Top Hard

by Stephen Booth

  "Should I have heard of him, Slow?"

  "No." He hesitated again, but I wasn't in the mood for kid gloves after entertaining thoughts about a knife in the guts. I could remember those dead eyes, and they were putting my stomach off thoughts of a Danish pastry.

  "Let's have it. Now."

  "Our Sean told me about Josh Lee. They came across each other in Lincoln."

  "Oh, right." He wasn't talking about a chance encounter while boating on the River Witham or admiring the architecture of the cathedral. Slow's big brother Sean had recently done a spell inside for armed robbery, and Lincoln Prison was one of the local institutions favoured for a short break away from the hurly-burly of crime. Armed robbery is a respectable crime on the inside, the sort that gets you looked up to by all the petty thieves and twockers and Saturday night piss artists who get too handy with their fists and boots. Sean would have made acquaintance with influential types, and would no doubt have been offered a few jobs for when he got out. Did I say it was a break away from crime? More of a chance to make contacts, learn new tricks, and plan the next job. The good citizens who are paying for it all don't know the half of it.

  "Sean said Lee is connected with some of the big pushers. He came over real friendly inside, asking all sorts of questions, he was."

  "About what?"

  "Oh, people Sean knew. Who was involved with what, you know. I guess it's the sort of thing they talk about in prison."

  "Yeah, maybe. So did he offer Sean a job?"

  "Well, yeah - I reckon he did. But Sean didn't want anything to do with him. He said Lee was big trouble."

  "Why exactly?"

  "Just the talk, you know. There's stories about him. Tasty bloke, he is. Well, you saw him yourself."

  "Yeah. But how come you recognised him, Slow?"

  "Sean pointed him out to me one day in Nottingham. It wasn't long after he came out. Sean told me to stay clear of him. Well, you know what our lot's like about drugs, Stones."

  The Thompson boys had just been kids when they were forced to watch their dad plumbing the depths. An addict himself, he'd made money selling third-rate stuff to kids the same age as his own and nicking money wherever he could get it, including the pitiful family allowance in his wife's purse. He'd learned the trick of telling his customers that the stuff he was selling was 'brown'. They aren't so streetwise as they like to think round here, and they thought it was just another form of cannabis, until it was too late. By the time they found out 'brown' was heroin, they already needed it too much.

  Sean and Slow, and their mum Angie, had lived among the degradation and despair and danger that Des Thompson had brought upon them, until his body finally disintegrated under the abuse and he OD'd. Slow didn't need his mum to warn him about the danger of drugs. He'd seen it all for himself.

  My cup of tea and Danish pastry finally arrived. The tea was coffee without milk but loads of sugar, and the Danish was a piece of dried-up Dundee cake. Like I said - Dave's got a memory like an ox.

  While I chewed, I thought about this Josh Lee for a bit, then about his mate Rawlings. When I finished thinking, Slow Kid hadn't even touched his coffee, but Dave had several empty plates in front of him and was looking round for more.

  "When this Lee was asking questions," I said, "did Sean get the idea that it was for someone operating in this area? Someone Lee was working for?"

  Slow shrugged. "Dunno. Could be. One of the big outfits, you mean? But what about Eddie Craig?"

  "Just what I was thinking, Slow. What about Eddie Craig?"

  Yes, Craig. Anybody trying to survive round here has to remember that name. The likes of Josh Lee might be nasty, but Eddie Craig is poison. He runs the big operations in this area - the protection, the clubs, the illegal gambling, the prostitutes, the pornography. And there are a few exotic substances changing hands at the odd club or amusement arcade too.

  There are some small fry who get away with running their own little franchises out of the night clubs and that sort of thing. But God help them if they get ideas above their station and think about branching out. Eddie has his ear firmly to the ground and stamps on anyone who even smells like a rival. And when you've been stamped on by Eddie Craig, you stay stamped on. This bloke is big time.

  Officially he's as clean as a whistle, of course. If you checked his criminal record, you'd probably find he's gone straight as a die, your honour, ever since he was nicked for riding his bike without lights in 1954. It was such a shock to his dear old mother that her little Edward could have got himself into trouble with the police that he's been a model citizen ever since, in honour of her memory.

