Chapter 23:
The cars took them away, and Charley found himself sitting back in his little house in Ampswell. It had hardly changed since he had left it to live in the hotel in London. Only six months ago, it seemed like a lifetime now. No one had cleaned the place since he left, and even Charley wondered how long it had been since the house saw a Hoover. Maybe since his girlfriend, Elizabeth left him? These were old familiar walls that had greeted him every morning when he rose for work at Cobol. So there was something warm and familiar in the worn carpet and layers of dust covering his Dr Who videos.
Of course, it could not go on like this, and Charley knew he had to go and see Old Dave and the other Lottery winners at the factory. He picked his moment well and walked down to the factory during the lunch break.
There they all were. Old Dave was emptying a large metal bin full of scrap steel, with help from Bob. Kevin and Stuart were pushing a small wheeled truck, laden with steel sheets, into the dark heart of the factory. The door closed behind them, and the roar of the guillotines filled the air.
What a comedown.
Charley had toyed with the idea of storming into the plant, waving the ticket, and sticking two fingers in the direction of Eurco. But something stopped him. Somehow Charley knew that acting in an obvious way would compromise his whole plan. Only they must know they he now had the second half of the ticket, and that they could now collect the money. There was something evil out there, and they must guard against it. Meeting Pierse Morel had taught him a lesson, and that was to be careful. Cunning and stealth had to be his watchwords now. He knew his enemies had acted cleverly, to make sure they could not be caught out, and he had to be just as professional.
He hid in the bushes and watched the factory for some time. His life had been in there. Certainly, he had come a long way, through a journey which had taken him to the island, and a shipwreck. But his past lay still in there now.
After stopping to think of a sensible way out, Charley decided to go back and visit the solicitor that had handled their affairs the first time they won the lottery.
The solicitor stared with an open mouth as Charley told him, that he had travelled around the world to retrieve the ticket.
"So can we have the money now please?"
Charley laid the two tickets on the desk before him.
"It's them?" whispered the solicitor. "The two actual tickets? I never thought you would do it."
"No, plenty of people made that mistake," said Charley. "Well, here they are, so can you do your magic and inform the Euro Lottery, that we will be down in London tomorrow, to collect our cheque?"
"Yes, certainly," the man was taken aback by it all, but still made the call.
Charley walked out of the office. A few months before, he would have been in a spin. Not knowing what to do. Now he knew exactly.
Back in the Dirty Rabbit, things had not changed. Apart from the fact that the landlord had invented a beer named: "Oh God help me!" Apparently, this was the last thing people said after drinking it and then hitting the floor. Apart from that, it was all the same. The same dirty seats, and the same peeled wallpaper.
Old Dave was quite expecting things to be the same when he walked through the door that evening. Everything was the same. All except the man sitting at the end of the bar.
"Charley! We thought you were dead, or in jail or something?" Old Dave stood and stared at the other man.
"No, I'm alive and well. Here I am, and here's our money." He held up the sample cheque, sent over from the solicitor's office that afternoon. "The money will be wired to your accounts, tomorrow. We have to go to London to collect the real one."
"Quick!" said Old Dave turning to Stewart, "Go and tell the others."
With that, the other two lottery winners were called for. Their teas were left in front of the television, and they rushed to the Dirty Rabbit, to hear the good news.
"So you found the ticket after all?" said Bob, staring at the sample cheque before him on the bar.
"We couldn't let £200 million go unclaimed," smiled Charley, drinking his first pint in weeks.
"Did you have any trouble finding it?" asked Old Dave.
"A Little."
"What do you mean? A Little?" asked Bob.
"Things were a little wet at times, but we got there, that's the main thing."
"The first thing I want to do is go and smack that bloody Eurco right in the mouth." Old Dave now turned his mind to the question of revenge.
"Why did you all go back to the factory?" asked Charley.
"What else could we do? The money was gone," said Old Dave. "That place in China did not even exist."
"Oh, it existed alright," added Charley. "Only, no one will be building any factories there. But you can't have lost all your money?"
"Every penny piece," said Bob, getting back into his old ways, of pouring drink down his neck. "Some of us had to register for bankruptcy."
"What about your houses? Kevin, what about that mansion you lived in?"
"The wives took them, once we lost all our real money in the land deal. They did not see the point in hanging around to watch us drink the rest. So they just divorced us and took the properties." Kevin seemed resigned to it all now.
"The blood-sucking lawyers had it easy." Old Dave cast his mind back. "They could prove in court that we had wasted their lives, and that really the women should have the homes, as they had suffered so much. Still, yours never got a penny, eh Charley?"
"Yes, she did. I gave her a million."
"You did what?"
"I had to, she was desperate. I could spare it anyway." Charley could feel the looks of unprofessional pity from the other men, as he stared into his beer.
"Well, she lost the lot." Old Dave smiled. "That guy she was shacked up with, gambled it at the races. Now she has nothing."
"Poor Elizabeth," said Charley. "What will she do?"
"What do you care? She took your money and gave it to that waster?" Old Dave could not believe what he was hearing.
"She was badly advised, that's all. Not her fault."
"You've changed Charley," was all Bob would say.
And so he had.
Charley could see that he had become wiser. He could see beyond the problems now, which was more than could be said for the others.
"Now, I've got an idea for a dog track," said Bob, through the slurs as the beer began to flow. "It will make us millions!"
"We are not going to squander it like the last lot," said Charley. "Look where that got you?"
"Let's not fight on this great day!" said Old Dave, realising Charley could not be pushed around, like in the old days. "Tell us about that porno channel thing?"
"There's not much to tell really," said Charley.
"Not half!" laughed Bob. "What about that Natasha? I bet she's hot?"
"Hot-tempered maybe," replied Charley, wondering where she was now.
"I bet you had some fun with her, right?" Bob clearly wanted a more tabloid account of the story and was trying hard to turn the conversation in that direction.
"We never got up to anything like that. Strange really. To tell you the truth, she wasn't that sort of girl."
"She was a porno star!" cried Bob. "What other sort of girl should she be?"
"When you know them, they are quite different to the screen."
"What about that shooting?" Bob was not going to leave it there and wanted every juicy ounce squeezed from the story. "We all watched the night, that crazy bastard blew his brains out. And you were there!"
"Yes, we dropped in."
"We wondered why those guys fell through the roof," Old Dave was thoughtful as he recalled the strange scene. "So why did that guy have a stick up his arse?"
"Rufus was a sick man, we had to get rid of him. He was cruel to those asylum seekers. they used them as slaves on that island."
"They are using them as slaves at Cobol," said Old Dave.
"It has to stop. We have to do something about it." Charley wondered if he should tell them, that he had promised some of the money to various people around the world. he looked into his beer, then at the men, as they played pool and chattered about the factory.
No, this was not the time.
