Bodyguard (14 page)

Then he pulled up by a car park. He was checking us again. Two muscular blokes were waiting for us. ‘They work for me,' Harry told us.

‘You're not sussing us out are you, Harry?' I made him feel like he was in control.

‘Nah, nah, if Paul tells me you are the boss man, then you are the boss,' he joked.

At the restaurant, I made sure I sat right next to the little weasel, with Dom and Paul opposite, my shrimp and salad nothing more than a prop to open him up. I was a fat bastard, I didn't eat salad and it didn't take long.

He was lining me up for bigger things and repeat visits. He
promised
me that a Formula One racetrack was going to be built locally – this would be an economic boom for the pair of us.

‘If you can do this for me, I will show you my appreciation. It's very important to me,' I bullshitted.

‘I am the same,' he replied. ‘Craig, I will do this for you.'

I was talking bollocks of course. Since that very first day working with Nick Witchell, the story was all I cared about.

‘Have you been to England?' I asked him.

‘No, Ireland,' he explained.

‘What have you been doing in Ireland?' I probed, knowing I was opening up his little trade routes.

‘A bit of business. I've got a few vans over there, moving stuff around … just stuff.'

He spoke like a crook. They always referred to stuff. His wife, from whom he was separating, also lived there. Or so he said. He told me he had already got the ball rolling. His man in Turkey had fixed the orphan house. Those words alone told me that, at this speed, this was a regular operation. ‘My man in Turkey' for fuck's sake – that's a different country and he'd only met Paul and Dom the other day. Clearly, I was just another customer.

‘Do you like the ladies?' he asked.

‘Course I do. What bloke doesn't?'

We were moving on fast. When the crooks start taking you to their clubs, it's game on.

‘The boss's wife is very beautiful, Harry.' Paul kept the story on track.

‘Yeah, yeah, we'll just go have some drinks and watch some nice women dance,' he protested.

‘Yeah, I'm having some of that. What goes on tour stays on tour,' I joked.

We walked round the corner from the restaurant onto the main drag. I thought three of us were too many to be going into some seedy unknown nightclub. While Harry was chatting up his bouncer mate on the door, I told Paul to make his excuses and get back to the hotel and stick by the phone in case anything kicked off. Dom confirmed that he wasn't tired and was definitely up for girls! Even though I was on Harry's turf, I felt comfortable. The boys had bigged me up so much that all he wanted to do was impress, probably by now already dreaming of ditching that Audi for a Porsche.

‘Come on, Harry, that's a bit insulting,' I complained as the bouncers patted us down on the way in. It was the club rules, but nobody else got the treatment. That's why we didn't bring the covert equipment. On a second visit, they might trust us and wouldn't have to do the rigmarole, but on the first night, this was new territory to us, and we couldn't know where we would end up.

He led us down some steps into a dark and dingy, basement area. Neon lights were the new thing here! Add to that carpets
which hadn't been changed in twenty years and you couldn't get much seedier.

‘I wish we had the camera on,' I said to Dom, as some bikini-clad tart in a thong came rushing up to Harry as she had probably done a thousand times before, attracted to his perceived power, unless it was part of a routine, choreographed act to entrap us. Only dodgy people doing deals came this way, and Harry, by the ease with which this all panned out, had brought many a bent geezer here before. For a moment we mooted buzzing Paul to get him back, but ultimately it wasn't worth the risk.

‘I've fucked her and I've done her.' Harry showed us his totty
portfolio
. ‘Would you like me to arrange something?' As he spoke, he was summoning one of his bitches for a dance on Dom. You can see, can't you, just how tough, life on the BBC payroll was.

‘Nah nah, I'm a bit tired tonight; maybe another night,' I replied when offered.

He promised us a party at his place – probably just as well. He clearly had a lot of friends in this gaff. You always knew in surveillance when all eyes were on you. Harry took us next door and this time we were ushered in – no pat-downs. This club wasn't busy but we'd climbed another rung on his ladder. No need to check us out twice. We were still being monitored though – a thick-set man in a red t-shirt was clocking us from the end of the bar. The scouts were out.

It was Harry's turn to flash the cash – large shots of green apple Schnapps flowing like there was no tomorrow. Then he raised the stakes. He motioned me to the bogs. ‘Do you like a bit of the old [sniff] powder?'

‘What do you mean?' I quizzed him. Course, I knew what he was on about.

‘Charlie,' he replied.

I reckon he had watched this scene in some pirate Bob Hoskins rubbish. ‘Yeah, I don't mind a bit of Charlie,' I responded.

He unwrapped the tin foil like an expert. It was already in powder form. Out came the credit card. I realised now that of all the things I had seen, all the risk assessments I had been made to fill in, all the stupid courses which I had bullshitted my way out of, there was
nothing
under the heading ‘Snorting coke in the bogs with the Bulgarian mafia'. Fuck – what was I meant to do? Either I had to do it, or risk losing face. I was in the role. That meant it was in the job description. I would deal with London when I got back.

If I had to do it, I had to do it.

‘I'm not using that fucking dirty rolled up note you've just used Harry; I'll roll my own,' I conspired. Fuck me, what would Nicholas Witchell have done in the same situation?! I couldn't get out of it. I was a big-time bent gangster from the East End who did dodgy things. Of course I was a cokehead.

I rolled up a fifty-euro note. I bent down over the marble surface, ready to whack it up my nose. ‘Is this good shit Harry?' Like I gave a shit.

‘Yeah, very good … the best,' Harry replied.

Bang. The toilet door barged open. It was Dom.

