Old Crackers

by Peter Bates

  “I don’t think that we should call him right now,” responded Frank. “We’re not exactly in a mad rush. It won’t make any difference to anyone if we just hang around a bit and see if we can find those bodies. Thomas and his gang just have to be close to here somewhere. I’m certain that Mel Harrison wouldn’t take the risk of transporting them to another location, and leaving evidence and trails all over the place. He might be a nutter but he’s not totally stupid. You can bet your life that they will be somewhere close by. I’d much rather call Norman when we can close the investigation completely. We never did half cases before, did we? So why on earth would we want to do that now? I’ve got the exact location of these shell cases on my tracker now, and they certainly aren’t going to go anywhere or lose their value as evidence in the next couple of days.”

  “I’ll give way to that,” agreed Terry, “as long as it doesn’t take too long. We don’t want to get hauled up for obstructing justice, Frank.”

  Frank laughed. “You’re not serious, Terry. How would it look in court if we had cracked the case, rather than the coppers? They’d be more likely to give us an award than some sort of punishment. Even Norman might be a little embarrassed that we four old buggers have solved several crimes on his own patch.”

  Reg nodded his agreement, and turned to face Roy. “What do you really think, Roy?”

  “Well, I know we really should tell Norman Pendleton, but I do tend to agree with Frank. I’d much rather completely solve a case rather than hand it over when it’s not yet finished. We couldn’t go on indefinitely looking for the bodies, but if we allowed ourselves a very short time-scale, I don’t honestly see why we don’t do it. Don’t forget lads, that without the bodies this case could fall completely flat on its face. Some smart-arse lawyer could end up getting them off. We all said it the other day, didn’t we. The legal system nowadays seems to be more geared towards helping the culprits than it does to the victims. Knowing what we have learned so far, the last thing we’d want is to let Mel Harrison off the hook.”

  CHAPTER 64

  Mel Harrison breezed into the house with a huge smile on his face. He usually smiled when he was leaving it, but today was good, very good. No longer did he have to ponder over that idiot, Jed Thomas, and he had avenged the deaths of the kids at the same time. The future looked good, really good. He’d already inherited a big bag of cash, and now he had a free hand to make more money than he had ever dreamed of. The bad situation with Thomas would never happen again. Any newcomers would be seen off the moment that they arrived. They would be nipped off in the bud.

  Christine was in the kitchen, and busy making dinner. She’d heard the front door open and close, and knew that it would be Mel. If he came back into the house the way that he’d left it, she would have been better off at the shops and with her few friends, well away from all the hassle and his almost permanently long face. She still didn’t know what he did for a living, but whatever it was, it seemed to give them a good lifestyle but very little time together. Over the years, she’d learned that time spent together was not always a good thing. His mood changed from day to day, and she never knew from one day to the next which Mel Harrison would get up in the morning or return home to her at night. How much longer she would put up with it, she really didn’t know. She did know that leaving him would not be easy.

  Her thoughts were harshly interrupted by the sudden appearance of Mel, as he pushed the kitchen door wide open and strode straight to her, causing her to retreat until her back was touching one of the kitchen cabinets. She could certainly retreat no further.

  “How’s my lovely wife today?”

  Christine almost gasped, then quickly answered with a forced smile. “I’m fine thanks, Mel — and how are you?”

  “Never been better, my love.”

  Mel pulled his left arm from behind his back, produced a large bunch of freshly cut red roses, and held them out to her. “These are for you.”

  Christine was stunned, her eyes flicked rapidly from the flowers to Mel’s smiling face. Occasions like this were rare. What had he been up to, to warrant this sudden change?

  Make the most of it, she finally told herself, and she leaned forward and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

  “Thank you so much, Mel. That’s really nice of you.”

  “You’re welcome, Christine. I really should have done this more often, but you know how it is when you’re always busy.”

  Christine nodded her head and smiled, her mind still in turmoil.

  Something had happened, that was for sure, and she’d probably never find out exactly what it was. Would he always be like this in the future? It was most unlikely. Better to make hay while the sun shines.

  Christine took his hand and led him up the stairs.

  *

  “As well as all the trees, there are a hell of a lot of big bushes and undergrowth in this wood,” commented Roy.

  “You’re not kidding,” agreed Frank. “I guess that was one reason why they must have chosen it.”

  “Have you seen any likely spots yet?” asked Reg, looking at his watch as he spoke.

  “I’ve seen a couple of soil areas with not much grass,” said Terry, “but neither were really wide or long enough to put bodies into.”

  “Let’s just think about this a little more,” suggested Roy. “If you’d done it, lads, where would you have buried them, bearing in mind exactly where the narrow path is, and also the fact that you wouldn’t want it to be too far away from it either.”

  “As near as possible, but also unseen by passers-by,” added Frank.

  “OK, I agree,” said Terry,” and it wouldn’t be too close to one of these big trees. They’re so old that their roots would certainly prevent digging to any decent depth.”

  Roy nodded. “In that case, Terry, you’d choose to bury them amongst those big bushes over there. They provide cover, and their roots won’t be as big as the tree ones. If possible, you’d also want to be out of sight whilst you were digging. You’d also need cover just in case there were any passers-by. Let’s concentrate on those bushes, especially the areas which can’t be directly seen from the path.”

