Harboil: Part IV

The thing is: all villains reiterate.

The rooftops of the offices and stores along Main Street are lined with professional photographers and police snipers.

Down in the cavalcade, there are undercover cops who have learnt to play the trombone especially. Even the orphan choir contains a mole: Tina, the city’s only female police officer. Princess Miriam’s girdle doubles as a bullet-proof vest.

And while the police protect the new regency, on the other side of town the petty criminals stack TVs, empty tills and load up boxes of cigarettes.

Uncooked rice hits tarmac, so bricks hit shop windows. Everyone is celebrating. The sound of applause like smashing glass.

They say that, in Harboil, you can feel a big deal coming: the humidity before the storm, the pressure of expectation that – to some – might feel like excitement for the wedding of the decade but, to others, like Boris the Migraine, it’s unmistakeable: the quiet burden of a diamond on the move.

The truly ambitious, discerning criminals are not reversing four by fours into MG showrooms. They are listening. As the cavalcade lopes down the main strip, every gang worth its sodium chloride, has its ears to the ground and eyes to the keyhole.

There are men pretending to read newspapers on all the arterial roads. In the docks, bad fishermen hide walkie-talkies in their tackle bag. Freight containers contain armed teams waiting for a signal. Every tough with his eyes on the prize.

The slightest whiff or glint and the underworld will be stepping out of the shadows with a shotgun and a kind word.

The Migraine is rubbing his temples: he can hear the hailstorm of matrimony as it moves across town.

~

THE PLAN: "Diamonds Are For Eva"

It was more of a letter, less of a plan.

Reading by the light of a burning trash barrel, perhaps the Ballastrians should not have been surprised by the document’s candid tone, its tendency toward back-story, its endless re-capping.

But they were surprised.

They could not believe their good fortune.

Dearest Father Lincoln,

I trust this letter finds you focussed, alert and, above all, sober. The time is at hand.

Let me remind you what is at stake. The Aquarium diamond is the single most sought after piece of jewellery, the most wanted piece of crime memorabilia, and, simultaneously, my wife Eva’s favourite doorstop. No single object has higher material value.

But let’s make things even simpler. I bought it for Eva. And she wants it back.

When the Aquarium moves, people tend to know about it. The gangs and clans will be expecting the Royal Wedding to be used as a diversion for something; they don’t know what for but, I’m sure, they intend to find out. They will be expecting an armour-plated cavalcade, a speed boat sewer chase or, perhaps, a ninja with a bulge in his tunic.

Which is why I came to you.

Let me run through things, one more time, just for the sake of transparency. As you know, our dearest Princess Miriam, whose posture can be relied upon, will be concealing the diamond in her hair-do, parading it down Main Street, to the wedding reception, which I am generously hosting in the grand ball room of my villa in West Averly.

The Princess and I are quite close. In a private room, I will invite Miriam to let her hair down before she takes the first dance.

This plan may sound simple, Father, but let me give you a little back-story, just so that you understand how much work has gone in to this project already.

Twelve years ago, after regaining possession of the diamond, we took it far away from Harboil. I could not risk bringing it near the city. I could not risk another kafuffle.

As soon as the diamond left, we started planning its return.

This took some preparation. For my part, I started buying presents for the Princess Miriam. She was only seven-years old. I bought her a stack of meringue cake like an iceberg. I bought her more dollies than she could name. I even bought her a telescope and an observatory to match.

She was a sweet kid, father. She said the stars were pretty.

While I was getting chummy with the princess, my good friend Moira Cifuentes was training Harboil’s first female hairdresser: a sweet girl called Louisa Ort. You may have heard of her. Louisa opened her own salon – His Scissors – on the distant outskirts of Harboil.

Louisa built a fierce reputation for her talent but also for her stubbornness. You may have read about her in the lifestyle press. She has a number of rules: she only cuts in her salon; she doesn’t do home visits, for anybody; she doesn’t allow mirrors; no-one else is allowed in the room while Louisa cuts: you either trust Louisa or you leave.

All this was an elaborate act of forward planning.

Despite the unlikely location, Louisa’s client list read like the FBI’s Wives of the Most Wanted. If the girl on your arm had one of Louisa’s haircuts, then you were pretty much admitting to murder.

So inevitably, when it came to the Royal Wedding, there was a call made to Louisa. The haircut she has created being a thing of both aesthetic and mathematical beauty. Designed to incorporate a weight the equivalent to a chandelier, hanging from the inside of her hive, each hair supporting the next, like a perfect society that will never exist.

On the morning of the wedding, Princess Miriam will visit Louisa who, after twelve loyal years, finally has the chance to fulfil her role. She is alone with the Princess. She does not work with a mirror. The diamond is fitted in to the miraculous haircut. Needless to say, nobody interferes. Every strand is sacred.

From that point, the princess is escorted to the church. As I’m certain you are aware it is not so difficult to find a corrupt priest but, Father, I would not have approached you if I did not think you were of particular merit. Not least for your conjuring talents. Once we are both safely at the reception, I do hope you’ll treat the guests two a feat of deception.

Once the marriage is legal, then the Princess will mount her carriage and, under the supervision of both the entire Harboil police force and an army of vicariously protective mothers, she will bring the diamond to my home, where its boudoir awaits, walls lined with fish tanks, a drag-net of laser-security and it’s own twenty-four squat team. On arrival, I’m certain that my wife, Eva, will want to spend some time alone with it.

Father, I am not a jealous man.

So I think you understand that there’s rather a lot at stake. I’ve been waiting a long time. If anything should go wrong, I don’t know what I would do.

And as if it needs mentioning, you shall be ludicrously paid.

Yours,

Francois Gallas