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  And so the day of the heist arrived. Almost everyone from the Never-Say-Die had been talked into joining in and clambered onto the bus the Brigadier had laid on. Half of them were so confused most of the time that you could have talked them into running the London Marathon. The notable exception was Briony. She wanted no part of it. She stayed put, guarding her hoard of newspapers and marmalade jars. The Brigadier called her a ruddy conchie when he found out.

  In their defence, few of them knew the finer points of the battle plan. But they still amounted to a formidable squad as they alighted from the bus and listened to the Brigadier’s Agincourt-style speech.

  “There are senior citizens all over Britain who will think themselves accursed they were not here with us. We few, we happy few, deaf but not downtrodden, stand on the brink of victory. Onward, then.”

  So began the main assault, as the Brigadier called it. Four old ladies crossed the hotel foyer Zimmer to Zimmer, a vanguard forging a route for the main party, twelve more on sticks and crutches, with two motorised chairs like tanks in the rear. Inexorably they headed for the suite used by Marcus Haliburton for his consultations. Their task: to block all movement in the corridor.

  Because of my supposed underworld connections I had been selected for a kind of SAS role, along with the Brigadier himself. At some time in the first hour, while all the new patients were being documented, tested and examined, a security firm would deliver the latest box of hearing aids to the hotel. One of the staff was then supposed to bring it to the suite for Haliburton to begin handing out the aids to people who had placed orders on his previous visit. Thanks to the congestion in the corridor this would not be possible.

  The next part was clever, I must admit. The Brigadier had booked the room two doors up and he and I were waiting in there with our own box filled with crumpled-up junk mail. The porter was bound to come past with the box containing the expensive digital aids.

  We waited three-quarters of an hour and it was a nervous time. I had my doubts whether two elderly gents were capable of intercepting a burly hotel porter, but the Brigadier was confident.

  “We’re not using brute strength. This is our strength.” He tapped his head.

  “But if it doesn’t work?”

  To my horror he took a gun from his pocket and gave a crocodile grin. “My old service revolver.”

  “That would be armed robbery,” I said, aghast. “Don’t even think of it.”

  He misheard me, of course. From another pocket he produced a flask of brandy. “You need to drink a bit? Take a swig, old boy. It stops the shakes, I find.”

  Before I could get through to him I heard the squeak of a trolley wheel in the corridor outside. The moment of decision. Should I abort the whole operation? Unwisely, disastrously as it turned out, I decided to go on with it. I stepped into the corridor, right in the path of the trolley, and said to the porter pushing it, “Mr Haliburton said to lock the parcel in here for the time being. He’ll collect it when the people waiting have been dealt with.”

  He said, “I can’t do that. I’m under firm instructions to hand it to Mr Haliburton in person.”

  I winked and said, “I work with him. It’s as good as done.” I pressed a five-pound note into his sweaty palm.

  Persuaded, he wheeled the parcel into the room and left it just inside the door. The Brigadier meanwhile had stepped out of sight into the bathroom. The porter had the impression he was locking the parcel in an empty room. The idea was that the Brigadier would then emerge from the bathroom with our box of junk mail and make the switch, returning to the bathroom with the box containing the aids, where he would lock himself in for an hour.

  My job was to shepherd the Never-Say-Die residents as quickly as possible out of the corridor and back to the bus. I was starting to do so when a man in a grey pinstripe suit came marching up and said, “What’s the trouble here? I’m Buckfield, the hotel manager.”

  “No trouble, Mr Buckfield,” I said. “The system can’t cope, that’s all. Some of these old people have been waiting an hour for an appointment with the ear specialist. I’m suggesting they come back next time. We’ve got transport outside.”

  He looked at me with some uncertainty. “Are you their warden?”

  “Something like that.”

  “One of the bellboys tells me he delivered a box of valuable hearing aids to Room 104. Was that at your bidding?”

  I said, “Yes. I think you’ll find it’s still there.”