  “If we don’t find anything soon,” added Reg, once more glancing at his watch, “we’ll have to call it a day. We’ve done our best, fellas, but we can’t leave it much longer without calling Norman Pendleton.”

  Each of the four elderly men drifted wearily towards the large bushes, and on the far side of their branches spread themselves evenly along a thirty-yard strip of ground, each one stooping and staring closely at the ground beneath their feet.

  “Lads!” called out Frank.

  “What’s up, Frank?” yelled Roy.

  “Come quickly over here and look at this.”

  These days, quick wasn’t the norm for Roy, Reg or Terry, but this was one occasion when they moved quickly. In a matter of seconds all three were standing at Frank’s side, and staring at the ground where he was pointing an outstretched finger.

  “What do you reckon,” asked Frank.

  The ground below their watching faces had certainly been broken recently. It wasn’t very obvious, and several small sticks, logs and branches covered the area, partially covering the soil’s surface.

  “Good on you, Frank. That could be it,” whispered Roy. “The area is about seven feet by three or four, and it’s certainly raised.”

  “How can we be sure that they’re here?” asked Reg. “We can’t report it to Norman unless we really know. He’ll think we’re just wasting his time if we turn out to be wrong. It’s not exactly a certainty by any means.”

  “Give me that little narrow shovel of yours, Frank,” said Terry. “I’ll dig away a small opening at the edge, and see if there’s anything in there. This might just be nothing more than animal scrapings, and Reg is right. We need to make sure before we report it, or we’ll just look like a set of village idiots. In the meantime, try not to stand too close, we don’t want to destroy any evidence by
mistake.”

  Terry gently took the shovel from Frank, then very slowly and carefully began to scrape fairly close to the edge of the broken soil, stacking the removed earth in a neat little pile two feet away from it and Gary Bob Alan Kenny onto the surrounding grass.

  “Nothing so far,” said Terry. “This could easily take some time, and I daren’t try to rush it either. If it is the right spot, they could well be buried quite deep, but I must say that what I am digging out is not the firm soil that you would expect to find here normally.”

  “Keep going, mate,” said Roy quietly. “We’ve got the time, and we could be very near to a result. If we don’t get one, we’ll just call it a day and get off back home.”

  Terry nodded his head, and continued to scrape and remove the soil until he was almost two feet down into the ground. Suddenly he stopped scraping and stood upright.

  “There’s something down there,” he announced. “It’s not very hard, but as far as I can tell, it isn’t the soil. It could be even a small tree root, but there’s definitely some resistance. I’ll widen the hole that I’ve dug a little, then we should be able to see what it is, if anything.”

  “OK mate. Take your time, we’ve got plenty to spare.”

  Terry smiled at Reg, then returned to his digging. This time he shaved an additional two inches from the edge of what he had already dug, widening the gap sufficiently to comfortably lower his arm into the hole. He dropped to his knees and leaning forward, pushed his arm down into the widened space, shuffled his hand at the bottom and pulled out some more loose soil. When he turned to face the others, his expression had changed.

  “I can feel cloth, and something I’m not sure about,” he announced bleakly. “Who’s got the best eyes?”

  “Probably me,” answered Roy. “Do you want me to look?”

  “I do.”

  Roy dropped to his knees and leaned over the hole’s opening. He took a deep breath, and stared down into it for several seconds before lifting his head and facing his friends.

  “Have you got your mobile with you, Reg?”

  “Sure,” said Reg, dipping a hand into his pocket.

  “Does it have a torchlight on it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Switch it on for me, mate.”

  Reg nodded, clicked a button, and handed the phone to Roy.

  Roy thanked him, then taking a deep breath, turned his face back to the hole in the ground and pointed the phone’s light into the darkness.

  “Bloody hell!”

  “What’s up Roy?”

  “We got it right,” gasped Roy. “The cloth that Terry just mentioned is a shirt. The thing that he wasn’t sure about was a lad’s face.”

  CHAPTER 65

  “Well, lads. Welcome back to our town, and now it’s ours exclusively. We can get on with whatever we want now. There’s no more of that pillock Jed Thomas to bother us and the world is our oyster.”

  Mel Harrison sat back in his seat and folded his arms.

  “What’s first then, boss?” asked Bob.

  “We’ve got a few names in already from his protection routine, so I reckon it’s time to pay them a call, and let them know the score. We’ll say to them what we agreed to say when we last talked about it, so we shouldn’t get any trouble. If we do, we’ll just deal with it immediately, then they’ll know for sure who’s boss around these parts now.”

  “When shall we start?” asked Kenny.

  “Right now!”

  “Can I finish my beer first?” asked Alan with a smile.

  “Yeah, all right,” laughed Harrison. “Only the one that you’ve already got, though,” he added.

  “Who’s first on the list?” asked Gary.

  Harrison, glanced around the other tables, and seeing that they were mostly empty, and none that were occupied nearby, pulled out a cream-coloured note pad from his jacket pocket. He stared at it for several minutes before answering the question.