  I'm clean, too, obviously. But I do it by being a bit cleverer than the plods. Craig has the sort of organisation where blokes are queuing up to take the rap for him and thank him for the privilege. He possesses enough dosh to make it worth their while, and the clout and the hard men to make it not worth arguing the toss, inside or out.

  If somebody else was operating on Craig's territory, it could get quite interesting. If two of those somebodies were Rawlings and Lee, it could be a real pleasure.

  Despite the sweet coffee and the Dundee cake, I felt a smile coming on.

  7

  When Lisa rang, it was to remind me that I was supposed to be giving her a lift to the station. Which station? Oh yeah. She was going to Sheffield on a course. Away for three days. How could I have forgotten that?

  Soon I was on the road, heading for Lisa's place a couple of villages away. She lives in a mid-nineteenth century terraced house right on her village's main street, but with a view from the garden at the back that you could die for, if that's what turns you on. Me, I'm more interested in the things that tell you people have lived here for a long time. Weavers' windows or Yorkshire ranges. Keeping cellars or those stone steps worn into hollows by centuries of feet. Or, in this case, the carved stone set high up in the centre of the row of houses giving the date and the name: Balaclava Terrace, 1895.

  It was a strange custom they had in those days to name streets and terraces after famous battles, even ones the British had lost. Oh, we had six hundred men slaughtered at Balaclava, did we? Russians shot our troops to bits with cannon? Thousands of widows, orphans and bereaved parents in some working class areas now, are there? Jolly good, we'll sling up a few new houses to commemorate the glorious event. Eh, what?

  Funnily enough, the Dabbling Dukes did much the same on their vast estates, only in their case it wasn't houses, but trees they planted. There are plantations called Ladysmith, Culloden and Corunna. Even Spitfire Bottoms. But then the Dukes also planted woods named after their racehorses when they won a big prize. That many trees must have done the landscape a world of good, but you can't help finding their motives a bit puzzling.

  Still, these terraces are solid and well-built, which is a bit more than you can say for some of the rubbish that's been put up since.

  Lisa has done her little house up in what I think of as single girl's style - you know, lots of frilly curtains and chair covers, floral patterns and porcelain nicknacks, rugs and dried flower arrangements and pot pourri. Everything smelling very fragrant and always in its right place. There's even a teddy bear on the bed. Awful, the place is. You couldn't really ask for anything more different from my house on Sherwood Crescent. A colour TV, a freezer, and plenty of beer in the fridge. Now, that's a home.

  "What did you say this course was that you're going on?"

  Lisa gave me that exasperated look that says 'you're an ill-mannered pillock, but you're a bloke, so I don't expect any better.'

  "Heritage Management," she said, but from her tone of voice she might as well have been saying "How to turn water into wine". She sounded reverential, almost. I gathered that this was the latest in-thing, like all those American executive gimmicks that came round in the 1980s, when I was in another life. As soon as you'd got your head round one of them, it was totally out of date and the next one had come along. To be in management, it seemed as though yo
u had to follow the old eighty - twenty rule. Eighty per cent of your time reading memos and going on management courses, and the other twenty per cent actually managing.

  "Right. Heritage Management. Who else will be there?"

  "I don't really know."

  "Heritage managers maybe?"

  "Oh, the usual crowd, I suppose."

  She said this a bit too casually. It made me suspicious, though I couldn't think what she might be hiding from me. Another bloke she'd met somewhere? That could only be a good thing from my angle. It was time I moved on. If Lisa was going to make the break, that would be all the better. God alone knew why I couldn't get round to doing it myself. It had never been a problem in the past. Perhaps I had a touch of social constipation - there was something I had to get rid of, but the system was bunged up. Send for the sexual senna pods and stand clear of the loo.

  "Middle-aged biddies from WI groups and Local History evening classes at the Tech then?"

  "That's about it, I expect," said Lisa placidly. She gave me no argument, you see. A warning sign in a woman, that is. McClure's Rule number three. I call it the Adam and Eve Rule - never trust a woman when she agrees with you.

