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5. A barn.
A barn out in Kent, on the doorstep of a bloody military base.At the time, no one had thought about what they were going to do with it afterwards. They gave the landowner twenty grand in cash for it and for a field, and it’s not hers anymore.It’s possibly burnt - the mark figured out Eddie’s bar, he might have figured out the barn too - and Ash has never been back.What do you even do with a barn? That’s not stashing gold bars, anyway. Ash has no need for one outside of a very specific set of circumstances, and those circumstances are well and truly behind him.The most use it gets is when someone else needs it to be an artist’s studio or antiques cache. For five minutes, some enterprising wanker starts growing weed, but having the Army running through regularly is a better deterrent than any solution Ash can bother to think up.
I. [Redacted]
Pictures of him and Stacie. Those pictures.Taken in the back of a limousine, that she’d kill him over if he ever brought them up again.
A. Wine.
Not that he knowingly buys wine. Not a collection of wine.A collection of wine, French and the good kind, the kind that he doesn’t really drink but Mickey does, when he’s not pretending he’s dead or that he’s actually capable of retirement.Ash is more of a lager-whiskey-Irish coffee-celebratory champagne type; drinking a bottle of wine alone isn’t and has never been his scene.It’s all Sancerre or something, and it’s not half bad. It had made Mickey raise an eyebrow appreciatively when he’d dropped in and beers before dinner were replaced by a bottle of wine.Mickey drops in, does so more frequently than Ash had thought, but it’s never for long, and not for work; they don’t need a job, and it’s probably not all that safe too. Maybe. It wouldn’t be the same, anyway.Albert’s in America, quiet and settled, grandsons and a long lost daughter like something out of a film; Danny never sent that postcard, and Sean and Emma-The thing is - despite being adults and independent people capable of living their own lives - Sean and Emma were kids when he and Mickey walked into the squat they’d been living in and now-Well, years of learning the ropes under Mickey Bricks rather changes people.
VII. The thing.
The thing.
The thing, from that time, in the place.The thing, with the- With the you know what’s.
3. German Renaissance art.
There are three copies of an Albrecht Aldorfer landscape he’s never gotten round to doing something with.They’d shown up in a crate, with no warning, and Ash recognised the painter at once. Not Albrecht Aldorfer - to be honest, Ash had never heard of him until he spent a quick ten minutes doing some cursory googling and found his work currently on exhibition in the Louvre.No, Ash recognised the painter. The forger.Neal Caffrey hasn’t lost his touch, even if he is a grass.Well, maybe not a grass. Just the FBI’s pet.Ash knows it’s not like that, that he’s- That they’ve worked for the police themselves, before, when they had to. And Ash has done a stretch himself, and he can’t imagine four years, plus another four when they caught him.Caffrey’s still a genius, still a better forger than anyone else. He’s also supposed to be dead but, then again, so is Ash. So is Mickey.A French newspaper was in the crate, and Ash doesn’t know French but he knows newspaper headlines well enough to know that the Petite Galerie was robbed three evenings prior to the crate arriving, only the painting that was supposedly stolen was recovered shortly after.The three copies - Ash is out of it, now, he’s quiet. Not making trouble.Mickey might want them again, someday. For a quick turnaround, or just for show.
H. Amateur pornography.
In a lock up, somewhere, that Ash can’t quite remember where he put the key for, there are four hundred copies of the disk he and Mickey used to blackmail two members of MI6.They’re insurance and that’s always handy to have, no matter how old the threat is, but- There are over four hundred copies of what he’s fairly sure is Mickey having sex with a spy.Ash has never listened past the first few seconds, incriminating enough as they were, and frankly can live the rest of his life without listening to the rest, but the disks are still around, all the same.It’s par for the course, a little bit, that all the odds and ends generally come to him. But what do you do with blackmail if you don’t need to use it?
12. Responsibility.
Beezer’s something of a disaster, now that his mum’s gone, and Alfie was trouble even when he was eleven.A fifteen-year-old, unsupervised more often than not, can find worse places to land than his godfather’s spare room, even if Ash is now retired, out of the country, out of the game. There’s plenty Ash can still show the kid, loads Alfie still can learn, and Ash’s quiet stretch of land is safer than the shitholes Ash had ended up in back when he was the kid’s age.Alfie shows up with a split lip, a rucksack and no note. Ash takes one look at him, at his face and his bruised knuckles, and asks, “Me and your old man going to have a problem?”The kid looks confused for a moment and then rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile somewhere, underneath all the bravado. “Nah. Dad’s fixing a problem out in Thailand. Been gone since April; promised he’d be back three weeks ago, only he likes it out there.”Ash still might have a problem with Beezer. Alfie’s two feet taller and growing into his face and his attitude, but fifteen’s still a hell of a long way from an adult. He takes Alfie’s backpack, ushering him inside, sighing. “Let me guess then, ran into a wall, did you?”“School,” Alfie declares instead, “is shit.”And Ash can see that, could see it himself back in the day.Alfie stays for seven weeks, learns the classics Beezer hasn’t taught him - there are gaps in his knowledge that Ash can’t quite believe, not given how Beezer operated way back when.The kid learns how to tell a Mondrian from a Monet, and who’s his best bet for a forgery. Ash makes him a passport, a better one than the fake he’d shown up with. The kid’s pretending to be twenty-three; Ash cuffs him round the back of the head and paints him as nineteen. They run short cons, sometimes, though Ash is more careful these days, smaller pond and all that.Alfie’s still a natural, but he’s better than the clumsy eleven year old who’d been constantly underfoot. Ash draws the line at teaching him The Flop, though, not that there’s much to teach. The care home bills still come, every month.He’s fast, Alfie is. Fast hands, fast feet; he’s trouble. He was never going to be anything else, not when he knows right off the bat whose wallet is worth pinching and who he’s better off leaving alone.
A. A family.
An invite, to a wedding.It’d had his name on it, or at least the name he’s using now.Emma was never going to be the typical blushing bride, but she’s stunning nonetheless, and Ash takes best man duties seriously.Albert walks her down the aisle, and it’s a reunion in every way possible.
+1 A non-refundable gift, without the receipt.
It’d been a birthday present, or at least it had arrived within the vague window of his birthday, and it wasn’t something he’d expect from anyone else- No one else would bother to take the piss that way.He’s kept it - you don’t just throw gifts away, it’s bad manners and worse karma - but the Liverpool shirt currently sits shoved into the back drawer of his wardrobe, and it’s still a point of shame.It’s from Eddie, though, and Ash is foremost impressed that Eddie sent him something and only then, when he’s stopped being vaguely grateful too, is he outraged that it’s a Liverpool shirt.Liverpool.Still, it’s not Eddie’s fault he’s been brainwashed.