“I don’t know what he’s on about,” Sadie said to me.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s playing soldiers, that’s all. He’ll find out it’s a nonstarter.”
“No muttering in the ranks,” the Brigadier said. “Any dissenters? Fall out, the dissenters.”
No one moved. Some of us needed help to move anywhere and nobody left the room when tea and biscuits were on offer. And that was how we were recruited into the snatch squad.
On Saturday, the Brigadier reported on Phases One and Two of his battle plan. He marched into the tea room looking as chipper as Montgomery on the eve of El Alamein.
“Well, the obbo phase is over and so is the liaison and I’m able to report some fascinating results. The gentleman who wants us all to troop along to the Bay Tree Hotel and buy his miraculous hearing aids is clearly doing rather well out of it. He drives a vintage Bentley and wears a different suit each visit and by the cut of them they’re not off the peg.”
“There’s money in ripping off old people,” Sadie said.
“It ought to be stopped,” her friend Briony said.
The Brig went on, “I talked to my contact last night and I’m pleased to tell you that the enemy — that is to say, Marcus Haliburton — works to a predictable routine. He puts in a fortnightly appearance at the Bay Tree. If you go along and see him you’ll find Session One is devoted to the consultation and the placing of the order. Session Two is the fitting and payment. Between Sessions One and Two a box is delivered to the hotel and it contains up to fifty new hearing aids — more than enough for our needs.” He paused and looked around the room. “So what do you think is the plan?”
No one was willing to say. Some might have thought speaking up would incriminate them. Others weren’t capable of being heard by the Brigadier. Finally I said, “We, em, requisition the box?”
“Ha!” He lifted a finger. “I thought you’d say that. We can do better. What we do is requisition the box.”
There were smiles all round at my expense.
“And then,” the Brigadier said, “we replace the box with one just like it.”
“That’s neat,” Sadie said. She was beginning to warm to the Brigadier’s criminal scheme.
He’d misheard her again. “It may sound like deceit to you, madam, but to some of us it’s common justice. They called Robin Hood a thief.”
“Are we going to be issued with bows and arrows?” Sadie said.
“I wouldn’t mind meeting some merry men,” Briony said.
The Brigadier’s next move took us all by surprise. “Check the corridor, George. Make sure no staff are about.”
I did as I was told and gave the thumbs-up sign, whereupon the old boy bent down behind the sideboard and dragged out a flattened cardboard box that he rapidly restored to its normal shape.
“Thanks to my contacts at the hotel I’ve managed to retrieve the box that was used to deliver this week’s aids.” No question: He intended to go through with this crazy adventure. In the best officer tradition he started to delegate duties. “George, your job will be to get this packed and sealed and looking as if it just arrived by courier.”
“No problem,” I said to indulge him. I was sure the plan would break down before I had to do anything.
“That isn’t so simple as it sounds,” he said. “Take a close look. The aids are made in South Africa, so there are various customs forms attached to the box. They stuff them in a kind of envelope and stick them to the outside. What you do is update this week’s documents.”
“I’ll see what I can manage.”
“Then you must consider the contents. The instruments don’t weigh much, and they’re wrapped in bubble wrap, so the whole thing is almost as light as air. Whatever you put inside must not arouse suspicion.”
“Crumpled-up newspaper,” Sadie said.
“What did she say?”
I repeated it for his benefit.
Sadie said, “Briony has a stack of Daily Mails this high in her room. She hoards everything.”
I knew that to be true. Briony kept every postcard, every letter, every magazine. Her room was a treasure house of things other people discarded. She even collected the tiny jars our breakfast marmalade came in. The only question was whether she would donate her newspaper collection to Operation Syringe. She could be fiercely possessive at times.
“I might be able to spare you some of the leaflets that come with my post,” she said.
Sadie said, “Junk mail. That’ll do.”
“It doesn’t incriminate me, does it?” she said. “I want no part of this silly escapade.”
“Excellent,” the Brigadier said, oblivious. “When the parcel is up to inspection standard, I’ll tell you about the next phase.”
The heat was now on me. I had to smuggle the box back to my room and start work. I was once employed as a graphic designer, so the forging of the forms wasn’t a big problem. Getting Briony to part with her junk mail was far more demanding. You’d think it was bank notes. She checked everything and allowed me about one sheet in five. But in the end I had enough to stuff the box. I sealed it with packing tape I found in Matron’s office and showed it to the Brigadier.
“Capital,” he said. “We can proceed to Phase Four: Distracting the enemy.”
“How do we do that?”
“We inundate Marcus Haliburton with requests for appointments under bogus names.”
“That’s fun. I’ll tell the others.”
Even at this stage, it was still a game, as I tried to explain later to the police. Some of us had mobiles and others used the pay phone by the front door. I think a couple of bold souls used the phone in Matron’s office. I don’t know if we succeeded in distracting Haliburton. He must have been surprised by the number of Smiths, Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons who had seen his publicity. The greedy beggar didn’t turn any away.
And so the day of the heist arrived. Almost everyone from the Never-Say-Die had been talked into joining in and clambered onto the bus the Brigadier had laid on. Half of them were so confused most of the time that you could have talked them into running the London Marathon. The notable exception was Briony. She wanted no part of it. She stayed put, guarding her hoard of newspapers and marmalade jars. The Brigadier called her a ruddy conchie when he found out.
In their defence, few of them knew the finer points of the battle plan. But they still amounted to a formidable squad as they alighted from the bus and listened to the Brigadier’s Agincourt-style speech.
“There are senior citizens all over Britain who will think themselves accursed they were not here with us. We few, we happy few, deaf but not downtrodden, stand on the brink of victory. Onward, then.”
So began the main assault, as the Brigadier called it. Four old ladies crossed the hotel foyer walker to walker, a vanguard forging a route for the main party, twelve more on sticks and crutches, with two motorised chairs like tanks in the rear. Inexorably they headed for the suite used by Marcus Haliburton for his consultations. Their task: to block all movement in the corridor.
Because of my supposed underworld connections, I had been selected for a kind of SAS role, along with the Brigadier himself. At some time in the first hour, while all the new patients were being documented, tested, and examined, a security firm would deliver the latest box of hearing aids to the hotel. One of the staff was then supposed to bring it to the suite for Haliburton to begin handing out the aids to people who had placed orders on his previous visit. Thanks to the congestion in the corridor, this would not be possible.