by Mike Ripley
If the internal dimensions of the pub had changed, then much of its furnishing had retained its character. The paintwork was beautifully nicotined and only slightly greasy to the touch, a few of the ashtrays had been emptied at least once and some of the longer slashes in the upholstery had been tastefully repaired with black insulating tape. The trouble was the locals would probably rise up in arms if anyone tried to change it or even remove one of the corny notices ranged behind the bar. Talk about kitsch, these were unfunny when they first came out. There were the traditional ones such as DON’T TAKE OUR GLASSES, SEE AN OPTICIAN, and perennial favourites such as DON’T ASK FOR CREDIT AS REFUSAL OFTEN OFFENDS and WE DON’T CASH CHEQUES EVEN GOOD ONES.
There was one that caught my eye that said, in relatively small print: IF YOU THINK YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN SHORT MEASURE PLEASE ASK FOR THE MANAGER – HE WILL BE PLEASED TO TELL YOU TO FUCK OFF.
But my favourite was the one truly original one, pinned to the fake wooden beam above the bar saying: GAY NIGHT LASER KARAOKE SHOWS – TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS.
I smiled at that and ordered a bottle of lager. While the barman was struggling to take the top off, I leaned against the bar and looked around. I spotted three more of the signs advertising the gay karaoke nights.
They were serious.
I figured I had spotted the Man Who Gives Out the Pay Packets, as Tigger had called him, at least 15 minutes before Tigger bothered to turn up.
I had started to relax once I remembered it was a Wednesday, even trying to engage the barman – an Irish lad not long enough away from the boreen to have stopped worrying about missing confession – in conversation.
‘Popular, are they, these karaoke nights?’ I’d opened.
‘Oh, sure, yes. We have all the proper equipment you know.’
‘If you don’t have the equipment, it’s called being drunk and disorderly,’ I’d said, and he’d thought about that until another customer had distracted him.
While he was down the other end of the bar I borrowed his Evening Standard, but it was open at the ‘Situations Vacant’ page, so I replaced it and found a seat at an empty table.
The pub was filling slowly, the going-home-from-work crowd being replaced by the going-up-West-for-the-night mob who needed lubrication before the minicabs arrived.
One guy was well out of place. He was about mid-fifties, short, with black, swept-back hair and a black moustache. He wore thick, square, black-framed glasses that made him blink every three seconds. I timed him. There was nothing else to do.
Sure enough, when Tigger did arrive just as I had decided not to invest in another beer and maybe give the whole thing a miss, he flounced straight by me and sat himself next to the guy in glasses.
‘Umberto!’ he squeaked, or at least that’s what it sounded like, as he took one of the bloke’s hands in his. The guy didn’t look too keen on him borrowing it and he eased the grip free and stood up, saying something and nodding at the bar.
‘Large Southern Comfort ‘n’ coke for me,’ Tigger announced, then looked across at me. ‘And another beer for my chauffeur.’
The older guy stared at me long enough to blink twice, then went for the drinks. Tigger waved me over.
He had changed out of his bike-rider’s leathers into a light blue tracksuit and trainers. He perched rather than sat on his chair, folding his legs up under him in a semi-lotus position, and dragged another chair by the arm so I could be close to him.
‘Has Umberto been here long?’
‘Hadn’t noticed,’ I lied.
‘1 don’t think you miss much, Angel,’ he said loudly, and reached out to pat my knee.
‘How old are you, Tigger?’ I asked to throw him, and it did for a millisecond.
‘Nineteen. Why? Do I look younger?’
‘No. Just surprised you made it that far.’
A bottle of Mexican beer thumped down on the table in front of me. There was a huge wedge of lemon balanced precariously in the top.
‘The barman said everybody drinks these during Happy Hour,’ said Umberto. ‘And he said sorry about the lime as well. Wouldn’t give me a glass, though.’
‘I’ll manage,’ I said, flicking the lemon into the ashtray.
‘Umberto Bassotti, this is Angel, but I don’t think he likes me calling him that.’