  He had a pass key and opened the door and picked up the parcel that was waiting there. I gave all my attention to ushering the old ladies towards the foyer and the waiting bus. Most of them were pleased to leave and didn’t understand what we had achieved. A few genuine customers for the hearing aids were just as confused, and when we got to the bus I had difficulty persuading two of them that they weren’t in the Never-Say-Die party.

  Finally everyone except the Brigadier was on board. It was my job to see that all was clear and help him out of Room 104 with the parcel we had requisitioned, the most dangerous part of Operation Syringe.

  Trying to look like any other guest, I crossed the foyer and stepped along the corridor. It was now empty of people. I tapped on the door of 104 and immediately realized that there was a fatal flaw in our plan. How would the Brigadier hear my knocking? I tried a second time.

  No response.

  Along the corridor, the door of Haliburton’s suite opened and an old man came out. I tried to ignore him, but he said, “Are you waiting for a consultation? It’s that room I just came out of.”

  I thanked him, but I don’t think he heard. I took off a shoe and tried hammering on 104 with it.

  At last the door opened and there was the Brigadier with the parcel in his arms. For the first time since I’d known him he looked concerned. “Take this to the bus and tell the driver to put his foot down.”

  “Aren’t you coming?” I said.

  “Cunning? Far from it,” he said. “I’m a silly arse. Left my service revolver on the bed and some beggar in a pinstripe picked it up.”

  “Leave it,” I shouted into his ear. “Come with me.”

  “Can’t do that,” he said and made a little speech straight out of one of those war films when the doomed Brit showed his stiff upper lip. “That revolver is my baby. Been with me all over the world. I’m not surrendering, old boy. I’ll get back to base. See if I don’t.”

  I said, “I’m leaving with a heavy heart.”

  He said, “Don’t be so vulgar.”

  No use trying to talk sense into him. He really had need of a decent hearing aid.

  I carried the parcel to the bus. Everyone cheered when they saw it. Then Sadie said, “Where’s the Brigadier?”

  I didn’t want them to know he’d brought a gun with him, so I said he was hiding up until it was safer to leave.

  The bus took us back to the home and we tottered off to our rooms for a nap after all the excitement. We’d agreed not to open the box before the Brig returned.

  All evening we waited, asking each other if anyone had heard anything. I was up until ten-thirty, long past bedtime. In the end I turned in and tried to sleep.

  Some time after midnight there was a noise like a stone being thrown at my window. I got out of bed and looked down. There in the grounds was the Brigadier blowing on his fingers. He shouted up to me, “Be a good fellow and unbolt the front door will you? I just met a brass monkey on his way to the welder’s.”

  In twenty minutes every inhabitant of the house except the Matron and her two night staff assembled in the tea room. The nightwear on display is another story.

  “Open it, George,” the Brig ordered.

  They watched in eager anticipation. Even Briony had turned out. “Ooh, bubblewrap,” she said. “May I have that?”

  “You might as well, because you’re not getting a hearing aid, you conchie,” the Brigadier said.

  I unwrapped the first aid. It was a BTE (behind the ear), but elegance itself.
I offered it to the Brigadier. He slotted it into his ear. “God Lord!” he said. “I can hear the clock ticking.”

  Everyone in the room who wanted a replacement aid was given one, and we still had a few over. The morale of the troops couldn’t have been higher. Even Briony was happy with her stack of bubblewrap. We all slept well.

  At breakfast, the results were amazing. People who hadn’t conversed for years were chatting animatedly.

  Then the doorbell chimed. The chime of doom. A policeman with a megaphone stood in the doorway and announced, “Police. We’re coming in. Put your hands above your heads and stay where you are.”

  Sadie said, “You don’t have to shout, young man. We can all hear you.”

  We were taken in barred vans to the police station and kept in cells. Because there was a shortage of cells some of us had to double up and I found myself locked up with the Brigadier.

  “This is overkill,” I said. “We’re harmless old people.”

  “They don’t think so, George,” he said in a sombre tone. “Marcus Haliburton was shot dead in the course of the raid.”

