They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

61 26 September 2011 — Nicos Christoforou

Nicos looked in disbelief at the suitcase on the floor.

Tight bunches of fifty-pound notes, secured by red elastic bands, were stacked up beside — £110,000 so far in this bundle.

He carried on counting. But was shocked to see an increasing number of the bundles had been altered and contained newspaper to bulk them out along with the fifty-pound notes.

After a couple more layers he realized the rest of the suitcase was packed tightly with nothing but newspapers, which Jerry methodically pulled out and laid down. All of them, from the headlines and front-page photographs Nicos could see, were no more than a couple of days old.

‘What the fuck?’ Nicos said, almost silently, to himself. He took a large sip of his rum.

The Liverpudlian carried on, as if expecting to start finding more cash underneath the papers. He kept on removing more and more newspapers, all from the same day, until he reached the bottom.

Nigel Davis’s face changed from benign to furious. He lit another cigarette. ‘What’s going on, Nicos, you want to tell us?’ His nervous twitch looked like it was going critical.

‘I... I...’ Nicos uttered, then fell silent. ‘There’s been a mistake.’

‘Crap at maths, are you?’ Davis asked, his voice tight with pent-up rage.

‘There’s been a mistake, I’m telling you!’

‘Perhaps the mistake was trusting you?’ Nigel Davis said. ‘The boss was right, wasn’t he, when he said to count your fingers after shaking hands with you?’

‘I’m telling you, there’s been a mistake,’ Nicos said, his confidence eroded, realizing he was sounding more like he was pleading.

He was thinking fast. He’d checked every damned bundle of fifty-pound notes himself and there had been £1.2 million worth of them when he’d put that suitcase into that storage locker last year, not wanting to risk the sniffer dogs at any of the London airports, or bringing it in through Jersey airport. Much safer to let Sandy and her kid, returning home on the car ferry, on Jersey plates, bring it, with a layer of the kid’s clothes on top, like he’d told her.

So where had the money disappeared? From the locker or in transit? It was Sandy, he knew. The bitch — she—

His train of thought was interrupted by Nigel Davis standing over him, his face twitching more crazily than before. ‘Do you have any idea how much this operation has cost Mr Brignell? The fuel for this boat, all the risks of loading the cargo — and you try to stiff us with the decades-old newspaper trick?’

Nicos raised his hands. ‘You need to understand — it’s not me — I’m not the one who’s done this. Look.’ He tried to mask the desperation in his voice and demeanour. ‘Look, guys — so there’s just over a million — so just give me that amount’s worth of gear.’

‘Seriously?’ Nigel Davis said. ‘You really think we’ve come six hundred fucking miles for this? It is not what we agreed.’

‘Like I told you,’ Nicos said, ‘there’s been a mistake — I’ll correct it — I’ll sort it.’

Davis stared at him and he twitched again. ‘A mistake? So you didn’t check it before you came? Or did you think we’re a bunch of suckers, a bunch of honky-tonk boat people without a maths O level between us?’

Nicos shook his head, desperately trying to think his way out of this. ‘Look,’ he pleaded, ‘Saul knows this is not how I do business.’

‘Saul knows, does he?’ Davis retorted. He dug one hand into the right-hand pocket of his jeans and took another drag of his cigarette with the other. ‘So the rest disappeared by magic, did it, Nicos?’

‘Not magic but—’

‘Sleight of hand, perhaps?’ Davis gave him a warm, disarming smile. And yet another twitch. His expression changed but Nicos barely noticed.

‘Yeah, sleight of hand.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, sleight of hand. That’s it!’

‘You know the stock-in-trade of magicians, don’t you, Nicos? Distraction?’

He frowned. ‘Distraction?’

‘They get you to focus your attention in a different direction, so you don’t notice when they remove the rabbit from the hat, or drop the coins up their sleeve, or do this!’ As Davis said the words he pointed his cigarette up towards the ceiling.

While Nicos craned, looking upwards, presenting his neck as the perfect target, Nigel Davis pulled a switchblade, razor sharp, from his pocket, and with one swipe sliced cleanly through the Greek’s throat.

Blood instantly began to spurt from the cut as Nicos raised his hands to his throat. He tried to speak but just a gasp came out. He stared in disbelief at the man in front of him holding the blade. He kept on trying to speak as he sank to his knees, shaking and gurgling as he dropped forward, before finally falling silent.

‘You’re really making a mess,’ Davis said. ‘Mr Brignell won’t be happy about this. He likes everything immaculate. He really doesn’t like a mess. He’s going to be very pissed off with you. And you don’t want to be around when he gets pissed off. So it’s just as well you won’t be.’

He stubbed his cigarette out in Nicos’s right ear. There was no reaction.

Ten minutes later, a spare anchor chained securely around his midriff, under the glare of a powerful spotlight, Nicos was lobbed over the deck rail. His body belly-flopped onto the black water, with a splash and a moment of turbulent white foam, then there was just the blackness of the surface of the sea again.

The depth here was 135 metres. Far too deep for most scuba divers to operate. It would take a submersible to find him. And that’s if they even knew where to begin to start looking. Not that there was likely to be much left of him within a few days.