‘Roy will do.’
I nodded at Bassotti and he raised a glass at me. There was Scotch in it.
‘Call me Bert, not Umberto, and don’t for fuck’s sake ask me what bit of Italy I come from.’
‘Sicily, it’s gotta be,’ said Tigger immediately.
‘Tuscany,’ I said, joining in. There were so many people from Hampstead owning property in Tuscany now, it was known as Chiantishire and no genuine Italian in England would admit to coming from there.
‘Pompeii? Pinocchio? AC Milan ... ?’ Tigger rattled on
‘I said not to ask, but if you must know, it’s Bedford. I’ve never been to Italy, red wine gives me an ‘eadache, pasta rots my guts and I couldn’t name the Pope if you paid me. Now if that’s out of the way, is the rest of the evening my own?’
Tigger put on a fake hurt look. I grinned and took a pull on the neck of my beer.
‘You’re gonna be our driver, then?’ Bert said to me.
‘I need the work,’ I said, though the words didn’t come out easily.
‘What have you driven before?’
‘Rock bands, dry goods, wet goods, a petrol tanker once. Oh yeah, and I used to do the Spitalfields grape run to Bedford, would you believe?’ I said, and all of it was true.
Bert raised his eyebrows and sipped more whisky.
‘Bedford?’ Tigger asked.
‘The Italian community there used to buy up the remains of the Italian grape harvest from the old London fruit markets and turn them into wine. Kept them going for the next year.’
‘Like home brewing, you mean?’
‘Too right,’ Bert chipped in. ‘They’d invite you round to their houses and there’d be piles of bloody grapes in the bath. Get your shoes and socks off and start trampling. Bloody peasants. They’d make gallons of the stuff. Why they couldn’t pop down the off-licence I don’t know.’
‘Was it legal?’ chirped Tigger.
Bert and I exchanged pitying looks.
‘Well, this isn’t fresh fruit, Roy,’ Bert went on, ignoring Tigger, who had started fidgeting again.
‘What exactly are we shifting; and where, and when?’
Bert looked at me, then at Tigger, who gave him a slight nod.
‘Got a load waiting to go tonight if you’re interested. It’s not far away, and it goes as far as Barking.’
That wasn’t very far at all. Not far enough to hire a driver and van unless there was something very dodgy about the cargo.
Tigger was making money signs, rubbing his forefinger and thumb together.
‘Cash?’
‘In hand. A ton each.’
‘And if we’re caught, we’ve never seen you before in our lives?’
‘Me who? I’m at home watching the football on the telly.’ He sipped from his drink and added: ‘I hate football. The Eyeties are mad on it.’
‘So, what’s the cargo?’ I asked, knowing I’d regret it.
‘A load of crap.’
It was a white box van. Well, of course, it would be. The ubiquitous, anonymous, dirty white box-backed van used to transport most of the stolen goods in London. The Model T Ford of the criminal classes and probably big enough to get a Model T in the back if you could find one.
It was parked nose first in a lock-up garage at the end of a street where unimproved Victorian terrace houses sprawled along one side down to the Stratford railway line and down the other, mid-size tower blocks of shoddily built ‘60s flats offered panoramic views over the Grand Union Canal. It was so
obviously a dodgy location I’m surprised the police didn’t use it in their training films.
Bert Bassotti didn’t help by looking furtively up and down the street before opening the first of three padlocks that held the doors. He looked like he’d done an Ealing Comedy acting course by post: Stock Character No. 31 – London shifty crook/spiv.
Tigger had ridden with him from the pub in an ageing Ford Sierra and I had followed, parking behind them down the street a few yards. Not dead outside the lock-up, I noted, but close enough to make a run for it if need be.
Bassotti got the doors open and disappeared inside. A second later, a weak, low-wattage light came on. Tigger and I joined him, Tigger easing the door closed behind me. ‘Can you drive one of these?’ asked Bassotti.
‘Has it got wheels?’ I said.
‘The keys are in. You’re going over towards Creekmouth down by Barking. Know how to get there?’
