Top Hard

by Stephen Booth

  Did you know those big companies write off huge losses to theft? In fact, they take them into account in working out their budgets for profit and loss. They call it slippage. It's one of those words business types like to use to cover up something they'd rather not talk about. They probably call going to the toilet 'dumpage'. Anyway, the point is that if a few loads of their stuff didn't go missing now and then, it would throw their accounts out completely. So I'm doing the accountants a big favour. Right? They ought to pay me for it. I could be a Freelance Slippage Consultant.

  As for insurance companies, they already make more money than is good for them. Fatter profits would only make people take a closer look at their activities. So let them share the money out a bit. The government can't seem to manage it, whatever its colour. But I can.

  When I talk like that, I feel good. And when I count the money, I feel even better. There's only one more thing that can make life perfect, and here it comes now.

  "Hello. Who's that?"

  Lisa has a warm, sexy voice. Hearing her speak is like drinking your first cup of coffee in the morning and finding it spiced with rum. You're already looking forward to it, then you realise it's even better than you thought.

  "It's me," I said, original as ever.

  "Stones?"

  "Yeah. How are you?"

  "Fine. Are you busy?"

  "Well, you know, so-so..."

  "Got much on tomorrow?"

  "Always things to do. Business." I was beating about the bush here. Lisa has no idea what I actually do for a living, and I need to keep it that way.

  "Oh. I thought you might have time to see me. I'm not working tomorrow afternoon."

  "Right. Where? What time?" I didn't want to sound too eager. But, well, the sound of her voice was doing strange things to my hormones that kind of over-ruled anything my brain might be telling me.

  "Can you pick me up at the hall? I should be out at twelve-thirty."

  "No problem. I've got something to do in the morning, then I'm free."

  I signed off feeling pleased with myself. Lisa had made the first move. That always makes a guy feel good.

  When I think back, it was her who made the first move that day we met at Newstead Abbey. She may have been listening in to what the other bird was saying, but it was me she was talking to. That's the way it felt, anyway. And that's the way she hooked me. After I'd listened to her talking for a while, with my mouth hanging open like one of those roast pigs without the apple, it hadn't seemed at all difficult to find out her name and where she worked.

  When I'd finally walked out of Newstead Abbey that afternoon, the other bird had to run after me and remind me that she was there. I never saw her again after that.

  4

  Next morning, when I arrived with Slow Kid at the workshop on an old industrial estate outside Medensworth, there was another bit of solidity waiting to trip me up. Half a ton of fancy motor, in fact.

  Metal Jacket had picked up an old Citroen BX. That's one of those French jobs that crouches at the kerb like a whippet with the squitters. It always looks as though its suspension's gone, until you turn on the ignition and the hydraulics kick in to lift its skirts off the road. Trust the French to be different. I've never got over sitting in a Citroen Dyane once and finding both the gear lever and the handbrake sticking out of the dashboard at me like a couple of bread sticks. The BX wasn't quite as eccentric as that, but it was trying. They don't make them any more - not since the EC decided that all cars had to look the same.

  "What did you nick this for, Metal?"

  He ran the back of a greasy hand across his nose, leaving a dark smear among several other dark smears on his face. Metal was well camouflaged for work in a garage, being mainly covered in engine oil and rust. He wore a baggy old grey sweater that matched the bags under his eyes, and the holes in his jeans were more likely to have been caused by spilt battery acid than any attempt at fashion. He was chewing gum, and he hadn't shaved for a while. When he shouted at me above the racket from the radio, I could tell that he hadn't used much breath freshener recently either.

  Metal Jacket is a real hard worker. He has several kids at home, and a Mrs Jacket who thinks she has a licence to stack up store credit cards now her husband has a proper job for once. This gives him a sharp eye for any chance of turning a few extra quid.

  "Slow told me to nick it. He says there's a bloke wants one nicking, so I nicked it."

  "What bloke's that, Slow? Local?"

  "Nah. Whatsisname, Sharma, in Leicester. He's got a customer for one. But he wants it cheap. So I put the word out for the lads to look out for one."

