The Retirement Plan

Chapter 12

Phil glanced back at the villa before getting in the car. Jennifer sat by the pool, not looking at him, eyes on her phone, giggling, dimples just like her mums. Face-timing with a friend more important to her than spending actual time with her estranged father.

That would be her mother's doing, no doubt. He could picture Lucia with her fiery Latin temperament, calling him every hijo de puta under the sun. Poisoning his daughter's mind with tales of her daddy's infidelities. Hadn't his mother done the same to him after Phil's parents split? Dragged him away from his friends back in London when he was a couple of years younger than Jennifer was now. Paloma Greene, née Alvarez-Sanchez, badmouthing her ex-husband every chance she got. Phil convinced it was all that seething hatred that led to her massive embolism, aged just fifty-three.

Phil slipped the key in the ignition. He couldn't help looking up at the white minimal design two-storey villa. His dream home. The mortgage he was shelling out sixteen-hundred a month on. The wooden pergolas, where he and his wife had spent many a summer evening sipping Beaujolais and enjoying Lucia's home-cooked Paella. And the roof-top terrace where Phil would take Jennifer up to watch the stars when she was younger. Telling the enthralled ten-year-old the names of the different constellations. Before she would inevitably fall asleep and he would have to carry her back to her room. Those memories as far removed from his current life as Orion's light is from the earth.

Phil backed down the gravel drive, reversed onto the street. The electric gate trundled closed.

An hour ago, Phil had received a call from Max Schelling. The diminutive Dutchman with a penchant for eye-watering violence had requested a meet. A chat. Max's idea of a chat was to scream obscenities and threaten to physically remove your vital organs. Depending on his mood or the severity of the offense, Max might bypass the chat and skip straight to the actual assault.

Phil glanced at the scar on the back of his left hand.

Stomach performing somersaults, Phil sought to reassure himself. He had been keeping up with the payments every week, as promised. It meant living in a fleabag hotel, but at least he was living. And as he and Lucia weren't formally divorced, alimony wasn't an issue. So long as he kept up the mortgage payments, she didn't get on his case. That might all change in a few months when Jennifer started college. Even on Lucias surgeons salary, college fees would take their toll. But for now, he funneled what spare income he had Max's way. Kept him sweet.

So what was behind Max's call?

Phil parked the Volvo on a side street a few hundred yards from the beachfront and made his way to the arranged meeting point on foot.

A smattering of people walked up and down the golden shoreline, couples, dog-walkers and the odd jogger. Phil sat on the small concrete wall across the road from the closed Café del Mar, tried to relax. Out here in the open, there were limits to what even a mental case like Max could do. But what the hell did the lunatic want with him?

Phil turned his back to the street and sat facing the sea. Watching wispy waves roll to the shore helped soothe his brainwaves. The soft lapping sounds stabilized his heart rate.

The hand squeezing his shoulder almost caused him to do a Humpty Dumpty off the wall.

"Bit jumpy, are we?" a voice that wasn't Max said. Phil turned around to see two men whom he didn't recognize. The lanky one with bad teeth said, "Max would like to see you." The well-built one kept his hand vice-tight on Phil's shoulder.

When Phil looked at the blue Honda Civic parked up on the curb, engine ticking over, that electrical activity in his brain went haywire again. "Where are you taking me?"