‘Out of here, on to Bow Road, after the hospital and the police station’ – he winced at that – ‘hang a right on to the Blackwall Tunnel approach then cut off towards Barking before you hit the East India Docks. After that, follow your nose.’
‘After that, you follow Tigger. He knows exactly where to go. There’s no rush. After midnight’s better anyway. Tigger knows what to do. When he’s dumped the stuff, bring the van back here and just snap the top padlock. Drop Tigger off wherever he wants to go.’ He finished his speech and started edging towards the door.
‘Hang on a sec,’ I smiled. ‘I might drive a taxi but I ain’t on duty.’
‘Tigger’ll have your wages,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s different. Where to, sir?’
Tigger pulled his tracksuit top together over his chest and put on his orphan-in-the-storm look.
‘Wherever there’s a cardboard box I can call my own, and an empty lager can on which I can rest my weary head.’
Bassotti shook his head slowly and breathed: ‘Fucking weirdo.’
‘Just one last thing, Bert.’ He was by the door now. ‘What exactly are we dumping?’
Bassotti nodded and Tigger opened the sliding door at the back of the van, pushing it upwards to reveal a solid wall of black plastic refuse bags.
‘Like I said, it’s rubbish. Okay, so it maybe is stuff you should take a bit more care of when you’re getting rid of it. I know, these days, we should all think of the environment, but sometimes you gotta cut corners. Any more problems?’
‘Don’t worry, Angel,’ beamed Tigger, ‘it’s not nuclear.’
It wasn’t household rubbish or kitchen waste either; there was no smell. Though that wasn’t quite right. There was a faint, antiseptic whiff coming off the van.
Tigger read my mind: ‘Paint, paint stripper, mild fungicides, the stuff decorators use. That’s what you can smell, but don’t worry, you won’t get any on your clothes. I’m here to do all the heavy lifting.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bert. ‘Tigger’ll look after you.’
‘That’s what worries me,’ I said to myself. ‘Okay, I’m in. Let me shift my wheels.’
Bassotti looked at me as if I had made an improper suggestion involving several members of his family.
‘Well, you don’t want an unattended black cab parked outside here for a couple of hours, do you?’
He considered this.
‘Good thinking, Roy. Stick it round the corner, it’ll be all right there.’
That was when I should have cut and run, just kept on driving, leaving Bert and Tigger playing with themselves in the lock-up, wondering what had happened to me. But the truth was it seemed easy money and I needed it. And a little bit of illegal dumping didn’t seem so bad. I knew I might have to stay away from Greenpeace meetings for a while, but they didn’t issue death sentences just for fly-tipping, did they?
I drove Armstrong round the corner and parked under a streetlight; not that I relied on that to deter thievery, but it was the sort of thing an honest civilian would do. There was little chance of Armstrong getting pinched. The young joyriders who went ‘hotting’ wanted something with a bit more speed, and the professional car thief would have a hell of a job selling him to anyone other than a real taxi driver, and you can’t imagine a real musher touching stolen property, can you?
In the glove compartment I found half a packet of Sweet Afton cigarettes I’d forgotten about, two pirate tapes of a Guns ‘N’ Roses studio session, a single black nylon stocking (which for the life of me I couldn’t explain) and then, eventually, what I was looking for.
If you buy diesel at garages these days they have a dispenser near the pump that gives out cheap pairs of clear plastic gloves. I always take more than I need as, well, you never know.
I pulled on a couple of them – they are all one size and there is no ‘left’ and ‘right’ – and smoothed them down. They slipped and tore easily, but at least they would do the job. I was damned if I was going to leave my fingerprints on Bassotti’s van, if it was his, which I doubted.
It turned out to be the only sensible decision I made for quite a while.
Chapter Three
So there we were, in the middle of one of the biggest, richest, most sophisticated cities in the world, at the start of the new decade of the Caring Nineties, and we were taking a job, cash-in-hand, from a man we met in a pub.
Would you credit it?
It went off easy enough. Money for old rope, really. Well, old something or other.