  “Let’s see,” he murmured, still looking down a reasonably lengthy list.

  “We’ve got quite a good spread of pubs, a few nightclubs, and some shops to start us off with. Some of the shops are virtually seasonal so we could start off with some of those. They’re usually a lot easier to fix than the nightclubs because the owners are usually on the premises. We can get more dosh from the nightclubs, but it sometimes takes a bit longer.”

  “It's a pity we can’t do banks,” smiled Gary. “They’ve got loads of cash.”

  “We can’t directly — these days they’ve got massive security — but we could do cash vans, even though they’re really tough to get into and have automatic alarm systems as well.”

  “Maybe we should branch out,” said Bob.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, there are other things that we could do, Mel.”

  “Like what?”

  “Burglaries, robberies. Things like that.”

  “They’re all a lot more difficult these days than they used to be, Bob. Mobile phones and modern security systems mean that even breaking into a house can be a problem. It only takes a quick call to the coppers and they’ll be all over you in no time.”

  “So, if we go back to seasonal shops where we started the conversation, have you got any in mind, boss?”

  “There are a few we could make a start on. I know that they were on Jed Thomas’ list so it wouldn’t come as a big surprise to them. Some are only pulling in fifty to a hundred a week, but they all add up if you have enough of them, even though they’re only seasonal. After that, we can add in the all-year-round places, like the pubs and local clubs.”

  “Well, we’ve got none at the moment, so where should we start?”

  “Looking at this list, lads, I’d say that the first one would be the Pilgrims Arms.”

  “You must be joking, the Pilgrim’s Arms?”

  “I know it’s hard to believe, but apparently Thomas was picking up regular dosh from them once a week. It’s not a lot, but two hundred a month is a nice start, and as I said, it all adds up. And it’s very easy pickings.”

  “How do you know that it was two hundred a month?” asked Gary.

  Harrison laughed. “I know everything Gary. One of our small-time contacts on the street told me a while ago. He’d seen the money change hands, and watched as Thomas counted out the notes.”

  Alan shook his head in surprise, then looked around the saloon area before asking, “Just staying with Jed Thomas for a moment, boss. How long do you think it’ll be before he and the others get found?”

  Mel Harrison laughed loudly. “Never in a hundred years, Alan. Maybe not even a thousand, but we’ll all be well gone before then. Nobody’s exactly going to miss them, are they?”

  “You’re right, boss. I doubt if they’ll even be reported as having disappeared. Even their relatives won’t bother.”

  “Come on, let’s go. The Pilgrim’s Arms is beckoning us once more. You guys can sit outside whilst I do the business.”

  *

  Harrison deliberately waited until the bar area was clear of customers, and casually approached the landlord. Coincidentally, the man was tidying the till and neatly stacking separate piles of five, ten and twenty pound notes under a number of labelled clips.

  “Hi, Keith.”

  Keith Turner looked up from the till into Harrison’s face, and with a sharp click, quickly closed down the lid.

  Turner’s usually permanent smile had already disappeared.

  “Hello, Mel. What can I get you?”

  “Well, it’s a bit of a long story really, so I’ll try to cut it short.”

  “OK,” nodded Turner, looking decidedly unimpressed.

  Harrison hesitated, taking a long moment to glance along each side of the bar, and then into the seating area. Seemingly satisfied, he turned his face back to the landlord, and spoke in a low voice.

  “We have very reliable information that Jed Thomas and his crew have upped sticks and moved away somewhere down south, almost ce
rtainly to the London area.”

  “He’s gone?” asked Turner, surprise written all across his face.

  “Yes, Keith. I’m virtually one hundred percent certain.”

  Keith Turner’s expression didn’t alter. Where was this conversation going? Would some potentially good news suddenly turn bad?

  “Well, I can’t honestly say that I’m not pleased,” he finally said.

  “I can’t blame you,” agreed Harrison. “It does mean, though, that your pub will now no longer be protected from hooligans and some of the trash that come into the town.”

  Turner’s lips closed tight and he remained silent, his mind was already reading what was now surely on its way.

  “What were you paying him?” asked Harrison.

  Turner hesitated. How much did Harrison already know? On balance it was probably better to say nothing. He would remain silent, at least for as long as he could, and somehow, he managed to maintain a blank expression on his face.

  “I won’t ask you again, Keith.”

  Keith Turner recognised the threat in Harrison’s voice. He inwardly sighed, blinked his eyes, and then finally responded.

  “Two hundred a month.”

  “I thought so,” said Harrison. “Well, I’m a very reasonable man to deal with, Keith, so I won’t make any increases to that. Next year it may be a little different though. You know how it is in business these days with costs going up all the time. My boys and l will be coming in here fairly regularly, but if you need us urgently to get rid of any riff-raff, just call this number, and we’ll be out here in a flash.”

  Harrison reached one hand into a jacket pocket, pulled out a small slip of paper, scribbled a series of numbers on it, and placed it on the bar in front of Keith Turner.

  “Don’t worry, Keith. We always provide an excellent service for all of our customers. We’ve never had even one complaint. Our service really is second to none, and well worth the money.”