The Undertaking: A comedy spy caper (Cremains Book 2) by Rob Johnson

Author:Rob Johnson [Johnson, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Xerika Publishing
Published: 2023-03-22T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I was all out of ideas. With Oleg missing and presumed impossible to find, I hadn’t got a scooby how to get Carla out of the clutches of the Russian agents, and I had less than six hours to figure something out.

Hardly a word passed between Alan, Scratch and me as we left Aunt Betty’s narrowboat and drove back to the funeral parlour. I didn’t know what the others were thinking, but in the absence of any practical solutions, all I could do was pointlessly run through a series of “if onlys” in my head – with the help of its resident voice, of course.

‘If only Mr Mysterious hadn’t vanished off the face of the Earth, you’d have been able to hand Oleg over to him or MI6 or whoever as soon as you’d got back from France.’

‘If only the cops had taken him in when you took him to the police station.’

‘If only these Russian agents hadn’t been so hell bent on killing him or if we’d managed to give them the slip.’

‘If only they’d kidnapped Dimitri instead of Carla, you wouldn’t need to give a shit.’

And so on, and so on, culminating with: ‘If only I hadn’t taken the job of collecting Oleg from France in the first place, none of this fucking nightmare would ever have happened.’

‘You’re not wrong there, mate,’ said Scratch, ‘but we all agreed, so you don’t have to take all the blame yourself.’

‘What?’ I hadn’t realised I’d spoken the last “if only” out loud so hadn’t expected a response.

‘You were saying how we wouldn’t be in this fucking nightmare if—’

‘Oh, right. Yes. Sorry, I—’

‘Anyway, we’ll be back at Stiff City in two shakes. Get one of Sanjeev’s brews inside yer, and it’ll do yer the power o’ good.’

‘Yeah,’ Alan snorted. ‘’Cos a nice cuppa tea is gonna solve all our problems, isn’t it?’

‘Fuck off, Alan.’

But I never did get Sanjeev to brew up because no sooner had we stepped through the door of the funeral parlour than he rushed up to us, arms flailing and babbling like a half-crazed crack addict.

I put what was intended to be a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘You wanna calm down and tell us what you’re so het up about?’

‘There’s a… There’s a…’ He was hyperventilating like he’d just finished a marathon and could barely get the words out.

‘Maybe I should slap him,’ said Alan. ‘Looks hysterical to me.’

I ignored him. ‘There’s a what, Sanjeev? A what?’

‘There’s a… There’s a…’ Once again, this was as far as he got, so I told him to take a few deep breaths, which seemed to help.

‘There’s a body. A dead one. A man. Downstairs. In the… mortuary.’

‘Yeah, well, in case it may have escaped your notice,’ Alan said, ‘this is in fact a funeral parlour, so a dead body in the mortuary isn’t something particularly out of the ordinary. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s perfectly bloody normal.’

‘No, no. You don’t understand,’ Sanjeev gasped. ‘I found him right outside.

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