  “Shot? I didn’t hear any shots.”

  “After you left, it got nasty. They’ll have me for murder and the rest of you for conspiracy to murder. We can’t expect all our troops to hold out under questioning. They’ll put up their hands, and we’re all done.”

  He was right. Several old ladies confessed straight away. What can you expect? The trial that followed was swift and savage. The Brigadier asked to be tried by a court martial and refused to plead. He went down for life, with a recommendation that he serve at least ten years. They proved that the fatal shots had been fired from his gun.

  I got three years for conspiracy to murder – in spite of claiming I didn’t know about the gun. Sadie was given six months. The Crown Prosecution Service didn’t press charges against some of the really frail ones. Oddly, nobody seemed interested in the hearing aid heist and we were allowed to keep our stolen property.

  The Never-Say-Die Retirement Home had to carry on without us. But there was to be one last squirt from Operation Syringe.

  One morning three weeks after the trial Briony decided to sort out her marmalade jars and store them better, using the bubblewrap the aids had been kept in. She was surrounding one of the jars with the stuff when there was a sudden popping sound. One of the little bubbles had burst under pressure. She pressed another and it made a satisfying sound. Highly amused, she started popping every one. She continued at this harmless pastime for over an hour. After tea break she went back and popped some more. It was all enormous fun until she damaged her fingernail and had to ask She-Who-Must-Be-Replaced to trim it.

  “How did you do that?” Matron asked.

  Briony showed her.

  “Well, no wonder. There’s something hard inside the bubble. I do believe it’s glass. How wicked.”

  But it didn’t turn out to be glass. It was an uncut diamond, and there were others secreted in the bubblewrap. A second police investigation was mounted into Operation Syringe. As a result, Buckfield, the manager of the Bay Tree Hotel, was arrested.

  It seemed he had been working a racket with Marcus Haliburton, importing uncut diamonds stolen by workers in a South African diamond mine. The little rocks had been smuggled to Britain in the packing used for the hearing aids. Interpol took over the investigation on two continents.

  It turned out that on the day of our heist Buckfield the manager suspected something was afoot, and decided Haliburton might be double-crossing him. When he checked Room 104 he found the Brigadier’s revolver on the bed and he was certain he was right. He took it straight to the suite. Haliburton denied everything and said he was only a go-between and offered to open the new box of aids in the manager’s presence. We know what it contained. Incensed, Buckfield pointed the gun and shot Haliburton dead.

  After our release, we had a meeting to decide if we would sue the police for wrongful imprisonment. The Brigadier was all for it, but Sadie said we might be pushing our luck. We had a vote and decided she was right.

  The good thing is that every one of us heard each word of the debate. I can recommend these new digital aids to anyone.

  CONTINUITY ERROR

  Nicholas Royle

  Christine rang Maddox on his mobile. A little accident, she said. A bump.

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No, no one was hurt.”

  He made his way to the side street in Shepherd’s Bush where it had happened. A one-way street temporarily blocked off by roadworks at the junction with Goldhawk Road. Estate agent’s on the corner. Christine had reversed away from the roadworks and at five miles an hour hit a silver Toyota coming out of the concealed exit from the sunken car park behind the estate agent’s.

  By the time Maddox arrived, the driver of the silver Toyota was in full magnanimous third-party mode, confident the insurance companies would find in his favour. Maddox hated him on sight. Too reasonable, too forthcoming. Like providing his address and insurance details was some kind of favour.

  Maddox’s son Jack had got out of the car and stood staring at the small pile of shattered glass on the road, seemingly transfixed by it. Christine was visibly upset, despite the unctuous affability of the Toyota driver and Maddox’s own efforts to downplay the situation.

  “It’s only a couple of lights and a new wing. No one was hurt, that’s the main thing.”

  Two days later, Maddox and Jack were walking past the top of the side street. The roadworks had been removed and a car was exiting into Goldhawk Road without any difficulty.

  “Is that where the accident happened, Daddy?” asked the little boy.

