Top Hard

by Stephen Booth

  "Where did you see them?"

  "Last night, yeah?"

  "Yeah? What, you mean in the Ferret? Mick Kelk's mates?"

  "Nah, not his mates. The other lot."

  I thought about this. I recollected my hasty exit, hidden behind Dave's shoulder. I'd seen them coming, but my eye had been fixed on the one in front, Sledgehammer Stan, though there had been at least three others with him. Of course, Dave had seen them all right.

  "With the broken-nosed bloke, Stones."

  "Shit, Donc. Were those Eddie Craig's lads?"

  "That's them," he said. "See, I remembered."

  * * * *

  Nuala did her best to take my mind of things later on. As it was her afternoon off, we were able to spend some time on foreplay, which means Nuala talking and me thinking about something else. She'd noticed I was a bit fed up, and she was trying really hard. She gave me a talk on the attractions of the Seychelles as an exclusive holiday destination that was first choice for the discerning travel customer. I guessed it was word for word from the seminar she'd been to that day, but with more body language. Eventually, she got herself into such a heated state that she had to start taking her clothes off. Now she was talking.

  And then the mobile phone rang.

  Well, you can't ignore a ringing phone. It might be business. But when I put it to my ear there was nothing. I said 'hello' all the same. These digitals are supposed to be safe, so that no one can tap into your line and listen to your calls. If that wasn't true, then I was going to sue somebody. Probably Bob Hoskins or Buzby. Somebody, anyway.

  But there was a caller there, something like a heavy breather except the breathing sounded faint. Then a distant voice said 'hello' like it was talking to itself and knew the men in white coats were about to come and cart her away for it. It was a female voice, and that was about all I could tell you.

  I mentally ran through the list of females that might have my mobile phone number and discovered that it was a pretty long list. I made myself a note to change my number soon.

  I said 'hello' again, louder. I got a surprised 'yes' in reply. Then there was more silence. This didn't seem to be getting us anywhere. I tried a 'who's that?' and the breathing became more rapid, as if the mere sound of my voice had stirred up somebody at the other end. But then I always seem to have that effect on women. It didn't narrow it down at all.

  "Is that Stones?"

  At least that was clear, but it was like a radio station fading in and out of reception.

  "Yes. Who is that?"

  "Ah. It's Angie Thompson here."

  "Who?"

  The voice repeated the name, but seemed to be talking to someone else. I wondered whether she had the phone upside down or something.

  "Can you speak towards the phone, Angie? I can't hardly hear you."

  The next minute I was deafened by a bellow from the earpiece.

  "Is that better? I'm not used to these things. That is Stones, isn't it?"

  "Yes, Angie, it's Stones. What's the problem?"

  "They've taken Lloyd."

  "What? What? Who's taken who?"

  "It's Lloyd. They've been and taken him. That is Stones, isn't it? He said to ring Stones."

  My brain must have been affected by too much tequila or too much Nuala, but at last it was starting to click into place. It was just that Lloyd was never a name we thought to use for Mrs Thompson's little boy.

  "Slow Kid? Are you talking about Slow Kid?"

  "Yes, that's what you call him, isn't it? But they didn't - they called him Lloyd, very polite."

  "Who did?"

  "The police. Didn't I say? The police have been and taken him away."

  "Tell me what happened, Angie."

  "They came to the house, two of them. Not uniforms, the others, you know. Detectives. And they asked for Lloyd Thompson. Then they took him away."

  "Did you get their names? Did they say what they were taking him in for? Was he arrested?"

  "I don't know, I don't know. So many questions, Stones. They were asking questions too. But I'm sure Lloyd didn't know the answers." She paused. "I think that's why they took him away."

  "Is that what they said - they were taking him for questioning?"

  "That's right."

  "They didn't arrest him? Did they read him his rights and all that?"

  "No, they didn't. That's right. They can't have arrested him, can they, Stones?"

