I didn't need to be hospitalised, which was fine by me, I'm not the world's best patient. I wanted to see Kashmere but as her three brothers had all died in the battle on the cliff I felt it wasn't really appropriate. I rang her number a couple of times but Old Stan answered and he said that she had just gone out and then he hung up. My friend, or should I say my ex-friend, Lincoln had been taken into custody and charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation. Sunshine, who was clucking around me like a mother hen, had been snooping around and she had discovered that Theodore had organised a shipment of various weaponry, manufactured in North Korea and shipped it to Hong Kong. From there it had been transferred to a ship bound for Singapore, where it had been transferred to a ship bound for Dubai, the shipment included medical supplies, the iniquitous AK47's, plus surface to surface missiles, and, what was getting right up everyone's nose, it also appeared to include chemical weapons. The boxes were marked as agricultural chemicals. Lincoln, it would appear, had been involved with the paperwork end, the three musketeers had put the money up and a man named Pops was to have taken delivery. I wondered if Pops was Kashmere's Grandpa. It seemed to me that there had been some sort of split in the gang and everybody, that is the three musketeers, Lincoln and perhaps Old Stan, if he was Pops, was trying to sideline everybody else to get a bigger cut of the financial cake. That's why they had used me, to try to discover what everyone else was up to, all very complicated.
Ollo reported that the ship had been boarded on the high seas by SAS commandoes from Australia and taken into custody. All in all a good outcome but the worry was, and there is always someone worrying somewhere, had a batch of chemical weapons already been delivered. I lay in bed recuperating, eating peaches and directing Ollo on a case. We still had to keep the office open and Ollo was to follow a guy with a bad leg and get film of him, the guy we were following had put in a workers compensation claim. Not quite as exciting as getting thrown off a cliff but hey, a hell of a lot safer.
After a few endless days of doing nothing I couldn't stop myself, I drove my old Beetle around to Kashmere's house, parked down the street and decided to wait until she either came in or went out. I waited all morning and into the afternoon, I must have fallen asleep, as when I opened my eyes there she was in the garden, just doing something ordinary, like smelling the roses. I got out of the car and slowly walked towards her, she looked up and saw me but didn't move. I reached the gate but stayed outside on the footpath and looked at her. She looked back at me and her eyes filled with tears.
'Kashmere…' I said and then old Stan came out into the garden, he was pointing a shotgun at me.
'Get away, get away, murderer!' he shouted. 'I kill you, I kill you. My boys, my grandsons, I kill you.'
'Grandpa!' said Kashmere. She turned to him and took hold of the gun, Stan yanked it upwards and it went off with a bloody great bang, then he collapsed into Kashmere's arms and started crying.