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Uniform, who was further along the harbour side squeezing himself into his tiny black booth and peering out of the minute window hole, giving the peculiar impression that he was wearing a burqua.
    ‘What’s he doing, your boss, moving house?’ Johnny asked.
    ‘Not him – his very important friend.’ He raised his voice for this last bit so that the Uniform might hear. ‘An exceptionally powerful man , I’ll have you know. ’
    ‘If he’s so powerful why didn’t he get his own truck?’
    ‘Good question!’ Charlie said, spinning round. Johnny had at last got his full attention. His beady eyes inspected Johnny’s scruffy appearance. ‘How do you think the rich get richer, young man? They don’t ever spend their own money, that’s how. He heard that we were going down to Fethiye and asked if he could put “one or two things” on board our truck, which was coming out from the UK with a few pots of paint in it. One or two things, I beseech you!’
    Charlie laughed at the audacity of it and Johnny tried to look suitably outraged.
    ‘My boss is livid. Livid!’ The thought of his boss’s fury clearly quite excited him. ‘I’ve never seen him like this. There’s going to be trouble. He told me to dump the stuff here at customs but that walrus over there in a box…’
    Charlie folded his arms and looked over at the Uniform Then an idea struck him. He turned his attention back to Johnny. ‘Can you work hard?’
    ‘Yes,’
    ‘How do I know that?’
    ‘Well, you can ask anyone at the Gündüz yard. We’ve been working there for the last four weeks, twelve hours a day.’
    ‘And the girl?’ he said, looking over at Clem, who was now ambling towards them. ‘Is she strong? She looks a bit puny.’
    ‘No, my wife is small but she’s strong.’
    ‘Your wife?’ He laughed. ‘You look like you’re not long out of short trousers yourself. Do you have passports?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘How long have you been in the country?’
    ‘A month or so. We’re meant to be travelling through. Heading for Iran, Iraq, maybe make it to Pakistan, India.
    ‘All right, all right, I don’t want your bloody life story. You’re hired. I’ll pay you ten pounds each for the day. Unload the truck. Put it all on this deck. We’re going to Kos.’
    So with a couple of Charlie’s Turkish crew Johnny and Clem had spent the next three back-breaking hours unloading the contents of the truck on to the stern deck and the three of them had motored across to Kos in the monstrous floating hotel that was the Old Rangoon .
    Johnny flicked his cigarette into the oily water of the marina and wondered what Clem was up to. The Greek boys had ambled further down the quay and were fiddling about with their fishing rods. He looked down on to the deck beneath brimming with the curious unwanted cargo: piles of boxes filling all available space, a white Steinway piano backed against the marble statue, a giant oak table standing on its side with a chandelier hanging from one leg, a four-poster bed carefully taken apart, the entire contents of some Turkish millionaire’s garish home wedged on to the back of the boat.
    His back ached. He stretched and yawned. With any luck they should get it all unloaded and be back in Bodrum before midnight in time for a swifty with Aussie Dave with twenty quid in their pockets. He took a deep breath of the fresh evening air and thanked his lucky stars; then he turned around and set off to look for Clem – she had to be somewhere on this vast vessel of vulgarity. He opened the sliding glass panel beside the controls and slipped inside, finding himself in a corridor along the starboard side of the boat. He hadn’t been on the upper level yet.
    ‘Clem?’ he called. Hung along the walls was a stream of photographs, in enlarged pixels, featuring a heavily made-up, bleached-blonde middle-aged woman striking various jaunty poses. She was not a woman who benefited from either enlargement or jaunty poses. He stopped