  Angie Thompson knew about arrests. Her middle son had only recently spent a spell in Lincoln Prison, after all. And then there was Slow Kid's father. He hadn't been seen around for quite a few years, and it wasn't because he was shy.

  "These police. What were they like?"

  "Oh, now. The one who did the talking had glasses. Very polite, he was. A nice man. The other was fatter, not so nice."

  A poor judge of character, Angie Thompson. But then she'd married Slow's father, so it was too late to expect anything better.

  "Was it Inspector Moxon?"

  "Maybe." she sounded doubtful. "Can you get him back, Stones?"

  "I don't know," I said, honestly. "What were they asking questions about?"

  "I can't remember. They took me by surprise, you know, otherwise I would've got him out the back. I don't know what they were saying. But Lloyd didn't do it, whatever it was. I could tell."

  At least she didn't claim, like so many mothers, that her little Johnny wouldn't do anything like that and never got into any trouble. A mother's love is blind sometimes. Even Jack the Ripper was probably a poor misunderstood boy as far as his mum was concerned.

  "I'll see what I can do, Angie. Is it Lloyd's mobile you're using? Will you hang on to it? If it rings, tell people to phone me?"

  "I'll try. Get him back, won't you, Stones?"

  I closed the call without promising anything. I don't like to promise things I might not be able to do, and this came into the category. And so, unfortunately, did what Nuala wanted me just now. You can't concentrate when you're worried.

  "I have to make a few calls."

  "Now?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's not fair."

  "Tough. There's things I've got to do."

  "Does that mean I've got to get dressed?"

  "Not if you don't want." Well, there's nothing wrong with a decent view while you're working.

  The first call was to Ralph Catchlock. Ralph is a defence solicitor, and if Ralph can't get you to walk you haven't got legs. Slow Kid wouldn't be on his own down the station for long. Then I made a few more calls, putting feelers out, calling in a few favours, even where I didn't have any owing. I needed to know what was going on. It made me mad to think of Moxon sneaking round to knock on the Thompsons' door, while me and Dave had actually been down the nick doing our duty voluntarily.

  Picturing Frank Moxon completely ruined the effect of Nuala lounging around the house in her knickers. She must have noticed my expression, because she got dressed and started to talk to the picture of my mum and dad over the fireplace while I was still on the phone. One of the lads I'd rung thought it might be worth mentioning a bit of action that was supposed to be going on up the top end of the estate. He didn't know if it was relevant. But, relevant or not, I was clutching at straws just now.

  11

  An hour or two later, and I was left feeling strangely dissatisfied. The calls I needed to make about Slow Kid had already been made, and now all I could do was wait for results. So far, I didn't even know what the coppers were questioning him about, or whether they might charge him. What did they think they could prove?

  But there were other causes for anxiety. Some of them made themselves obvious as soon as I started to take the afternoon's calls on the mobile. There were two abort messages, jobs that had been called off or gone wrong. A trailer load of computer parts parked up near Worksop had already been nicked by somebody else when we got there. A delivery of watches and jewellery from Birmingham had failed to arrive for no apparent reason.

  T
he occasional abort does happen. Sometimes people turn out to be not quite so stupid as they seem. Sometimes the coppers stumble across something by accident and we have to back off. Two aborts in one day seemed like bad luck. An omen, if you like. I rang up one or two of the boys, but they didn't seem too bothered. They mostly wanted to ask about Slow Kid. But their talk didn't make me feel any better. Time to clutch at those straws.

  "Nuala, I have to go out for a bit."

  "Oh, where are we going?"

  "I said I was going out for a bit." Nuala's a bit slow sometimes, and I have to repeat things.

  "If you think I'm stopping in this place on my own, you've got another think coming. I've got better things to do."

  "Look, you'd only be bored. Anyway, it's business."

  "Where are we going?"

  "I'm going up Top Forest. Just to see some people."

  "Wonderful. I'd like to meet some of your friends."

  "Who said anything about friends?"

  "Will I need my coat?"

  "Only a bullet-proof vest."

  "Just let me tidy my make-up."