  There wasn't much conversation on the way to the station in Mansfield. Lisa had a suitcase with her in the car, and it was only when I happened to glance at this that it dawned on me she was stopping the night somewhere. Presumably a couple of nights. I don't know why this hadn't clicked before, but there it was.

  "Where are you staying then?"

  "Stones, I've told you all this. Weren't you listening?"

  Why do you have to justify yourself to women all the time?

  "I've forgotten. I've had a lot on my mind."

  "The seminars are in a hotel. We stay there overnight as well. It's all organised as part of the course, and they book the rooms for us."

  "I see. You and all the other course members will be there then. In this hotel."

  "Yes."

  "All the middle aged biddies."

  "Yes." She sighed. "I'll be back on Friday."

  "Okay." We turned into the station car park and Lisa hopped out. There wasn't much time to spare before her train arrived, so all I got was a quick peck on the cheek before she went off to meet the biddies. I could barely muster the grin as she walked off.

  I watched the carriages pull away northwards towards Shirebrook and wondered whether Robin Hood would be waiting to waylay her.

  For a long time Mansfield was the largest town in Britain without a railway station - one of the achievements of Dr Beeching. Now it has passenger services again, connecting southwards to Nottingham and north through some of the villages to Worksop and on to Sheffield.

  This has helped to put a bit of life back into some of the old pit villages like Creswell, Whitwell and Shirebrook. But naturally tourism was foremost in the minds of the people who named it the Robin Hood Line. Perhaps they think loads of Americans and Japanese will come over and ride the diesel units backwards and forwards looking for signs of outlaws in green outfits with bows and arrows, lurking among the slag heaps and the fields of oilseed rape.

  Actually, it wouldn't be all that surprising if some of them did just that. A few years ago they put up signs on the A619 into Worksop warning motorists of speed cameras. You know those signs with a little illustration of a camera on them? Local folklore has it that there were Japanese tourists stopping their cars at each one they reached, thinking they were viewpoint signs telling them the best spots to take photos from. There must be a lot of baffling holiday snaps being shown around in Nagasaki and Kyoto with nothing on them but a few telegraph poles and the odd bored cow.

  But I digress.

  You might call me a bit of a bastard, but by the time I'd turned the car round at the station and was on my way back towards Medensworth, my thoughts had already left Lisa and were hovering around Nuala. But I've already explained that, haven't I? It's just the way I am.

  I was hoping Nuala would be my senna pod. She could certainly talk the shit out of anybody I know.

  I drove across Medensworth to the new estate, where they slung up some low-rise flats a few years ago and moved folk in from the grottier bits of Mansfield. These flats have got their own garages, private parking for residents and their own graffiti. It's not a place for a miner to live - all miners want to be outdoors when they're not working. But you can't even do a bit of gardening here. Since the gardens are only ten years old, the grass hasn't managed to force its way through the rubble left by the builders yet. Luckily, the folk who live here spend all day indoors watching soaps on the telly.

  Nuala was waiting for me in the bus shelter near the flats. At first glance, she looked to be half naked. When I looked a bit closer, I could see she wasn't wearing as much as that. Apart from the usual pelmet round her bum, she had on a low-cut top that hung away from her breasts at the side and failed to get anywhere near covering her navel. There was a gang of teenagers behind her, ogling her legs, but she pretended not to have noticed them.

  "Hi, love. You look great."

  I gave Nuala my grin as she climbed in the car and got a quick kiss. I heard shouts and hoots behind me and turned to stare at the youths. One of them gave me the finger. There's no respect in this part of town.

  "Where are we going, Stones?"

  "Well, I thought you might fancy something hot."

  She pouted at me. "You'll never believe the sort of day I've had."

  "Yeah? You live such an exciting life, Nuala."

  "Too right. We had the accountants in from head office all afternoon. Going through the books, they were. And do you know why?"

  "They wanted something to read?"

