Page 13 of The Gods of Chaos and Chance

‘You think Peyton and I run an international crime syndicate?’

‘Dunno, don’t care, long as lots of dosh keeps comin’ my way. No, I meant the fucking being Russian thing. HerrWulfof the World Bank. The lizard-in-human-form kraut—seizing all the yachts, isn’t he?’

‘I don’t own a yacht.’Well,notyet.

‘Yeah, but the boats are just fuckingsymbolic, aren’t they? Like putting the little fucking flags up on thingsoh, look at us, look at how fucking virtuous we are.’

Aleksey smirked and took a swallow of water. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll take them all down when we invade here.’

Squeezy laughed. ‘You could sign up again. Finally win a war.’

‘Oh, we won plenty, trust me. You just have to look at things in the bigger picture.’

‘So, you okay? You gonna survive the little Hitler-wannabe’s progroms? Only it’s getting close to home. Russian whatshisname with the football club docked his tub in Devonport dockyard last week, and the coppers fucking tried to throw him overboard and steal it, fucking pirates. He got away and rowed to that medieval island—just over there, you know. But then they arrested him there. Fuckers.’

Where did you start?

‘Medieval island? Do you meanMediterraneanIsland?’

‘Huh? Bloody hell, you’re hard work sometimes. The Bailiwick one. Just over there. You know!’

Aleksey really didn’t. He picked at the water bottle label. Bailiwick was a thing in cricket, wasn’t it? Cricket Island? Didn’t seem right.

‘Cus with the renovations… The Old Woman would get a bit angsty if you had to sell it like. If you became a paup—’

‘Island? Near here?’

‘Well one of them, yeah. You know! Your bloody wife owns them all now, shouldn’t wonder.’

Ah, light dawned.

‘Ex-wife. Do you meanles iles de la Anglo-Normandes?’

‘Typical fucking foreigner,’ was all Squeezy replied. He indicated to the bar once again and Aleksey lay back.

So, with all this interesting information to ponder, probing Squeezy’s probable knowledge of the intricacies of pain relief had got put to one side.

Aleksey knew aboutlesiles de la Anglo-Normandes—the Channel Islands, as Ben would probably call them. All children brought up on Nazi war films did. When they weren’t playing knights and peasants, or once knights and dragons (but that game had ended very badly for Nika), they would play escaping Nazi prisoners of war, of course.

HavingactualNazi warmongers in the family always gave this particular game a certain frisson of realism.

Occasionally, they switched it up and played prisoners of war escaping Nazis, but that was never as much fun.

When Ben was making dinner, and he was allowed to stare morosely at one glass of red wine (if he actually drank it, it wouldn’t be there at all), he wondered why he wasn’t just Googling islands for sale and be done with it. After all, if you wanted to buy a house, you found the house for sale first. But he knew why really, and didn’t need to ponder this too deeply: he didn’t want to find that doing this remarkable thing, owning an island, wasn’t possible. Although, if the trial went badly for the miserable drug addict, Aleksey supposedhisisland might come up for sale…

He twisted Ben’s laptop around and woke it up. To his amazement, the screen appeared to be filled with…equations. He’d have been less astonished if he’d found breasts. He studied the numbers. Molly was three. Were they really expecting her to do speed, time, distance calculations?

‘What are you doing?’ Before he could reply, Ben strode over and closed the lid. ‘Dinner’s ready. Move your shit.’

Aleksey dutifully and carefully folded his glasses away.

Curry? This was new.

As he was pretending to eat something green that had poked out of the brownish-yellow mush, he asked conversationally, ‘Are you helping Molly with her homework? The Professor apparently knows much about everything; you could ask him to assist, and then I could finally work out what it is that I pay him for.’

‘That’s lemongrass. You aren’t supposed to eat the stalk. How did your session with Squeezy go?’

‘You probably had a more intelligent conversation with your daughter.’

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