  "Nuala, you're not coming."

  "Won't be a sec."

  Naturally, I walked straight out of the door, pulling on my leather jacket as I went. You can't let women argue with you like that.

  But when I got the door of the Impreza open, somehow Nuala was already sitting in the passenger seat doing her lipstick. Her skirt was up round her bum as usual and she looked like she was ready for a Saturday night disco.

  "Out of the car," I said.

  "What do you think of this colour?" she said, dabbing at her lips. "It's a bit darker than what I normally use."

  "Look, you're not coming."

  "You don't like it, do you?"

  "It's fine, but - "

  "I got it to match my hair."

  "Nuala -"

  "I suppose you don't like my hair either."

  I turned on the engine and pulled away from the kerb. I recognised the horrible whine in a woman's voice that warns you she's about to cry or sulk unless you do exactly what she wants. It was better to take her up Top Forest than tolerate that. There's only so much I can bear in one day.

  "I could always dye it blonde," she said.

  * * * *

  Like a lot of these estates, you can easily get lost on the Forest if you don't know the place. There's no sign of a way out once you're in. It's a bit like a maze - any turning could lead you to a dead end or into a crescent that will just bring you back to where you started from. When you stumble on the little shopping parade in the middle, it's always a surprise. To a stranger, it must look like an oasis in a desert of Transit vans and Sky TV. Some oasis. Peter Malik at Malik's Late Night Superstore, Off Licence and Video Hire Centre is always complaining that he spends half his life directing strangers off the estate. It's best to ask Peter, though, rather than one of the kids on the street - they'll most likely direct you into someone's back garden and nick your spare wheel while they're doing it.

  Yes, the kids play on the streets here - at least they do down in Bottom Forest. It's really because the streets weren't made for cars, like I said. Once you get cars and vans parked on both sides of the street, the traffic ain't coming through too fast. If it's anything wider than a Transit, it ain't coming through at all. If you have a chip pan fire at the weekend round here, you don't call the fire brigade, you have to call the next door neighbour to come round with a spare blanket. By the time the fire engine gets through, your whole house could be frying.

  On the newer, more open sort of streets up Top Forest, it's a bit different. This is where the joy riders rule. The county council has put speed humps here to stop them. Traffic calming, it's called. It took them months to do it, because they couldn't leave any equipment or materials on site overnight. They had to pack it all up and take it away every night and bring it all back again from the depot next morning. Otherwise it would have been regarded as surplus, and there would have been none of it left within twenty-four hours.

  Anyway, they've put these little red hillocks in the roadway and bollards either side to narrow the road down to one car's width. The only people it slows down are folk like me, the ones who are worried about damaging the suspension on their nice new Toyotas. And there's nothing calming about that. Of course, the chuffin' joy riders aren't bothered - it's not their cars they're driving, is it? They're nicked, didn't you know? In fact, these lads soon found out that if you hit the humps fast enough, you could get airborne. Wowee, new game. Traffic calming? What a load of crap.

  So the young kids stay off the street up in Top Forest. You never know when some pillock's going to come screaming round the corner on two wheels, dead set on killing himself and anybody else who gets in the way. But there are places to play. In two directions, the estate peters out into the edge of heathland to the north of the village. There's also the car park of the old Miners Welfare. The Welfare's not a bad place to go, in fact. The beer's still cheap in there, and the pool tables are free. There just aren't any miners.

  Nuala chatted happily as we drove up the estate. She seemed to be commenting on the choice of curtains in the houses that we passed. Then she started cooing over the fact that someone had attached a bit of trellising to the wall next to their front door and had managed to get a clematis to survive long enough to produce a flower. I thought for a minute she was going to tell me to phone Homes and Gardens with the news.