  "Them at head office couldn't believe that we'd made so much money this month. What do you think of that? It's because of our bonus, of course. They think we've fiddled the books to make it look like we've reached our sales targets. But I told one of the blokes - you ought to see me selling holidays, mate. Then you'll know why we're so good. You can't argue with that. They ought to be thanking us, not accusing us of fiddling."

  "It's a disgrace."

  Nuala went on for a bit longer on the same theme. And then a bit longer again.

  "Can we go to that Italian place?" she said after a while.

  "What? Rome? Venice?" I thought she was still talking about holidays.

  "Stupid. That Italian restaurant in Edwinstowe. Luigi's or something."

  "Oh. You want to eat, then?"

  She looked at me funny. "I want you to spend some money on me for once."

  "Come on, sweetheart."

  But the appeal got me nowhere.

  "Well then, what's it to be?" said Nuala. "Luigi's, or I go straight back home. On my own."

  I looked at her, giving her a careful consideration. The seatbelt across her chest was pulling her top really tight in the middle, and her tits were bursting out at the sides like the corners of a bouncy castle. She uncrossed her legs, pushing her feet against the footwell so that her long thighs tensed and stretched. Tensed and stretched.

  "I'll spend the money," I said.

  * * * *

  And afterwards I took her to Clumber Park, which in the summer is like a sort of open air knocking shop and picnic site combined. Clumber is always a revelation for me. The Dukes of Newcastle lived there for a couple of centuries, until they eventually had to demolish it in the 1930s when even the ducal money bags couldn't keep such a vast pile from developing dry rot in the joists and cracks in the plaster in the downstairs toilet.

  Although there's no house there any more, they've left nearly four thousand acres of wooded parkland - not to mention a big lake, a coach house, stables, estate offices, a brew house, vineries, a fig house, a palm house, a huge range of greenhouses, a walled garden, a family chapel, mock Roman and Greek temples, and pleasure grounds. You can't say they didn't know how to live, those dukes.

  The best feature of Clumber Park, though, is the Duke's Drive, three miles long and better kno
wn as Lime Tree Avenue because of the double row of limes. It's around this area that you find most of the visitors who flock to the park to eat their picnics, run their dogs, take a walk through the woods, or just sit and do whatever people can think of to do together in a car in a secluded spot. Play Scrabble or listen to The Archers, for example.

  Lime Tree Avenue is a public highway, so access is free. The rest of the park is National Trust property, and you non-members have to pay to get in. There are little sentry boxes manned by students and such, where cars are supposed to stop. They don't all do that, of course. A quick burst of speed over the ramp can save you a bit of money, so why not? No student is going to leg it after you to demand a few pennies.

  And there they are, all these cars. Practically abandoned in their little secluded corners, parked up on patches of grass, well hidden by trees and clumps of rhododendron bushes. These are cars owned by tourists and families out for the afternoon. This means they're full of cameras, binoculars, radios and other items useful for doing a bit of business with. You will also, I swear, find wallets and handbags, cash and credit cards, and driving licences galore if you take the trouble to carry half a brick in a sock to smash the odd back window with.

  Can you believe that people leave themselves and their property so vulnerable in this day and age? I can. All too easily. Because they never learn, remember?

  These thoughts were going through my mind as I sat in the Subaru with Nuala. I just can't help it. She was talking, of course, and my ears had kind of turned off. Shortly my body might pay attention, but my brain tends to remove itself from involvement. Even the squirrels that were coming down from their trees to pick up the debris from the nearest picnic looked fascinating to me just then. A squirrel is only a rat with a fluffy tail, after all. Fascinating, though.

  Nuala is different from Lisa. It goes without saying, I suppose. It's why I do this - for the change. She's dark and somehow sort of mysterious. I don't know how that can be when she talks so much, but it is. Maybe it's because she talks a lot but says nothing. It leaves you wondering whether there's anything really in there. That's a kind of mystery. She has lots of dark hair, and where Lisa is slim she's, well, what's the word... voluptuous? Plenty of curves, know what I mean? Something to get hold of. When she talks, which is most of the time, her arms fly about and her sweater bobs and quivers violently as if she had a couple of bunny rabbits under there.