Trouble on the Heath: A Comedy of Russian Gangsters, Town Planners and a Dog Called Nigel

Chapter Eighteen

So that’s really the end of the story.

Eva Petrova Koslova seemed to take a shine to Malcolm, possibly because he’d kidnapped Anton. She made him promise to keep Anton in England. That was no problem because Anton had fallen in love with Malcolm’s sister, Glenys, and Glenys seemed to be happy, too. Anton and Glenys went on to have two children, one of whom became a concert pianist.

Eva was found not guilty, when the three guards swore that they had been there the whole time and that she had shot her husband in self-defence. They didn’t want to lose their jobs, after all, and now Eva was in charge.

Malcolm persuaded Eva to drop the planning application and keep the two houses exactly as they were. She sold one of them to the Managing Director of Malcolm’s university. In fact she liked Highgrove Park so much that she moved into the other house herself. She said she really liked the view of Hampstead Heath and the burial mound.

Trevor Williams got lucky. Before Cynthia had time to hand the threatening notes over to the police, the story of the Russian involvement in the Highgrove Park shootings was all over the newspapers and TV.

Cynthia burned all the notes and persuaded Trevor to resign from his position as Head of Camden Planning. “How can anyone be happy in a position like that?” she said to him. “It would drive anyone mad.” Trevor agreed.

He also agreed to marry Cynthia, since she had gone to the trouble of proposing to him. And the next week he won the lottery again. Not quite the full £3 million he’d hoped for, but enough to set up a very successful business advising people on how to put in planning applications.

Angela persuaded Malcolm to resign his chairmanship of the Residents’ Association, and Malcolm was more than happy to do so. He persuaded Eva to take over from him. So for the first time the Residents’ Association had a chairman who knew exactly how to deal with outrageous planning applications, particularly ones put forward by Russian gangsters.

And Nigel the dog continued to pee on his favourite tree, unaware of everything.