  There weren't many people about, except at the shops. There were a few blokes hanging around outside the betting shop and the newsagent's. They weren't speaking to each other. In fact, they had nothing much to do except kick used crisp packets about on the pavement until they were too wet and shredded to move. Anywhere else, it might have been an aluminium drinks can they were kicking. But those cans are like gold round here. If you drop one, a kid will dash up and grab it before it has chance to hit the floor. Crisp packets don't make good substitutes - instead of a satisfactory rattling, there's nothing but a pathetic rustle. That says it all, really.

  Malik's Superstore was open as usual, but the chippie was shut and its steel shutter was firmly down. The hairdresser's and the motor spares shop didn't look like they were doing much business. The other two units had been closed and derelict for a long time. A few starlings were perched on the edge of the roof, picking at the weeds growing in the gutters.

  This area around the shops is about the only place on the estate where you can find rubbish bins. They're put there by the council for the empty chip papers. But the bins are red and they look ridiculously like post boxes, so people sometimes get them mixed up. I mean, they drop bits of burning paper into the litter bins to set fire to them, when they really meant to drop them into the post boxes. They also get phone boxes mixed up with public toilets. I blame the teachers, you know. Why don't they give classes on this sort of thing? What hope have these kids got of landing a job in some high tech computer factory if they can't figure out whether you speak into a phone or piss on it?

  I found two of the blokes I wanted standing with some mates looking into the engine compartment of a Ford Capri. This is a favourite hobby round here, when there's nothing much on the telly. Engine compartments can be really, really interesting when you've been on the dole for a bit.

  Jeff and Colin are ex-miners, employed at Medensworth Colliery up to the day it shut. Their dads had worked there as well, and probably their granddads. But their sons never would.

  "Hey up, lads."

  "Hey up," said Jeff cautiously. It was his driveway, so he was the spokesman. The others just nodded at me. Then I saw them all turn and stare at the Subaru behind me at the kerb. I gathered that Nuala was getting out. And I'd specifically told her to stay in the car, no matter what. I could well imagine the bits of her that were showing as she struggled to make it to the pavement in that skirt. They were bits that some of these lads probably hadn't seen since they retired the pit ponies.

  Four pairs of eyes swivelled as N
uala came to stand at my side, hitching up her blouse where it had fallen open a bit more over her lacy bra.

  "Hello," she said. "I'm Nuala."

  She didn't even get a nod in reply. She might be the most exciting thing they'd seen all month, but she was only a woman.

  "I'm a friend of Stones," she tried again.

  This made no impression either, except that one or two of them looked from her to me and quickly back again. You could see their minds making the connections in all the right places.

  "Are you friends of Stones too?"

  Nothing.

  Well, this was really good. Compared to them, I was going to seem really courteous and caring to Nuala from now on. I might be a bit rough and ready, but at least I know how to be polite to a woman.

  "Piss off back to the car, you silly tart," I said. "You're in the bloody way."

  Nuala sniffed and backed off a bit towards the Subaru. I knew she hadn't actually got in. I knew this not only because I didn't hear the car door shut, but also because there were four pairs of eyes angled past me on a course that I reckoned would end at about Nuala's thigh level. I guessed she was doing her Motor Show pose draped over the bonnet. I tried to act as if this was perfectly normal.

  "I'm looking for some help," I said.

  I had their attention a bit now.

  "What sort of help?" asked Jeff.

  He was looking hopeful suddenly, as if he thought I might need some help with Nuala. Well, I did, but not that sort of help.

  "I know you blokes keep your eyes open. I wondered if you'd noticed anybody new working this part of the estate. Anyone selling, you know what I mean?"

  They knew what I meant all right. When I said 'you keep your eyes open' they knew I meant 'you lot are all unemployed and have got nothing better to do.'

  "We don't take any notice," said Jeff. "Why should we?"

  "You care about what goes on round here, don't you?"

  "Maybe. But that's our business."

  "No bugger bothers about us, do they?" said Colin. "Forgotten about us, they have. The council, police, government. Nobody gives a toss about us down here. We've got the worst crime rate in the area, but we haven't had a beat bobby walk down this end of the village for years. And do you know they're shutting the old community house now? So why should we help anybody?"