  "All right," I said. Jotindar Sharma was a regular customer, canny and safe. In any case, there'd be no way of tracing the car back to where it had come from by the time it reached him. Metal could render a car unrecognisable in an hour or two.

  The Citroen wasn't what he'd called me about, though. He'd brought in an old Morris Traveller, one of those half-timbered little estate cars that make you think of 1950s comedy films and tea on the vicarage lawn. Did they used to call them shooting-brakes, or am I mistaken? Apparently I'd once mentioned them fondly to Metal as being part of our heritage, and the jerk had remembered it.

  But this particular Morris had belonged to some old farmer out near Newark. It looked as though it had spent the last couple of decades being used as a hen house. There were white streaks on all the seats, and various bits of the car were fastened on with lengths of baler twine.

  "And this one? Don't tell me some rich eccentric German businessman or somebody is itching to get his hands on this, Slow."

  "Nowt to do with me, this."

  "So. Metal? What's the excuse?"

  Metal had to chew his gum a few times before he could translate the grinding of his mental gearbox into English.

  "Well..." he said. "It's difficult to explain, like."

  "Shit, Metal. How many times have I told you? You nick the rich gits' cars - the Mercs, the BMWs, the Bentleys, that stuff. Or you nick the company motors. That don't matter. But I don't want you nicking stuff like this, from people who can't afford it. You got me, Metal?"

  "I know all that, Stones."

  "So why did you nick it then?"

  "I didn't."

  "What do you mean, you didn't? Oh yeah, so you found it, then. Or maybe it took a fancy to you and followed you home?"

  "I bought it," said Metal.

  "You what?"

  Metal Jacket hung his head, looking shamefaced, and fiddled with the ratchet on his spanner. Behind me, I heard Slow Kid gasp in disbelief.

  "Metal? What do you mean? Tell me you're joking."

  "I paid a bloke for it. I bought it. He gave me the log book, look. I reckon it's a real one too."

  "Holy shit."

  "Man, that's really weird," said Slow Kid, awed.

  "It's even got its MoT certificate and everything," said Metal.

  "Yeah? And I suppose the MoT's genuine as well?"

  Metal glanced at the nearside headlamp of the Morris, which would have been pointing at the floor if it hadn't been jammed into place against the wing with a bent six-inch nail.

  "Well... sort of. I had one lying about in a drawer."

  "And you're really telling me that you bought this thing?"

  "It needs a bit of work on it," he admitted. "Restoration, that's called. But it'll be worth quite a bit when it's done, I reckon."

  "Well, maybe." I was seeing a new side of Metal Jacket. I'd never put him down as a bloke who needed a hobby. But people never cease to surprise me.

  Then I looked again at the Citroen. Other than its odd posture, it was fairly anonymous. A bit of flashy French styling, true. But it was plain white with no distinguishing marks, as they say, apart from a small blue and red sticker in the back window with the initials 'PF' on it. I had a sudden nasty suspicion. It was like the feeling you get when you're caught short and there isn't a toilet for miles.

  "Was there a radio in this
one, Metal?"

  He sniffed and shuffled his feet uneasily at the tone of my voice. "We took it out, Stones."

  That was normal, but the feeling in my guts didn't shift. "Show it to me."

  Reluctantly, Metal disappeared into the cupboard he called an office and came back with a small cardboard box trailing wires. It was a radio all right, but not a cheap Motorola that had been pre-tuned to Radio 4 and Classic FM, as you might expect. It was a short wave two-way set, with a hand mike on a coil of cable and a tuner no doubt locked onto the Nottinghamshire Constabulary waveband. It looked to me like Alpha Bravo Charlie had just gone off the air for good.

  "Where did you say you got this motor, Metal?"

  "Car park at Trowell Services. Dead easy. No alarms, nothing."

  So some plain clothes cop on the M1 had made the mistake of stopping for a piss, or a plate of chips at the Granada restaurant. Served him right for being careless. And I don't just mean for leaving his car where Metal might find it. You see, some of us aren't totally ignorant round here. We know a thing or two that's useful - like, for example, that the letters 'PF' stand for Police Federation, the coppers' trade union. The PF is one of those rare beasts these days - a union that fights tooth and nail for its members, and it doesn't care who it takes on. Criticise a copper and the PF's solicitors will be after you. Sometimes you might think the police are more likely to sue you than bang you up for a crime.

