, suddenly rather drained.

  “It’s an astonishing list, Felix,” she continued. “Barely believable, in fact. But there’s enough here to have you locked away for an extremely long time.”

  Her colleague leant forward, and held my eye. “We know where the bodies are,” he whispered.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No Felix. Not yet,” said the woman. “What we don’t know is how all these activities of yours are linked. That’s what you need to tell us. Otherwise, we’ll be obliged to hand you over to colleagues who care rather less about the subtleties of these things.”

  “But I’m just a simple wine merchant, not the kingpin of some underground network…”

  “We believe that’s probably true, Felix, which is why we’re still talking to you. But people smuggling, drug dealing, subversion and murder are major crimes. So why don’t you just take a deep breath and tell us everything? And if we’re satisfied with your account, we might just tell our American friends there’s nothing to worry about. Oh, and we’ll take your phone for now. What’s said in here stays in here.”

  What choice did I have? God knows what other evidence they’d intimidated out of witnesses or winkled out of servers and switchboards up and down the land. And I didn’t fancy spending the summer being water-boarded by the FBI before being locked up for the rest of my days in a maximum security stockade.

  I placed my phone on the desk. The woman took it, removed the battery and deposited them in a heavy metal box at her feet. Then the big man loomed behind me and waved a security wand over my body and laptop bag. It crackled and warbled softly at it passed over my wallet and keys but not enough to cause him any concern. He nodded to the woman and returned to his position at the door.

  “Well,” I said quietly, “I suppose I should start at the beginning. The story really begins several years ago. In the final week before my expulsion from school, in fact.”

  ***

  The Christmas holidays were over and it was the first morning of the new term. I’d enjoyed an itinerant break, as usual, staying at the homes of various friends. My own parents were no longer on the scene, my father having scarpered when I was a toddler, leaving my poor mother to bring me up single-handed in a damp council house before succumbing to a lung infection when I was eleven. A tragic tale I’m sure you’ll agree, but you get used to these things. By the time I was in my late teens I’d grown to love the freedom from adult supervision.

  The day started normally enough, with around thirty boys sitting in pairs at desks, catching up on holiday gossip and boasting of conquests, whether sporting, intellectual or carnal.

  “Morning gentlemen. Welcome back. Quiet please.” The hubbub died down a little. The Form Master shuffled through his folders to find the class register and, clicking his pen, began to take the roll call. When he got to ‘G’ there was a pause. “Golden?” No response from among the murmuring conversations. “Golden!” Again, no response.

  I turned to the desk behind to see my good friend, aspiring musician Dan Golden, in intense conversation with his desk-mate.

  “Golden! Golden! Golden! Golden! Golden!” shouted the Master, slapping his palms against his desk. Dan looked up, startled, taking in the twenty-nine smirking faces and one livid one.

  “Roll call,” I whispered.

  “Oh, ah, yes. Here sir.” A ripple of laughter played around the room.

  “Thank you Golden,” breathed the Master. Then he suddenly caught his breath. “What in God’s name is that on your face?”

  “A moustache sir. I became a man over the holidays.” Cue howls of laughter.

  The Master clenched his teeth as he spoke. “Facial hair is not permitted, Golden, as you very well know. Except for religious reasons,” he added, glancing at Golden’s desk-mate, who had been sporting a magnificent black beard for the past year.

  Paul Singh stroked his luxuriant cheeks. “My beard is very religious, sir.”

  The Master removed a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “Golden, that’s a Hitler moustache. And you’re Jewish.”

  “I’m reclaiming the look from the Nazis sir. It’s my right as a member of an oppressed race.” Further titters from around the classroom.

  The Master took a deep breath. “Golden. Leave the classroom now and shave it off, or I will have the entire teaching fraternity hold you down while matron personally waxes your face. She’s not a great fan of yours, so I think she’d enjoy it.”

  Golden stood and walked to the door. “This is how the Third Reich started!” he declared and left the room. The room burst into a round of applause, whoops and cheers.

  “Shut up” snarled the Master and surveyed the room with disgust. “What a puerile shower you are. God help us.” He turned back to the registration folder. “Hart?”

  “Sir,” I said.

  “Hussein?” Silence. “Hussein!”

  “Hussein’s in Mecca sir. Doing the Hajj, sir,” piped up someone.

  “He did the Hajj last year,” growled the Master. “And, as I recall, the year before.”

  “He’s very devout sir.” A rumble of guffaws from around the room.

  My good friend Tariq Hussein certainly was devout – fanatically devoted to pissing every possible afternoon up the wall down the King’s Head, that is. It was a devotion we shared. Tariq was currently on his father’s yacht in the Caribbean enjoying some winter sun, the jammy bastard. While we shivered in an under-heated classroom he was probably dancing on the deck surrounded by gyrating lovelies, a half-finished bottle of Bajan rum in one hand, the other caressing a nubile, bikini-clad…

  “Oh, by the way, Hart,” said the Master, interrupting my reverie. “You’re to see the Head of Sixth Form after assembly. Something to do with your dismal attendance record I imagine.”

  Bugger, I thought, a bollocking within two hours of the beginning of term. Not a great start. The Master finish
ed the roll call, making his final mark in the register. “Get out and go to assembly, you appalling rabble.”

  After a soporific welcome-back speech from Headmaster Dr Pankhurst, better known as Dr Pie ’n Crust, and a dirge-like rendering of ‘Abide With Me’ led by the school’s profoundly deaf organist, we filed out of the assembly hall. I made my way to the Old Manor House which housed the private studies of the senior staff.

  Fletching Ordnance School for Boys was a minor public school founded in the late eighteenth century and set in acres of wooded grounds near Hampstead Heath. Founded by a religious zealot who made a fortune out of naval weaponry, it was established to mould muscular Christian boys who could plant God’s word and deed overseas, presumably after raking the bewildered natives with cannon fire and stealing their land.

  Its motto, Carpent tua poma nepotes, translated as ‘Your descendants will pick your fruit’. The somewhat crowded school crest showed a woman kneeling behind a bearded man who, in turn, was stretching to pluck an apple from a tree. This picture of imperial bliss led to the school being known affectionately as Felching Orchard by the pupils, although not within earshot of the senior masters.

  The Old Manor House was the original heart of the school and Reverend Parr, Head of Sixth Form, had one of the grandest studies. Only the Deputy Head and the Headmaster had larger ones. I knocked on the door.

  “Come!” he barked.

  I’d been summoned to Parr’s office many times and I suspected the door was kept deliberately difficult to open to intimidate the smaller pupils. I turned the brass handle and gave the door a good shove with my shoulder. It swung heavily against the inside wall, the handle cracking against the wood.

  “Try not to destroy the place Hart!” snapped the Reverend. He sat behind an enormous wooden desk, an austere, bony man with just a fringe of grey hair around the sides of his head and a flaking scalp. A light frosting of dandruff coated the shoulders of his black shirt, softening the contrast with his dog collar. “Do you know why you are here?”

  Not sure I like this, I thought. Usually you have a fairly good idea why you’re in the shit with the Reverend. If there was something expensive broken or missing he’d be accompanied by a member of Her Majesty’s constabulary. If the Headmistress of St Hilda’s Girls School was standing there, face livid and hands on hips, it would be an interrogation as to whether the CCTV footage of a strapping young lad climbing through a first floor window was yours truly. But on the very first morning of term I was stumped.