  “Yes.”

  Jack stopped, his big eyes taking in the details. The fresh asphalt by the junction, the concealed exit from the sunken car park behind the estate agent’s.

  “Is it still there?” the little boy asked.

  “What? Is what still there?”

  “The accident. Is the accident still there?”

  Maddox didn’t know what to say.

  They were getting ready to go out. Christine was ready and Maddox was nearly ready, a too-familiar scenario. She waited by the front door, smart, made-up, tall in new boots and long coat, enveloped in a haze of expensive perfume.

  “Are you nearly ready, Brian?”

  That she added his name to the harmless query was a bad sign. It meant her patience was stretched too thin. But he’d lost his car key. He’d looked everywhere. Twice. And couldn’t find it.

  “Where did you last have it?” she shouted up the stairs.

  The unhelpfulness of the question grated against his nerves.

  “I don’t know. That’s the whole point.”

  He started again. Bedroom (bedside drawer, dressing gown). Jacket pockets. Kitchen.

  “Have you looked in your box?”

  “Yes, I’ve looked in my box.”

  They each had a box, like an in-tray, in the kitchen. Christine never used hers, but always knew where everything was. Maddox used his, but still managed to lose at least one important item every day. Wallet, phone, keys. Chequebook, bank card. Everything always turned up, sooner or later, but in this case, not soon enough.

  “I can’t find it. I’ve looked everywhere.”

  Heavy sigh.

  If the atmosphere hadn’t become tense he would jokingly accuse her of having hidden it, of trying to make him think he was losing his mind. But that wouldn’t play now. They were beyond that.

  “It’s probably at the flat,” she said, loading the word with her customary judgmental emphasis.

  “How could it be at the flat when my car’s outside?” he snapped before realizing that she must have been joking.

  “It’s a pity you don’t have a spare key,” she said.

  “It’s a pity your car’s in the garage,” he retorted, “about to be declared uneconomical to repair. Look, Christine, it’s very late. I can’t find it and I certainly won’t find it with you hovering
, getting all wound up, so I suggest you get a cab and I’ll follow.”

  “But what if you don’t find it?”

  “I’ll find it. I’ll be there, just a little late, that’s all. You go. You’ll easily pick up a black cab on the Green. You’re only going to Ladbroke Grove.”

  Sweating, he listened as the front door was opened and shut – slammed. Gate clanged. Fading echo of footsteps receding. He felt the tension flow out of him and collapsed on to the nearest chair. He loosened his tie and reached for a glass.

  In their bedroom he pressed the power button on his laptop. While waiting, he stared blankly at the framed poster on the wall. A production he’d been in more than twenty years ago. Colossus. Clive Barker’s play about Goya. He allowed the faces of cast members to run through his mind, particularly those who’d gone on to other things. Lennie James – you saw him on television all the time now. A part in Cold Feet. A one-off drama, something he’d written himself. That prison series. Buried. Right. Buried in the schedules.

  Aslie Pitter, the most naturally talented actor in the cast. He’d done one or two things – a Channel Four sitcom, guest appearance in The Bill – then disappeared. Maddox had last seen him working for a high-street chain. Security, demonstrating product – he couldn’t remember which.

  Elinore Vickery had turned up in something at the Waterman’s. Maddox had liked her, tried to keep in touch, but there was an invisible barrier, as if she’d known him better than he knew himself.

  Missing out on a couple of good parts because of his size (five foot five in stocking feet, eight stone dead), Maddox had quit the theatre and concentrated on writing. Barker had helped with one or two contacts and Maddox sold a couple of horror stories. Over the years he’d moved away from fiction into journalism and book-length non-fiction. The current project, New Maps of Hell, hadn’t found a home. The publishers he’d offered it to hadn’t been able to reject it quickly enough. They didn’t want it on their desks. It made them uncomfortable. That was fine by Maddox. He’d worry if it didn’t. They’d want it on their lists, though, when it was too late. He’d finish it first, then pick one editor and let the others write their letters of resignation.