Rosetta Mary Swinburne. Born 7th July 1993. Died 23rd
January 2015. Aged 22. Our Rosie - A Bloom That Faded Too Soon.
“How tragic”, Vicky thought to herself as she read the
gravestone in a small village cemetery in Norfolk. “But Rosetta is about to
rise from the grave and make me a lot of money”.
Vicky’s trade was conning rich and stupid people out of
their money. She did this by pretending to have inside knowledge of investment
opportunities that had to be seized at the earliest possible opportunity. This
was best done by pretending to be someone else, and the best candidate for
“someone else” was a dead person whose birth certificate could be obtained and
used to get a fake passport and open a bank account in the false name.
Vicky’s scam was performed on cruise ships that hopped from
port to port, such as around the Mediterranean or the Caribbean. All she had to
do was buy a ticket, get on board, swindle a few victims out of several
thousands apiece, get them to wire the funds to her fake bank account, then
disembark before anyone could make too many awkward enquiries.
It had worked several times in the past, with a new identity
taken for each of her ventures. The expense of setting up the scam was always
rewarded many times over.
Vicky liked to make sure that her false identity was
believable. She was 28, which was only three years older than Rosetta would
have been now, had she not been the unfortunate victim of a car crash on an icy
Norfolk road that took her car into a water-filled ditch from which she could
not escape. Vicky found this out from researching back issues of the local
newspaper, which also had a colour photo of Rosetta. With the help of the right
shade of hair dye, Vicky could easily pass for Rosetta. Although this was not
strictly necessary for the task at hand, it was an added touch that pleased a
consummate professional like Vicky.
Terry had been a steward on the Tourmaline Star for two
years, having previously worked at a top London hotel. He enjoyed the work, not
least the added bonus of visiting so many interesting places. Having customers
who were there purely to enjoy themselves rather than be in town for important
business reasons was also an advantage.
When Terry glanced down the passenger list before leaving
port he had a shock. There was a name on it that he had had no occasion to
remember for at least ten years, but he had clearly not forgotten it entirely. Just
how many Rosetta Swinburnes could there be?
The cruise of the Tourmaline Star on this occasion was a
winter trip along the coast of Norway. The passengers would fly to Bergen and
then be taken all the way to the North Cape and back, stopping off in various
fjords and with an excellent chance of seeing the Northern Lights.
From Vicky’s perspective this provided many opportunities to
work her scam as well as plenty of escape routes should anything go wrong.
For Terry, there would clearly be many chances to talk to
his long-lost friend and renew his acquaintance with her, which had ended when
her family had moved to Norfolk and he had stayed put in Southampton.
And so it was, on the first night out of port, that Terry
was able to speak to “Rosie” on an otherwise deserted promenade deck. The
average age of the passengers was well over 50, so a single woman in her 20s
stood out from the rest and was easy to track down.
“Are you Rosie Swinburne?” he asked.
For a second, Vicky was about to say “No”, but remembered in
time who she was pretending to be.
“Yes”, she said. “I am”.
“Do you remember me? I’m Terry Muldoon.”
Of course, the name meant absolutely nothing to Vicky, who
was suddenly aware of her mistake in choosing a name that was unlikely to
belong to anyone else. Had she chosen to impersonate “Claire Smith” or “Ruth
Jones” a stout denial would have been perfectly acceptable. But as it was, this
was not going to be possible.
“How are you?” asked Terry. “I often wondered what became of
you.”
Clearly Terry had not heard about Rosetta Swinburne’s
untimely end in a Norfolk ditch. But it was not going to be easy to play along
with the deception for long, especially as Vicky had no idea just how well
Terry had known Rosie ten years previously. And Vicky’s researches had not been
thorough enough to allow for the possibility of meeting someone from Rosie’s
past and getting away with it.
“Have you been in touch with any of our old friends? Alan
Bostock, for example? Or Bobbie Randall? You were great friends with Natalie
Watts, if I remember. Did she end up marrying that guy from the bakery? You
must know if anyone does”.
This was getting far too dangerous for Vicky. Getting into a
conversation about people of whom she knew absolutely nothing would soon reveal
that she was not who she said she was. Stewards on cruise ships were used to
the activities of con artists such as herself, and once she aroused this man’s
suspicions it would all be over for her.
She wondered about feigning an illness and leaving the scene
without saying anything further, but that would have meant moving from the dark
near the ship’s rail to a much brighter area. Although someone’s appearance can
change a lot in ten years, she could not be sure that Rosie’s former
schoolfriend would not have been able to see that she was not who she claimed
to be.
There was no-one else about. There seemed to be only one
solution to Vicky’s problem. She had had some training in wrestling in her
youth, and she knew that if she could take Terry unawares she could throw him
clean over the rail and into the sea. What other alternative did she have?
Not being the woman she said she was, she was not to know
that Terry had been the captain of his school’s judo team, and that he had kept
up his training ever since. This would not be a one-way fight.
It did not last long. There was a single splash and then
silence.
The original Rosetta Swinburne had ended her days drowning
in ice-cold water. Sometimes history repeats itself.
© John Welford
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