Chapter 19

Jamie shook. "What?"

"Excuse me, sir," the Guard said and Jamie felt adrenaline course through his veins. Surely he wasn't going to get arrested yards from the departure gate? Surely fate would not be so mean as to let him get so close and yet so far?

He took a deep breath; he bet they had inspected the bag and found the stolen statue and the stolen money, and he was going to be apprehended. He wondered if he could sprint onto the plane, but knew the plane would not take off with him on board.

He was going to be stopped and his adventure would come to end. He had done well, travelled all the way to London and then got to departure gate of a plane to Argentina; he wondered how Emma was doing, but it would be all over for him.

"Your shoes, sir. The laces are undone."

Jamie gawped and looked down at his scruffy trainers. The guard was right, his right shoe didn't have the laces done up and he gestured towards him. "Cheers mate."

"You'll go arse over tit," he said with a giggle.

The guard smiled and watched as the rest of the passengers filed past Jamie retying his shoelaces before he rejoined the throng of travellers. Jamie's seat was in the aisle and after the obligatory welcome, the plane took off and Jamie was treated to a safety announcement by the alluring cabin crew. He got himself something to eat and then sat back enjoying the flight out of Britain to a country far, far away. The woman next to him went to sleep almost immediately and Jamie had not brought any entertainment but took to watching the in-flight film and then sleeping himself.

The descent into Buenos Aires was steep and turbulent, and Jamie was not the only passenger to feel nauseous, but the plane hit the runway with a jolt and taxied to the terminal.

He expected to have swarms of armed Police officers waiting for him, but there was no-one apprehending him as he got off the plane, showed his passport and filed into the baggage area to collect his stolen baggage. The Argentines seemed welcoming and relaxed as he walked past the security who happily waved him through and smiled at the passengers.

Emma had told him to find a gentleman by the name of General Bastos and after collecting his bag and ensuring that his loot was still present, he went to the bureau de change to ask and to swap some of his stolen British currency for Argentinian Pesos.

Neither the assistant at the bureau de change or the barman at an English pub in the city centre knew anything about General Bastos, and Jamie was half-tempted to stick all the money into a bank account and flog the statue to any pawn dealer: the statue was supposedly worth a small fortune because of what it represented but if Emma wasn't in the Argentinian city and he couldn't find her contact then he had no hope.

Instead, Jamie found a cheap hotel with a receptionist that spoke English and traded a couple of his Argentinian notes for a room for a couple of nights; the day was giving way to evening and Jamie wanted to get something nice to eat and some sleep.

He would find General Bastos in the morning along with a change of clothes.

Jamie threw his guide book into the corner of the room; he had been in Buenos Aires for two weeks and found no-one – not Emma or General Bastos. He had got food poisoning twice and changed hotels twice but was getting very disillusioned with the Argentinian city: no-one seemed to like him when he told them he was English. Hadn't they forgotten about the Falklands yet?

Jamie had had a lead on General Bastos, being told in an English themed bar that he was very senior in the Argentinian military and to try and visit a large building in the centre of the city. He spoke at length to a ex-pat who did not seem to worry about why Jamie wanted to find the man as long as Jamie kept supplying him with beer, which he could amply afford to do.

The following day, Jamie went to the imposing building with the statue in his bag and tried to speak English to the border guard who looked at him blankly. He thought about showing the Gold statue to the uniformed soldier who kept shouting at him in Spanish, no matter how many times Jamie told him firmly that he didn't speak "their lingo" but decided that it probably wouldn't buy him a ticket into the building so kept his grip around the statue firm.

In the end, Jamie gave up and decided he would need to try with a translator and walked back to his small hotel room, opening his door with his key and setting the statue on the top of his chest of drawers.

"Ya fuckin' pain in t'arse," he told the figure of the half-naked girl. "Ya better be worth it," he warned her and walked into his en-suite shower; the day was not hot but the lack of rain had coated the roads in dust and as he had trekked back to his hotel, he got coated in dirt. He just wanted a shower and turned on the water.

It ran warm and let the warm water soak into his skin, looking up at the dirty shower head that the water dribbled out of. He took a leak in the shower, watching as the water coloured a mirky yellow and then disappeared.

He puffed; he had been trying to offload the statue for two weeks and find either Emma or Bastos to no avail. The four weeks Emma reckoned it would take was up in two days time and he decided, if there was no sign of her by then, not that he knew how they would meet, then he would try and leave the city.

He was not sure where he would go but he didn't like Buenos Aires and all he needed was a country that had no extradition treaty and a nice beach with nice girls; preferably one that would accept a criminal on the run and where his stolen money would go far.

Jamie came out of the shower, rubbing his face and looked at himself in the mirror; he needed to see a barber, his short hair was unruly and he looked unloved. He felt his stubble, he also needed a shave. Jamie opened the bathroom door to retrieve his razor and clapped eyes on the cabinet: his statue was gone.

Emma walked down the street in Buenos Aires. She had not expected to miss the five goofy companions she had spent the last three weeks with and although they asked if she wanted to come back with them, Emma needed to get to Argentina where she was safe.

Although she never tired of the near-constant sex, she didn't want it for too much longer anyway, she would chalk it down to a fantastic few days, a brilliant adventure and something to tell the grandkids about; she was not a swinger and she was not in possession of an over-active sex drive.

Emma had to slip past border control and then head for the city centre but she cleared them easily and was in the back of a cab speeding towards a hotel within a few minutes of kissing her maritime companions goodbye.

She worked out she had spent almost a month escaping England, but not all of the time had been unpleasant and wondered if she might adopt ocean yachting once she had sold her statue.

Being so isolated had meant she had not caught up with the news and she began to think about Jamie. Oliver was going down for the job but she wondered whether her ex-boyfriend had had enough about him to not get caught.

Emma's cab came to rest outside a small hotel and the driver got annoyed when she tried to pay with pounds, but accepted a ridiculous amount of Euros instead. Fortunately for her, the hotel spoke English and were more than happy to accept British pounds for her stay. She smiled at the check-in girl – barely old enough to be out of school by British standards and had her bags carried to her room.

Emma emptied the loot on the bed; she would need to see about finding the General who she wanted to sell the statue to and saw a glistening of gold. For the first time she pulled out the three necklaces she had stolen and turned them over in her hand – one was ornate, with a blue stone in the centre, and very similar to the one that Oliver had taken. It was pretty and she slid it over her neck.

For years Emma had always resisted jewellery and making herself look pretty; her line of work made it quite inappropriate and she preferred to go the gym and do kick-boxing and Taekwondo, but a few days being appreciated by her lustful ocean-crossing friends had made her enjoy the thought of being pretty. Suddenly, she liked her body and looked at herself in the mirror.

Chrissy sat back in her car and glanced at the vibrating mobile. Her editor had given her permission to "check out" Oliver's claims but not to spend too long doing it, but she had been missing for two days as she sought to verify the allegations and he was clearly getting most annoyed with her.

Her initial enquiries had not been too promising; the road Oliver had mentioned was long and containing over 400 properties. Furthermore, there was a similarly named road in Warrington, St Helens and Bebington – all within twenty miles of Liverpool, but she had spoken to an old acquaintance in the city and he had pointed to a house on the south side of the city.

The address, the location of one of Jaroslav's brothels, was in one of the shabbiest parts of the city and she had watched from a distance from the safety of her car. After a couple of hours, of discreet comings and goings, a blacked out people carrier left from around the side of the property and she had started following it.