  "Don't you recognise this, Metal?"

  "Just a radio, in't it?"

  "No, it isn't. Haven't you ever sat in a police car?" Stupid question. I realised it when Metal stared at me as if I was gone out. "Yeah, course you have. But only in the back seat, eh? With the cuffs on."

  He shrugged. He had no idea what I was talking about. "Last time they done me was for that bit of bother at the races, Stones. It was a whatsit..."

  "...a misunderstanding. Yeah, I know. Your solicitor said so."

  "You want the radio, Stones?"

  "No, no. Get rid of it, Metal. Chuck it in the river, bury it at the refuse dump. But wherever you ditch it, make it somewhere safe. Unless you want the owners round here turning you over. You've nicked one of the plods' little toys."

  "What? You mean the motor's a pig wagon?"

  "That's about it. You're hot, boy. You need to cool off quick, before they decide to put you on ice somewhere."

  I shoved the radio back into his hands, watching him swallow his gum. Metal's day had turned runny already. I should have taken it as a warning.

  * * * *

  Twelve o'clock already. I got back in the Impreza with Slow Kid. From Medensworth it was about twenty minutes to the hall.

  "Where do you want dropping, Slow?"

  "I got to see a few boys down the Welfare, Stones."

  "Business, is it?"

  "Well, you know... a few games of pool, a bit of chat, a drink or two."

  I looked at him, but said nothing. He'd got rid of the ski jacket and the woolly hat and was wearing a Chicago Bulls baseball cap.

  "Yeah... and probably a bit of business," he said.

  "That's good, Slow. Let's keep it up. That load was only the start. We need to keep our eyes open for some more like that."

  "Sure thing. Trust me, Stones."

  "We ought to get confirmation on that load soon, shouldn't we?"

  "They've got your mobile number, yeah?"

  I dropped Slow Kid off at the top of Medensworth, near the old Miners' Welfare, and picked up an onion bhaji and a couple of Danish pastries at the deli on the corner. There'd be crumbs in my car, but it was a small price to pay.

  Then I carried on through the village, passing under the railway viaduct that carries the old mineral line to Warsop. From here, the line goes on east past Tuxford to the power stations in the Trent Valley. Those power stations were the biggest customers for local coal for years, and at one time the mineral line was the only way coal could get to them from the pits. Then they started switching loads onto the roads, and the result was thousands of lorries trundling through the villages every day.

  But the viaduct is still there. Five hundred feet long, with five stone arches standing over the River Meden like swan's necks, full of power and grace. To me, it's the best sight in Medensworth, not excepting the old church. Funny, though, that it took Lisa to point the viaduct out to me. Until then I hadn't noticed it much. It was just part of the scenery, like the street lights or the back wall of the Welfare. How had I missed that craftsmanship? It was built in 1819, said Lisa, out of the local stone. Wagons originally carried stone from local quarries to a canal wharf, and brought coal back from the pits in the other direction.

  The amazing thing is that this was before the invention of steam railways, and the wagons were pulled by bullocks, and later by horses. Yet here the damn thing is, still standing, a monument in its own right, totally ignored by people passing it in their cars day after day. And totally ignored by me, too, until I had my eyes opened.

  Some folk sneer at stuff like this. Pit headstocks, Victorian pumping stations, the framework knitters' cottages, canals, windmills, lace mills. Industrial archaeology, they call it. But it's all part of our heritage, isn't it? Just the same as Sherwood is, or Hardwick Hall or Creswell Crags. And so is what's left of the pits. Even the godforsaken housing estates like the Forest, built for long-gone miners. Because this is how people lived, you see.

