Free Cocaine by Jack Hillgate

would Jack Wiseman be doing between now and tomorrow morning in order to prepare for our meeting? Would he be setting up a dummy bank account in which to siphon my capital, assuming he could somehow get his hands on it? Would he be arranging for various people to call or email him during our discussion to make it appear as if he were highly successful and actually doing what he was meant to be doing? What would he be using the two thousand five hundred for? To buy Kit Kats?
    Speculation was the most innocent of luxuries, confined as it was to one’s own brain. I speculated for a good few hours in the sun, toasting myself nicely, basting myself in coconut oil and turning regularly to avoid burning. I felt like an omelette, preparing myself for consumption tomorrow morning by Jack Wiseman. My diversionary tactics had worked well, and I used the word in the sense of diverting myself from the reality of my situation, which was the waiting, the not knowing. If I was still alive tomorrow morning then it would be great fun to listen to Jack Wiseman’s investment gems, his infallible scheme for protecting capital. Perhaps he would try and involve me in his import/export business, one of the three business cards I had from him from our first meeting. Or maybe he would try and sell me a peerage? What would I be? Lord Milton of Cannes? There already was a Rue Milton , as well as roads named Shakespeare and Byron. They criss-crossed the English quarter of Cannes and the Boulevard des Anglais , also known as Carnot , the road that ran north from the sea to Le Cannet.
    Twice a day, morning and evening, without fail, I enjoyed regular bowel movements. The predictability was delightful and helped give an order to my life. My evening ablutions heralded the night and the sparkling lights in the Bay of Cannes all the way from the Cap to the Esterel. That night there was a partial eclipse of the Moon, but by the time I’d run in for my camera it had gone, leaving me with a high-definition multi-pixellated image of a red circle and a black blob. I imagined Carlos’s face, wrinkled and drawn, slowly materializing out of the black blob. I stared at the digital image for a few seconds and then I wiped it from my camera.

    Tuesday 3 rd April, 2007

    Another fine day. I walked down at seven in the morning and did twenty laps of the fifteen-metre pool which the management kept heated year round to eighty-five degrees. It steamed on cold days, like thermal springs. The laps didn’t take very long. I dried off under the low sun, lying on the white lounger in my thick white bathrobe and took out my camera from my wash-bag, the Nikon with the powerful lens. I tried looking up into Jack and Jan’s apartment using the zoom but they had their blinds drawn. In three hours I’d be sitting up there with him, eating one of Jan’s famous Kit Kats and being given the keys to Jack’s kingdom, the secrets to his intricate financial trapeze, complete with a money-back-guaranteed safety-net.
    Three hours passed slowly, the way it always did. No Carlos, of course. I was beginning to wonder. I knocked on Jack and Jan Wiseman’s door at ten-thirty sharp and Jack opened the door almost immediately with a beatific smile which turned almost ethereal when he noticed I was carrying an expensive bridle-leather attaché case that he no doubt imagined was brim-full with my financial affairs, ready for the master, Jack from Marbella.
    ‘I’ll tell you, George’, he said, edging closer on the sofa which someone had moved to his terrace, enclosed with glass and which we now shared with two desks, two computers and the young man sitting at one of them, tapping away on the keyboard. I noticed Bloomberg was on in the living room, the large silver plasma telling me London was up seventy points already, a one point two per cent gain, and that banks were looking to consolidate once more.
    ‘Nice set up’, I said, thinking that it looked like an office, suddenly. The two