In that split second that I was about to take one up the nostril on behalf of the Beeb, my mate barged in. We hadn't planned it. I didn't even give a thought to the greater consequences with my employer.

The door that led to the loo also took you outside. We hadn't talked through what we would do if one of us got separated and isolated. I blew it away off the top of the wrapper, and twitched my nose.

‘That is good shit, Harry,' I lied.

‘Very good, very expensive, Boss,' he confirmed. It looked like fine flour.

Dom hadn't even known we were in the toilet. ‘I don't think you realise how perfect your timing was,' I said to him on the way out.

‘I was just concerned,' Dom told me.

‘That was brilliant,' I told him, buzzing. ‘You saved me from having to do a line of coke.'

And I would have done it, too. For the story. I was living off the adrenalin. Had anybody on the BBC payroll ever gone this far for the story since Donal MacIntyre around the new millennium? I loved the idea that I could put in the receipts next month for all the dodgy contraband I had bought and consumed for the most famous
broadcasting
organisation in the world. I wouldn't of course – these kind of characters left very little paper trail.

Dom had played a blinder, unzipping his flies, and carrying on as though it was business as usual. Harry had pushed past him on the way out. Dom mouthed ‘OK?' to me, and we both exited back towards the stage area. I don't know if Harry was topping himself up after an earlier hit but he was on hot coals now, unable to sit still, eyeing up his shag for the night while recounting his previous conquests.

‘Are any of these girls available to ship back to England?' I asked.

‘Yeah, yeah, Boss, everything is possible,' he dealt.

‘Are they Romanian girls or Bulgarian?' I faked my interest.

‘Both – we can achieve everything.'

I told Dom we needed to get into the prostitution game. Harry kept promising me anything I wanted. I was gutted we weren't filming. There was no point carrying on for the night. Our
relationship
was good. We were in.

He wanted us to go to the Peep Show Club on Maria Luisa Street right in the centre of Varna. This was classic Harry – rarely in bed before five, never up before three in the afternoon.

‘I'm asking no money now from you, Boss,' he said. ‘I already have been myself to two orphan houses. I spoke to my man in Turkey by Skype today and he said we're gonna do this.'

‘Look Boss, it has been a long day,' Dom butted in. ‘You need to call the wife.'

‘Yeah, yeah, good call.' I was grateful for the get-out.

Harry was hugging me like the grovelling little shit he was, telling me it would be his honour to collect me and my wife from the airport
on our return. I told him we needed to confer – she was nervous but hopeful – but I would bring her next time.

‘It has been a pleasure,' I lied. ‘And I think we can do business.'

We agreed to meet the next day.

By 03.00, we were back at the hotel. Harry probably can't piece together the rest of his night. More ‘Pump My Pussy' and then the same again, without the song this time. In the morning we would see if he was true to his word that one of the 30,000 vulnerable orphans kept under minimal security in this country would be ours.

We decided we had to film the next meet. There was no time to hang around – we needed to do the deal. And we would sell it to Harry accordingly. I was a busy man with businesses to run, and I didn't have time to live the life of some playboy chasing him around Europe. The only problem was that Harry wasn't answering his phone. I knew he barely saw daylight but I feared the worst. At 19.00, he finally surfaced.

‘Boss is really pleased,' Paul told him. ‘He thinks you are a good guy and wants to do business. Boss is going back tomorrow to speak to his wife. You need to produce the goods here, Harry. This is a good opportunity for you to get in with the boss.'

We had strapped the Dictaphone to the handset.

‘I've got some business to do, but I can meet you at the garage at 10 p.m. tonight,' he took the bait.

Fuck – I didn't want to meet in some garage, waiting for him to show or not, potentially exposed to God knows what. I told Paul and Dom to go. ‘Boss doesn't piss around meeting people in garages,' they told him. On covert camera, he said he could show us the kids – boy or girl – anything, and then came the bombshell. It would be tomorrow. Shit – change of plan. My lovely wife Sangita wasn't even in the country.

I didn't care about shafting her. I rang London pretty damn excited, telling them everything except, of course, I never mentioned the coke. My debrief was simple – be patient; there was plenty more to come. Harry was going to show me some kids. It was on.

Harry knew I didn't have the money on me this trip and we had already escalated from a bonding session to doing the deal in twenty-four hours. In reality, he had hardly checked me out at all. I wanted to know how he could fix this so quickly. As I said, I clearly wasn't the first.

‘I'm gonna take you up to the orphanage,' he announced. He told us to get some crisps and biscuits and stuff to take in. What the fuck was this all about?

Inside he introduced us to the owners, whom he clearly knew well. Jesus – they were complicit too. Deep down, I didn't like it. Were these people who we were going to be dealing with? Were we buying direct from an orphanage? Paul was rolling. Harry told us to walk around and take a look at these kids. We knew nothing about them.

I told Dom to ask him in Bulgarian what the score was. Dom translated back that Harry wanted to get a feel for the kind of children we wanted. It was a recce. In fact, it wasn't even that. It was bullshit. Waffle. The Emperor's New Clothes. These weren't our kids. This was just the brochure – a gallery. Borderline genetic engineering designer babies territory if you like, except these were already born – just show ponies in Harry's Game. This wasn't real. It was another test. Harry was trying to show he was credible. I took it that he wasn't. I told Dom to tell him we were off.

And on the next plane home.

By that night, I was back in London. My last words to Harry were that I didn't have time to fuck about. I would be back if he got his act together.

‘The way things are going there's nothing happening, mate,' I had told him. ‘I've got businesses to run; I've got a wife who wants
this baby more than anything and she's giving me grief. I can't keep flying out there.'

He told me to come back in a week.