We made it down the East India Dock Road before the pubs chucked out and then on to the A13, bypassing East Ham and Barking.
‘We turn off here,’ said Tigger unnecessarily. He hadn’t said much during the trip, but I wasn’t going to lose sleep over it. ‘That’s it, River Road. Now we hang a right just down here.’
I assumed he knew where he was going. As far as I could remember, though I didn’t know the area well, River Road ran parallel to Barking Creek, which eventually disgorged itself into the Thames. On the other side of the Creek was a huge sewage works stretching almost as far as the Royal Albert Dock, which is light years away from the yuppified Docklands further upriver towards the City. Down here was real bandit country; or maybe that should be pirate country.
‘There! Down there,’ said Tigger, waving a hand in front of my nose. ‘Right down there between those two warehouses.’
I swung the van over and flicked on the full beams of the headlights as we left the road onto a concrete wharf. The warehouses penned us in with their darkness, and ahead the lights were beginning to waver and reflect off water. In the distance, I could see the lights of the sewage works, and my nose confirmed the sighting.
‘Turn it round,’ hissed Tigger, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘And kill the lights.’
I told him I didn’t need telling to make sure I was pointing roughly in the Getaway direction, but unless we fancied a swim, I had no intention of killing the lights. Once pointed back towards the road, I turned off the ignition. We sat in silence for a few seconds. Somewhere in the distance a burglar alarm was ringing continuously, plaintively and unattended. Nothing unusual there.
Tigger had produced a pair of gardening gloves from the depths of his tracksuit and was pulling them on.
‘You stay here, Roy. Have a smoke, abuse some substances, think dirty thoughts. You can leave the dirty work to me.’
‘No doubts on that score, Tigger.’
He grinned at that and patted me on the knee again.
‘I think I’m beginning to like you, Angel,’ he said as he climbed out.
‘Thanks for the warning,’ I said to myself.
For ten minutes or so I watched him through the wing mirrors as he carted black plastic sacks from the back of the van and out of my sightline. At one point I thought I heard a splash, but I may have imagined it.
Then Tigger shut the doors with a bang and was back in the passeng
er seat, back in hyperactive mode, squirming around, pulling his gloves off and beating a riff with them on the plastic dashboard.
‘Let’s go go go go! It’s payday and the night is young.’
‘Then let’s keep them in that order,’ I said, holding out my hand, palm up.
Tigger gave my plastic glove a funny look, then shrugged as if to say each-to-his-own and began to unlace his right trainer, his foot up on the dash. When the shoe was off, he flipped it in the air and caught it with his left hand, then he put it on his right hand like a glove puppet and held it to his cheek.
‘Hello, Hi-Top,’ he mugged. ‘Has pretty Hi-Top got some lovely folding stuff for Roy the Boy? He can only have it – what? What was that, Hi-Top?’ He put the shoe to his ear, like it was whispering to him. ‘Only if he’s very, very nice to you and gives you a kiss? Do you really mean that, Hi-Top? You want a kiss from rough old Roy?’
I sighed, turned all the van’s lights on and leant on the horn.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ yelled Tigger over the blast. ‘Okay, okay.’
His hand came out of the hi-top and it was holding five of the new £20 notes. I took my hand off the horn and started the engine.
‘Thank you, Mr Hi-Top.’
If Tigger had been silent on the way out to Creekmouth, he made up for it on the way back to the lock-up garage. He talked about how he was at a high risk point in his life and the more risks he took, the more he felt alive. But it was all cool because he’d read that the body was at its peak at his age and he could take it. At that he’d looked to see if he’d offended me but I didn’t let it show that he had.
There was no sign of Bassotti at the lock-up and Tigger said he rarely stuck around. I asked how many jobs he’d done like this one and he said ‘a few’ and then asked me for a lift to King’s Cross.
At that time of night, that meant one of two things, and I didn’t think he was going there undercover for the Salvation Army, but I said okay nonetheless. It had been implied as part of the deal, and if there were more moonlight jaunts like this in the offing, I was in the market.