  That's what heritage is all about, right? It's not just about the dukes and mill owners, not just about the rich gits who lived at Welbeck Abbey and Clumber Park. It's about the ordinary folk too. The poor buggers who got chopped to bits fighting for King Edwin of Northumbria against the Mercians and were chucked into a big hole at Cuckney. The poor bloody women who went blind straining their eyes to make lace by candlelight in dingy hovels. All those Victorian mill workers and brewers and bicycle makers. And, of course, the bolshie sods who spent the whole of their working lives underground digging out coal until they got kicked onto the spoilheap like the rest of the unwanted rubbish. They're all part of our heritage, and they've all left their mark on this landscape.

  When I stop and think about it in some of the places round here, I can practically see and hear and smell them still. I haven't got the right words for it, but I think what I mean is that they're the people who really make a place. Aren't I right? You see a bridge over the road as you're driving along. Who built that? Was it erected personally by Sir Robert McAlpine? Did Mr Taylor and Mr Woodrow heave those slabs of concrete into place with their own hands and ring up Mr McAdam to come out with his tip-up truck and put the surface on? Or was it really built by a gang of sweaty, beer-bellied labourers with Guinness hangovers, holes in their socks and handkerchiefs on their heads, who had to work as much overtime as possible because they each had six kids at home eating tons of fish fingers a week, peeing on the carpet and kicking the telly in? You know which it was. I rest my case.

  When the phone rang again I expected it to be the call telling me that the load had arrived safely at its destination. But the voice at the other end sounded upset, despite the terseness of the message.

  "Delivery lost."

  "Lost?"

  There was the pause of somebody being careful. "It attracted a bit of attention at a truck stop. Driver safe."

  "Right."

  This was bad news. There was a good load in that trailer. But it sounded like a bit of bad luck. It does happen sometimes. I know that as well as anyone. I didn't know my luck was about to get even worse.

  Now I only had a few minutes to get to the hall, and I was already in a bad mood.

  The hall? I suppose that sounds bit grand. Now you're thinking that Stones has got off with some rich bird who lives in a bloody great mansion somewhere. What a hypocrite, you think. Well, tough - you're wrong. Lisa is a tourist guide at Hardwick Hall. That's Bess of Hardwick's gaff, right on the border with Derbyshire. You'll no doubt have noticed its graceful Tudor turrets from the M1 on your way south between junctions 29 and 28? Li
ke hell you will. Like everyone else, all you'll have noticed is the bumper of the car in front and the signs telling you how far it is to the next service area.

  But take my word for it, it's there. In fact, there are two halls - the Elizabethan mansion built by the Countess of Shrewsbury (that's Bess's Sunday name), and next to it the ruins of an earlier effort.

  Lisa has the shitty job of shepherding hordes of ignorant visitors about all day, answering bloody stupid questions. You wouldn't believe some of them. Most of these people don't know Bess of Hardwick from Tess of the d'Urbervilles. They've come because it's next on the list of places to visit on their tourist board kitchen calendars. Or maybe they got lost on the M1 at Heath and ended up somewhere real, not knowing quite how to handle it. When they arrive at Hardwick, they expect Shakespeare to have written Romeo and Juliet there or something. Lisa has to explain two thousand years of English history in thirty seconds, and do it fifty times a day. But then, she's good at it. She's good at a few other things as well, but I'm keeping those to myself for now.

  Thoughts like these kept me warm while I drove the Subaru west through Meden Vale, Church Warsop and Warsop Vale to reach Shirebrook, a village that is all back streets, plus a one-way system that directs you away from the shopping centre, which is shut anyway. By the time I got to this gem in Nottinghamshire's crown I'd already passed four pits - Medensworth, Welbeck, Warsop and Shirebrook itself. But then I began to wind my way through some lanes towards Stony Houghton, and the pits might as well have been in a different country. I started to feel quite cheerful. Hardwick and Lisa were ahead, both of them nestling invitingly in a bit of parkland that was as far from the Forest Estate as you can get and still be within ten miles.

  Getting to Hardwick Hall is a bit of a neat trick, though. The hall lies east of the M1, on the Nottinghamshire side. But to get there you have to go past it, cross the motorway at junction 29, then sneak back under again on a little side road. If it weren't for the little brown tourist signs at the junctions, you'd never find it, even though you can see the towers up there on the hillside.